Holt House

by L. G. Vey

  The

  Eden Book Society

  100 Years of Unseen Horror

  The Eden Book Society

  Copyright © L. G. Vey 2018

  All rights reserved.

  The right of L. G. Vey to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

  First published in Great Britain in 2018 by The Eden Book Society, an imprint of Cinder House Publishing Limited.

  ISBN 978-1-911585-42-8

  Printed and bound in Great Britain by Clays Ltd,

  St Ives plc.

  www.edenbooksociety.com

  www.deadinkbooks.com

  About the Society

  Established in 1919, The Eden Book Society was a private publisher of horror for nearly 100 years. Presided over by the Eden family, the press passed through the generations publishing short horror novellas to a private list of subscribers. Eden books were always published under pseudonyms and, until now, have never been available to the public.

  Dead Ink Books is pleased to announce that it has secured the rights to the entire Eden Book Society backlist and archives. For the first time, these books, nearly a century of unseen British horror, will be available to the public. The original authors are lost to time, but their work remains and we will be faithfully reproducing the publications by reprinting them one year at a time.

  We hope that you will join us as we explore the evolving fears of British society as it moved through the 20th century and eventually entered the 21st. We begin our reproduction with 1972, a year of exciting and original horror for the Society.

  L. G. Vey

  L.G. Vey was born in Southampton in 1921. He served in the Royal Engineers during World War II, and then joined the British Broadcasting Corporation, starting his career in television as a technician. By the end of the 1950s he was an award-winning scriptwriter with a number of well-known horror and science fiction dramas to his name, many of which can no longer be found.

  He lived, unmarried, in Hampshire for many years, where he enjoyed walking his Bassett Hounds, fishing, and painting landscapes. He died in 1978. Holt House was his only piece of fiction.

  Chapter One

  The branches of the wild cherry trees, thick with frothy blossom, swayed in the fierce breath of the wind. But when Ray put his eye back to the hole in the fence he couldn’t see a blade of grass stir. The Latches’ garden was sheltered from the breeze: orderly, maintained, perfect.

  The lawn was cut short. He had watched Mr Latch mow it a dozen times or more, carefully pushing along a cylindrical lawnmower that looked pre-war. It fascinated Ray how he never saw the blades of grass grow; time was an invisible process in this place. The Latches had aged, were aging, but he couldn’t see it, and the house, with its large rectangular windows and gabled back porch, the mossy slope of its high roof and the two thin chimneys, looked exactly the same to him as it had when he was eleven years old.

  He had been so very scared, then.

  The dusky pink curtains in one of the upper rooms – the Latches’ bedroom, Ray assumed – were pulled back, and Ray glimpsed Mrs Latch’s white, curly hair and the baby blue sleeves of the cardigan she favoured: it was only for a moment, and then she stepped back out of view.

  ‘I’m here,’ he said.

  He did not move.

  Close by, a wood pigeon made its calm, even call. The stalks of the bluebells, not yet erupted into flower, rustled behind him, giving away that some sort of animal was nearby. He thought a fox, or an otter, perhaps. Then he remembered that there were no more otters here, in Holtwood. There hadn’t been wild otters in these parts since he was a child. Before that, even.

  He did not take his eye from the hole in the fence.

  The back door of the house squeaked as it was opened, and the beat of wings sounded overhead as the wood pigeon fluttered away in instant response. Mr Latch emerged, already dressed. The only difference between the past and the present was his smooth bald head – Ray’s memory of him included thinning silver hair, brushed carefully from a side parting. Apart from that he was a familiar sight, from the braces stretched over his stomach to his brown leather slippers.

  Mr Latch shuffled down the path that led from the back porch to the outhouse – a small stone building with peeling green paint upon the door – and as he went inside Ray thought of the new estate that was eating up chunks of the Holtwood, speeding towards change at a rate that only humans and their machines could manage. Those houses had every manner of modern convenience. He had walked around the new roads with their turning circles and cul-de-sacs, seen the kids in the play park, their feet crunching upon loose chippings around the base of the shiny swing set and the roundabout. All modern conveniences were expected; an outside lavatory, nowadays? It would never be tolerated.

  He heard the flush, and Mr Latch emerged, closing the door of the outhouse behind him. He returned down the crazy-paved path to the house. Breakfast, no doubt, awaited him.

  The day had started.

  The Latches would eat eggs and toast, and drink tea from a brown earthenware teapot that she would warm first, then cover with a knitted cosy. The washing up would follow, and other household tasks. She would hang out the wet clothes at some point; it was going to be a fine day. She always hung the shirts out first, shaking them, and then pinning them upside down from the line that ran above the kitchen window to a pole half-way down the path.

  Mr Latch would take care of that lawn, and spend time in his shed. That was what he did. Every day.

  Ray crawled back from the fence, on his hands and knees. Once he was within the wood, under the cover of the trees, he stood up, and made his way back to his tent.

  *

  I don’t know why I came back here. Where it went wrong.

  To find the Latches still living here – it’s a gift. Maybe this was meant to be all along. Just like finding that hole in their fence. It’s perfect for watching him. Seeing how he is.

  He’s the same.

  When you watch someone, you know them. You know them better than they know themselves. You can get answers to all sorts of questions, without ever having to ask them directly.

  But you can’t get an answer to everything.

  I should have paid as much attention to Trish, and watched her every day. I would have seen it come over her – the minute she decided to leave me. I would have cottoned on to what she was trying to tell me when we walked along Southsea and she asked me to buy her that shell at one of the gift shops, the big pink conch with the shiny mother of pearl inside. You’d never find one like that actually on Southsea beach. They must have shipped it in for the tourists. I bought it though, and gave it to her, and she gave it back to me, right then, on the spot. She said – it’s for you to keep. To remind you of today.

  I thought it was soppy, in that way that women like to be. I didn’t get it at all. What she was telling me. Why I’d need a reminder of a good day, after she’d gone. She already knew she was going to go. She had it planned all along.

  Everything happens for a reason.

  *

  Ray put his notebook and pen back in his rucksack, along with the shell from Southsea. He remembered how, after buying the shell for her, she had wanted to sunbathe although clouds had been constantly passing over the sun, and the wind had been strong. It was a pebbled beach, too – not comfortable for sitting. Still, he tried to give her whatever she wanted. He had watched the ferries make pace across the waves, in and out of the harbour. Then he had glanced at her, lying on the pebbles, arms and legs flung out wide, her skirt pulled up to her thighs.

  Put your legs away, he had said, not wanting other men to see her that way. Had that been wrong? Her expression had darkened, but deep down he thoug
ht she enjoyed it: his jealousy over her, his need to keep her for himself.

  The next day he had set sail on Ark Royal for a NATO exercise. He’d been gone for four months. It hadn’t even been a long stint, compared to the usual, but it was long enough.

  He took the Polaroid of her from his shirt pocket, kissed it, and replaced it. He reached for his wash bag before backing out of the tent, closing up the canvas loops, and making his way down to the river.

  *

  The River Meon formed a natural barrier between the new estate and Holt House, winding through a number of Hampshire villages until it found its way to the Solent. But here, high in the Holtwood, it was knee deep and silty, cold and with a perceptible current after the spring storm last week.

  Ray stripped off and waded in.

  He washed this way every morning, but he still smelled bad all the time. It wasn’t his clothes. He had washed them, too, and hung them from the trees. It was a deep down smell inside him. It was no wonder that he never saw any animals; they must be able to sniff him out miles away. Foxes and badgers surely still thrived here – he had seen the holes, tracks and trails – even if the otters were all gone. Maybe they watched him. Maybe they wished him gone.

  When Dad had brought him to this very spot in the river, and they had waited patiently to see otters, they had no idea that they could have hidden in the leaves forever and never got lucky. They had spent hours out here, when Mum was at her worst during the pregnancy, and Dad would say, It’ll be today, I’m sure. A flash of brown, a swipe of a long tail, as quick and smooth as an eel: sometimes Ray even convinced himself that he had seen one. There. There. He’s still there, look. Dad would shake his head.

  It wouldn’t hang around for you to point him out. Otters are fast. So fast. All the other animals are afraid of them, did you know that? They’re carnivores, with teeth that can go through bone. If you see one, stay down, and stay quiet.

  Going near one never was an option, but the hunt kept them talking when everything else was too difficult to discuss. One time, though, they saw a kingfisher. A dot of electric blue, hovering, and then zipping away on tiny pulses of energy. That had been close to the Latches’ house, by the fence. They had walked past there many times, on the way to the river.

  Ray finished washing. He shook out water from his hair, and felt the growth of it. His beard was thickening too, day by day.

  The wind dropped, leaving a hole in the usual sounds of the wood: no birdsong, no rustling. At such moments he felt certain he was being observed. It wasn’t just the thought of the animals he never saw. It was as if the trees, the water, the wood itself had eyes upon him.

  He waded back to the bank, aware of the way he disturbed the river, making patterns in a place that should be free of human interference.

  *

  The space behind the Latches’ fence was beginning to look like the den of some animal. The springy grass that grew around the posts had been flattened by his body weight. A man who knew what to look for could see signs of life here, could even follow them back to his tent.

  They won’t look for you here, he reminded himself. You’re safe.

  He sat in his spot, and put his eye to the hole in the fence.

  Mr Latch was sitting on the wooden bench under the kitchen window, smoking his pipe.

  Time played its usual trick in the presence of Holt House: each puff the old man took was languorous; each raise of the stem to the droop of his lower lip was poised; every curl of smoke took an age to rise to the sky, and dissipate.

  Latch was dressed in his usual outfit. His stomach pushed out against the material of his shirt and trousers, and his braces curved around it. The same old brown leather slippers remained in place, and there were grey woollen socks underneath, with a stripe of skin visible above each ankle where the trousers rode up.

  Where was Mrs Latch? Ray never saw her at this time of day, but the bedroom curtains were closed again so he assumed she took a nap after lunch. But even if she had been sitting next to her husband, they would not have spoken. They hardly ever spoke.

  It wasn’t how he remembered them from that night when they had taken him into their house. They had worn concerned smiles, considerate expressions, as they welcomed him and assured his dad that they would take care of Ray for as long as was needed. She had carried on talking to his dad in the hall while Mr Latch had said, ‘Young man, I’m sure we can find something to interest you,’ leading him away to the kitchen, for biscuits. When she joined them, they had held a little conversation about what to do, what blankets to put on the spare bed, that kind of thing, but he had sensed even back then that the words had been pitched for his ears, in light and soothing tones.

  For a small boy like him, in an emergency, the public face of the Latches had been presented. Alone, thinking there was nobody to see them, their mouths sat a little slacker.

  The pipe finished, Mr Latch knocked it out on the arm of the bench, pocketed it, and then made his way down the path towards Ray’s spot behind the fence. The shed, of course: he was going to the shed, as he did every afternoon. It was a small, flat-topped wooden shack that Ray couldn’t see from his hiding place, but he had been taken into it as a child, on that one visit, and he remembered it clearly.

  One window, with a workbench beneath it, had given a view back towards the house. An old tea chest had squatted in the corner, along with a pile of wood offcuts. At the back of the shed had been a set of hooks that held tools, metal things, and then two rows of shelves bearing cobwebbed jam jars filled with nuts, bolts, screws, washers, buttons, clips.

  Banging brought Ray back to the here and now. Mr Latch was creating in his shed. Ray pictured him selecting the claw hammer from the rack of tools on hooks. Perhaps he was pounding nails into wood. He had shown Ray a nailed construction that day – a fort, he had said, but it had looked like no recognisable object.

  And then he had taken him indoors, and shown him the wardrobe. The thing inside.

  That sick, cornered feeling reappeared as, in a flash of memory, Latch whispered to him once more. What were the words? He couldn’t remember. He couldn’t remember.

  He crawled away, his hands balled into fists, and was sick beside the trunk of a cherry tree. The wood whispered around him.

  *

  It had only been a small shop, once. But since his childhood it had been expanded back and back, shelves stacked high, to double as a post office, newsagent, and sweet shop, amongst other things. Ray guessed the latter incarnation was popular with the kids off the local estate; a pile of Choppers had been dumped just outside the door when he arrived, and the boys inside were waiting for a quarter of aniseed balls to be measured out from one of the tubs behind the counter.

  ‘Kids,’ said the man serving, once they had left. He was thick-set, with sleeves rolled up to reveal a tattoo of a rose inside his left arm, just below the elbow. Ex-military, Ray suspected. He wondered if the man thought the same of him. ‘They’re all right at that age, but give ‘em a year and they’ll be in here trying to pinch everything they can reach. That’s why I put the expensive stuff higher up.’ He gestured to the top shelves, which held a range of cans and packets that looked no different than the ones on the lower shelves to Ray. ‘Seen you round here a bit. You moved in somewhere?’

  ‘No no, just visiting a relative.’

  ‘Oh yeah? Who’s that, then?’

  ‘How much are the cans of beans?’

  ‘Price should be on the bottom.’

  ‘Oh yeah, thanks.’ Ray made a show of checking the sticky label, and put what he wanted into his wire basket. Beans, soup, canned fruit. A few Fry’s chocolate bars, for energy.

  ‘It’s the parents,’ said the man, as he tallied up the cost of the goods on pen and paper beside the till. ‘Too busy watching television to pay attention, not even caring whether they get on the bus to go to school every day. I’ve got a lad that age. You have to keep an eye on them. Give them stuff to do.’

  ‘Isn
’t it Saturday?’ said Ray, suddenly fearful that he had lost count of the days out in the wood.

  ‘Yeah, no, it’s Saturday. Getting on to lunchtime. We’re just about to close up.’ The man threw him a look as he handed him a plastic bag containing his purchases, and Ray knew he’d made a mistake. Now he was memorable. He’d have to find another shop – walk further, to the next village along, or even make the journey into Bishops Waltham to visit the Co-op.

  When he left the shop the Choppers were gone, and the street was quiet. The garage next to the shop was shut up tight. He idled past and, through the large window to the customer area, saw a slew of curling newspapers on a low coffee table, with a few chairs arranged around it. On the orange partition wall was a pinned picture from a newspaper, showing a woman sitting in a field, naked, her body hidden by the red dabs of wild poppies, apart from a tantalising view of the side of one breast. He stopped and stared at her untouchable smile.

  When he was young there hadn’t been a customer area. The only picture in the garage had been of the Queen. It had hung in a heavy frame on the wall behind the pits and the tools and the tyres. He remembered it clearly, from when his father took in the Allegro for a service. It has to be tip-top, said his dad. For when the baby finally comes.

  Ray, in the grip of memory, walked away. He turned left, then right, to find his feet upon a familiar lane.

  It was a mile or so to stroll in bright sunlight and a blustery wind. What had been meadows fifteen years ago were now lined, ploughed fields, with the green fuzz of new spring growth just beginning to erupt. A barbed wire fence had been strung along the roadside to deter those who would walk over the land and ruin its symmetry. When Ray reached the house he kept back, close to the barbed wire, and surveyed it.

  Canary yellow paint coated the door and window sills, although the walls themselves remained white. But it was a bigger, bolder house in many ways – a new car port sat on one side, and on the other was a two-storey extension in a different brick entirely, jutting out, capped with its own red roof.