The Dark Corners Box Set

by Robert Scott-Norton

  Calm. Why did she say calm like the collection was a living thing that might rise when angered? Doubt flitted around his mind like disturbed dust when a window is left open.

  “I’m sure it won’t be too much of a challenge,” Seth said.

  “Forgive me for saying so, but you’re a fool if you really think that. The occult is not something to take lightly. You’ve already seen how desperate some men can be over their beliefs, the lengths they will go to. We’re not talking about your readings for naive old ladies.”

  The back of Seth’s neck began to feel uncomfortably warm.

  “How long have you been watching me?”

  Olivia took the question in her stride. Did nothing bother her? “We keep tabs on anyone claiming to have abilities.”

  “How long?”

  “You came under our radar on the night you went to Ravenmeols.”

  “And you didn’t think we might have needed your help?” Seth tapped his fingers against his leg and tried to keep his voice lowered. He didn’t want to lose his cool, but she was pushing him to the limit.

  “We don’t have crack assault teams ready to turn up at the last minute and save the day. That’s not how we work. But, for instance, if you’d have contacted us and let us know what you were about to do, we’d have been more than happy to supply resources to assist you.”

  “How is anyone meant to contact you if they don’t know you exist?”

  She set her cup to the side. “I’ve taken up enough of your time. I should leave.”

  It was difficult to ignore the sense that Seth was missing something from this exchange. He didn’t want Olivia to go. She knew about the Adherents and about Ravenmeols. And she had the resources to help with the collection. Over the last half an hour, he’d felt it. Sitting above the basement, he was left with the unshakable feeling that something powerful lay beneath him, waiting for his attention. It had been calm, whilst they’d been talking, but as she’d said she was leaving, there had been a quiver.

  Olivia was taking her time. She stood and glanced down at the floor then up at Seth. “You can feel it too, can't you? The power down there. It doesn’t like me being here. Lamont had imprinted himself heavily on his collection. He’d reassured me that he had protections in place to prevent anyone but those he’d passed ownership on from entering the basement. He was smart. But the society is smarter. We can take it and all your problems will go. We’ll even let you keep the house, it’s of no interest to us. But I’m telling you that the moment you step down into that basement, there’s no turning back, you will not be able to let go of the collection.”

  “I’ve had my fair share of last chances and so far, have always survived.”

  “But I suspect things are different for you now.” She looked into him with those steely eyes again. “Are you willing to hand the collection over to the society?”

  Seth found it difficult to move his head or find his voice.

  Eventually Seth spoke. “You said it yourself, Lamont was a smart man. He left it to me for a reason. I don’t intend to go against his wishes.”

  Olivia nodded slowly, almost as if this was the answer she’d expected all along. Her expression didn’t alter though. There was no sign of annoyance, no flicker of resentment. She left the room, opened the front door then passed him a business card. “Keep that. You can get hold of me—should you ever need to.” As she stepped outside, she took one last look at Seth before walking away. There was something in her expression that sent a chill up Seth’s back and even after the door had closed behind her, Seth felt uneasy. Had that been the right thing to do? It felt now that he’d ignored the life jacket that had been offered and he was facing the wide unknown without help.

  The basement grumbled beneath his feet.

  13

  Seth filled the kettle and looked at the state of the sink. Ten minutes later he’d cleaned all the plates and cups that had been left there and was sitting on a stool at the kitchen island pondering Olivia’s information. His uncle had been heavily involved in this occult world, knowing about the Adherents of the Fourth, presumably then he’d known what was going on at Ravenmeols. And yet, Seth and his parents had lived on the edge of the Ravenmeols estate for so long. Seth didn’t like coincidences. If his uncle had known this, why hadn’t he told his parents? Kelly would still be alive if they hadn’t lived so close to that damned place.

  Was this what the Vigilance Society did to its members? Encourage secrecy? It sounded like his uncle had seen signs that Vigilance weren’t all that they purported to be; otherwise why would he have left them?

  He took his coffee with him around the house, checking out what was, he supposed, going to be his new home. Throughout, there were signs that his uncle had lived a fairly sedentary life, and the house needed maintenance. The windows in the bathroom, for example, were edged with a dark mildew that Seth didn’t think any amount of scrubbing would get rid of. The decoration on the first floor was dated, it couldn’t have been touched in twenty years. Carpet was threadbare in places and the air was thick with dust in the four spare bedrooms he wandered into. Lamont had been using a large bedroom at the front of the house and this had a stale musty smell. The bed had been made, the room was tidy, a tumbler of water sat on the bedside table, untouched. A writing desk tucked into the corner was home to several potted plants, the soil crumbling. Seth used the glass of water in an attempt to revive them, then opened a window to give the room a chance to breathe.

  There was one more door from the landing leading up to the attic. Seth poked his head up there briefly to get a quick view of a jumble of crates and broken pieces of furniture, then headed back down to the kitchen, his curiosity satisfied.

  From his pocket he pulled out the second letter Chesterton had given him, the one that should only be opened in the house.

  Thank you.

  It means a lot to have someone I trust in charge of the house. Hopefully, you haven’t found it in too much disarray. I used to have a cleaner pop in once a week but had to let her go. She was asking too many questions.

  You might wonder why I haven’t left the house to your father. The short answer is the collection in the basement would not agree with him. There is a rather longer answer but I’ll leave that to you to find out. Your father has always been a stubborn man, but his heart is in the right place—usually.

  Olivia will no doubt have shown up by now. Take anything she says with a pinch of salt. Vigilance has an agenda and despite my working with them for years, I never did fully understand what that was. One thing is for sure and that is they want the collection. They want it, but they can’t have it. And that irks Olivia.

  The collection belongs to the owner of the house, and once I’ve died, that owner is you. Only you will be able to go freely about the basement and lead others down with you. There are instructions on the other side of this letter for how to do that. The collection has several rituals it responds well to. You’d do well to remember that.

  Be careful of All the Darkness. It’s the most dangerous thing in the collection. It may try to speak to you. Don’t listen.

  Last, be careful who you trust. I’m afraid I may have made you a target.

  Lamont

  Seth turned the paper over and saw a list of instructions written in his uncle’s now familiar scrawl. He checked the drawer of the island unit and pulled out a candle, candlestick, matches, and a key, all listed in the instructions.

  A vibration rumbled through his feet and his eyes snapped to the basement door. It wanted him to go down there. And against all his common sense, Seth wanted to go down there as well.

  He could feel something beneath his feet, but it was impossible to take that feeling and shape it into a tangible thing. The collection in the basement had been still whilst Olivia had been in the house and now that she had gone, it had stirred. That was the only way he could describe it. At no point did he think he’d made a mistake in turning down Olivia’s help though. This society she spok
e of sounded dangerous. Lamont may have helped found it, and on the face of it Olivia seemed harmless, but there had been a falling out. Letting them take over now, before he’d even got to see the collection was disrespectful to his uncle, not to mention reckless. The collection came with the house: the house was his financial security.

  Seth popped a candle into a holder and lit it with a match. The flame flickered, then died. The instructions pointed out that electrics didn’t fare so well in the basement. Seth had seen a similar thing happen at Ravenmeols. He repeated the process, and this time watched the flame burn steadily.

  He wandered to the basement door with the candlestick in hand. The door was solid and unassuming with a bolt at the top and bottom. He withdrew the bolts then slipped the key into the lock. He turned it, opened the door, then stared down into the darkness thinking this wasn’t so bad.

  A blast of air struck Seth forcing him backwards. He clenched his free fist to stop it trembling and focused on taking deep breaths.

  Seth relit his candle and approached the doorway a second time.

  There’s nothing to worry about. Maybe you should have as much faith in yourself as your uncle did in you.

  Seth counted to three in his head then before he could talk himself out of it, he stepped down onto the staircase. A breeze of cold stank air washed over him but that was all. Each step into the gloom felt like descending a dozen metres or more. The walls and ceiling bore down on him, squeezing him into insignificance.

  It was difficult to get a full sense of the collection, but he cast the light to his right so he could look at some of the artefacts on display. There were old wooden shelves and rusty brackets. This wasn’t like anything he was expecting. He was expecting more of a museum feel, with glass cases and bright lights. Not this dark gloomy basement area which could have been at home in anyone’s house, full of bric-à-brac and forgotten rubbish. Perhaps that was part of Lamont’s plan, he mused, disguising the extraordinary amongst the ordinary.

  He reached out to touch what looked like a plastic pig’s head then thought better of it. Until he’d reviewed his uncle’s notes, he should avoid touching any of this stuff. Who knew what it could do?

  It seemed ridiculous but he couldn’t escape the sensation that he was being watched, observed by the things on the shelves. Did the artefacts know that Lamont was dead?

  He passed a large object hanging on the wall covered with a black shroud, and Seth got a sudden glimpse of something moving under the black material. He shivered as he hurried past, not wanting to linger by this particular piece. On the next rack of shelving, bookshelves were packed with ancient volumes, broken spines, and tatty pages.

  Quickly, he came to an incongruous brick structure. A room within a room. No attempt had been made to tidy up the mortar, and the brickwork looked irregular. The light from his candle flickered and as he looked down, he discerned what he thought were blood splatters. Could this be where his uncle had been found? A door had been fitted into the wall of the room, and it was ajar. Seth observed the bolts. A padlock was still open in one of the brackets.

  What the hell was a burglar doing down here? To the untrained eye, he couldn’t imagine how this could look like anything other than a load of junk. The idea came to him that they must have known what they were after. He’d checked the rest of the house and whilst the study was a mess; it didn’t look like it had been turned over by a burglar. The messy papers and stacks of books were Lamont’s filing system.

  Cautiously, making sure the door wasn’t about to swing shut behind him, Seth entered the space. Jesus, he’d thought the basement outside this room was oppressive, but inside this little annexed cell it was ten times worse. Automatically, without thinking, he scanned the brickwork checking for signs of doors that shouldn’t be there. There had been doorways here. He knew that much. He could smell them, like the weird scent of ozone after a thunderstorm, but there was nothing there now.

  He lowered his candle to the floor, noting what appeared to be more blood splatters.

  What had been kept in here?

  Seth straightened and took several steps forward. Ahead and to the rear of the room was a modest wooden table with a simple stand. It looked like it would have taken the weight of something fairly substantial. Besides that, though, the room was bare.

  On the wall, a nail, and beside it, a legend, printed in Lamont’s by now familiar handwriting, identifying the object that had once hung here.

  All the Darkness by Kain Scardovi.

  The same painting that the second letter had warned him about. He’d built this room specially to house it—no to cage it.

  Back upstairs, he locked the basement door and blew out his candle. Lamont had mentioned his notes on the collection. Whoever had killed his uncle, had wanted the painting. Find the painting, find the killer.

  After an hour’s searching, Seth found Lamont’s ledger in his study. Two large desks, of different styles, had been shoved together in the middle of the room—the fat leather bound book had been wedged in the gap between them. Dust covered everything bar a small rectangle on one desk where Seth assumed his uncle had sat and worked. A laptop, still open, rested to the side.

  The ledger appeared to be a catalogue or artefacts that were included in the collection. He found the entry he was looking for in only a few minutes.

  All the Darkness - Joceline Scardovi.

  And a date, presumably when Lamont had acquired the painting.

  3rd June 2010 - Reference over page.

  The plaque in the basement had read Kain, so who was Joceline? He turned the page over and Seth understood the reference was a photograph stuck into the ledger. It was a colour print, the painting’s title written in Lamont’s jagged scrawl beneath.

  And it took Seth’s breath away. In that moment he was back at Ravenmeols, the days torn away like the stitches of a wound, leaving the emotions exposed and raw.

  It was the shadowmen. The hitchers. The Adherents. Whatever you wanted to call them. Two of them against some grey wooded background, fog, or mist wrapping the figures. One of the figures was towards the back of the composition, much farther away than the main subject. The main figure in the painting was as he remembered them at Ravenmeols and throughout his life. The shadowmen were the characters he’d seen in his waking dreams, the creatures that came from the doorways he’d sensed ever since he was eight-years old. The subject’s features were indistinct. Instead of eyes, a nose, and mouth were jagged holes like they'd been burnt away by the fiery red light that came from deep within.

  Seth walked away from the ledger. This wasn’t fair. He thought he was here to help his uncle look after his legacy. The creatures he’d seen at Ravenmeols were under the control of Adam Cowl, the leader of the Adherents of the Fourth. But people had seen shadowmen for decades, perhaps hundreds of years, long before Adam and his cult. What did they want?

  Seth thought they were tired of not belonging. They wanted to exist here, with us, through us. To steal our lives.

  This hadn’t been some random burglary. Whoever had taken the painting had done so for a reason.

  Seth snapped the reference photo using his phone, then another one of the ledger entry with the name of the painting and the seller’s details. It wasn’t much, but it was a start.

  “You’re serious? He’s left you a house?” Judy was looking at him like he had two heads.

  Seth had needed to get some air and wanted someone to talk to, someone that wasn’t Malc. Judy had been reluctant to meet at first, and he didn’t blame her. When he’d gone missing, he hadn’t thought to let her know he was safe until two days had passed. In his defence, his head was still scrambled from the experience and Malc had encouraged him to rest, but he could see that she had every right to be angry at him.

  He picked her up from her house and drove to the library, parking up on a side road and he told her everything that had happened since getting the letter from Chesterton.

  “He’s left me the hou
se, money, and a basement of the most dangerous occult artefacts I think have ever been housed together under one roof.”

  “How dangerous?” Her eyes narrowed.

  “Dangerous enough that someone killed him to steal a painting.”

  “What the hell are you doing there, Seth? You’ve got enough going on. You’ve been through enough.” But what Seth heard was her saying that she’d been through enough. That night where she’d faced down Adam Cowl and the Adherents was horrific for both of them, more so for Judy who until that night had no idea there were such people out there, or that the occult was a real dangerous thing, with real power.

  “The police aren’t helping. They think it was a burglary gone wrong. I need to find out who killed him.”

  “You don’t. Let the police do it. How long has it been?”

  “A week,” he replied.

  “Give them longer. The best thing you can do is stay out of it.”

  “How can I?” he said, rubbing the side of his head where a headache threatened to explode.

  “You’ve got to. There’s no other choice.”

  The library was crowded, and it took them a few minutes before somebody eventually relinquished their seat at one of the Internet stations.

  “If it was the Internet you wanted, you could have come back to mine,” Judy told him.

  “I like it in here. There’s something relaxing about having all these words surrounding you.” He logged into his email and scanned through the list quickly. There was an email from Chesterton’s office asking him to come in to discuss paperwork. He tapped out a reply as he spoke to Judy. “So, how are you doing?”