Its blank, almost senile-looking windows stared down at me as I neared the door and rapped upon it. Soon, though, I found myself ushered deep inside the old house in Poole's redecorated study - a book lined room full of polished wood, paintings and leather armchairs, with a coal fire roaring in an elaborately carved hearth full of ebony cupids and flowers. Poole - tall, thin, with the concealed strength of a mountaineer - was in the best of spirits. My own, in contrast, though relieved to a degree by the signs of redecoration, were overcome by a newer and less easily explainable feeling of abhorrence. There was a certain, indefinable quality about the house which I strongly disliked, and I knew then, without a shadow of a doubt, that, however much Poole might enthuse about it, this initial feeling of mine would not be changed. The more I saw of the house, in fact, as Poole showed me around it, the stronger this abhorrence grew.
Upstairs it was almost derelict, with large, grey, vacuous rooms that echoed their emptiness through fibrous veils of cobwebs and dust. Looking at them I could well imagine this place as:
A house without a living room For dead it was, and called a tomb!
"I don't intend using them much," Poole explained, interrupting my thoughts, "except, perhaps, as store rooms, though I might have two or three done up for guests."
Presently we returned downstairs to the hallway where, at Poole's insistence, we turned off into an arched alcove, within which stood a sturdy wooden door that led to the cellar steps. Lighting a paraffin lamp from a shelf beside it, he unlocked the door and led me down the damp-slicked steps beyond into a tactile darkness that took us into its frigid depths like the waters of a Stygian well.
"Once, before neglect did its worst," Poole said, as he raised the lamp up above his head so that its light could filter across the cellar floor a few moments later, "this was used for storing wine in." The decaying ribs of sundered barrels, furred with mould, could still be seen across the wet flagstones, amidst the remnants of broken bottles and racks. "Some good vintages there were here too," he remarked, stooping to pick up one of the bottles. Its label slid from it like pulp. A curled spider rolled across the floor, spilled from the bottle like a withered grape.
Faint in the distance between heavy pillars I could make out extensions, like passageways. When I asked him about them Poole replied that most had been bricked up long ago. "Or were filled in with rubble when their ceilings gave way."
"Have you been down here often?" I asked, amused at his interest in the dismal place.
Surprising as an affirmative answer would have been - even from Poole, who I had long known had a somewhat morbid temperament - the way he said, "No," came in an unexpected tone of voice. Shaking his head in consternation, he went on: "Before I decided that it was a pointless task, I had some workmen in clearing it out. What they found should have been enough to keep me returning here again and again. But I rarely do."
Turning, he led me across the cellar floor, saying: "I'll show you so that you can judge it for yourself."
As we walked, the air seemed to congeal about us into diseased vapours, smothering us with the sealed-in stench of decay. Our footsteps echoed from the dim expanses of the cellar as we passed beneath the stone built archway into one of the extensions. Though I had only expected it to be a glorified alcove, it went on for nearly thirty yards before ending in a square shaped chamber of ancient, crumbling bricks from which the burnt-out stumps of old torches poked like bony fingers blackened with age. Hanging the lamp from one of them, Poole pointed at the floor. There, deeply cut into the unworn slabs of stone, was the intricate design of a five pointed star, set within two circles, around and in which various signs and arabesques had been carved.
"Devil worship?" I asked, as I felt at the grooves. They were about two inches deep, almost the whole of which was filled with a foul slime.
Poole shrugged. "Probably, but I don't know for certain. I don't even know how old the thing is, nor who must have made it."
"It's old," I confirmed, standing up to look down at the design as a whole. "And authentic, I think. I recognize a few of those signs."
"So do I," Poole said sombrely. "That's the reason, I suppose, why I don't come down here often. It's the one place in this house where I actually feel afraid. Perhaps it's something to do with vibrations from the past, lingering here - I don't know. What I do know is that whatever went on here when this chamber was originally made and used could hardly have been of the more innocent nature such as our modern "fireside" witches get up to. Why else but to conceal the reverberations of a scream should it have been placed so far underground? Maybe blood smeared this devilish creation. Maybe that slime inside those grooves is made of blood itself."
Feeling a certain revulsion at Poole's unsavoury fascination in the-thing, I diverted my attention to the walls. At various points about them there were iron bolt heads riddled with rust. Though there was little of interest in them, one caught my eyes more than the others. The bricks around it appeared to be loose. Inspecting them, as Poole stepped over to join me, we began to pull one of them away to see if there was anything interesting hidden behind it. Within a few minutes five of the bricks were laid on the floor and a sizeable hole uncovered in the wall. Though at first sight it had looked as though we had only come upon a narrow crevice, further dislodgement of the bricks showed that an earth-lined burrow or tunnel large enough for a man to crawl along extended outwards at about chest height for several yards before inclining upwards out of sight. The lamplight illuminated the straggling roots hanging like lengths of matted grey hair inside it.
While Poole stared in rapt and muttering fascination along the burrow, I turned away from it to inspect the bricks we had piled on the floor. Looking one over in my hand, I noticed that it had been heavily scratched on one side as if by claws. Evidently, losing interest in the thing, some rats had tried to force a way through the wall over the years - and failed, I supposed, though their efforts had weakened the mortar enough for us to finish their work with ease.
Noticing that Poole was still staring into the tunnel, I began to feel annoyed.
Taking him by one arm, I said: "Come on. It's about time we were leaving this dismal hole. It's damp and raw down here, and though you might not mind risking rheumatics, I do…"
Stones and lumps of dislodged earth began to tumble down the hole, to scatter like mice across the floor at our feet. And with them, like the gases of decay, a noxious stench far worse than any we had encountered thus far emerged to blanch Poole's face in an instant - and no doubt my own as well. Barely able to restrain our nausea, we fell back from the hole.
"The sewers?" I asked. My words sounded sick in the echoing emptiness of the chamber, and slightly unreal. The air was rapidly becoming discoloured, whilst the lamp grew dim, guttering long black tails of soot. In some incomprehensible way sensing danger, I reached for the lamp, grabbing Poole's arm once again.
"Let's get out of here," I muttered coarsely, ignorant of all other impulses but to flee.
The scraping of grit tumbling down the hole filled me with alarm. A moment later we were hurrying self-consciously across the cellar towards the steps. Climbing them in an instant, we paused only at the door into the hallway. Turning, I peered back into the impenetrable dark of the cellar once more, with its mouldering barrels and decay. There was nothing to see or hear save the distant dripping of water somewhere, yet it seemed to me that someone or something stood, concealed in the all-encompassing darkness, glowering into my eyes. My scalp prickled and I felt a sick bout of fear overwhelm me. The next moment I was out of that hideous chamber, with the reassuringly solid weight of the door slamming shut beneath my hands.
We spoke no more of the phenomenon that night. Perhaps it was fear or nervousness that sealed our lips, but I think it was more likely shame. After all, it had been no more than a few sods of earth and a smell that sent us scurrying in the headlong flight for safety in the hallway above.
It was, however, close on midnight before we decid
ed to retire.
Strangely - perhaps even perversely - enough, when I reached my room and prepared myself for bed my tiredness left me and insomnia set in. For what seemed like hours I lay tossing in bed, trying to compose my mind for sleep. It was as if now that I was alone, the atmosphere of the house, which I had already found distasteful, had intensified its effect upon me. At the time, depressed by the boredom that my insomnia inflicted upon me, I blamed the unsettling fright we had childishly brought upon ourselves in the cellar. Whatever it was, it was already late when I decided that I had had enough and, though I usually scorned their effectiveness and the sense of my doctor in once having prescribed them for me, I climbed out of bed to go to my suitcase to get a bottle of sleeping pills. There was nothing else for it, I knew, unless I was willing to risk the inevitable tiredness that would beggar me the next day if I did not somehow get to sleep.
As I stepped across the room to my suitcase I chanced to glance out of my window into the moonlit grounds. I can't say that the garden there was a particularly pretty sight in the stark moonlight. The gnarled trees and bushes, not to mention the reed-like grass, were as if a nightmarishly deformed jungle had quite suddenly taken root about the house. The scene was peculiarly depressing, and I was about to turn from it when I saw something move in the shrubberies. I paused and turned back to the window, pressing my face to the panes. I held my breath so that it wouldn't mist the cold glass. I could make out a man, half hidden in the interweaving shadows. It seemed that he was dressed in a dark overcoat that hung flapping in the wind about his heels. His hair, a dry-looking tangle of strands, was scattered about his shoulders as he picked his way through the trees. Despite the strong moonlight it was too dark to make out his face properly, though I could tell that it was distinctively white.
Slowly he continued on his way till he passed beyond the edge of the house and I lost sight of him, whereupon I decided that he must, undoubtedly, have been a passing vagrant - he was certainly too poorly dressed to have been a thief - and I finished off what I had set out to do, a few minutes later settling back into bed where I dry-swallowed two pills and waited for the inevitable sleep that within ten minutes overwhelmed me.
I rose late the next day, finding Poole already breakfasted when I came upon him.
"What will you have?" he asked.
"I'll just make do with some black coffee," I replied, as I settled myself down at the table.
"You look at if you slept badly last night," Poole remarked. "Did you find the air in your room too close? Or was it the bed?"
"I sometimes suffer a little from insomnia," I told him with a shrug. "It's not the room - or, at least, I don't think so. Though there was something that disturbed me." Poole glanced at me sharply - perhaps a shade too sharply, I thought. "There was a man wandering through the garden. I saw him from my window some time after one. Do you often get tramps this way?"
"A tramp?"
Was that a look of relief on Poole's face? "I supposed so at the time," I said. "Though I didn't get a very clear view of him in the gloom. Those damned elms blotted out much of the moonlight down there."
"Yes, I was thinking of having some of them cut down," Poole said, staring down at his cup.
"Have you seen prowlers here before?" I asked, suspicions sharpening the edge of my senses.
"You're more perceptive this morning than I thought you to be. But you're right, of course, I have seen someone once or twice before, though I took him to be a local poacher taking a short cut. There are some well stocked forests just a little way further on from the lane past a narrow stream." He laughed quietly. "I dare say he fancied himself less likely to be seen going through the garden than continuing any further down the lane, especially if he had had a good night and was -laden with game."
When I had finished my coffee I stepped outside for a breath of fresh air. The grounds looked more healthy in the strong sunlight of a fine September day than at night, and I even found them faintly attractive, though much in need of the attention of a capable gardener. A few minutes later Poole joined me.
"Have you had a look at the house from the outside yet?" he asked, with more than a touch of pride in his voice.
Looking up at the ungainly edifice I wondered what it was about the place that appealed so strongly to Poole. "It seems to have gone through quite a few transformations in its time," I remarked tactfully, noting its early Tudor origins in the barely discernible beams about the lower floors before extensions and alterations obliterated much of them with Georgian, Queen Anne and Victorian elaborations, with a touch of the Regency Oriental in a cupola on one part of its roof- evidently an elaboration which either lack of further money or a premature death prevented from reaching fulfilment. In fact, as I began to think about this, the various changes gave off in general a half finished impression, as if succeeding owners had never possessed it long enough to complete their differing intentions. Mentioning this to Poole, he laughed indulgently and said that it was in more than one way a remarkable house.
He led me to one of the doors. "As you know," he said, "I had to have a lot of work done on the house before I could move in. The man in charge of the renovation, Mortimer (of Sletheridge, Gilbraith and Mortimer, no less) was exceptionally interested in the place, aside from the purely professional angle, which I must say I found gratifying, to say the least. Did you notice, by any chance, if any of the door or window frames were lop-sided? I'm sure I didn't when I first looked at it. He did. And he even knows why every single one of them is so, and it's not because of faulty craftsmanship, for he says that it is one of the finest houses for its age that he has seen, despite its disrepair. The main part, you see, was built during the early years of james I. Then, far more than now, the influence of superstitions on everyday life was particularly strong, far beyond any bounds we can imagine today. So much so, in fact, that they even took precautions against the supernatural in the building of their homes. And one of these was based upon the odd idea that no evil spirit could enter a house through a misshapen entranceway. Therefore the window frames, the doors, even the chimney shafts themselves, are lopsided - not too much so, but enough to reassure our ancestors that they would not be awakened in the night from their righteous sleep to find a leering succubus astride their beds."
"And did this Mortimer have any other insights into the house?" I asked. "About the cellars, perhaps?"
"He looked in once from the doorway. His only reaction was to shudder and say - rather brusquely, I felt - that it would be best to have it filled in. But I'm not too sure. It seems a waste somehow."
Feeling that "filling it in" was probably the best suggestion he could have made, I said: "You might be able to deceive yourself that what occurred last night in the cellar never happened, but I can't. Have you forgotten about it?"
Reluctantly Poole shook his head. "I went to have a look down there again a short while ago - perhaps to convince myself that we had let ourselves get carried away by our own imaginations, but…"
"Yes?" I prompted, impatiently.
"But, somehow - I can't explain why - I just couldn't raise the guts to take that one first step down into it. It was as if the darkness - or something I felt within it - held me back, repelled me, and I couldn't go on."
Sensing that it would do no good to press too hard on the matter, I let it drop. I said that I would like to have a look in the nearby village. "You said in one of your letters that it was a picturesque place. As long as it's better than that town I had to pass through on my way here, I'm not bothered."
"Chalk and cheese," Poole said, brightening. "I don't think you'll be disappointed. But there are several things that need doing around here this morning, so I'm afraid I won't be able to come with you. But you've got your car, and it is only a ten minute drive. It's straight down the lane; you can't miss it. There's a rather fine twelfth-century church near the green."
When, eventually, I left a short while later it was with no small feeling of relief. Few build
ings, I thought as I drove down the lane beneath the overhanging branches of the trees, had such an oppressive atmosphere about them. My nerves, for some reason, seemed perpetually on edge all the time I was indoors, and were only eased a little in the grounds. Now, though, I felt relaxed once more, and at ease, and I completely looked forward to having a look around Fenley.
What our conversations had taught me, however, and over which I ruminated much on my drive into the village, was that the house was having an unhealthy effect upon my friend. He altogether lacked the spirit that had so characterized him in the long years of our friendship, and corresponded only to the dark months immediately following the death of his wife five years before, when he had nearly suffered a breakdown. But that was over and done with now. And I was certain that whatever was affecting him now had nothing to do with this. Besides, I thought, this was an altogether different type of disturbance.
It was all to do with the house, I was sure. If only for Poole's good, therefore, I decided to see if I could find out anything more about the place. Spotting the local library near the village green, I had a look inside. A small, pinched man with empty cheeks and horn rimmed glasses sat in a corner behind the desk at the entrance, while a young girl stood stamping romantic novels for a gossipy group of old ladies. The man seemed oblivious of their chatter as he read through a catalogue. I waited till the girl had finished and turned to me.
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