The House on the Moor

by Meikle, William

  The landing was in complete darkness. Dim, diffuse light came from high above where rain lashed against a domed skylight. Somewhere down on the ground floor yellowish lamplight showed under a door, but the rest was just dark and darker shadows.

  He was starting to question his decision to leave the bedroom.

  Haven’t you seen any movies?

  In the end it was the thought of the Scotch more than anything that got him moving. He found his way to the staircase mostly by touch, running his hand along the warm mahogany of the banister. He took the stairs slowly, mindful that they were both steep and uncarpeted. The third from the bottom creaked loudly and echoed around him. He waited to see if anyone would come to investigate, but quiet quickly fell again.

  He made his way quickly across the large open hallway. The library door was open, and the embers of the fire showed him his way. It was only once he was in the doorway that he thought of switching on a light. He found two switches by the side of the bookshelves. The first lit up the whole library from top to bottom, but the sudden glare seemed too garish to his dark-acclimatized eyes, so he settled for the second option, which lit three small lamps on the wall over the fireplace and lent the fireside area a cozy, reddish glow.

  To his delight, the whisky decanter and glasses were still on the table between the chairs. He went across to the library table, fetched the photograph album, and returned to help himself to a large measure of the fine single-malt.

  He sat in Blacklaw’s chair at first, but the padding and upholstery had molded itself so well to the old man’s body contours that it was a form of torture for anyone else to attempt to relax in it. He went back to the chair he’d sat in earlier, and dragged it back closer to the embers of the fire, a bulwark against the coldness of the night that was winning the battle for the soul of the room.

  Any discomfort he might have felt was quickly forgotten as he sipped at the Scotch and lost himself again in the pictorial history of his grandfather’s life.

  He found one picture that brought back a memory he’d forgotten he had. Hugh and Blacklaw stood posing with a bear—a live, full-sized grizzly, up on its hind legs, standing behind them. Both men—and the bear—seemed to be smiling.

  He’d seen the picture before—it was one of the few his dad had a copy of in an album that was rarely opened. John had found it when he was no more than ten years old, and often sneaked a look at it when Dad was out of the house. As a lad he’d often thought of that bear, and how they’d got the picture without being eaten. Seeing it again brought his childhood flooding back, and it was with those memories that he drifted, falling down into sleep.

  ^

  He woke sometime later with a start, sloshing whisky onto his lap, and jumping again as the photo album fell to the floor with a loud thud. He sat in almost total darkness, just the dying, barely red of the coals to tell him he was still in the library. He might have slept for ten minutes or three hours—he had no way of knowing. He rescued the whisky glass—thankfully he’d only lost a thimbleful at most—and was trying to feel his way to where he could place it on the table when he heard a fluttering high above.

  Bats in the belfry.

  But it didn’t sound like bats or pigeons—it sounded more like someone scrambling for purchase on the roof, feet sliding on wood, fingers—and fingernails—grasping for a hold.

  “Hello?” John said softly, and immediately felt foolish, realizing he had no clue what he might do if anyone actually answered.

  The sound got louder—it seemed to be coming from inside the library itself now—and was getting closer.

  John stood and tried to get his bearings. Not only was the library light switched off, but the door through to the hallway had been closed. He had a bad moment when he thought he was trapped, then he saw, barely visible, a lighter patch where some light seeped under the door.

  He headed in that direction.

  The scrambling got louder, almost frantic. There was a thud on the balcony almost directly above him, then another. It took John a second to figure out what it was—books were being dislodged from the shelves, knocked from their position by whatever was up there—and it was very close now. He heard breathing, a thick watery gurgle that sounded like a sick person attempting to laugh.

  “Hello?” John said again, and was dismayed to hear the tremor and whine in his voice. He finally reached the door and put his hand on the handle. It felt too cold to the touch, but it turned when he put pressure on it. That small act of normality seemed to lend him some strength.

  “This isn’t funny. This isn’t funny at all.”

  The scrambling got louder still, mere feet from him now. A book fell from above to thud at John’s feet, then another.

  “That’s quite enough.”

  John reached out and threw on both light switches.

  The library fell quiet and still.

  Two books lay at John’s feet, but there was no sign of any other disturbance. He looked up, but all he could see were dark shadows high in the rafters. He moved the fallen books with his foot, half expecting some kind of attack, but they were just books.

  He slid them aside to leave them at the side of the door, made his way quickly out into the hall and closed the library door quietly behind him.

  A minute later he was back in the bedroom, listening to Carole’s gentle snoring, and wondering whether he’d imagined the whole thing.

  = 6 '

  John was quiet, almost withdrawn, in the morning and looked like he’d had a bad night. But he waved away Carole’s concerns as they shared the cramped bathroom mirror over their morning ablutions.

  “I’m fine,” he said, and gave her a smile that didn’t quite reach his eyes. “You know what I’m like trying to sleep in a new place.”

  It was more than that—she saw it in his eyes—but she didn’t push him. There had been too many rows recently, from both sides, and it wouldn’t do to start a new one up in a place where neither of them had a chance to escape.

  As for herself, Carole felt much better now that she was rested. She’d slept all through the night, having been only vaguely aware that John had got up—and stayed up for a while—at some point. There was no more recurrence of strange noises and the room, now that she was used to the sounds and feel of the place, actually felt more welcoming and homely than any hotel they might otherwise had stayed in. She was looking forward to breakfast—and maybe coffee afterwards with more of the highland fancies.

  ^

  The front room felt chilly—the two-bar electric fire was doing little to heat the high-ceilinged area, and much of the heat it produced seemed to be getting sucked straight up the chimney in the huge fireplace. Carole was glad she’d decided on jeans and thick socks—comfort over style was definitely going to be the order of the day in this place. At least the view out of the window was better than the day before, but not by much. Fog had replaced the rain, and wafted in billowing sheets across the bog, alternately showing and hiding the muddy pools and stunted grasses.

  John saw her looking.

  “We should get out for a stroll later, if the rain stays off,” he said.

  She nodded absent-mindedly. A stroll was the last thing on her mind. The room might be cold, but she had a feeling it was positively balmy compared to what it would be like out on the moor.

  McKinnon had arrived in the doorway, with that almost magical knack he had been showing of knowing exactly when he was needed.

  “Will that be the full Scottish breakfast for two?” he asked.

  John looked at Carole and smiled.

  “Time to let the belt out a notch, I think—but when in Rome …”

  They ordered the full breakfasts and sat down. There were only the two of them at the table for almost half an hour, in which time they ate a small mountain of food between them—porridge first, then bacon, eggs, black pudding and sausages with a heap of toast and as much coffee as they wanted. By the time the butler showed Blacklaw to the top seat, Carole was
quite full.

  “Apologies,” the old man said. “It takes me a while to get going some mornings, especially when it’s a tad damp. I hope McKinnon has been looking after you?”

  Carole smiled through the last mouthful of toast she was going to be able to manage.

  Blacklaw once again barely touched the small helping of breakfast that was brought for him, although he did take two cups of black coffee, after which he was distinctly more animated. He perked up even more when the butler brought him a tray containing a lighter and a single cigarette.

  He looked at Carole and smiled. For the first time she saw the younger man he had been, and could well imagine that he had indeed melted many hearts. “Capable of dropping knickers at two hundred yards” was the phrase John had quoted from an old newspaper clipping, and seeing him smile now, she could well believe it.

  “Forgive an old man’s indulgence,” Blacklaw said as he lit the cigarette. “I’m only allowed one of these and one cigar a day, so I must make the most of them.”

  He sucked in a lungful of smoke, and as before, almost none came back out. Then he let out a satisfied sigh.

  “I do miss smoking. I know I’d be looked on as a pariah these days, but when I was young it was almost compulsory, and it’s a pleasure I am loath to deny myself in these last months.”

  “Nonsense,” Carole said. “You’ve got years in you yet, surely?”

  That got her another smile, one filled with sadness.

  “I wish it were true,” he replied. “Although my doctor seems to think otherwise. But come, let us not ruin the morning talking about me.” He turned to speak to John. “Now, young Fraser, I suppose you expect a story?”

  “As long as you feel up to it…” John said, and Blacklaw smiled again.

  “It’s now or never,” he replied. “I might not get too many more mornings in which to tell it. And if anyone deserves to hear it, it is you, my boy. But it will take some time—and you really should take notes, for there is a lot of detail you might want to check on later.”

  John nodded.

  “I came prepared,” he said, and took out his pocket recorder. “Do you mind?”

  Blacklaw did not seem to understand what was being asked, until John showed him the purpose of the recorder, which was no bigger than a cigarette packet. Once he knew what it was, Blacklaw laughed.

  “Your granddad would have loved it—he loved gadgets—although in our day the high point of technology was his portable reel-to-reel player. Remind me to tell old McKinnon later—there’s a box of tapes somewhere that you should have. But we are digressing already, and I haven’t even started. Let me take you back, to nineteen sixty-eight, and a night in a bar in Edinburgh.”

  There was a click as John started recording; then the only sound was the whisper of the old man’s voice.

  = 7 '

  “We were rather famous at one time, you know?

  “It wasn’t something we sought out—at least not at first. As you know, your Granddad and I met at Edinburgh University in the early fifties, and we hit it off straight away. Soon we were spending our weekends in the hills climbing, and our weekdays working our way through the female student population. Oh, don’t look so shocked—sex wasn’t invented in the sixties.

  “After graduation we put off gainful employment by taking ourselves off to the Alps in search of higher climbs and more exotic women. And it was there that fame fell into our laps—we rescued, then bedded, three girls on the Matterhorn, our pictures made the French and Italian papers. We soon realized we rather liked the attention, and away we went, on fifteen years of adventure and debauchery.

  “And although that all brought rewards and riches beyond our dreams, it was never really enough for Hugh. There was always going to be another mountain to climb, another desert to cross, another woman to conquer.

  “But by the late sixties, our star was on the wane. We were well into our thirties by then. Older chaps like us had to make way for younger men with long hair and loud music, drugs and outlandish clothes. The world turned, and we were too slow in turning with it. You have to understand that Hugh and I—myself in particular—were very much the products of a war and immediate post-war upbringing. We were stiff-upper-lip types in a world that was quickly passing us by. Our accents were suddenly too “posh,” our activities, while risqué, were not sufficiently salacious, but mostly we were just getting too long in the tooth, in London particularly, for a culture that was now worshipping at the altar of youth.

  “For my part, I would have been happy by ’68 to let it all go. The constant traveling was wearing away at me, and I yearned for hearth and home in the Highlands. We were set up for life, I had already bought this place for a song when the previous laird died, and I was looking forward to a long, quiet retirement. Hugh, of course, had other ideas, and that weekend in Edinburgh was meant to persuade me that there was still life in the old dogs, even after all our previous adventures.

  “When I met him in the Café Royal, he was as excited as I’d seen him in years. I expected him to have plans in place for some new adventure in a far-flung locale, but as it turned out, his plans were for something much closer to home.

  “We hadn’t been in the Royal since our student days, and it was something of a homecoming for us. We drank beer and reminisced about the old days for a while before Hugh got to the point. It being a weekday afternoon, and not in the middle of tourist season, the place was almost empty, and the sound Hugh made as he dropped a book on the table echoed in the high-ceilinged bar like a gunshot.

  “‘I’ve got it, Blackie,’ he said.

  “As I said, it was a book—and it looked old. Beyond that I couldn’t tell, as he refused to let me look closer when I leaned to drag it across the table toward me.

  “‘Not yet,’ he said. ‘Not until I’ve told you. I think I’ve found a way to keep us relevant.’

  “Now, I had never stopped feeling relevant—in fact, I had never started—but Hugh was in one of his excited-puppy moods and my only options were to leave him alone in the bar or to listen.

  “My curiosity got the better of me. I stayed, and I listened.

  “’I got the idea from a blasted television program, of all things,’ Hugh started. ‘You know how the youth are now involved in strange music, magic and all that nonsense? Well, why don’t we give them some—why don’t we give them a great big dose of it?’

  “It was only then that he pushed the book over the table to me. I could see immediately that it was rather old, leather-bound, and in a fragile condition, to say the least. The top right quadrant had suffered severe water damage at some time in its life, and the lower portion of the spine was starting to fray and separate from the main book. Any writing that might once have been on the cover itself was long since worn and faded away, and I feared it might fall apart in my hands should I grip it too tightly.

  “I opened it gingerly and read an inscription inside the jacket.

  “Ye Twelve Concordances of ye Redde Serpent. In wych is succinctly and methodically handled the stone of ye philosophers, his excellent effectes and admirable vertues; and, the better to attaine to the originall and true meanes of perfection, inriched with Figures representing the proper colors to lyfe as they successively appere in the practice of this blessed worke.

  “’What in blazes is this nonsense?’ I asked.

  “’Nonsense indeed,’ Hugh said, smiling. ‘Some kind of medieval Scottish alchemy text, I believe. I found it in a shop in the Cattlemarket. But it scarcely matters—it is no more than our McGuffin, our plot device to get things going, a purpose for which it should do nicely.’

  “‘Do for what?’ I asked, fearing the answer.

  “‘For our comeback show, of course,’ Hugh said, and laughed. ‘We are going to raise some hell for the kids.’

  ^

  “Over the course of a few more beers Hugh laid out his plan. As was often the case with his more outlandish suggestions, he steamrollered my initial skeptic
ism with his force of will and sheer enthusiasm, such that by the end of the afternoon I was quite sold on the idea that he might be onto something big this time.

  “His scheme, on the face of it, was a remarkably simple one—we would make a documentary—and, we hoped, a full series of them—investigating the supernatural from our unique viewpoint as travelers and adventurers.

  “‘Who better than us?’ he said. ‘We have trodden where angels fear to tread, we have conquered things that were said to be unconquerable—let us tilt at some new windmills. If we are to go down into oblivion, let us at least go down fighting.’

  “As I said, he had me most of the way convinced. I agreed that we should take the matter forward with our contacts in the BBC, and told Hugh he could get the ball rolling—I was on board.

  “That was when he told me that he wanted to use my house—this house, for our first investigation.

  “‘It’s perfect, Blackie,’ he said, in that way he had that brooked no argument. ‘It’s spooky and old and full of atmosphere—and we don’t have to get a camera crew and cast to travel abroad. I can see it all in my head already. And I’ve found just the right spell to put the wind up the unwashed masses on the television.’

  “‘What do you mean, spell? Like black magic—hocus-pocus?’

  “‘Precisely,’ he replied. ‘We use the ritual as set out in the book, add in some theatricality and dramatic music and such, and build up the tension to breaking point. Then, of course, nothing at all will happen. We’ll all have a jolly good laugh, and spend the rest of the program explaining why it failed. Science and rationality wins, superstition is dispelled and we all—especially the two of us—get our profiles raised back to where we should be.’

  “As I say, he had me convinced, and I could foresee no risks in what he meant to attempt. In all our travels and high adventures we had never once come across anything that could not be explained by science and common sense. Neither of us believed that this time would be any different.