Did the house, then, possess some strange hold over Roger, of which he had no control? Suddenly Matthew was open to the possibility, and he had to know.
He tentatively reached out to push open the iron gates, but even as his hands touched the metal, something in the recess of his mind made him snatch his hand back sharply.
Some subliminal phantom voice warned him of impending danger that awaited him at the house. He stood for a few moments, trembling slightly, feeling clammy and nauseous. In spite of the sunshine which had finally broken through the rain clouds earlier that morning, it was still decidedly chilly, but the hot flush that suffused Matthew with such ravenous ferocity made him suddenly appreciate the suffering of his menopausal cleaner, Joyce. She had moaned recently that her night-sweats were unbearable, and Matthew, being the typical ‘uncaring’ man that he was, had tried to sympathise, but without any frame of reference, could not fully appreciate the enormity of Joyce’s discomfort.
Now he could, and even as he swam against the dizzying tide of nausea, he made a mental note to apologise the next time he saw her.
Clutching hold of the gates tightly, Matthew closed his eyes and willed the nausea to dissipate. It did so gradually, and the kaleidoscope of erratic colours that had clouded his vision began to fade away.
When he opened his eyes and brought his vision back into focus, he saw not Silverthorne Lodge up ahead of him, but rather Four Oaks. It was cleaner, newer, the trees younger and the driveway little more than a dirt track – but it was undeniably Four Oaks.
Clenching his eyes tightly shut again, Matthew counted to ten and reopened them, and was relieved to see the image of Four Oaks had gone, and his parents’ house was once again where it should be, at the top of the tree-lined driveway beyond the gates.
‘What the hell was that?’ he wondered aloud as he fought to control his racing heart. He continued staring at the house for several long minutes, but Four Oaks did not reappear, and as he stood in the autumnal sunshine, the cold began seeping through his coat, and the hot, clammy feeling he had endured vanished abruptly, along with the nausea.
He wondered where the image had come from, and whose voice had warned of impending danger.
The voice in his head had been that of a child. It was difficult to decide whether it was male or female, but there was something oddly familiar about it, as if he had heard the voice somewhere before.
But when?
He could not actually recall having heard voices in his head before, so it had to be someone he knew, or had once known. Maybe being back at this house had reawakened some adolescent memory he had long repressed out of resentment towards his father. Was he perhaps remembering the voice of an old school friend, long since forgotten? An echo from his past, subliminally warning him that his father would not have changed and would undoubtedly be as abhorrent as he recalled.
‘For God’s sake, get a grip, Matt!’ he snapped aloud. ‘You’re twenty-nine… you cannot possibly still be frightened of the old man.’
Indeed, Roger Silverthorne would definitely be an old man by now. How old was he? Matthew found he could not actually remember, but his father had to be approaching sixty, if not older.
No. The time for fear was in the past.
With fresh resolution, Matthew finally pushed open the gates and marched up the steeply inclined driveway towards the house itself.
It was only bricks and mortar, yet it still made Matthew feel distinctly uncomfortable. There was nothing particularly special about its appearance. The portico and the internal walls of the immense vaulted hallway, constructed from much older stone and slate, was oddly not in keeping with the rest of the house, yet curiously still did not look out of place amid the red brick. The white woodwork to Matthew appeared freshly painted, and the driveway newly paved – he recalled his mother mentioning the fact the last time he had seen her. As he approached, he also noticed that the three chimneystacks appeared much shorter than he remembered. He had always thought such elongated chimneys to be impractical in such an elevated, exposed position. Strong winds blowing in off the sea and from every other direction had no doubt finally caused damage that necessitated reducing them radically in height.
The altered roofline was really the only significant difference to the building’s outward appearance, and it did nothing to dispel the unwelcoming aura that permeated still.
It was, Matthew decided as he approached the front door, as if an ancient evil lingered in the vicinity, languishing patiently, awaiting the time to re-emerge.
In his mind’s eye, he fancied he could witness the construction of the house, way back in the late Nineteenth Century. He could see the foundations being dug laboriously by hand. He could see the red bricks being brought in from recently demolished local houses, and the stonework being brought in from out of the area. There was an accident. Two men died during construction, and another man was charged with their murders.
Matthew staggered back beneath the onslaught of confusing images that suddenly filled his mind. Where had these images come from? Whose memories were they? Why had they come to him now, of all times?
It is going to happen again, just as it has happened before!
The child’s voice returned to Matthew’s mind the instant the images vacated the space.
He stopped just short of the house, bent his head and thumped his temple with the heel of his hand in an effort to dislodge the invasive echo.
‘I don’t know who you are, or what you want, but please, leave me alone,’ he whispered.
The dull throbbing vanished instantly, and the interloper in his mind was gone as suddenly as it had appeared. For a moment, Matthew did not move as he cautiously opened his eyes, and found his mother standing in the doorway ten feet away, her eyes fixed upon him, filled with concern.
‘Hello Mum,’ he managed with a weak smile.
‘Darling, are you all right?’ Margaret murmured gently, coming out into the chilly morning sunshine to embrace her son. ‘You looked as though you were about to faint!’
Matthew returned the warm embrace, comforted by his mother’s open affection. ‘I’m fine,’ he muttered. ‘I think it was just the shock of seeing this god-awful place again.’
Margaret held her son at arm’s length, staring searchingly into his watery eyes. ‘You still feel that way about the house, even now?’
Matthew nodded. ‘I was suddenly overwhelmed by images of it being built.’
Margaret arched one of her perfectly plucked eyebrows. ‘Really? And what did you see?’
‘There was an accident. Two men died.’ Matthew gauged his mother’s reaction as he uttered those words. ‘Mum, what’s going on? Something’s not right here, is it?’
Margaret sighed, straightening her grey hair and smoothing down her pinafore dress. ‘Come along inside. There’s something you should see.’
Almost reluctantly, even though he had come here with the intention of spending some time with his parents, Matthew followed his mother inside and closed the front door behind him, cutting off his escape route.
Once inside the house, a mounting sense of panic-stricken unease welled up within Matthew, spreading with such speed that he staggered almost drunkenly and blindly crashed into Margaret, who had paused momentarily directly before him.
They caught hold of one another for support.
‘Matthew, what on earth is wrong? You’ve gone as white as a sheet!’
‘Mum, I feel really, really sick. I need to sit down.’
Matthew allowed his mother to guide him into the front living room, where he sank gratefully onto one of the nineteenth century bold-patterned sofas. He sat quietly, head in his hands between his knees, chest heaving as though from some tremendous exertion as he struggled desperately to breathe, while Margaret disappeared from the room.
She returned a few minutes later with a glass of water, her husband in tow, who remained on the threshold, staring at his son in silent concern.
‘Here darli
ng, sip this,’ Margaret whispered as she pressed the glass into her son’s hands and guided it to his lips.
For nearly five minutes, all three of them were silent, save for Matthew’s laboured breathing, which gradually settled into a gentler rhythm as the panic attack slipped slowly into memory.
He opened his eyes slowly, and the room drifted lazily into focus. The first thing he saw was his mother’s concerned face. The second thing he saw was his father, still and silent in the doorway.
‘Hello, Dad,’ he mumbled. ‘How’ve you been?’
‘Fine, just fine,’ responded Roger in a stilted voice, clearly uncomfortable with his son’s presence, although Matthew felt the awkwardness was more to do with not knowing what to say than his father not wanting him there. Indeed, there was actually a friendly demeanour about the old man, almost as though he had just seen an old friend for the first time in years – yet there remained the uncomfortably awkward silence.
‘So, what happened?’ Roger said after an interminable length of time.
Matthew falteringly recounted the images he had witnessed of Silverthorne Lodge’s construction, of the child’s voice that had recently started to come and go from his mind, and of the oppressive sense of claustrophobia that had overcome him. He glanced at his mother. ‘You said you were going to show me something?’
Margaret nodded. ‘Indeed yes. It was when you mentioned about there having been an accident during the construction of this house that I was reminded of something. Wait here. I’ll fetch the papers.’
Margaret disappeared from the room once more, leaving Matthew alone with his father. They observed one another almost warily, and several times each thought the other was going to say something.
But the stilted silence remained.
‘So, are you just going to stand there, Dad?’ said Matthew when the silence seemed to drag on unnecessarily. He motioned the grey haired older man to come and sit opposite, and slowly, Roger moved to comply. ‘I have to say, you’re looking well. You and Mum have both put on weight, but you’ve not changed much really since I last saw you.’
‘Older, perhaps wiser too,’ Roger mumbled after clearing his throat. ‘Tell me, this child whose voice you hear, do you know who she is?’
Matthew stared hard at his father, frowning. ‘I never said it was a girl. I haven’t been able to tell whether it was male or female.’
‘Oh, my mistake.’ Roger suddenly averted his eyes from his son, but was saved from any awkward questioning as Margaret came bustling into the room again, carrying a large pile of papers.
‘Five years ago,’ she began, sitting on the sofa beside Matthew, ‘your father and I finished paying our mortgage. We were sent the deeds to the house, which we keep locked in the safe. I read them for the first time recently, and they make fascinating reading. We have a potted history of all the people who have lived here since it was built one hundred and fifty-odd years ago. We know all the major alterations that have been made to the structure over the years. There were a couple of newspaper articles in with all the documents, which I thought was odd to begin with.’
Margaret handed Matthew a half-page newspaper clipping, yellowed with age. It related to an accident that had happened during the construction of a house on the upper slopes of Portsdown Hill, where two of the labourers met with untimely deaths after plunging from the nearly-completed roof. There was an artist’s impression of the house, and there was no doubt in Matthew’s mind that the house, unnamed back then, was Silverthorne Lodge.
‘Oh, I see,’ Matthew mumbled. ‘Curious, that I should have imagined the accident when I knew nothing about it.’
‘Indeed,’ replied Margaret.
‘Doesn’t explain why I’ve suddenly become prone to images of houses from the past, or why I’ve been getting voices in my head.’
‘Houses?’ queried Roger, sitting upright. ‘Plural?’
Matthew nodded. ‘I’ve inherited a house called Four Oaks in the East Sussex village of Elendale, and I’ve had visions of that place from years gone by, too!’
‘Four Oaks? Are you kidding me?’
Matthew glanced at his mother, frowning. ‘No, I’m not kidding. It’s the property I went to visit last year, the one I was outbid on.’
‘Ah, I seem to recall you were immensely upset at not getting that house.’
‘Well, the old woman who bought it died recently, and for some inexplicable reason, she left it to me.’
‘Strange. But that’s not the strangest fact.’ Margaret rummaged through the paperwork perched on her lap, extracting a sheet of paper. ‘This is the original purchase order and invoice for some of the building materials. The whole building is constructed from bricks reclaimed from a variety of sources. The stonework at the front and in the hall comes from an old coach house that once stood in the grounds of a property called Four Oaks, in the Sussex village of Elendale.’
Matthew nearly snatched the paper from his mother’s fingers. ‘That’s not possible,’ he gasped.
‘Highly unlikely, admittedly, but as you can see, it’s true.’
Matthew could feel the hot flush creeping up his body from his toes, until it reached his neck. He tried to focus on the paperwork he held in his trembling hands, but suddenly the words were little more than a jumble of unintelligible letters.
He glanced across at his father, who was leaning forward, almost eagerly observing his son in anticipation. Roger’s image began to blur, shift out of focus, and suddenly Matthew’s eyes misted over. ‘It’s going to happen again, isn’t it, Father?’ he whispered. ‘Is there no way of stopping it?’
Roger smiled. ‘You must not go back to that house, my child. Even then you will only delay the inevitable. We must hope he does not find you this time.’
‘What is there to stop him, Father? Has he not found me every time before, no matter where I am? Is there no way of halting the torment?’
‘I am here this time, my child. Perhaps it will be different.’
Margaret rose to her feet, backing away from the centre of the room, horror etched on her face as she listened to her husband and son talking in voices that were not their own. ‘What’s going on?’ she gasped when finally, her back pressed against the wall, she could retreat no further. ‘What’s happened to you two?’
As one, distracted by Margaret’s fear-fuelled whine, Roger and Matthew sank back onto their respective sofas, shaking their heads as if to clear cobwebs from their befuddled minds.
Matthew rubbed a hand across his forehead. ‘It happened again, didn’t it? I blacked out!’ he gasped. He turned to face his mother, and was shocked to see the abject fear etched deep into the creases of her suddenly very old looking face.
Margaret’s voice was quiet when she spoke. ‘You and your father spoke in strange voices!’
‘It’s this damn house,’ Matthew said, having not heard her words. He stood sharply. ‘I’ve always hated it, but never knew why, and I still don’t. Coming back here today was a huge mistake. I should leave.’
Roger stood up. ‘You must not return to Four Oaks, my child!’
‘My child? For god’s sake, Dad, call me Matthew, Matt, or son, but not my child.’
Roger remained silent for a moment, and then repeated his statement, but would not elaborate when Matthew asked why he should stay away from the house he had inherited.
‘If you cannot tell me why, then I see no reason to do as you ask, Dad. It seems to me this house is the problem, not Four Oaks.’
‘But Matthew, remember what you’ve just read… about where the stonework for this house originally came from?’ said Margaret. ‘This house has links with Four Oaks. What happened to you here might happen to you there as well. I don’t pretend to understand what happened to you and your father just now, but I don’t like it. It scared me. It was almost as though you were both possessed. I think your father is right. You should stay away from that house.’
‘On the contrary, Mum, I think Four Oaks is where I�
�m going to find all the answers to what’s been going on.’
‘I really do think that would be a mistake!’
The veiled threat in Roger’s warning was lost on neither Matthew nor Margaret, who both looked at him apprehensively. Margaret caught her son’s eye, and it was clear to them that they both believed what had taken hold of Roger still had control of him.
‘Well, it’s my mistake to make, isn’t it?’ Matthew snapped. ‘Why break the habit of a lifetime? I never could do anything right. I mean, in your eyes, my entire life has been a constant catalogue of mistakes, so what’s one more?’ He turned to his mother without giving Roger the opportunity to respond. ‘I’ll be in touch, Mum.’
‘Are you sure you’re going to be all right?’ Margaret asked as she embraced her son. ‘Are you certain that house is a safe place to be?’
‘Are you certain this house is a safe place to be?’ Matthew whispered in her ear. ‘Dad’s not exactly himself at the moment.’
Margaret chuckled mirthlessly. ‘Darling, neither were you. Besides, he’s been acting strangely for years. I’m used to it.’
‘Yes, Mum, he’s been acting strangely ever since he first set eyes on this house!’
Margaret held her son at arm’s length. ‘Well just remember that small fact when you go back to Four Oaks.’
Matthew sighed. ‘Fair comment, but you’ve got to admit, it’s all far too much of a coincidence to ignore. Firstly, dad fell in love with this house years ago and forced us to live here, and now we discover it’s partly built using stone salvaged from the old coach house of the property I’ve just inherited. I inherited that property from a woman I’ve never heard of much less met, who originally outbid me for the same house last year… a house I fell in love with the instant I first set eyes upon it in the paper, and fell even more in love with it when I first saw it with my own eyes. Then there’s also the fact that I have had visions where I witnessed both properties in their early years, and both Dad and I seem to have some physical connection to the houses we fell in love with. Whether it’s dangerous or not, it’s far too intriguing to ignore. I have to return to Four Oaks. I have to try and find out what’s going on.’
The Master of Prophecy (The Sawyl Gwilym Chronicles Book 2) Page 8