‘The Pnakotic Manuscripts,’ she whispered. ‘A part of them, at least.’
Inside the envelope were more fragments of a parchment sheet, like the ones I had, pieced together like a jigsaw puzzle. On them was a drawing in faded brown ink that my mind rebelled from. I couldn’t take it in. I could, however, see the gaps in the jigsaw: gaps that the fragments I held would fit into perfectly.
‘With the pieces that I assembled, during my time in the village, and the pieces that my friend was sending me, there would be enough to form a single page of a single volume of the Pnakotic Manuscripts. That would be enough for me to bargain my way out of here, but it arrived too late for me.’ She reached out, handing the transparent envelope to me. ‘But not too late for you.’
‘Are you sure?’ I whispered.
‘Go,’ she said in a suddenly commanding voice. ‘Go from this place. Go in peace, but when you get to a place of safety… then start a war. Burn them all.’
I nodded, and took the envelope from her. I gazed into her soft brown eyes, at her benign, almost triumphant expression, and then I turned around and left. I walked down the central aisle towards the door of the church, and I didn’t look back, but as I walked I took the fragments of parchment that had been in the letter and I pushed them into the gaps in the parchment that was held in the plastic envelope that the vicar had given me. They fitted perfectly, and they formed a whole.
Outside the door, in the darkness of the churchyard, they were waiting for me: the robed, shrouded figures with the sodden white skin, and behind them the more human inhabitants of Winterbourne Abase. They had knives, and curved metal weapons the like of which I had never seen before, and they had lit torches that flared in the darkness, casting shifting shadows everywhere.
I held the plastic envelope up where they could see it. Some of them fell to their knees. One of the robed elders reached out a trembling hand and took the envelope from me. He – or she, or even it, I couldn’t tell – brought the envelope up close to where its eyes should have been, and examined it.
‘What is the price?’ it asked in a voice that sounded and smelled like it was bubbling up from beneath a swamp.
I touched my chest, and I gestured towards the road. ‘My life,’ I said.
After a moment that felt like eternity, it raised a hand. ‘The offer is accepted,’ it replied.
I left the village of Winterbourne Abase in the same way that I had arrived: on my Italjet Velocifero and along a rutted dirt track, but I wasn’t the same person. I had seen things, and I knew things, that had changed me. I returned home, and I haven’t had a full night’s sleep since.
My interests have changed, as well. Yes, I’m still fascinated by lost spaces and ambiguous or forgotten locations, but it’s not just an academic thing anymore. I know that these places exist, but I also know that they aren’t barren. Things are living there, breeding there. Spreading their influence.
They have to be fought, and thanks to a misdirected letter and a vicar’s sacrifice I appear to have been chosen to take part in that fight.
Was that letter really misdirected, I wonder, or was it meant to have landed on my mat? There are a lot of things that I suspect I will never really know, and that is probably the smallest of them.
ANDREW LANE
Andrew Lane has written over thirty books in fields as varied as science fiction, horror and crime, non-fiction, adult and young adult. Most recently he has been engaged on a series of YA novels concerning a fourteen-year-old Sherlock Holmes (eight to date) which attempt to be as faithful to history and to Arthur Conan Doyle as possible.
‘Buyer’s Remorse’ is a story written against the fictional and nihilistic mythological background invented by 1930s pulp American horror author H.P. Lovecraft (generally known as the Cthulhu Mythos), but transplanted to the backwaters of England rather than its native New England. It only occurred to the writer afterwards that instead of the jumble sale in the story he could have had a Lovecraft Fayre…
GONE AWAY
MURIEL GRAY
It’s always been a matter of curiosity to me why postmen persist in wearing shorts regardless of the viciously unpredictable seasons of England. Perhaps it’s a badge of honour in an occupation so starved of appreciation. For a short while we had a postwoman who eschewed her small red van for a bike, and she was possibly the only one who dressed appropriately for the elements.
Last week, however, it was our usual bare-legged chap, and on account of the driving rain, and the fact I had taken shelter from it under the grandest of our sweet chestnut trees, I decided to save the poor wretch the business of continuing all the way up the drive to the house by relieving him of his deliveries.
Had I given it rational thought I would have stayed put and let him pass me by, since there is always a terrific amount of last-minute post before Grandfather’s party. But having unburdened him from an armful of letters and small packages I found myself remaining under a dripping tree waiting for the shower to pass lest I should ruin the paper. There is no other reason than this that I would have found myself browsing idly through the pile of RSVPs, bills, catalogues and flyers that would have normally never attracted my attention, since our post is separated by Adam every morning and all items redistributed discreetly to their intended recipients, which judging by what I held in my arms, must often include the dustbin.
On coming across an opened and resealed letter amongst this most mundane pile of paper, my interest was stirred. The curious thing was that this piece of returned mail did not have our address on it.
We are not hard to find. The correct address is ‘Bosmaine House, Fieldings, By Catscombury, Gloucester’. There is no need for anything as vulgar as a postcode, since the estate encompasses two villages in the area, including Catscombury itself, and its small, irritatingly but picturesquely inefficient post office. Hence Grandfather regards having to identify the family seat by numbers and letters an intolerable insult which is why no such thing is included on our writing sets.
But this envelope, a small affair, calling-card size, had merely the words ‘Squire-966’ scribbled on the back in pen, and yet had been delivered to our door. Since it clearly belonged to nobody at this address I pocketed it without conscience. I confess I was intrigued. The rain softened and I walked up the driveway, anticipating with pleasure a hot bath, and less so an evening of dull conversation.
Grandfather had three ‘Amusantes’ staying. One apparently presented a political late-night television programme that nobody watches but everybody admires. Another was an artist of some sort whose work involves decaying fruit, and the third was a female bullfighter and is now an architect of perfectly preposterous structures, admired and written about by people who live in Georgian townhouses. They were all terribly pleased with themselves, and adopted that easy posture that the lower classes care to affect to indicate they are not impressed by being entertained by the last remains of English aristocracy, but which in fact reveals they believe quite the contrary. We do not slump casually at dinner and undermine etiquette. We sit properly and attend to our manners. I judged them accordingly.
I know I am a plain woman, but unlike my ancestors, modern life affords me the freedom to enjoy my privilege without the intolerable pressure they suffered of marrying unattractive wretches who pitied them but required an increase in status.
Grandfather has often remarked on his relief at my genetic predisposition to clumsy, ungainly, sexual unattractiveness, as he says it ‘brings less trouble to the door’. He may be right. Untroubled by suitors, I have a quiet, if splendid life.
Grandfather sits, of course, in the Lords, and I am titled, and when he dies I shall inherit Bosmaine, which, unlike the properties of many of our friends and family who are obliged to sell cream teas to obese people with tattoos and screaming children in fold-away buggies just to have the roof repairs done, remains an estate that more than earns its keep.
It’s assisted, of course, by substantial investments Grandfat
her made in Africa via the great friends he made when his parents were mine owners, whom I know, though it’s never discussed, he continues to assist in siphoning foreign aid into private bank accounts with a skill that would make him the greatest chancellor Great Britain never had. The upshot is, we are a rarity. We are an aristocratic family that still has money.
Of course when I say family, we are certainly diminished in that respect. When mother and father and Hugo and James died in the Cessna plane crash off Antigua (the pilot was a drunk; Grandfather ensured his family were subsequently made destitute), Grandfather was apparently a broken man. But even though I was only three, and Grandfather is not the most emotionally demonstrative of human beings, he was all I had left, and indeed I was all he had left, and so we love each other in a cautious but unbreakable bond that is unspoken but ever present. It’s admittedly lonely at times, but then I imagine, if called for, I would take a bullet for the old goat.
The dinner was as tedious as anticipated, with the architect and the TV presenter fighting for attention as they argued about politics in Europe and I saw my opportunity to slip away. Nobody, I imagine, mourned my leaving. My contribution to the evening was watching and listening, and despising these monkeys we have never met, and will never meet again, ‘busy’ people, yet not busy enough to turn down a weekend invitation from a stranger to dance to the tune of money. Before pudding was served the artist did at least turn to me and ask, ‘And what is it you do then, Sarah?’ I replied, ‘I am currently a visiting professor at Harvard researching the outcomes of proto isolated genetics.’ She nodded sagely, waiting, and when I added nothing further said, ‘Very very cool,’ and turned away again.
Grandfather loves this. Of course I am no such thing. I made it up. But I know he enjoys the discomfort of the Amusantes when they curse themselves for not having thoroughly googled me. There always follows a great deal of barely disguised regret that there might have been someone useful at the table whom they ignored, and they may have seemed foolish, and so with that triumph I chose that moment to leave.
I kissed Grandfather on the head and retired. I smiled, feeling their palpable uneasiness that they were the only ones there, and there was no A-list party other than themselves, no ‘networking’ opportunities, their sole chore being to amuse Grandfather over his pigeon pie. These are the people who write in the Guardian about refusing honours, and reforming the second chamber, yet they can all be summoned with merely the opening of a gold-trimmed invitation card. Anticipating their horror at reading the reports in all the society magazines of his summer solstice party only two weeks from their dinner, to which none of them would be invited, sealed the schadenfreude.
Tragedy, as I was taught by my ridiculously attractive drama tutor Miss Anderson in boarding school, is defined by the protagonist bringing the calamity upon themselves.
* * *
When I retired to my room I opened the letter expecting something mundane. It was not. It was perplexing. Several Post-its, from a high-end hotel chain, had been stuck with red pointing arrows to locations on a ragged map of our area.
On each Post-it, in a rough ring, in the centre of which appeared our estate, was a person’s name, and a letter of the alphabet, either A or B. I confess to having felt a worm of excitement. Whether of pleasure or trepidation I can’t decide. My life is contented but it rarely has the extremes of dark and light that describe the thrill of being alive that I understand some other people experience, from having read accounts of their exploits. It was perhaps that the letter may have actually been connected to us in some way, and not just a delivery error, that ignited the part of my brain long buried from childhood, when I played solitary detective games in the grounds, picking up meaningless objects and constructing crimes and clues around their origins.
The addressee on the envelope was one ‘Allun Carver’. A strange spelling of a common first name, but not a mistake as the hand was careful, by a nibbed pen.
I opened my laptop and googled the street name on the address, a street in London. Then disappointment. A shabby, empty corner shop next to a bookmakers.
In truth there was nothing remarkable about this. But it niggled sufficiently to puzzle me, and there had been little else to do this last while, except fend off the exasperation of the household staff who appear to become hysterical when dealing with catering and parking arrangements. I had not been in London for months, so resolved to go almost immediately. I would visit and investigate, just as I had done when aged seven, when I found the bare footprints before the party, just by the summer pavilion, that really had no business being there in the mud.
I resolved to pack lightly and head off in the early hours. If I timed it right I would be long gone before the Amusantes had eaten their sullen breakfast in a fog of their own failure.
* * *
It doesn’t take long for a person of my standing to get what I want. Even before I arrived on the train the estate agents named on the To Let board had been alerted to my interest in the vacant shop and one of their representatives was waiting for me as I stepped out of the cab. He was a young man whose skin and features suggested an Arab origin, but with a personal grooming style currently fashionable in the less affluent boroughs of London. His hair was slicked down like a licked newborn calf and the sharp suit he wore was of a garish pastel powder blue that any decent tailor would pay to have removed from his workshop under cover of night.
He unlocked the security grating, pushed open the peeling front door and we entered. I’m not certain what I expected to find, but the dusty empty shop floor was a crushing disappointment. A quick glance told me this had been an electrical appliances store. Catalogues of fridges and TVs lay in untidy piles, and a few cardboard boxes still contained odd cables and plug attachments.
The empty shelves were fringed with Day-Glo labels proclaiming special offers on selected computers.
I quizzed the estate agent as to the previous owner, and he told me it had been a British Indian gentleman who had now gone out of business. I asked if the gentleman had perhaps had a business partner, but drew a blank and in addition a sideways glance of suspicion that perhaps I was not a straightforward businesswoman looking for a vacant shop let. I asked if I could survey the back premises. Having lost interest in me he opened the office behind the counter and then began tapping into his phone and staring out of the window.
I opened the door onto a grimy office, as dusty and empty as the shop, but on the floor lay some in-trays. On the top to the left, the unopened mail, perhaps a dozen or more letters, of one Allun Carver.
How very disappointing. The answer straight away. No trail to follow. No secrets to uncover. Just a man who worked in a shop, who didn’t open his mail and must have left before the last one arrived. Why it had come our way may be perfectly well explained, but it seemed as though I was to be thwarted in adventure. The child detective in me wilted but while my bored companion gesticulated at the sky with a loosely flapping hand as he droned in a monotone to someone on the phone, I nevertheless scooped up all the envelopes and slid them into my bag.
Since the occupants had taken everything of value it seemed no great crime. It would be something to read later in my room at the club.
* * *
The tiresome Wilkinson sisters were staying in town and so it was no hardship to leave the dining room, these days full of city women with flattened-end false fingernails, to their braying and take supper upstairs.
I started at the bottom of the pile, eleven letters in all, and began to open them in order, bottom to top. There is no point in dragging this out. Mr Allun Carver was clearly an invited guest to Grandfather’s summer party. There was the invite, or should I say three of them, right at the bottom of the pile. There were the familiar bronze tissue-lined envelopes, gold-trimmed, finest hand-spun cards, and punch-stamped lettering, requesting the RSVPs by, well by next Wednesday as luck would have it. The most curious thing was they had been sent in the same packet, only one short month a
fter last year’s celebrations. Affording Mr Carver and his two mystery companions a good clear eleven months to respond seemed not only excessive, but highly unusual since our invites did not go into the post until May.
The other pieces of mail were an enigma. Three names. Callum Dale, Olive Channing, Shirley Fog. I looked at the postmarks. Each one had arrived within a month of the other. A piece of paper with three names, and a reminder that there was ten months to go, then nine and so on.
Only the one I had intercepted contained the map and the arrows and, as I realise now, the ‘by Wednesday’ note. It must surely only refer to the party itself. On reflection, the last returned letter had an unusual air of urgency about it, as though the sender had been perplexed at the others not having been acknowledged.
It suggested the sender had been staying at various outposts of this high-end hotel, posting out regular reminders, doing little else other than counting down to a date. Only this last missive conveyed a palpable sense of anxiety.
In fact on examination only the first one had the Squire-966 on it, and one can only surmise that it must be a postbox number for Bosmaine, otherwise how would it have arrived at our door?
So if I did not send this, then it can only have been Grandfather.
I realised that I had wished for some rare detective treat to unfold and found myself childishly disappointed that it had not led to something grisly and sinister. The dull part was that I simply had to go home now and ask Grandfather what it meant.
I had dreamt of trails of clues, secrets unfolding, but here I was once again, the solitary grandchild of a solitary man, dreaming of adventure in the musty bedroom of a gentlewoman’s club in Bloomsbury, with nobody to share my dreams. Opening the mail of a stranger for thrills and receiving none.
What had I secretly hoped for? Perhaps that dear Grandfather was a serial killer or a Satanist? How very predictable. Slaughtered innocents? Secret cult members being invited to parties to perform rituals?
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