A Legacy of Dirt: The Shunned Place — A Tale of Lovecraftian Noir by Peter Guy Blacklock — Chapter Two: Dissolute Progeny

I have finally got round to editing the second chapter of my Lovecraftian Horror, hard-boiled Noir mashup. A newly finalised Chapter One can be found HERE, if you haven’t already read it. This tale was originally intended to be a novella (of about 40,000 words), but may now have to be expanded into a short novel (of about 50,000 to 60,000 words) depending on how the remaining writing and editing process goes.

I make no appolgies for depicting the characters as movie stars from 40s and 50s genre film, in keeping with the first chapter. I find it useful to picture the said stars as the characters in my story while I’m writing, and I thought it might give the readers here a helping hand to visualise them more accurately while reading.

I currently have six chapters drafted out and will probably post a couple more here to this website as teasers before I get the full ten to twelve chapters written, edited and ultimately published. Now, to the text of the latest chapter…

Chapter Two: Dissolute Progeny

The Lincoln’s twin headlights projected two searching beams that scanned and probed the dead of night darkness through near opaque sheets of rain. The slate grey stones of the looming five-storied keep-like house, and the castellated walls of the courtyard that fronted it, glistened wet, black and slick. It was an ugly, horned toad of a building. Big and hulking, with bloated appendages squared out and meeting in an arch over the open entrance through the gatehouse. Already, Lofty knew he hated the place. It reminded him too much of the old-world edifices the Nazis had so often occupied and used to dominate local populations across Europe. They had been bases from which to brutalize with an unrelenting iron fist. They made perfect prisons to hold those that resisted them, and holes to throw those that did not fit within their twisted, evil ideology of affected purity and supremacy.

The big sedan slipped through the yawning gatehouse with masses of room to spare and on into the inner cobblestone court. In the middle of the courtyard was a circular structure about fifteen feet wide and five feet high, like a low building, but with no doors or windows. It had a shallow, conical roof made of timber, suggesting it was a kind of covered water well — a thing it was assuredly too big to be in any conventional sense. Lofty drove around it slow, taking in the size of the main house. He beeped the horn several times in the hope it would bring someone to let them in from the rain that much sooner. The courtyard itself was about fifty feet across, flanked by ancillary buildings. Most now garages, but once were stables and other workshops or housings typical of such late medieval complexes. He pulled up to the broad, high stairs that led to the big front doors of the building proper, which remained decisively closed.

“Well, there’s no point in us both getting wet again.” He said with a glance back at Martha. “You better stay here till I can get someone to come and open the door. It’s only eleven, there should be people about, and I’m sure the old bird will have plenty of servants.”

“What makes you think it’s locked,” she said, “maybe we can go straight in.”

“If you ask me, walking into a rich man’s house unannounced in the middle of the night is a good way to get yourself drilled. Anyway — if I was rich and it was my house — I’d keep it locked.”

She nodded.

He got out, ran around the sedan and sprinted up the five massive steps to the solid-looking double doors. They each sported a heavy knocker, and a bell-pull hung to the side. He knocked loudly, then gave the pull an urgent couple of tugs. Lofty looked the doors up and down as he waited, getting wetter and more impatient as the rain continued to pour. Directly above, where the two doors met, he noticed a strange — and relatively recent — embellished ankh-like symbol carved roughly into the thick lacquer of the ancient weather-worn timber frame. His gloom adapted eyes were dazzled by the bright shaft of light cast into them as the doors opened inward. Though not before he noticed the shadowed impression of another, older and more subtle, carved sigil inscribed on the underside of the massive stone lintel that jutted out above his head. There he saw a stylized pictogram or hieroglyph depicting what looked like a fat, squat bat with three protrusions rising from its triangular head; long ears perhaps, with a single central horn?

The two sigils carved into and above the door frame.

“Yes, yes?” Came a stern and austere female voice from inside. “Who is it at such a late hour? What is it? What do you want?” A tall, slim, rather sombre middle-aged woman stared at him accusingly from the bright, warm and dry within.

“Mr Robertson and Miss Woodstern.” He said, looking down with what he hoped was a charming smile. “I believe we are expected.”

“Expected, eh. I see a Mister, but no Miss!” She said as if somehow catching him out.

Lofty turned — about to whistle to the car — but the fox-fur wrapped Martha was already running up the stairs, having seen the castle doors open from within the vehicle.

“Ah, and there is the Miss.” The woman said, seemingly disappointed. “Well, I suppose you had better come in if your arrival is, indeed, anticipated. You’re not the first of the vultures to arrive, and I expect you will not be the last.”

Lofty and Martha gave each other a sideways glance as the woman turned begrudgingly to allow them in. “Do you not have any luggage?” She said.

“Oh, yes — in the Lincoln.” Lofty paused as if to go back.

Mrs Rachel Dudley, the housekeeper at Castle House.

“No, it is fine. I will get Sagamore to fetch your bags, and he can move the automobile into one of the garages. He will carry your things up to your rooms. But first, I must ask that you go through into the parlour.” She waved them toward the first door on the left in the palatial high-ceilinged reception hall that stretched through the centre of the building toward the distant stairs. “Master Shelby will want to greet you and check your letters. I am afraid Master Castle himself has already retired for the night — he will see you in the morning.”

“Master Shelby?” Quizzed Lofty as they moved toward the door of the parlour.

“Vincent Shelby, Master Castle’s nephew.” The woman replied as if she were stating the obvious. She ushered them through the door from the hall and unceremoniously closed it behind them the instant they were inside.

The parlour was a formal wood-panelled sitting room, dominated by a huge desk and liberally scattered with an eclectic mix of objet d’art from almost every corner of the globe and every age of its history. It positively reeked of old money, a lot of it. Lofty wandered around the room, silently appraising the various pieces on show. Martha settled herself down in one of the many plush chairs facing the almost monumental desk. It acted like a focal altar dedicated to the ostentatious wealth displayed on and around it.

Minutes passed before the presaged nephew of Master William Castle joined the two guests. He proved to be a tall man with broad shoulders, probably in his thirties, rather doughy and soft-looking. He seemed uncomfortable in his large masculine frame, almost like it belied his status as a refined gentleman. Lofty doubted the man had ever done a days work in his life, certainly not the kind of work that would cause him to break a sweat. And yet he was mopping his brow with a large handkerchief as he entered the room through the same door they had. He was impeccably dressed and groomed, with a sardonic smile, a pencil moustache and a clipped accent that put Lofty’s nerves on edge.

“Mister Robertson and Miss Woodstern.” The rich man’s nephew said. “It is such a pleasure to meet you both.” Though he seemed to only have eyes for Martha, barely giving Lofty a second glance. He approached and greeted her with a hand held out. She instinctively raised her hand to his. He made a rather gallant flourish of taking it and kissing the back of her proffered fingertips. “Exquisite.” He said and then looked at her face more closely. “Forgive me, but have we met before? You seem awfully familiar, oh, I’ve got it — you bear an uncanny resemblance to a certain young starlet who made a bit of a splash recently. Sugar Malone, that’s it, could be the next big name in Hollywood.”

Martha laughed at that. “There’s nothing uncanny about it. I’ve only had a few very small bit-parts so far, though. Not quite the glittering heights of Hollywood. Sugar Malone is my professional name — have you seen any of my performances on the silver screen, or maybe some of my shoots?”

“Yes, yes, of course, but this is incredible. To have an up and coming star here with us, a member of the family no less, I cannot begin to tell you how delighted I am.” He finally let Martha’s hand go and then sidled and smarmed his way to the seat behind the immense desk. “Well, I must thank providence for bringing a touch of glamour to this otherwise rather humdrum and depressing family affair. In fact, for bringing such glamour to this otherwise humdrum and depressing family full stop. For in truth, it would seem that we are indeed all related.” With that, he sat down.

Vincent Shelby, William Castle’s nephew.

“Though we must be pretty distant relations and from decidedly poorer branches of the family.” Said Lofty as he casually sat in a chair beside Martha. “Neither of us had even heard of old Wilbur before receiving the letters from his son, your uncle.”

“Oh indeed. Let us just say that my grandfather, and his father before him, had a remarkably prodigious talent for siring children that were not, for want of a better term — and if you’ll forgive my frankness — conceived in the marital bed. The copious results of their dissolute progeny have spread far and wide, whereas the seeds sown closer to home fell on increasingly infertile ground. My uncle, for example, despite a long life of dalliances and indulgences — perhaps the victim of some cosmic joker trying to redress the balance — has had little success as the expected great progenitor he so aspired to be.”

“And what about yourself?” Asked Lofty coolly as he tapped himself a cigarette from his pack. “No legitimate heirs to pass the vast fortune on to?” He then bumped another and offered it to Martha. She took it gladly.

As Lofty lit her cigarette and then his own, Vincent Shelby shifted uncomfortably. “Alas,” he said, “as for myself, I have neither the temperament nor the desire for children — legitimate or otherwise. Much to the displeasure of my dearly departed grandfather.” A hint of resentment entered his voice. “Who very much came to see me as the prodigal black-sheep, if you’ll excuse my mixing of metaphors, and an unmitigated dynastic dead-end, as he put it.”

“So, I suppose,” Lofty indicated himself and Martha, “we are the results of the dissolute progeny that now needs bringing back into the familial fold for the sake of the dynasty. To rejuvenate the infertile ground, so to speak.“

“Bluntly, yes.” Said Shelby with a thin smile. “My grandfather saw the two of you, among others, as the potential long-term security for the legacy of his diminishing and dissipated family. You would not believe the trouble we had tracking down the more dispersed and disparate of you all.”

“Where’s the catch?” Said Martha, cutting to the chase through the bandied wordiness of the two men. “You don’t generally get something for nothing in this life, and there is always a catch in my experience… so what is it?”

“As to that,” Shelby replied, his smile getting thinner, “I am as much in the dark as you. Presumably, all will be revealed at sundown tomorrow, at the reading of the will. Now, if I could check your letters. Then I’ll get Mrs Dudley to show you to your rooms, and you can change out of those wet things, freshen up and make yourselves more comfortable.”

“I need to make a phone call,” said Lofty as he handed over the letter, “to the police… someone was taking potshots out on the road — I should report it.”

“Really — how awful. Unfortunately, there are no phone lines that come all the way out here.” Said Shelby as he stood and rang a bell-pull by the door. “We are quite isolated in that regard.”

“Maybe we can try sending smoke signals or something.” Said Martha under her breath.

*

They were in their respective rooms on the third floor within half an hour, after climbing two sets of turning stairs at alternate ends of the long central corridors that ran the length of the building on each level. Although the house had looked big from the outside, it seemed positively cavernous now that they were inside it. The floor could easily hold twelve spacious guest rooms, each about nine or ten feet wide and twenty or so long. Assuming they were all analogous to the room that Lofty found himself. There was an open fireplace, a high-backed chair and desk, an armoire and dresser, a couple of easy chairs, bookshelves, a rather large bed with an ornately carved chest at its foot and accompanying side cabinets on either side of its head. There was even a compact, though well-stocked, drinks cabinet. If somewhat cluttered, it was a veritable home from home, sumptuously comfortable and certainly plusher than his usual lodgings. It was all dark mahoganies, soft leathers and rich fabrics. Everything had a sheen of the exotic, the antique and the expensive.

The only thing missing was his luggage from the car. Lofty took his wet jacket off and hung it over the high-backed chair, which he placed a safe distance from the fire to dry. He lit himself a cigarette and then poured himself a shot of whiskey from one of the decanters supplied by his host. As he settled himself into one of the easy chairs, his shoulder holster and gun hanging over the back of it, he heard a loud knock to the adjoining room that now sequestered Miss Martha Woodstern. A few minutes later, there was a heavy knock at his door too. Lofty lazily stood and opened it.

Samuel Sagamore, the caretaker at Castle House.

A large Native American dressed in work-denims filled the doorway; his thick, unruly hair slicked back and his arms full of luggage.

“You must be Sagamore?” Posited Lofty as he stood aside to allow him entry.

The man gave a glum nod as he strode past and dropped the bags inside the room. As he turned to leave, he held out the keys that Lofty had left in the car.

“Sagamore’s your surname, right?” Asked Lofty as conversationally as he could while taking the keys. Again, the man only nodded, so the P.I. continued. “You descended from the last chief of the old Agawam tribe?”

The Native stopped and looked at Lofty. “You ask a lot of questions, bud.” He said gruffly.

“Sorry, I was a student of history before the war, that’s all. I did a thesis on Algonquin culture in my final year at Miskatonic. The Agawam featured prominently, being the local tribe. What I would have given to have been able to talk to someone like you back then.”

“Someone like me?” Sagamore’s expression took on a more baleful aspect.

“An actual descendant of Chief Masconomet. He was quite the significant player in early Essex County history. Didn’t he and his family adopt the name Sagamore after he ceded the Agawam lands over to the English Colony?”

“He did, but that was a long time ago.” Sagamore seemed to consider a moment before continuing. “His people were already decimated by plague and misfortune before you English ever set foot here. The tribe ceded their language and their identity on that day too. They forsook their Algonquin heritage and adapted to the ways of the colonists. Countless generations have passed since that time; I doubt many of their descendants now know or even care who the Agawam were.”

“You certainly seem to know.” Stated Lofty as he stubbed out his cigarette. “But you’re right; first-hand knowledge of the Agawam is pretty hard to come by these days.”

Sagamore’s aspect lightened somewhat. “Quite the coincidence then that ya should find someone like me now, all-be-it belatedly — at least as far as your thesis is concerned.”

“Have a snort with me?” The P.I. proposed as he poured himself another whiskey. “It don’t seem right calling ya Sagamore; what’s your first name?”

“Samuel.” He said. “I don’t drink, but if you’re in a giving mood, I’ll gladly take one of them butts off ya.”

The detective tapped a smoke from his pack and proffered it to Samuel. “My name’s Mitch, by the way, though most folks call me Lofty.”

“Thanks.” Said Samuel taking it and flaring it up with his own lighter.

Mitch ‘Lofty’ Robertson

“So, what’s your place in this big old house? How long ya been here?” Lofty sat back down into the easy chair, he indicated the other chair, but Samuel Sagamore remained standing.

After a massive draw on his cigarette, the Native American said, “Been here about a year. They say I’m a caretaker, but I’m really the general dogsbody who does all the heavy work. Pay is good though, free bed and board — so, can’t complain, except for the isolation and the bad spirits that roam here.” He took another long draw.

“The bad spirits?” Lofty asked with a curiosity tinged by scepticism and a wry smile.

“There’s something not right about this house, that’s all. You’ll soon see; strange sounds in the night, ominous feelings, unpleasant smells, sudden chills. A place like this gets under your skin. It’s a bad house built on bad ground. The Algonquin called this area the Shunned Place, the mound that this house sits on, as well as the woods, marshes and estuaries that surround it; they would not go near it. The headlands and islands between the estuaries of the Ipswich and Essex Rivers were all forbidden.”

“But I thought there used to be some sort of old native earthworks or ruins here — a kind of quarry or mine — the records were somewhat vague. I even read it might have been a ritual complex in one account?”

“Those ancient ruins were older by far than even the earliest memories of the Agawam, or so the stories told. Strange stone-carved figures stood here on the hill once, supposedly depicting an ancient race that was not quite human. They lived here long before the Agawam or any of the Algonquin tribes. A cruel people, it was said, who built a malign place in which to worship their evil god.” He then gave a sardonically dark smile. “Of course, these days, that can all be dismissed as native superstition.”

There was a distant roll of thunder, followed by a sudden rap of knocks at the door.

“I should get back to my room.” Said Samuel Sagamore as he stepped to the door and opened it.

Waiting on the other side was Martha. Confronted by the big Native American making to leave, she took a surprised step back. He nodded to her and said, “Miss.” Then looked back at Lofty. “Probably best not wander too far from your rooms when it gets to the early hours.” He said ominously. “That’s when the bad spirits tend to stir.”

He left, and Martha stepped in, closing the door behind him. “What was that all about?” She said. The young woman had changed into an especially slinky Chinese-style dress, and to Lofty’s eyes, she looked like a million dollars and then some.

“Oh, just another attempt at spooking us into leaving, I think.” He said.

“What do you mean, another attempt?”

“The gas-station attendant was all dizzy with haunted house nonsense too. I’m beginning to think the Castle’s have hired a bunch of actors or something, to get us to fade before the reading of the will.”

“Haunted house?” She said, a little nonplussed. “You trying to tell me this hideous pile has ghosts adrift in its dark and drafty corridors?”

Martha Woodstern AKA Sugar Malone.

“Supposed to have — can’t say I’m buying it — though that Indian was good, laid it on a little thick, but he knew his stuff. He dangled just the right bait, and like a sap, I bit.”

“That makes no sense, though.” Said Martha as she sat in the other easy chair. “He never said a word to me, just dumped my bags like sacks of coal… and why would they invite us out here just to scare us off?”

Lofty paused to think but was frustrated in his search for an answer. “Don’t know. I guess I’m so busy second-guessing everything, I’ve stopped seeing things for what they are — a crazy gas-station attendant and an overly superstitious Indian.”

“Don’t forget the cantankerously hostile housekeeper and the sleazily creepy nephew with his morally bankrupt forbears. This place certainly seems to attract the strangest of people, and I don’t know what that says about the two of us.”

Lofty laughed kind of dryly at that. “No,” he said, “me neither.”

“Well, one thing’s for sure,” she then said with a half-smile, “that bullet that clipped your ear wasn’t an actor or a ghost.”

“Damn, I’d forgotten about that.” Lofty stood and went over to the mirror on top of the dresser to look. It was only a nick, though it had stung like blazing hell when first inflicted. It seemed to have stopped bleeding, and most of the blood had washed clean away in the heavy rain. He decided to leave it; cleaning it any more may just set it off bleeding again.

“So,” said Martha, “are we still nipping downstairs to get the lay?” Although Mrs Dudley had quickly pointed out certain rooms as she guided them upstairs, she had barely given them time to think, let alone take it in. They had agreed to have a good scout of the lower floors once they changed out of their wet clothes.

“I still haven’t had the chance to get changed.” He said. “Can I knock on your door in about five?” He was keen to see if any of the other guests were up and about. Mrs Dudley had mentioned that four ‘of the vultures’ had arrived sometime before them, and Lofty was itching to get the skinny on them all.

“Sure thing, Gee.” She said. Before leaving, she quipped. “Don’t waste time fretting on haunted house tales; the living are proving far creepier than any supposed ghost. Jeez, way things are headed, there’s probably some crazy old crone of a maiden aunt locked up in the attic somewhere.”

__________

Chapter Three: [Title yet to be finalised] will be coming to this blog soon and I may feature another of the initial chapters here before publication of the finished ebook and paperback later in the year.

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A Legacy of Dirt: The Shunned Place — A Tale of Lovecraftian Noir by Peter Guy Blacklock — Chapter One: Hell House on Haunted Hill

Here I present to you a newly edited version of the first chapter to my Lovecraftian Horror, hard-boiled Noir mashup. An earlier draft of this chapter is available in the previous post HERE. Initially I was going to update that post with this new version, but then thought that some might find it useful or interesting to compare and contrast an early draft with a much later one that is close to, or might actually be, the final edit. Originally intended to be a novella (of about 40,000 words), this story may now have to be expanded into a short novel (of about 50,000 to 60,000 words) depending on how the rest of the writing and editing process goes.

I’ve also got lots of ideas for further stories involving the protagonist from this tale, so it may well end up as a series of stand-alone short novels, each titled under the main banner of A Legacy of Dirt follwed by their respective stand-alone titles. This first one, called The Shunned Place will explore various haunted house tropes. I’m toying with The Long Lament as a title for the second, for which I already have a cool idea exploring the tropes of cursed objects.

Before I get to the text of the chapter, here’s an initial mock-up of the proposed cover to get you in the mood…

Chapter One: Hell House on Haunted Hill

It was a dark and stormy night, so the cliché goes, and suddenly, as it oft continues, a shot rang out.

Of course, nights are invariably dark, but this one was particularly so, and the storm that raged was uncommonly vicious. It was the right sort of night for the wrong kind of outcome. The shot ripped a red-hot slug of metal through the rain-swept windscreen. It screamed past Lofty’s head, tearing a chunk of flesh and cartilage from the tip of his right ear. Lofty braked hard. The big Lincoln-Zephyr four-door sedan skidded and skewed to a halt down the sloping muddy lane. It veered toward a waterlogged ditch that lurked at the bottom of the incline where the backroad took a sharp left. The large automobile stopped short of the flooded trench with mere inches to spare.

Lofty could see nothing through the opaque fanning of fractured glass that was the holed windscreen. The wipers kept up their frenzied metronomic flailing regardless. The blackness through the rest of the car’s windows was almost complete, like mirrors reflecting a murderer’s soul. His hand instinctively rested on the butt of the snub-nosed Colt Detective Special in his shoulder holster. He listened, alarmed and alert. At that moment, the pounding of torrential rain and the gusting wail of the wind was all that he could hear. A sharp flash and flare of lightning split the sky with a massive crack of thunder. He caught a glimpse of a pale and sodden young woman stumbling toward him down the backwoods lane.

Winding the window down on his left, Lofty reversed and turned the Lincoln to shine its headlights up toward her. He leaned out, peering into the tempestuous downpour. The bedraggled woman, dressed in a sheer white gown entirely unsuitable for a night such as this, staggered toward the twin beams. Her distress was evident in her gaunt and distraught face. The woman stumbled and fell hard to her knees just short of Lofty’s car. She stared wide-eyed at him, her big beautiful eyes pleading and begging hands outstretched.

“God damn it!” Lofty exclaimed under his breath, acutely aware that another shot could come tearing his way at any moment. The big man, lean and muscular, got out of the car and bundled the slight and shivering woman up in his arms. Hunkering low, he carried her slim and — he couldn’t help but notice — shapely form to the expansive back seat of the Lincoln. He wrapped her in the blanket that spread along that seat.

“Hit a tree!” She said between gasps and shivers. He got in beside her and leant forward over the front seat to close the side window. “Tire blew out,” she continued, “lost control and hit a tree!”

She didn’t look like she had any injuries, except for a pair of grazed knees. Lofty pulled a hip-flask from his jacket pocket and offered it to her. “Here, Sister,” he said, “have a snort of sour-mash; it’ll take the edge off.”

She took the flask with a half-smile and a rather pouty lick of her lips. “Thanks, Gee,” she said, taking a swig, “but my edges rubbed off a long time ago.” She coolly looked at him then pointed to his bloodied ear, “What happened to you?”

Just as coolly, Lofty pointed to the little round hole at the top of the windscreen. The wind was now whistling through it. “Someone took a pot shot at me, coming down that incline.”

“That’s where my tire blew; I managed to get round this bend before careening off the road.” Her forehead furrowed as she raised a concerned eyebrow. “You don’t think someone was trying to drill me too, do ya?”

He was pretty damn sure someone was. “We better get out o’ here.” He said as he clambered awkwardly from the back seat to the front.

“My, but you’re a BIG galoot, aren’t ya?” She said. “All strong arms an’ long legs.”

The V-12 was still purring under the hood as he got back into the driver’s seat and took the hand-brake off. Lofty eased the engine into a growl, and the Lincoln soon picked up speed. He punched his fist through the shattered windscreen in front of him, so he could at least have some idea of where he was going. The left wiper finally gave up the ghost and jammed halfway up.

“Wait, wait!” The young woman exclaimed. “My things, in the car… I can’t leave them here.”

He glanced back at her with a steely glare that revealed a slight flash of anger.

“Everything I own is in that crate. I can’t abandon it all; someone might glom the lot, and it’s all I have in the world!” She insisted, her steel matching his.

Lofty caught a glimpse of what looked like a brand-new maroon ‘47 Ford two-door convertible rammed into a tree. He braked suddenly, sending the blanket wrapped young woman sliding forward. She slipped clean off the back seat with a startled yelp.

“What am I getting?” He bristled, though the flicker of anger had vacated his granite chiselled features. He had a cleft chin and high cheekbones with the kind of lazy, sad eyes that had seen far too much of the world.

Sitting back up in the seat, she said. “There’s a case and vanity in the foot-well on the passenger side. A pocketbook in the glove compartment. Oh, and a clutch-purse, a fur stole an’ jacket, and a folio on the passenger seat too.”

He looked back at her, and with a hint of sarcasm, said, “Is that all?” He guessed she was about twenty, but she could have been a couple of years on either side of that. She had a knowing face and an easy air, a self-assurance that he liked a lot.

“Yep.” Not short of sass, she added with ironic demure, “I’m a simple gal of modest means.”

Lofty backed the Lincoln up a little and then eased himself over to the passenger side. The convertible’s door was already wide open, so when Lofty opened his door wide, the two doors met. “Open your door too,“ he said to the girl, “an’ I’ll pass all your worldly goods to ya.”

Staying low, the big man quickly shifted over to her car. It still had that new car smell, and all her luggage looked pretty damn pristine too. “And not cheap,” he mumbled as he started lifting and schlepping the items to her. Case, vanity, pocketbook, clutch, folio, and then he threw the stole and jacket — white fox fur, all very expensive — right in after them. “Modest means?” He said as he got back in the Lincoln. “Quite the doll, aren’t ya.”

“They were a gift… from a friend.” She said. “Not that I need to explain myself to you.”

“No, you’re right — ya don’t.” Doors closed, hand-brake off, and they were on their way again. “I apologize.” He said, peering through the fist-sized hole and the still pouring rain.

“Apology accepted.” She said. “We’re both a bit nervy, that’s all. Got any butts on ya? I’m gasping.”

Three rapid flashes of lightning bleached the whole of Essex County — if not the entire State of Massachusetts — for a brief second or two. It was all stark woods, dank marshes, unwholesome creeks and small, isolated, barren-looking farmsteads. The accompanying cataclysmic claps of thunder rattled the windows in the car,

“I’ve got almost a full deck in my inside pocket,” He said, negotiating a series of tight bends. “If you can reach around and get ‘em — don’t want to take my hands off the wheel at the moment.”

“Sure thing, Gee.” She said, reaching for the pack of Camel cigarettes.

“Flare one up for me too, will ya, Doll?” He glanced at her with a droll but intimate grin.

“Sure thing.” She replied with a coy smile. Martha lit the two cigarettes simultaneously with a lighter pulled from her purse. Then reached forward again to place one of them in Lofty’s mouth. “So, what’s your name Gee?” Her face was level with his now, and he felt her warm breath on his cheek as she spoke.

“Robertson.” He said, drawing in on his cigarette. “Mitch Robertson — but most folks call me Lofty.”

“Lofty!” She laughed. “Your friends aren’t the most original, are they?”

He laughed too, “Nope, but that’s soldiers for ya — I got the name in the army, and it stuck.”

“You a G.I.?”

“Was.” He said. “82nd Airborne Division, 505th P.I.R., Sergeant First Class.”

“Sergeant First Class!” She said, impressed. “What does P.I.R. stand for?”

“Parachute Infantry Regiment.”

“A paratrooper!” Again, she seemed impressed. “You must have been in the thick of it during the war; did you see much action?”

He nodded and said, “Some — Sicily, Italy, Normandy… all the way through to Germany.”

“Damn!” She said, but sensed his demeanour turn. He had tensed up at the close of her question. She had seen enough young men back from the war in the last two years to understand. Some wanted to talk about it, but most didn’t; she had learned it was best not to push, for many were broken — inside as well as out. She changed the subject, “So, what do you do now… for a living, I mean?”

“I’m a gum-shoe, but it’s not much of a living.” He said.

“You’re a Johnny Buttons?” A lot less impressed this time, she simmered a palpable hostility at the very idea that he might be a police detective.

“A Private Op.” He qualified.

“Oh, a P.I. — you must be a glutton for punishment. Couldn’t leave the excitement and danger behind when you demobbed, is that it?”

Lofty laughed, “Believe me, it’s not that exciting. It’s not like it is in the movies or some dime-novel, you know. It’s cheating husbands an’ wives mostly. What about you; what’s your story?”

“There’s not much to tell.” She said in a defensive tone. “I was a hostess for a while and have done a bit of modelling, a bit of dancing — chorus line… tried a bit of acting. You know, this an’ that.”

“Well, you seem to be doing well for yourself — new car, Chanel bags and Arctic Fox furs. You must have quite the benefactor?”

“Hey!” She said, offended. “What are you implying?”

“I’m not implying anything… hell, we all have to do what we have to do to get by in this world — I’m in no position to judge anyone in those regards. Think I can afford a bus like this on twenty-five dollars a day plus expenses?”

“Humph,” she said, “still sounds like you’re implying something to me.” Though, now she was more feigning offence than taking it.

“There’s a gas station up ahead. We better stop an’ tell them about your wreck back there; maybe call the local Clubhouse, tell the cops that there’s some kind o’ lunatic taking potshots at people.”

Lofty spent about five minutes out of the car while Martha bit her thumb inside it. She could see him and the attendant gesticulating to each other, getting directions she presumed, but the raging storm meant she heard none of it. The attendant took his time filling the tank. There were some more gesticulations.

“Damn this godforsaken place!” Said Lofty when he got back in the Lincoln, slicking his Brylcreemed black hair down. “Didn’t have a phone — hell, I doubt they even have cops out here anyway… the place is a total backwater.” He sat there a moment, thinking. “We’re not too far from my destination… is there anywhere I can take you? Where were you heading? Because I have to say, there’s not much of anything around these parts.” He turned to look back at her, “and I can’t figure what a big-city gal like you is doing all the way out here?”

“Ah, well… this big-city gal happens to have been born all the way out here. Orphaned at age four and sent to distant relatives in Boston.” A hint of bitterness crept into her soft caramel voice. “At twelve, they sent me to even more distant relatives in New York, been a big-city gal ever since.”

“Go figure,” he said, “so was I, born way out here that is. I got drafted into the army in 1940, twenty-two years old and fresh out of M.U., saw the world and opened my eyes… after the war, I moved to the big city myself — San Francisco. Never thought I’d ever come back here.”

“Me neither,” she said, “but I’m here… got an offer I couldn’t refuse. Some great-great-uncle I’d never heard of up an’ died and left me some kind of inheritance or bursary.”

“And you’ve gotta attend the reading of the will to receive it?”

“Yes, how’d you know?”

Lofty delved into an inside pocket, “Me too.” He said as he handed her an envelope.

She took it, removed the letter still inside and read it. “This is the same letter I got,” she said, “word for word, I think, except my name in place of yours.”

Lofty asked, “Do you still have the letter you received?”

“Sure.” She said and retrieved it. Hers too was still in the envelope, now folded in half. She pulled it from her pocketbook then handed it to him with his own.

He studied the two envelopes. Each address was written in the same hand. With identical post marks indicating they originated from Ipswich, a small town about three or four miles further up the road. Both dated October the 13th, about two weeks ago. Hers sent to Ms Martha Woodstern, 118a, Rapelye Street, Red Hook, Brooklyn, New York. The letters inside were indeed identical except for the names, and they were both typed — probably on the same machine. The shaky signatures matched too, from a William Castle, the last surviving child of the great-great-uncle previously unknown to them.

“Well, Ms Woodstern,” he said, handing back her letter, “it looks like we’re related, if somewhat distantly.”

“And this William Castle bird, that we’re going to meet, if he’s our great-uncle… how old must he be?”

“He’s eighty-seven… I looked him up. I spent the last couple of days back in Lynn and then Salem, at the Public Libraries and the Records Office. He’s from a rich family that has a long and complicated history. Of both Scottish and English descent. How it all relates to my family tree, I have no idea.”

“If he’s eighty-seven?” She exclaimed. “How old was great-great-uncle Wilbur when he died?”

“He was a-hundred-and-nine by all accounts.”

“Damn, talk about charmed lives.”

“Like I said, they’re rich. Have been for centuries. Old Wilbur’s father, Wilbur senior, paid to have a Scottish baronial castle moved stone by stone across the Atlantic and rebuilt here, in Massachusetts, in the 1830s. On the site of some deserted colonial village. With its cemetery and an old abandoned mine that he’d managed to acquire. It caused a hell of a stir. Young William still lives in that castle to this day. That’s where we’re heading now, Castle House.”

Martha laughed dryly, “So William Castle actually lives in a castle, and I was born to humble farm stock who’d worked themselves to death trying to feed me…  where’s the connection?”

“Not sure. I couldn’t find a connection to me either.” Lofty pondered. “It makes me wonder how many more prospective distant relatives are on their way to this Last Will and Testament reading?”

After a moment’s silence, Martha asked, “How much further is it?”

“Not far up this road, there‘s a turn off to the right. It loops back through the woods and salt-marshes to Castle House, toward the coast. It should take about fifteen or twenty minutes.” Lofty eased the Lincoln’s V12 back into a growl, and they set off from the gas station.

Castle House was an early sixteenth-century Tower House and courtyard, a big one, with two seventeenth-century towers at alternate corners of the massive keep-like house. It sat at the top of a relatively low conical hill known as Castle Mound. An old graveyard sloped down the right side toward the salt marshes, with a ruined church and village down the left to some woods. Essentially, it was an island that dominated the surrounding wetland of the Castle Neck River estuary. Lofty kept getting glimpses of it through the hole in the windscreen as he drove along the narrow causeway that twisted through the marshes between thick copses and over swirling tributaries. After another flash of lightning and burst of thunder, he said. “Looks like a backdrop from a Universal monster movie. All we need is Bella Lugosi or Boris Karloff and an overly dramatic musical score.”

“Gives me the creeps!” Said Martha in the back. It was not the sort of castle she had imagined; it was all bleak and foreboding and reminded her of nightmares that plagued her in childhood. Martha really wanted Lofty to turn the car around. “Something doesn’t feel right about this whole setup,” she warned, “the letters… a great-great-uncle that neither of us has ever heard of before. It has to be a joke or a con, a scam of some sort, or a trap — someone has already tried to kill us!”

Lofty uttered a dismissive laugh. “These rubes are rich, and I’ve got the jump on them. We both stand to carve a substantial chunk of sugar from inside that pile. I at least want to see how the cards fall before I consider checking out of this particular house game.”

She said no more, and he didn’t turn the car around. He thought about telling her what the gas-station attendant had told him, a nervous little man who wasn’t — Lofty suspected — entirely compos mentis. “It be a Hell house,” he had said, “a Hell house on a haunted hill! You don’t want to go up there. Often-times, people drive up there, but very few of them seem to come back down!”

Of course, he didn’t tell her — that fool of an attendant was speaking nonsense, and he figured she was jumpy enough as it was. So they continued following the road, snaking up the hill to the forbidding gatehouse that fronted the walled courtyard of Castle House.

__________

Martha Woodstern and Mitch “Lofty” Robertson on their way to Castle House

Chapter Two: Dissolute Progeny is now available to read HERE and I may feature up to two more of the initial chapters in subsequent posts before publication of the finished ebook and paperback later in the year.

Subscribe to this blog to keep updated on all my articles, stories and publications – or follow me on Twitter HERE.

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Sneak Peek at a Haunted House, Noir, Lovecraftian Horror mashup by Peter Guy Blacklock – an Exercise in cliché Management

Sneak Peek at a Haunted House, Noir and Lovecraftian Horror mashup by Peter Guy Blacklock – an Exercise in cliché Management

I’ve always wanted to write my own version of the classic haunted house mystery/horror trope, one that would bring in elements of hard-boiled Noir and sanity shredding Lovecraftian Horror. I was inspired to finally write it when I happened upon an article on Wikipedia about the often-mocked and parodied first line cliché “It was a dark and stormy night“, which mentions a literary competition that challenges entrants to compose “the opening sentence to the worst of all possible novels” – the first bout of which to be published uses the aforementioned opening so often employed by the Snoopy character in the Peanuts comic strip – among others. A good idea, I thought, but a much better and, it has to be said, tougher exercise would have been to write the first paragraph that rescues a clichéd opening by turning it into a potentially good one. I set myself that very task and it led to me writing the following first chapter of what, I hope, will be a novella I can publish. At the very least I will be publishing the subsequent chapters of this novella on my Patreon page as and when I write them.

Of course, these days the sub-genres of haunted house, Noir and Lovecraftian – though original once – have now become bogged down in clichés all there own. Many writers believe that clichés should always be avoided (like the veritable plague in fact) but I tend to disagree. Clichés have their place in fiction like they do in real life. Good fiction, especially genre fiction, will always be an exercise in cliché management, you can choose to never use them or you can learn to play with them – you can subvert them, use them for your own ends or use them to mess with your audience’s expectations… the world is your oyster – to paraphrase Shakespeare.

So, without further dilatoriness, here is my exercise in cliché management (titles are provisional) …

The Hell House on Haunted Hill

[or]

Justifiable Homicide

By Peter Guy Blacklock

Chapter One: There’s A Killer on the Road

It was a dark and stormy night, the cliché goes, and suddenly, as it oft continues, a shot rang out.

Of course nights are invariably dark, but this one was particularly so, and the storm that raged was uncommonly vicious – it was the right sort of night for the wrong kind of outcome. The shot ripped a red hot slug of metal through the rain swept windscreen, then it screamed past Lofty’s head, tearing a chunk of flesh and cartilage from the tip of his right ear. Lofty braked hard and the big Lincoln-Zephyr four door sedan messily skidded to a halt down the sloping muddy lane, veering toward a waterlogged ditch that lurked at the bottom of the incline as the lane took a sharp left. The big automobile only barely stopped short of the ditch.

Lofty could see nothing through the opaque fanning of fractured glass that was the holed windscreen – though the wipers kept up their frenzied metronomic flailing regardless – and the blackness through the rest of the car’s windows was almost complete, like they were mirrors on a murderer’s soul. His hand instinctively rested on the butt of the snub-nosed Colt Detective Special in his shoulder holster as he listened, alarmed and alert, but in that moment the pounding of torrential rain and the gusting wail of the wind was all that he could hear. A sharp flash and flare of lightning split the sky with a monumental crack of thunder and to his left he briefly saw the pale and sodden figure of a young woman stumbling toward him down the backwoods lane.

Winding the window down to his left, Lofty reversed and turned the Lincoln to shine the headlights down the lane and he leaned out, peering into the tempestuous downpour. The bedraggled woman, dressed in a sheer white gown entirely unsuitable for a night such as this, staggered toward the twin beams. Her distress was manifestly evident in her gaunt and distraught face. She stumbled and fell hard to her knees just short of Lofty’s car then stared wide eyed at him, big beautiful eyes pleading, with hands outstretched, begging.

“God damn it!” Lofty exclaimed under his breath. Acutely aware that another shot could come tearing his way at any moment; the big man, lean and muscular, got out of the car and bundled the slight and shivering woman up in his arms. Hunkering low he carried her slim and, he couldn’t help but notice, shapely form and got her into the expansive back seat of the Lincoln, wrapping her in the blanket that was back there.

“Hit a tree!” She said breathlessly between gasps and shivers as he got in beside her and lent forward over the front seat to close the side window there. “Tire blew out, lost control and hit a tree!”

She didn’t look like she had any injuries, except perhaps for a pair of grazed knees.  Lofty pulled a hip flask from his Jacket pocket and offered it to her. “Here, Sister,” he said, “have a snort of sour-mash, it’ll take the edge off.”

She took the flask with a half smile and a rather pouty lick of her lips. “Thanks, Gee,” she said taking a swig, “but my edges were rubbed off a long time ago.” She coolly looked at him then pointed to his bloodied ear, “What happened to you?”

Just as coolly, Lofty pointed to the little round hole at the top of the windscreen through which the wind was now whistling. “Someone took a pot shot at me, coming down that incline.”

“That’s where my tire blew, just managed to get round this bend before careening off the road.” Her forehead furrowed slightly as she raised a concerned eyebrow. “You don’t think someone was trying t’ drill me too, do ya?”

He was pretty damn sure someone was. “We better get out o’ here.” He said as he clambered awkwardly from the back of the car to the front.

“My, but you’re a BIG galoot, aren’t ya?” she said expressively, “All strong arms an’ long legs.”

The V-12 was still loudly purring under the hood as he got back into the driver’s seat and took the hand-brake off; easing the engine on into a growl the Lincoln soon picked up speed. He punched his fist through the shattered windscreen directly in front of him so he could at least have some idea of where he was going. The left wiper finally gave up the ghost and jammed half way up.

“Wait, wait!” the young woman suddenly exclaimed. “My things, in the car… I can’t leave them here.”

He quickly glanced back at her with a steely glare that revealed a slight flash of anger.

“Everything I own is in that crate – I can’t abandon it all, someone might glom the lot and it’s all I have in the world!” she insisted, her own steel matching his.

Lofty caught a glimpse of what looked like a brand-new maroon ‘47 Ford 2-door convertible rammed into a tree and he braked suddenly, sending the blanket wrapped young woman in the back sliding forward, she slipped clean off the seat with a startled yelp.

“What am I getting?” he said tersely but the flicker of anger had entirely vacated his granite chiselled features. He had a cleft chin and high cheekbones with the kind of lazy sad eyes that had seen far too much of the world.

Sitting herself back in the seat she said, “There’s a case and vanity in the foot well on the passenger side and a pocket-book in the glove compartment… oh, and a clutch-purse, a fur stole an’ jacket, and a folio on the passenger seat too.”

He looked back at her, and with a hint of sarcasm said, “Is that all?” He guessed she was about twenty but she could have been a couple of years either side of that. She had a knowing face and an easy air, a self assurance that he liked a lot.

“Yep,” she said pertly, and not short of sass she added with ironic demure, “I’m a simple gal of modest means.”

Lofty backed the Lincoln up a little, and then eased himself over to the passenger side. The convertible’s door was already wide open so when Lofty opened his door full the two doors met. “Open your door too,“ he said to the girl, “an’ I’ll pass all your worldly goods to ya.”

Staying low the big man quickly went to her car, it still had that new-car smell, the thought intruded, and all her luggage looked pretty damn new too, “and not cheap” he mumbled as he started lifting and schlepping them to her.  Case, vanity, pocket-book, clutch, folio and then he threw the stole and jacket – white fox fur, very expensive – right in after them. “Modest means?” he said, then “Quite the doll, aren’t ya.” as he got back in the Lincoln.

“They were a gift… from a friend.” she said, “Not that I need to explain myself to you.”

“No, you’re right – ya don’t.” Doors closed, hand-brake off and they were on their way again. “I apologise.” He said, peering through the fist sized hole and the still pouring rain.

“Apology accepted.” She said. “We’re both a bit nervy that’s all. Got any butts on ya? I’m gasping.”

Three rapid flashes of lightning, accompanied by positively cataclysmic claps of thunder, bleached the whole of Essex County, if not the entire State of Massachusetts, for a brief second or two – it was all stark woods, dank marshes, unwholesome creeks, and small, isolated, barren-looking farmsteads.

“I’ve got almost a full deck in my inside pocket,” he said, negotiating a series of tight bends, “if you can reach round and get ‘em – don’t want to take my hands off the wheel at the moment.”

“Sure thing, Gee.” She said, and she did.

“Flare one up for me too, will ya, Doll?” He glanced at her with a droll but intimate grin.

“Sure thing.” She replied with a coy smile, then lit the two cigarettes simultaneously with a lighter pulled from her purse, and reached forward again to place one of them in Lofty’s mouth. “So what’s your name, Gee?” Her face was level with his now and he felt her warm breath on his cheek as she spoke.

“Robertson,” he said, drawing in on his cigarette, “Mitch Robertson – but most folk call me Lofty.”

“Lofty!” she laughed. “Your friends aren’t the most original are they?”

He laughed too, “Nope,” he said, “but that’s soldiers for ya – I got the name in the army and it stuck.”

“You a G.I.?”

“Was.” He said. “82^nd Airborne Division, 505^th P.I.R., Sergeant First Class.”

“Sergeant First Class!” She said, seemingly impressed. “What does P.I.R. stand for?”

“Parachute Infantry Regiment.”

“A paratrooper!” Again, she seemed impressed. “You must have been in the thick of it during the war, did you see much action?”

He nodded and said, “Some – Sicily, Italy, Normandy… all the way through to Germany.”

“Damn!” She said, but sensed his demeanour turn; he had visibly tensed up at the close of her question.  She had seen enough young men back from the war in the last two years to understand. Some wanted to talk about it, but most didn’t; she had learned it was best not to push, for many were broken – inside as well as out. She changed the subject, “So, what do you do now… for a living I mean?”

“I’m a gum-shoe, but it’s not much of a living.” He said.

“You’re a Johnny Buttons?” She was a lot less impressed this time and simmered a palpable hostility at the very idea that he might be a police detective.

“A Private Op.” He qualified.

“Oh, a P.I. – you must be a glutton for punishment, couldn’t leave the excitement and danger behind when you were demobbed, is that it?”

Lofty laughed, “Believe me, it’s not that exciting – it’s not like it is in the movies or some dime-novel ya know, it’s cheating husbands an’ wives mostly. What about you, what’s your story?”

“There’s not much to tell,” she said rather defensively, “I was a hostess for a while, I’ve done a bit of modelling, a bit of dancing – chorus line… tried a bit of acting, ya know, this an’ that.”

“Well, you seem to be doing alright for yourself – new car, Chanel bags and Arctic Fox furs – you must have quite the benefactor?”

“Hey!” she said, offended. “What are you implying?”

“I’m not implying anything… hell, we all have to do what we have to do to get by in this world – I’m in no position to judge anyone in those regards – think I can afford a bus like this on twenty-five dollars a day plus expenses?”

“Humph,” she said expressively, “still sounds like you’re implying something to me,” though now she was more feigning offence than taking it.

“There’s a gas station up ahead, we better stop an’ tell ‘em about your wreck back there… may be call the local Clubhouse, tell the cops that there’s some kind o’ lunatic taking pot shots at people.”

Lofty spent all of five minutes out of the car while she bit her thumb inside it. She could see him and the attendant gesticulating to each other, getting directions she presumed, but the raging storm meant she heard none of it. The attendant took his time filling the tank. There were some more gesticulations.

“Damn this godforsaken place!” said Lofty when he got back in the Lincoln, slicking his Brylcreemed black hair down. “Didn’t have a phone – hell, I doubt they even have cops out here anyway… the place is a total back water.” He sat there a moment, thinking, then said, “We’re not too far from my destination… is there any where I can take you – where were you heading? Cause I have to say, there’s not much of anything round here,” he turned to look back at her, “and I can’t figure what a big-city gal like you is doing all the way out here?”

“Ah, well… this big city gal just happens to have been born all the way out here. I was orphaned at age four and sent to distant relatives in Boston,” she said, a hint of bitterness in her soft caramel voice, “at twelve I was sent to even more distant relatives in New York, been a big-city gal ever since.”

“Go figure,” he said, “so was I, born all the way out here that is. Got drafted into the army in 1940, 23 years old and fresh out of M.U., saw the world and opened my eyes… after the war I moved to the big city myself – San Francisco. Really never thought I’d ever come back here.”

“Me neither,” she said, “but I’m here… got an offer I couldn’t refuse. Some great, great uncle I’d never heard of up an’ died and left me some kind of inheritance or bursary.”

“And you’ve gotta attend the reading of the will to receive it?”

“Yes, how’d you know?”

Lofty delved into an inside pocket, “Me too.” He said as he handed her an envelope.

She took it, it was already opened but a letter was still inside, she removed the letter and read it. “This is the same letter I got,” she said, “word for word I think, except my name in place of yours.”

Lofty asked, “Do you still have the letter you received?”

“Sure,” she said and retrieved it, her’s too was still in the envelope, which was now folded in half, she pulled it from her pocket-book then handed it to him with his own letter.

He studied the two envelopes, written in the same hand and with identical post marks indicating they originated from Ipswich, a small town about three or four miles further up the road, and both dated October the 13^th, about two weeks ago. Her’s was addressed to Ms. Martha Woodstern, 118a, Rapelye Street, Red Hook, Brooklyn, New York. The letters themselves were indeed identical, except for the names, and they were both typed – probably on the same machine – and the rather shaky signatures matched too, from a William Castle, apparently the last surviving child of the unknown great, great uncle.

“Well, Ms. Woodstern,” he said handing back her letter, “it looks like were related, if somewhat distantly.”

“And this William Castle bird, that were going to meet, if he’s our great-uncle… how old must he be?”

“He’s 87… I looked him up, spent the last couple of days back in Lynn and then Salem, at the Public Libraries and the Records Office; he’s from a rich family that has a long and complicated history, of both Scottish and English descent. How it all relates to my family tree, I have no idea.”

“If he’s 87?” She exclaimed. “How old was great, great Uncle Wilbur when he died?”

“He was 109 by all accounts.”

“Damn, talk about charmed lives.”

“Like I said, they’re rich. Have been for centuries – old Wilbur’s father, in the 1830’s, paid to have an old Scottish baronial castle moved stone by stone across the Atlantic and rebuilt here, on the site of some deserted colonial village with its cemetery and an old abandoned mine that  he’d managed to acquire – caused a hell of a stir… but young William still lives in that castle to this day. That’s where we’re heading now, Castle House.”

Martha laughed dryly, “So William Castle actually lives in a castle, and I was born to humble farm stock who’d worked themselves to death trying to feed me…  where’s the connection?”

“I’m not sure, couldn’t find a connection to me either.” Lofty pondered “It makes me wonder how many more prospective distant relatives are on their way to this Last Will and Testament reading?”

After a moment’s silence Martha asked, “How much further is it?”

“Not far up this road there‘s a turn off to the right, we take that and it loops back through the woods and salt-marshes to where Castle House is, toward the coast. It should take about fifteen or twenty minutes.” Lofty eased the Lincoln’s V12 back into a growl and they set off from the gas station.

Castle House was actually an early 16^th century Tower House and courtyard, a particularly big one, with two 17^th century towers at alternate corners of the massive keep-like house. It sat at the top of a long low hill with an old graveyard sloping down the right side toward the marshes and a ruined church and village sloping down the left to the woods. Lofty kept getting glimpses of it through the hole in the windscreen as he drove up toward it. After another flash of lightning and burst of thunder, he said.  “Looks like a backdrop from a Universal monster movie; all we need is Bella Lugosi or Boris Karloff and an overly melodramatic musical score.”

“Gives me the creeps!” said Martha in the back, it was not the sort of castle she had imagined; it was all bleak and foreboding and reminded her of nightmares that plagued her in childhood. She suddenly wanted Lofty to turn the car around. “Something doesn’t feel right about this whole setup,” she warned, “the letters… a great, great uncle that neither of us has ever heard of – it has to be a joke or a con, a scam of some sort… or a trap – someone has already tried to kill us!”

Lofty laughed dismissively. “These rubes are rich and I’ve got the jump on them, we both stand to carve a substantial chunk of sugar from inside that pile. I at least want to see how the cards fall before I consider checking out of this particular house game.”

She said no more and he didn’t turn the car around. He thought about telling her what the gas-station attendant had told him, a nervous little man who wasn’t – Lofty suspected – entirely compos mentis. “It be a Hell house,” he had said, “a Hell house on a haunted hill! You don’t wanna go up there – often times people drive up there, but very few of them seem to come back down!”

Of course, he didn’t tell her – that fool of an attendant was speaking nonsense and he figured she was jumpy enough as it was. So they continued following the road, snaking up the hill to the forbidding gatehouse that fronted the walled courtyard of Castle House.

Chapter Two: You Can Check Out Any Time You Like, will be coming soon.

As stated earlier, you will be able read forthcoming chapters on my Patreon site (if you subscribe) HERE, or you can wait for it to be published in ebook form when it’s finished. Subscribe to this blog to keep updated on all my articles, stories and publications – or follow me on Twitter HERE.

The Horror of it All… enter HERE all those who delight in horror, death, the macabre, the occult, black humor, weird tales, dark fantasy – and all such nefarious pleasures.

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