by Giles Ekins
The entrance was dark, the only illumination into the dark confined hall was the pale late afternoon sunlight that trickled reluctantly through the open front door, but even the sunlight seemed subdued by the sheer intensity of the darkness within, seeming to heighten the blackness rather than illuminate.
‘Gimlet, have you got your Bulls-eye with you?’
‘Surely, Guv. Never goes nowhere without it, that and a clean handkerchief, Mrs Gimlet is always very particular about that. A clean handkerchief that is.’ Gimlet rummaged inside his torn, stretched jacket and from a poachers pocket produced the battery-powered lantern with the bulbous glass lens that gave the lamp its name.
‘Best light it up then, this place seems to be as black as the inside of Satan’s hat.’ Collingwood joked thinly, trying to make light of the feeling of intense oppression that bore down on him like a shroud, realising as he spoke that both he and Gimlet were whispering.
Sickly yellow light from the Bulls-Eye probed into the dark recesses of the hall. To their left a staircase curled up into the darker doom of the upstairs landing. Doors opened out from the hallway onto both sides. To the rear, beyond the staircase further doors could be seen. The walls were papered with heavy dark blue flock wallpaper, heavily embossed with inverted fleur-de -lys, as if the paper had been deliberately hung upside down. No pictures, mirrors or plants served to break up the stygian gloom of the lobby; however, gas light globes reflected back the torchlight like the eyes of night-creatures as Gimlet played the lantern along the walls. Opaque glass, the globes sat on brackets of convoluted wrought iron, as if the blacksmith were trying to depict the writhing of souls in the fires of purgatory. They were quite the most hideous artefacts that Collingwood had ever seen.
Gimlet flared a Lucifer match and turning on the gas valve, lit the lamps, first one, a second and then a third located part way up the stairs.
‘That’s a good sight better,’ Collingwood said, a good deal more relieved about the lights that he would ever care to admit. ‘Right, we’ll tackle the upstairs first and make our way down to the basement. I’ll take the Bulls-eye. Stick close to me Gimlet, there is something decidedly unsavoury about this house.’
‘You can say that again, Guv’nor, and in spades.’
‘I don’t think that there can be anyone else here, Gimlet, all the noise and ructions outside would surely have brought other occupants to the door or windows. But even so …’
‘But even so, that assumes anything else was able. To get to the door and windows, that is. Or else wanted to make itself known …’
‘We shall surely find out one way or another.’
‘That’s what’s giving me the jibblies, Guv, terrible jibblies.’ Slowly they mounted the stairs, footsteps muffled in the thick carpet. Brass stair rods gleamed under the light of Gimlet’s Bulls-eye like glowing golden serpents, waiting to strike. At the half landing, they stopped and listened, straining their ears to catch the slightest sound of anything untoward. Gimlet looked back down the stairs; the rectangle of light that was the open door to the clean air outside was infinitely appealing. He half took a step back down before gathering himself and followed on behind Collingwood’s heels. Even the sound of his own breathing seemed to rasp with hidden menace. His heart seemed to beat louder, a thick knot of apprehension lay curdled in his stomach.
The murk grew thicker, solidifying into a dense miasma of gloom. As they turned the corner of the staircase, the welcoming light from the doorway below disappeared, plunging them further into murk. Even the gaslights appeared to diminish in luminosity as they climbed the stairs to the first landing.
Moreover, as they reached the top of the stairs at first floor level, the light from the dim bulls-eye lantern seemed to shrink, retreating in upon itself, a thin tentative worm of light scarcely penetrating a blackness that had become absolute.
Collingwood cast the lamp about, barely able to pick out the globes of the gas lamps in the upper hallway. Even after Gimlet had raised the gaslight, the hallway retained a solid murky gloom that refused to give way.
A sudden loud crash from downstairs made both men start with shock, their pulses racing. Gimlet ran to the baluster and leaned over to peer down into the hallway.
‘Front doors slammed to, Guv’nor, must be a gust of wind. No sign of nothing else,’ Even though both men knew that the day had been as still as the grave, without the merest hint of breeze or zephyr.
Moving much more quickly now, fuelled by the desire to complete their search and vacate the house as soon as they could, both men hurried up the back stairs to the top level. Up there in the roof cavity, there were four rooms only, each lit by a single gable window. These rooms were intended for servants but all the rooms were completely bare, obviously unoccupied for many months. Long accumulated dust lay thick and grey across the window ledges and puffed up in miniature dust devils beneath their feet. Collingwood shone the bulls-eye up onto the ceiling of each room and on the ceiling of the stairway and landing but there were no hatches leading to up to a loft.
‘No servants? A house this size and no servants?’
The first floor consisted of six bedrooms, all of them furnished, although only two appeared to be in regular use. The large bay fronted bedroom to the front, obviously that of Sinistrari – and a smaller rear facing to the rear used by Avram. Sinistrari bedroom revealed nothing. The wardrobes were full of expensive bespoke clothing, all of the highest quality, morning dress, dinner jackets, smoking jackets, suits and separates, clothes for every occasion, clothes befitting a gentleman of wealth and status. Handcrafted shoes and boots. Shirts of the finest Egyptian cotton, all monogrammed at the breast with the same ‘S’ that emblazoned his coach. Ivory boxes of monogrammed gold cufflinks, collar studs, tie pins. Heavy Shantung silk ties and cravats. Monogrammed handkerchiefs starched and ironed to military precision.
The furniture was heavy and gilt, fantastically over-carved. Collingwood thought the furniture over-ripe, too florid, overbearing and intense. Byzantine in flavour, but more so. Byzantine bizarre? The bedclothes on the four poster bed were heavy crimson damask, the sheets ice-white silk, fat gold tessellated cushions and bolsters were laid across the bed like reclining Buddha’s, whilst a black silk dressing gown slithered across the base of the bed like an outstretched bat. The cloying scent of incense was pronounced, thickly sweet, like fruit about to go off in the summer heat.
‘S’like a Turkish whorehouse,’ Gimlet opined. Collingwood refrained from asking him how he knew, although he was of the same opinion – with first-hand knowledge from his convalescence all those years ago during the Crimean War when he and three similarly recuperating officers had nervously made their way to an officers only brothel on the European shore of Constantinople, not far from the Bosporus and the Dolmabahce Palace of the Turkish Sultan.
Avram’s room was more sparsely furnished, the clothes of not such good quality, nor of the same profusion, the distinction between master and servant clearly defined. The remaining bedrooms were anonymous, although the furniture was still of the same over-elaborate style.
Their search of the upper floors complete, including the backstairs, the two men made their way back down the main stairs to the hallway, the darkness seeming to close behind them like heavy curtains. Gimlet ran to re-open the front door, not to gain more light, but to try to relieve the oppressiveness in the forbidding hallway.
Moving with more purpose Collingwood and Gimlet continued their search through the ground floor. The drawing room, sitting room and dining rooms revealed nothing, except more and more of the Byzantine furniture. But as they moved, a thin prickle of apprehension tightened across Collingwood’s chest. It seemed as though every movement was tracked by footfalls overhead, as if an unseen presence were stalking them. At first he dismissed it as imagination, the creaking of old floorboards natural in any old house, but then as they moved from the sitting room into the dining room, a definite tread across the ceiling could be heard. Gimlet heard
it too and looked up wildly. They stopped, holding their breath in anticipation, and then slowly continued the search through sideboard and cabinet. Another muffled footstep, a shuffle, as if whomever – whatever it was overhead was listening also.
‘Must ’ave been waiting downstairs whilst we was up,’ whispered Gimlet. ‘You stay ’ere Guv and I’ll creep on up and see.’
‘No, Gimlet, thank you for the offer, but I must go myself.’ ‘Honest, Guv, ’tis better I go, just in case.’
‘This is precisely why I shall go. You have your truncheon?’ Gimlet nodded, unhappily. ‘Pass it to me. You stay here, but stay by the door, you can watch the foot of the staircase, should anyone come down, you can see and apprehend them.’
The door of the dining room creaked noisily, which it had not done before, as if to sound warning to whatever it might be above. Collingwood swiftly, but silently, slipped across the hallway and up the stairs, taking them three at time, aiming to surprise whom-ever was creeping about. One of the spare bedrooms was directly over the dining room and Collingwood went straight for it, the door was closed and whoever was inside could not have had time to get out.
He seized the handle and flung open the door. The door crashed against the brass doorstop set into the carpet and ricocheted back into Collingwood’s face so that he had to raise his hands to buffet it away thinking for a split second that he was under attack, that some fell creature had leapt upon him. The swinging door caught him heavily on the point of his wrist-bone and he yelped with the sudden pain of it. After rubbing and shaking the pain away in his arm, he held the door open, raised his truncheon and peered into the bedroom. Although it was dark within, there was just enough light from the bulls-eye lantern see that the room was empty. The light from the gas lamps on the landing stretched his shadow across the carpet like encroaching thunderclouds.
Collingwood strode over to the bed, raised the covers and peered under to check that no one was hiding underneath, careful not to get too close. Nothing, no one, only a large grey dust mouse and a porcelain chamber pot, from the smell of it unemptied that day. He quickly checked the wardrobes and other potential hiding places to ensure no one was within, and then, leaving the door open, quickly checked the other rooms. And inspected the back stairs once more, shining the bulls-eye down the steep narrow stairs that led to the kitchen. All rooms and passages were devoid of anyone or anything that could have been tracking the two police officers below, undisturbed from when they had been searched earlier.
‘All right, Guv?’ Gimlet called out, a nervous edge to his voice.
‘Absolutely, Gimlet, there is no one here, no -one, but I’ll check in the servant’s rooms again, just to make certain. You watch the stairs.’
The servant’s rooms proved to be equally empty, and so Collingwood quickly ran downstairs, satisfied that there was no one in any of the rooms above ground floor.
The only rooms remaining on the ground floor were another large reception room, study, a cloakroom, and to the rear of the house, the kitchen, pantry and stores. They crossed the hallway once more, the thick-gloom seemingly even more stygian than before, the gaslights on the walls reluctant to give out any more than the barest glimmer of subdued illumination – as if the house were determined to keep its secrets shrouded in darkness.
The last reception room was larger than the other rooms, corresponding, Collingwood could tell, with Sinistrari’ s bedroom above. Then, as soon as they entered the room, a heavy footfall scraped menacingly overhead. Gimlet’s face lost all colour, and Collingwood could feel his heart pounding in sudden alarm, he knew that here was nothing up there, so what in the name of all creation was making the noises overhead.
‘I’ve got them jibblies again, Guv, and I always take note of me jibblies. Never let me down ’ave me jibblies.’
‘It is exceeding strange, Gimlet and not a little disturbing, I grant, but I assure you, I did search most carefully, it can only be the movement of the floorboards, so prevalent in older houses.’
‘Hidden passages, Guv, it ’as to be. ‘Hidden passages, like what they ’ad afore, where priests and that hid out during the Civil War, escaping from the Regicide.’
‘Priest Holes? I think not, the thickness of the walls does not commend themselves to that idea.’
‘Whatever, Guv, I got the jibblies and no mistake.’
‘The quicker we can complete and remove ourselves from here the better, but we must complete our search, Gimlet, so put aside your jibblies for the moment and concentrate on the task at hand.’
As with all the other rooms searched, the reception room revealed nothing, except that it was more sparsely furnished than the other ground floor rooms.
The study concerned Collingwood more, although there was nothing to indicate the presence of the missing girl, the object of their search; he fully intended to examine the contents of the study in greater detail on another occasion. Many of the books on the shelves were of most strange and somewhat disturbing content – but today he had other priorities. Amongst the proliferation of books Collingwood noticed such titles as ‘Discours des Sorciers’, Deamonum Diablis, The Book of Death, La Veritie d la Demonalitie et des Animaux Incubes et Succubus. Tonalamatl, Grimoire Diabolis, and Santum Regum. The books agitated his mind greatly; he knew they were tracts on Satanism and Sorcery. A grimoire is a wizard’s collection of incantations and conjuration. Together with the sense of profound evil that permeated Blackwater House, these evidences of black magic and devil worship disturbed him more than he dare admit, even to himself.Quickly they moved on to the rear of the house.
The kitchen, scullery and other back rooms also revealed nothing, except that the kitchen, gleaming and polished, looked as though no meal had ever been cooked there.
All the time they searched, there came the intermittent creak and groan of footfalls above, sometimes loudly, sometimes less so, but whichever room they were in, noises there were overhead. Whenever these sounds occurred both men craned their necks to gaze up at the ceiling, as if expecting whatever it were to come crashing through the ornate plaster mouldings. The creaks had been particularly evident whilst they had been in the study, as if, whatever it were, did not wish them to linger there.
Then only the basement remained. The faint stench of corruption that Collingwood had smelt when he first entered Blackwater House grew more oppressive as they creaked open the cellar door.
‘I do not like this, Guv. Not one tiniest bit.’
‘Nor I, I suspect from the emanating stink, that we are to find that which we rather would not.’
‘Guv?’
‘That the girl is dead, rather than alive as I had hoped.’
Gimlet lit the gas globe at the top of the cellar staircase, even though he turned the brass tap up as high as it would go, the gas barely seemed to reach the gauze mantle, the bare yellow light flickering spitefully in protest. They then wedged the door open, using a broom that they took from a small cupboard beside the kitchen, jamming the head of the broom tightly beneath the door handle.
Cautiously they descended the stairs, Collingwood in front, dimly flickering bulls-eye in hand, Gimlet close behind. As he stepped down, Gimlet counted out each step aloud; half-expecting that something would reach up from the dark depths below and seize his legs, casting him down. Lord, but his jibblies were bad. The sound of their footsteps echoed hollowly around the darkening space below them.
A sudden screech beneath his feet, loud and jangling, and Gimlet yelped in terror as he felt something ripping at his leg; the pain sharp and raking. A hiss and another spine crawling howl, as he felt his bowels loosening and he clenched tight his sphincter, the shame of fouling himself before Collingwood would have been too great to bear. Instinctively he kicked his feet out and felt his toe connect with something soft, oh Lord, what be that? – something squealed and skittered away and then to his immense relief Gimlet saw only a large black cat, eyes flaring yellowly in the insipid light, flee up the stairs as though to escap
e through the wedged open-door.
Just as the cat got to the top of the stairs however, it suddenly turned and launched itself at Gimlet, landing on his chest and shoulder, almost knocking him over with fury of its attack. It spat and tried to claw at his eyes as he held the violently struggling beast away from him, pressing it as tight against the wall as he could. It shrieked and hissed, demonic snarl across its contorted face, its strength greater than any cat Gimlet had encountered before as it wriggled and fought in his hands. Its back claws raked violently at the sleeves of his jacket as it tried to rip at his arms and wrists. Collingwood still had the truncheon in his jacket pocket from his search of the upper floors and ran up the stairs to hit the beast as hard as he could across the skull. It squawked and shrieked again, still determined to claw Gimlet’s face to shreds. Collingwood struck it repeatedly, using his considerable strength. It was only after many blows that the creature stopped struggling and died. With a shudder of revulsion, Gimlet threw the bloody carcass down the stairs.
He then leaned against the cold walls of the staircase whilst he recovered his composure before bending down to lift his trouser leg and wipe away the smear of blood where the cat had first clawed him. Blood slowly trickled down his cheek from another scratch and he took out a pristine white handkerchief from an inside pocket to wipe it away, as well as the blood from the scratches and blood on his hands and wrists. ‘Mrs Gimlet won’t like that at all, blood on her clean laundry, handkerchiefs aren’t not meant to be used, she says, they only for show in case you get took to hospital. And it that beast had ’ad its way, I reckons that where I’d be.’
Collingwood waited patiently for him several steps below. ‘Are you all right, Gimlet? He gave us quite a start, our feline friend.’
‘Friend? More like fiend, I’m thinking. Anyways Guv, I’m all OK and raring to go, as they say.’ pocketing his bloodstained hankie and straightening himself up straight, although he was obviously still shaken up by the ferocity of the attack.
