by Ian Richards
HOUSE OF MANY DOORS
Ian Richards
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Published in the United States by Merry Go Round Books, April 2014.
ISBN: 978-0-9912839-0-3
Twitter:
@ianrichards
@housemanydoors
Marshwood … the house emerges slowly at first, wrapped up as it is in a hazy swirl of morning mist. First impressions are not favorable. This is an old, cruel building. The walls are the sickly grey of poisonous mushrooms. The stink of dead leaves and stagnant rainwater hangs in the air.
Once, perhaps, the house was more than this. Once, perhaps, the sun shone, the gardens bloomed, and there was color and sparkle instead of murk and gloom.
Perhaps. But not anymore. And not for a long time now.
This is a lonely, silent place. It seems lost. Abandoned.
Forgotten.
The sky is a permanent grey, packed with drizzling rainclouds that cry all day and continue their weeping long into the night. Every morning Marshwood wakes again to the same unbreaking misery. Cold rain. The smell of rot. An icy mist that ghosts across the lawns, decorating the grass with necklaces of dew that seem out of place amongst the weeds and toadstools that pimple the rest of the grounds.
The mist here never seems to dissolve.
It lingers, drifts, swirls, seeps—it hangs, haunts, whirls, creeps.
But it never fades—no, it never eases. Like everything else here at Marshwood it is permanent and unchanging. Suspended in time and space like the breath of God Himself.
Oh Marshwood, with its rotten peach tree smell and overgrown hedgerows.
With its mist and its silence and its vine-choked doors.
Were a child to leave a doll’s house at the bottom of the garden, to expose it to decades of rain and abandonment, it would begin to resemble Marshwood, for this is a house choked with moss, a house damp with rain, a house infested with beetles.
This is a house where nightmares begin.
Haroo.
Haroo, haroo, haroo.
PART ONE
1 - Martell’s Antiques, est. 1805
It was October in London and raindrops the size of pennies poured from the sky. The storm had been threatening since the morning, when the clouds above St. Paul’s had been the color of old gravestones and the surface of the Thames had been choppy and wild. Now it was here: a violent, thundering rain that slashed across the city, soaking everything in its path.
In Camden Town, a pair of raggedy tramps ran along the banks of the canal, searching for shelter beneath a nearby bridge.
In Whitechapel, a tour guide dressed as Jack the Ripper stood miserably outside the Ten Bells pub as his tour party deserted him for the sanctuary of a double-decker bus ride.
In Hyde Park, afternoon joggers sloshed hopelessly through the downpour.
In Docklands, bored office workers watched the lightning from their skyscrapers.
It was raining in London.
But the woman didn’t mind.
She walked beneath a large black umbrella, her movements slow and thoughtful, her eyes rarely lifting from the wet pavement beneath her. She was young—perhaps only twenty-five years old—and seemed out of place amongst the washed-out junk shops and craggy restaurants of Dover Street. This was an area that spoke of old things, of history and decay. The characters usually found here were as rough as old brickwork. They were drinkers in The Cross Keys pub, gamblers smoking rolled-up cigarettes in dingy cafes, shopkeepers who owned businesses on Dover Street and for the most part looked just as worn and haggard as their crumbling storefronts.
The woman, who wore a smart black coat and had a pale, unblemished complexion, didn’t belong here. She was too neat, too polished—a freshly printed banknote in a pocketful of change—a solemn angel in the land of the gargoyles.
Outside the entrance to a boarded-up bookmakers she stopped and looked across at a shop on the other side of the street. Martell’s Antiques. It stood before her like a rotten tooth: a grim, dirty building, with windows so filthy it was impossible to see through them. She glanced back over her shoulder—seemingly to satisfy some silent curiosity—then crossed over and ventured inside. A bell tinkled above her, and as she closed the door behind herself it sounded again—a gentle ting-a-ling that disappeared out into the shop and vanished in the darkness. There was quiet now. The only sound to be heard with any clarity was the irregular tick of five or six different clocks, each one positioned at different points around the store and each one ever-so-slightly out of sync with the others.
The woman set away her umbrella and stepped deeper into the gloom. From the outside the shop had appeared old and worn down—a sneeze away from collapsing in on itself in a shower of bricks and dust. The insides were even less hospitable. Every conceivable space had been packed with antiques, from furniture and cardboard boxes to bookshelves and stacks of old paintings. She had visited many shops like this in recent weeks. Bath, Hastings, York, Penzance. All had been similarly gloomy, all had been perfumed by the rich smell of books and dust. Martell’s Antiques was no different. The shop was an antique itself, a memento left over from another world. There was nothing to suggest that it saw much in the way of customers—nothing at all, in fact—and the items on display were for the most part cheap and unattractive. She noted guitars, flags, a metallic diving suit, a battered piano, stuffed animals, tribal masks, vases, hat stands, an empty birdcage, Victorian silverware, a didgeridoo, a rusted church bell, a billiard table, an Edwardian tea-set, a monstrous bouquet of Punch and Judy puppets tied together with black string, a wooden globe that must have been at least two-hundred-and-fifty years out of date. And this was only the part of the shop she could see. It went deeper, too—much deeper—on into forests of old furniture and abandoned bicycles—on into endless, lonely avenues lined with fishing nets and bookcases.
‘Mr. Martell?’
Her voice was clear and firm, but the shop remained empty. There was only a dry, dusty silence. The continual ticking of the clocks. ‘Mr. Martell?’ she repeated, her voice a little louder this time. ‘Is anybody here?’
For a moment she thought that her employers must have made some kind of mistake. There was nobody here. Everything about the shop—the smell, the dust, the cobwebs—spoke of a place that had been abandoned years ago.
Then she heard a noise approaching from the back of the store. Footsteps. Drawing closer. Slow and steady and in no rush for anything.
The boy stepped out of the gloom like a ghost.
Her first reaction was one of surprise. She had been expecting an old man, not a child. But then she remembered. She had been told that Mr. Martell’s nephew lived with him in the shop. He was a bright young thing, apparently. No mother and no father, but more clued up on antiques than most. From his appearance she guessed that he couldn’t be much older than eleven or twelve. He had sharp, curious eyes and wore a ratty brown suit, the kind that might have been worn by an up-and-coming gangster in the 1950s.
‘Afternoon, miss.’ He reached across and shook her hand. ‘Tony Lott, assistant antiques seller, at your service. How can I help?’
‘Good afternoon, young man. My name is Elizabeth Maidstone—’
‘Miss Maidstone.’ The boy affected a bow.
‘—and I was wondering if it would be possible to speak with Mr. Joseph Martell? I believe he is the owner of this establishment?’
Tony nodded. ‘He is. But I’m afraid he’s busy at the moment, miss. He’s fixing a cuckoo clock out back. I could go and
get him for you, but fixing cuckoo clocks is a delicate business, you see. There are cogs and sprockets everywhere. I’d say it’s probably best if we don’t disturb him.’ He slipped his hands into his pockets and looked around casually. At the dark windows. At a nearby totem pole that somehow she hadn’t noticed until that moment. ‘Of course, if you don’t mind dealing with a kid, I could always help you. Doesn’t matter if you’re buying or selling, I might be young, but when it comes to business I know my stuff.’
Miss Maidstone shook her head. ‘I’m sorry, Mr. Lott, but I didn’t come here today to haggle over antiques. I came to see Mr. Martell.’
‘He’s busy though.’
‘And if you were to tell him it was a matter of considerable importance?’
The boy looked at her carefully, unsure whether or not to believe her. He was a strange, spindly character. There was something of the other about him, she thought. An odd, out-of-time quality that made her think that he didn’t really belong to this world at all. He wasn’t like other children, the ones she had seen on her travels across the country. She couldn’t imagine him playing computer games, for example, or watching television. From his shabby appearance it was ridiculous to think that he had any kind of life outside of the shop at all. Trips to the cinema, football in the park—a fantasy. It was impossible to imagine him doing anything other than packing antiques into cardboard boxes and watching the world pass him by through the gloomy windows.
She gave him what she hoped was a reassuring smile. ‘Mr. Lott, I promise you that once Mr. Martell hears what I have to say, a broken cuckoo clock will be of no concern to him whatsoever.’
The boy nodded, still a little unsure. ‘All right,’ he said. ‘Wait here.’
He disappeared out towards the back of the shop, leaving Miss Maidstone alone with the sound of the rain. When he returned a few moments later there was an old man alongside him. Joseph Martell. Like many of the sellers she had encountered in recent weeks he was a pale, colorless man: the kind who had spent so long in the company of antiques that he had begun to resemble one himself. His clothes were shabby—a crumpled brown suit, a pair of worn brown shoes—and as he walked towards her a confused expression pained his face, as if he didn’t understand why he had been summoned or what somebody like her could possibly want with him.
They exchanged handshakes. His was cold and bony—like shaking hands with a skeleton.
‘Mr. Martell.’
‘Good afternoon, miss. Tony says I’ve been summoned. You are—?’
‘Elizabeth Maidstone.’
‘Elizabeth Maidstone, yes, of course. Well, it’s a pleasure to meet you, my dear. What can I do for you this dismal afternoon?’
The rain was still coming down outside. The way it rattled the dirty windows of the shop, like hands banging on the glass, made Miss Maidstone uneasy. Everything here did. The dreadful ticking of the clocks, the heaviness of the dust on her lungs. She looked at Martell, and the boy, and the menagerie of grotesque antiques surrounding her. How could anybody live like this, she wondered. How could a child live like this?
‘I’m here on an errand, Mr. Martell. I’m here today to give you something.’
At once the old man’s expression darkened. It wasn’t fear, she thought. Not exactly. But from his reaction she knew that he had figured out who she was and why she was here. He knew, and he didn’t like it.
She handed him an ivory-colored envelope with the name ‘Joseph Martell’ written on the side in flowing cursive.
Tony sat on a nearby rocking horse and watched as Martell took the envelope from Miss Maidstone, opened it and peered inside. Whatever lurked within didn’t surprise him. He nodded, as if to say as I thought.
‘What is it, Martell?’ Tony asked. ‘A summons?’
‘No,’ Martell answered. ‘It’s an invitation. To an auction.’
‘An auction?’ Tony laughed aloud. ‘Finally,’ he said. ‘A bit of excitement.’ Turning to Miss Maidstone he added, ‘From the way you two were acting I thought it was something bad.’ He laughed again then, a blast of bright, happy laughter that seemed out of place in the gloom of the shop, this eerie landscape of hulking wardrobes and horror-movie figurines.
For a long moment neither Miss Maidstone nor Martell said anything.
Eventually the old man broke the silence.
‘You’d better come through, Miss Maidstone’ he said. ‘We should talk.’
*
Martell led the way through the winding labyrinths of furniture as Miss Maidstone and Tony followed behind. They passed Pushkin, the shop cat, who lay asleep on a battered sofa, squeezed through a small army of tailor’s dummies dressed in assorted uniforms from the Second World War, and made their way past an enormous funhouse mirror that turned their reflections into those of three monstrous dwarfs.
Though Tony remained silent, he could sense something unusual happening here. Martell never took customers into his office. He didn’t even like Tony to be in there. As they made their way down the rickety staircase to the basement, he wondered just what kind of game Miss Maidstone was running. This wasn’t a regular invitation. It couldn’t be. Most of the auctions he had been to in the past were small, poky affairs. Invitations weren’t hand-delivered by mysterious women and they certainly didn’t send Martell scurrying down to his office like this.
Although only twelve years old, Tony Lott was an exceptionally bright boy. He could identify over two-hundred different pocket-watches from their tick alone, he could spot the difference between a shoddy original and a clever forgery, and he knew how to talk skeptical customers into buying items that they didn’t actually want, nor had any practical use for. For this, he could thank Martell, his uncle, who had raised him since birth and was currently groping for the light fitting that hung from the basement ceiling.
A sharp tug sent regimented blocks of murky light advancing through the darkness. They pressed on towards the office.
It was a procession of unfortunate events that had led to Tony living in the shop. His mother—Emily, Martell’s youngest sister—had died when he was a baby. His father—Thomas, a thin-as-a-rake rogue who had run out on them both shortly before his birth—had been out of the picture ever since. Martell was the only family Tony had ever known, and though neighborhood gossips sometimes questioned how healthy it was for a young boy to be brought up by such a very old man, Tony loved his uncle and he loved their life together. Yes, sometimes he longed for more excitement and adventure than an antique shop could possibly provide, but he presumed this was a natural consequence of his obsession with books and stories and poems and plays. Since an early age he had loved to read. And in Martell’s Antiques he had thousands of books available to him—books that touched on every subject imaginable, books that told stories of secret histories and sinister villains, books that stoked his imagination like a furnace—a flickering, rainbow-flamed furnace that sometimes kept him awake at night such was the brilliance of its intensity. By the age of ten he had read more books than most adults manage in a lifetime. By the age of eleven his knowledge of history, science and literature dwarfed that of many academics.
The insides of Martell’s office were as cluttered as the rest of the shop. An enormous wardrobe had been pressed up against the furthest wall. The rest of the space was taken up by a desk covered with books, notepads, letters and receipts. There was an old adding machine too, a spidery-looking creation that spoke of long hours spent trying to balance figures and manage budgets. Martell sank into the chair behind his desk and gestured for Miss Maidstone to sit in the chair opposite him. She did so. Tony remained standing. There was no room for him to do anything else.
For a long moment nobody spoke. The sound of faraway thunder played gently above them.
Eventually Martell puffed out his cheeks and tossed the envelope onto the desk. ‘I said never again, Miss Maidstone.’
‘The house is aware of that, Mr. Martell. But we elected to send you an invitation regardless. In ca
se you should change your mind.’
‘And I presume you’ve been told why I wouldn’t be interested?’
‘I know as much as I need to.’ She flashed a look at the boy. He had picked up the invitation and was studying it carefully. ‘What I also know, Mr. Martell, is that this is a wonderful opportunity for you. Forgive me for speaking out of turn, but quite frankly, you look as if you could do with the money a successful auction might bring. Your shop appears to be falling to pieces.’
He smirked. ‘It’s a bit on the rough side, but we get by okay.’
‘I had heard differently,’ Miss Maidstone said. ‘I had heard you were having considerable financial difficulties of late.’
Did his smile just waver? Just for a moment? Yes, she thought. It did.
Tony was still reading the invitation. His eyes scanned over the contents again and again, trying to make sense of its cryptic message. It had been written in flowing black ink, handwriting that was gothic and spidery all at once. The scrawl of a madman. The scratchings of a lunatic.
Mr. Joseph Martell,
Proprietor of Martell’s Antiques, London
Dear Mr. Martell,
You are hereby invited to attend the house’s annual midnight auction, to be held on the night of Saturday October 31st …
Tony’s stomach quivered with foreboding. He didn’t know what a midnight auction was, but it sounded exhilarating. Even the words carried an illicit thrill—midnight auction. He let them play silently on his lips and a ghostly chill shivered down his spine.
Martell spotted this and rolled his eyes. ‘Bloody hell,’ he muttered. ‘That’s all I need.’ He turned to Miss Maidstone and held up his hands. ‘All right. We’ll be there. Me and the boy. But under duress only, okay? And not because I have any fondness for what you people do or what you represent. I don’t. I’m done with all that nonsense. We’re doing this for the money and that’s the only reason. This is a purely financial transaction. I want you to tell your employer that this is a one-off appearance and that once the auction is finished I want nothing to do with him ever again. Are we clear?’
