‘Thanks, Matt, I appreciate that. So, where are you off to?’
Matthew smiled. ‘I’ve got a great idea for a new novel, so I’m off to do some research, and then I plan to write it over the next six months.’
Sudden intuitive dread filled Theo’s heart. ‘You’re going back there, aren’t you?’
‘To Four Oaks? Yes!’
‘But Matt, you said the house freaked you out!’
‘It’s only a house, when all is said and done. A house cannot harm me, no matter how unsettling I might find it.’
‘Well… if you’re sure.’
‘I am. But I’m not going there right away. First, I’m going to visit my parents.’
Matthew was uncertain why he had made such a statement. Theo knew perfectly well that he did not get along with his father at all, and only saw his mother when she came to visit. The very fact that he decided then and there to see his parents together at their home caught him by surprise, and he could tell from Theo’s body language that he thought it odd too.
Theo remained tight-lipped for a few moments. ‘Is it his birthday or something?’
Matthew snorted derisively before he could stop himself. ‘Do you really think I’d pay the old git a visit just for his birthday?’ He glanced up at Theo again. ‘Please don’t ask why I’m going to see him, because I really don’t know why. I just feel compelled to do so.’
‘Well, if you’re sure. I’m off out shortly,’ Theo muttered, and then when he caught Matthew’s reaction, hastily added, ‘To see Mum. She’s going to see Aunt Lesley in Scotland tomorrow, so I’m going to help her pack.’
‘So, Joyce is finally going up to the haunted house?’ Matthew chuckled mirthlessly. ‘Her and me both,’ he added under his breath.
As softly as he might have spoken, it did not pass unnoticed by Theo. ‘Do you think Four Oaks is haunted then?’
Matthew shrugged. ‘After visiting the place and getting spooked, I stopped off at the local pub for a stiff drink… just the one,’ he added when he saw Theo’s disapproving look. He understood Theo’s loathing for drink drivers, as it had been such a man who had killed his father eight years earlier, ‘Anyway, one drink and two hours later, I left the pub with the impression that something spooky was going on with the place. That, and the fact that I felt the atmosphere in the house the second I set foot there, is what gave me the inspiration for the new novel, and the fact that I was left the house by someone I’ve never met has piqued my curiosity. So, whether the place turns out to be haunted or not, I feel inclined to find out more about it, and how better to do that than by spending time there.’
‘Well, good luck to you. Are you leaving tomorrow morning?’
Matthew nodded.
‘Well, I’m staying with Mum tonight, and then I’m driving her to Euston so she can catch the train up to Scotland.’
‘Why not go the whole hog and drive her all the way up there? You missed your aunt when she was last down here, and you always get on well with your uncle. I’m sure they’d welcome a visit from you, and besides, I’m certain Joyce would love the company on such a long journey.’
Theo pondered the idea for a moment, and decided it was a good one. ‘Well, I’d better go and pack a few more things then,’ he said, wondering whether it was merely a ploy on Matthew’s part to put even more distance between them.
He could not shake the feeling that Matthew had already made up his mind that their relationship was over.
*
It was early evening when Louise finally returned home, to find Phil frantic with worry. He paced the floor in the kitchen, angry at himself for having just shouted at the children for no other reason than they kept pestering him for food. Whirling around as the back door opened, he was relieved to see Louise stepping in out of the rain, which was once again pouring from the swollen, blackened sky.
‘My God, Louise, where have you been?’ he cried, rushing over to help her remove her sodden parka.
Louise pushed her dripping wet hair from where it plastered her face, kicking off her mud-encased boots having left brown splash marks all over the floor. ‘I went for a walk, that’s all. I did tell you.’
‘Darling, you said you’d be about an hour. It’s nearly six o’clock. You’ve been gone almost all day!’
Louise glanced at her husband, a vacant look in her eyes, which remained unfocussed as she responded in a totally disinterested voice. ‘Have I?’
Phil frowned. ‘Are you all right?’
Louise nodded abstractedly. ‘Yes, I’m fine. Are the children back yet?’
‘Yes, your mother brought them back over an hour ago. She said they’d been playing her up all morning, and she’d had enough of them. And they’ve been really annoying me since they’ve been back, too. Maybe you could have a word with them?’
‘Glory listens to you more than she does me, Phil. Anyone would think I was the wicked stepmother.’ Louise took the towel that Phil offered her, drying her hair and face, and then proceeded to remove her drenched trousers. ‘I’m sorry I was so long,’ she continued. ‘I lost all track of time.’
‘Indeed,’ Phil agreed, grabbing a pair of Louise’s trousers from the pile of dried washing that waited patiently on one of the chairs surrounding the circular dining table in the corner. ‘So, where have you been?’
As she finished putting on the dry clothes, Louise found herself unable to meet her husband’s gaze. He would not like her answer, yet she knew she would tell him the truth. She was a hopeless liar, and would never consider lying to Phil anyway.
‘I went to Wicca Hill,’ she said in a softly hollow voice.
‘What in the name of sweet Jesus did you go there for?’ cried Phil, utterly appalled at her sheer recklessness. ‘That’s where Sawyl Gwilym’s lair is.’
Louise nodded. ‘I know. That’s why I went there, to see if I could find his lair, and to see if he left anything behind that might indicate how he survived his executions. I figured that if we could find that out, then it might give us some idea of how to be rid of him once and for all.’
Phil’s heart raced unsteadily in his chest, thumping against his ribcage with anxious relief as Louise told him she had found the lair, but it was nothing more than an empty cave. If Sawyl Gwilym had left anything there centuries ago, then it was long gone.
‘I had a strange experience in the woods before I got to the lair though.’ Louise glanced at Phil earnestly. ‘What does Peter know of the woman, Elen?’
Phil stood rooted to the spot, holding on to the back of the chair as if supporting himself during a brief spell of dizziness, and when he spoke again it was in the voice of Peter Neville.
‘Elen be she who lends her name to the village of Elendale on the other side of Wicca Hill. Legend dictates that she be as old as time itself. Why ask you about this woman?’
‘She invaded my thoughts whilst I was in Dead Man’s Wood. Is she a force of good, or an evil spirit like Sawyl Gwilym?’
‘What does instinct tell you?’
‘No more cryptic answers, Peter. Just tell me!’
‘I suspect she be benign in nature. Legend tells she be a wood nymph, the Green Woman, sister to the Green Man. I have also heard her revered as Mother Nature herself.’
Louise arched an eyebrow. ‘Really? Well, she did describe herself to me as being the guardian of the woods, but Mother Nature herself? That’s stretching credulity a little too far!’
Even considering I am here now having a conversation with a five hundred year old spirit who has possessed my husband, she wryly added mentally.
They were interrupted by the elephantine charge of three pairs of stampeding children’s footfalls coming down the stairs, and by the time Glory, Bryony and Byron appeared in the doorway, shrieking and tugging at one another with wild abandon, Peter had receded once more into Phil’s subconscious.
‘Mummy, mummy,’ squealed twelve-year-old Byron, with an infantile twinkle of mischief in his eyes, ‘I was the only one who behaved for Nan
a and Gramps.’ He pointed melodramatically at the girls, who were the picture of innocence. ‘Those two were very bossy and naughty!’
‘What has Mummy told you about telling tales?’ remarked Glory icily, glowering at her brother and sister. ‘You two are as bad as each other!’ She whirled around and flounced towards Louise and Phil with all the aggrieved petulance that only a teenager could muster. ‘The twins were abominable all the while we were at Nana’s house,’ she simpered, hoping she convinced as the victim of the piece. ‘They told on me about every little thing I did, which made Nana cross, and then Gramps told me not to contradict him when I told him it wasn’t my fault they were misbehaving.’
Louise struggled not to laugh. She turned to Bryony, who had so far said nothing. ‘All right, young lady,’ she said, knowing she could depend upon the twelve-year-old to tell the truth in a matter-of-fact manner. ‘What do you have to say on the subject?’
Bryony sat down at the table, crossed her arms and legs and, looking for all the world like a mini-adult version of her mother, took a deep breath and slowly proceeded to tell tales on her siblings, but included her own misdeeds from the past week.
When she had finished, Phil was struggling even more than Louise had been to stifle his laughter, Byron was shifting uncomfortably on his feet, Glory was staring at her with such venom that Bryony felt she might just shrivel up and die beneath the withering look, and Louise, finally losing all self control, burst into hysterical laughter.
‘You three really are the limit, you know!’ Louise gasped as she struggled to bring her laughter under control. She wiped her watering eyes. ‘You must learn to behave yourselves when you stay with your grandparents. They love you to bits, but they’re not getting any younger. They’ll end up banning you from staying with them if you behave like that again!’
For a moment, Louise thought Glory was going to say good, but if that thought crossed her daughter’s mind, she wisely chose to keep it to herself. Instead, she surprised everyone by apologising. ‘We didn’t mean to be naughty,’ she said, ‘but Nana doesn’t let us do anything we want to when we stay with her, and we get so bored.’
‘That’s why your father and I have always encouraged you all to have hobbies that you can do at home or away, so that you won’t get bored. It isn’t my fault you choose not to do the things that you enjoy. And if Nana said you couldn’t do something, I’m sure she had a very good reason for saying no. You have to learn that even in the adult world we cannot just go around doing exactly as we please. We too have rules that must be obeyed, and regulations that must be adhered to, and the sooner you learn that rules are made for a good reason, the better, my girl!’
‘Yes, Mother,’ responded Glory contritely in a small, polite voice.
Louise frowned. It was most unlike her eldest daughter to capitulate so quietly: to acquiesce with a riotous argumentative tantrum was more in Glory’s nature. ‘Well, that’s all right then,’ she muttered, deciding she ought to perhaps call her mother, find out just how much her errant daughter really had misbehaved. She felt certain there was far more to it than the fourteen-year-old merely trying to get out of the house in the dead of night, as Bryony had taken such delight in revealing.
‘All right then,’ she continued, ‘as everyone’s now down here, you can all help prepare dinner. Glory, you can peel the potatoes, Byron and Bryony, you can do the other veggies, and Phil, you can decide what we’re having with them.’
Phil chuckled. ‘And what, exactly, are you going to be doing while we’re all slaving away in the kitchen?’
‘I’m going to have a nice long soak in the bath… undisturbed!’
Saturday
October 26th
Matthew stood at the gates of Silverthorne Lodge, high on the slopes of Portsdown Hill on the northern boundary of Portsmouth. He stared in the opposite direction, which commanded impressive views over the city laid out below. Across the Solent he could see the Isle of Wight and the open sea beyond.
He had forgotten just how stunning were the views from this vantage point, which was one of the reasons that his parents had purchased the property fifteen years ago. The house itself was chief amongst the reasons that Matthew had not been back since he had moved out shortly after his eighteenth birthday.
True, he had hated all the constant arguments with his father, which was the other reason he avoided the place, but those arguments, which had often bordered on violence, did not start until after their move to the house.
Silverthorne Lodge, which back then had been named Solent View, had an aura about it to which Matthew had taken an immediate dislike, even at the age of fourteen, when such passionate loathing for the building was put down to his raging teenage hormones by both his parents.
Roger Silverthorne, on the other hand, proclaimed that he felt he belonged in the property, and more than any other dwelling place he had inhabited it felt like home to him, so he refused to budge on the issue of moving again.
The house was immense. Set on three floors, it had eleven bedrooms and five bathrooms. Two separate sitting rooms – one at the front and one at the back, overlooking the gardens – were divided by a kitchen the size of the entire ground floor of Matthew’s current terraced house, and a completely separate dining room, with room enough to seat thirty people, whilst a cavernous ballroom on the west wing opened into an immense conservatory.
The house was far too large for the small family, but the instant Roger saw it advertised in the local paper it called to him. He had to have it. Nowhere else would do.
It cost twice as much as the house they had been living in was on the market for, but Roger had made such a fortune from his antiques businesses around the south coast that the cost was negligible.
Margaret Silverthorne believed her husband to be mad, but she had never once questioned him during their then fifteen-year marriage, and he had certainly never made a bad business decision before, so she saw no reason to question him on that occasion.
Six months after the family had moved in, Matthew sensed the change come over his father. Not once before then had a bad word been spoken between the pair, but suddenly Roger questioned every little thing his son did. They argued almost daily, and the first time Roger raised his hand to strike his son, Matthew had struck first, and it remained debatable, even now, as to which of them was the most shocked.
Margaret remained blithely unaware of the changes that Matthew felt were so glaringly obvious. He was appalled that his mother should be so blindly loyal to her husband as to put the arguments down to teenage angst, blaming him for all the cross words.
Matthew at first believed the house had itself in some way possessed both his parents, blocking all rational thought from their minds.
At about the same time he decided that itself was an irrational thought, the headaches started, accompanied by blackouts. He underwent numerous medical checks over the years, but no doctor could find anything wrong with him, and they put it down to stress and anxiety.
It was also around that time in his life that Matthew came to the stunning conclusion that he was attracted to other boys, and this realisation made him decide that perhaps his father had recognised the fact already and that this was the true nature of his hostility – not to mention the reason for his pent up anxiety.
His father had displayed very little emotion of any description when Matthew sat them down one crisp April morning to make his announcement, though his mother had broken down in tears, claiming to have had an inkling, yet hoping she was wrong.
‘No grandchildren for us then?’ Margaret had sniffled through her tears, which had annoyed Matthew immensely. Was that all his mother thought he was actually for, to provide grandchildren for her?
He wanted to state categorically that he could have married a woman and not wanted to have any children, or that he might even be incapable of fathering a child. He said none of these things, however, not wishing to upset them further.
Matthew decided then
and there that he was not going to live under their roof any longer than absolutely necessary. He decided to get a Saturday job – which would get him out of the house on that day each weekend – to go with his morning and evening paper rounds, and started saving every penny he earned.
He left school at sixteen and started doing as many jobs as possible to earn as much money as he could, and two weeks after his eighteenth birthday he announced his intention to purchase a small mid-terrace house in the centre of town. He was just about able to manage without the need for a mortgage due to the trust fund that had been set up for him at birth by his father, which came into his possession on the same birthday.
His father had told him, in no uncertain terms, that if he had known he would turn out queer he would not have set the trust fund up in the first place.
Since then, Matthew had never once returned to Silverthorne Lodge. After that, the headaches abated and to his knowledge he suffered no further blackouts, and so in his own mind the cause of the problem was clear. His mother had made numerous visits to his cosy little house in town, but Roger had never once accompanied her. Father and son had not set eyes on one another since the day Matthew moved out.
Turning his attention away from the awe-inspiring vista laid out below him, Matthew took a deep breath and stepped up to the iron gates that led into the grounds.
He was struck with a curious feeling of deja-vu as he slowly made his way up the steeply inclined tree-lined drive towards the house. He had been unsure why he felt the urge to visit his father after all this time, but suddenly, as the house came into view, reminding him of Four Oaks in both its look and location within the grounds, he suddenly knew why.
He suddenly understood why his father had been so relentless in his pursuit of this house all those years ago, for he found himself in a similar situation with Four Oaks, and it occurred to Matthew that just because his father refused to relinquish Silverthorne Lodge, did not necessarily mean the old man actually liked the house.
Indeed, it seemed increasingly likely that Roger felt the same way about this house as Matthew felt about Four Oaks. Had he not found himself in the curious situation of having decided to spend time alone in a property he had inherited that gave him the creeps, Matthew would not have believed it possible that anyone could willingly remain living somewhere that they did not actually like.
The Master of Prophecy (The Sawyl Gwilym Chronicles Book 2) Page 7
