The Five Tors

by Benjamin Ford

  At the top of a flight of stone steps, the front doors to the house were enormous, dwarfing all the windows. About a third of the way up they had rusted iron handles, and spaced roughly a foot apart there were equally rusted iron studs. When he was close enough, Rob counted them: nine pairs on each of the two doors. The rust had run down the dark wood, giving the disconcerting impression that the doors had been bleeding.

  Rob followed Val up the crumbling stone steps, filled with awe and dread. The house possessed an aura that was even more potent than ever. From a distance it had been mild unease; up close and personal it was a sense of impending evil that Rob really could not bear. He found himself wanting to turn and flee, screaming like a frightened child. He could not define what frightened him so, but the fear gnawed at the pit of his stomach, increasing with strength every second that he spent in the shadow of the building.

  Val took a single key from her trouser pocket, inserting it into the lock just below one of the handles. She turned it with some difficulty, as if the doors had been locked for some considerable time, and when she pushed down the handles and shoved at the doors, they screeched open on severely rusted hinges.

  Val turned and smiled at Rob, flashing her disturbingly pointy teeth in what she obviously intended as a disarming manner. ‘Should you decide to remain here, Rob, might I suggest you use the back door? I am only showing you in this way for effect! As you can probably guess, these doors have not seen regular use since the last occupant died.’

  ‘When was that, then?’

  ‘Eighteen ninety-two, I believe,’ Val replied without hesitation.

  She must have told that fact to countless others who have come to look at the house, mused Rob. He wondered how long the local doctor, who also ran the local shop, had also been a letting agent for the house, but chose not to pursue that line of questioning.

  How many others had done the same before her? He found it difficult to believe that he was the first person to see the house in over one hundred years, so clearly others before Val had shown the house to potential owners or renters. Had any of them actually stayed here, or had they been frightened off by the atmosphere?

  Rob reminded himself that the locals of Dorstville, apparently, did not much care for strangers in their midst… apart from a select few, of which he, it seemed, was the latest. He could not decide what Val’s intent was, but she seemed more than a little keen for him to remain in the village. His thoughts drifted back to the dire warning he had received prior to his reunion with Gerry, and wondered whether remaining was perhaps the foolhardy option.

  ‘Have many people come to look at this house?’ he eventually asked as he hovered on the threshold, patently unwilling to set foot inside the house itself.

  Val laughed and shook her head. ‘Dear me, no. I have only recently returned to Dorstville myself after a long absence, and I cannot rightly speak on behalf of the gentleman who held the key before me, but you are the first to view it since I took possession of the key.’ She took Rob by the elbow and guided him into the immense hallway. ‘Come along, we must not dawdle. I have only closed the shop for lunch, so we really have no time to hang around.’

  Rob wanted to ask how she could manage being the doctor in the village if she had no help running the shop, but for some reason, Val’s grasp on his arm silenced him. He tried not to shudder as she closed the doors behind them and snapped on the light.

  The two storey hallway stretched upwards to a vaulted ceiling, from which suspended the largest glass chandelier Rob had ever seen. Above this, the ceiling itself was adorned with a stunning fresco painting, which Val described as depicting the ever present battle between Good and Evil. Demons and monsters fought mortal men and Gods; flaming spears seemed to fly visibly across the ceiling from one side to the other, whilst flaming chariots drawn by winged horses flew across the clouds within the painting.

  It was beautiful in an almost grotesque way, but its content startled Rob.

  Although it was clear that Good was close to triumph, the force that was being used to win the battle made Good appear more evil than Evil itself appeared. Such a depiction frightened Rob because to his understanding, the nature of Good versus Evil meant that was not the way it should be.

  He found himself wondering in what frame of mind the artist had been when creating the fresco.

  The hallway itself seemed almost circular in shape. A wide staircase curved upwards gracefully to the first floor balconied landing, which circumnavigated the entire hallway. Doors led off from the hallway at regular intervals. All were shut, and Rob could only guess for the moment as to which door led into which room. Craning his neck upwards, he could just discern the outlines of the doors upstairs, which appeared to be positioned identically to those on the ground floor.

  It was odd; the longer he spent in the strangely calming atmosphere of the hallway, the less inclined he felt to leave.

  A sudden flash of movement from the corner of his eye caught his attention and his stared upwards. His eyes immediately met those of an angry looking middle-aged man staring down at him from over the balcony.

  Rob gasped in alarm and stepped closer to Val, as if she might offer some kind of protection from the intruder. ‘Who the hell is that?’

  Val glanced up and smiled. ‘Oh, no need to worry about him. He is the caretaker of Naghene Hall. He tends the gardens mostly, but tries his best to keep the house up to scratch internally.’

  ‘I guess he’ll be staying then, if I decide to remain here?’

  Val nodded. ‘You must not worry; he will not intrude upon your privacy. I shall make certain of that.’ She motioned for the man to come down, and even as he slowly descended the stairs, Rob wondered why the man had been inside the house in the dark.

  As the man approached, Rob scrutinized him carefully. His hair was the same flame red as Val’s, and his eyes the same odd amber colour.

  He wondered whether they were brother and sister.

  Val’s voice interrupted his thoughts. ‘Rob, may I introduce you to the caretaker of this house, Stan O’Nass.’

  F ive

  Stan O’Nass

  Rob felt he had settled well into the tranquility of Naghene Hall during his first two days of occupation. The overwhelming belief that this was where he belonged frequently possessed him, and whilst oddly comforting, the sensations increasingly disturbed him, because he could vividly recall how the house had originally made him feel.

  Since moving into Naghene Hall on the first day of December, the day after he had first viewed the house, he had already planned sweeping changes, starting with the immediate removal of the window bars. He had enlisted the sturdy but unwilling assistance of the devilishly silent Stan, a man Rob instantly disliked and mistrusted.

  It became increasingly easy to understand Lilly’s motives for leaving Stan. Any effort on his part to be civil rebounded back rudely in his face. Any attempt he made to engage the morose caretaker in conversation met with cold distain.

  Though relatively plain looking, Stan was not what Rob might have considered ugly. At first glance, Rob took the man to be in his mid-to-late-twenties, but his general demeanour and sullen disposition at times gave him the characteristics of someone far older. His reaction to Rob’s request for help in removing the window bars was one of such bilious resentment that Rob began to wonder whether perhaps Stan himself had put them up in the first place.

  In the end, the task had been abandoned, not only because the bars were physically embedded in the walls themselves, but also because Rob could not stand Stan’s constantly changing moods.

  At times, he had behaved much like a petulant teenager, unable to get his own way. Were he a lovesick teenager genuinely in love with Lilly then it was certainly conceivable that he would try to snatch her back.

  Rob was determined to find out whether Stan had recently been to London. The one time he had mentioned Lilly’s name, the caretaker offered his first display of emotion, and the sense of loss Rob gai
ned from that single look indicated that Stan had actually lost the one person who had ever meant anything to him, with no hope of ever getting her back.

  It occurred to Rob that Stan might be pining for the love of someone else. He scarcely knew anything about the man, apart from what little he had learned in London – which amounted to nothing really.

  In a rare moment of lucidity, when Rob announced that henceforth the house would be known just as Naghene, Stan growled that in the twenty years he had been tending the grounds and maintaining the house, nothing about it had changed. He had not liked the planned removal of the bars, which were an integral part of the house as far as he was concerned, and he did not like the arbitrary change of name. The original had stood the house in good stead for many years and there was no need for it to be altered in any way; he could see no logic in dropping the word Hall from the name.

  Well, there goes my assumption that he’s in his twenties, Rob thought. He did not like to ask how old Stan actually was, but whatever his age, Rob was jealous. What did it matter how plain the man was when he looked considerably younger than he really was?

  As he watched Stan at work, Rob gleaned the odd impression that man and house shared some kind of symbiotic existence. He could not define what it was, but it felt as though the house would die without Stan’s interaction, and he began to understand why the man had been so upset at the proposed alterations.

  He resents my intrusion. It’s as if in some way I’ve defiled his personal temple. Well, it’s too bad really. I’m not going to be here any longer than I have to, and then he can put the bloody thing back how he wants it.

  Rob decided to explore the vast house and expansive grounds, and then browse through the extensive library he had discovered in one of the ground floor rooms that Val had elected not to show him during her brief tour.

  Not that she had actually shown him much of the house at all, only the drawing room and kitchen downstairs, one of three bathrooms and two of the numerous bedrooms on the first floor. It seemed to Rob that in spite of her genial introductions and smile, Val had lost interest in showing him around the house the instant she caught sight of Stan. Her enthusiasm disappeared, as did she, as soon as convenience allowed.

  The attic rooms afforded Rob spectacular panoramic views of the moorland, though he felt it odd that even from this fantastic vantage point the village somehow eluded detection. It was nevertheless a magnificent spectacle that would remain imprinted on his brain for the remainder of his life; a view of which he could never tire. It helped that after setting foot inside Naghene Hall, the decidedly ominous weather that had dogged Rob since before his departure from London had actually cleared, black clouds giving way to beautiful blue skies with an unusually warm winter sun beating down.

  Realising there would be no more help running the house and maintaining the grounds if he interfered with the synchronicity Stan had achieved, Rob capitulated on the name change, and he agreed to make not a single alteration to Naghene Hall. From that moment, Stan’s barrier of animosity lessened, but did not drop completely, and Rob did not allow himself to feel a false sense of complacency. He still harboured mistrust and ill will towards Stan and Val, and was not prepared to let down his guard until he found out what was going on.

  One, if not both of them, had something to do with Lilly’s disappearance, of that he was certain, and Val was without doubt behind Gerry’s odd behaviour.

  Rob was concerned about his brother. It pained him to think that he might lose Gerry so soon after their estrangement had ended. He felt that Gerry had been hypnotized in some way or brainwashed, and was determined to find out whether or not Val was the underlying cause.

  On top of this was the death of Satan.

  After showing Rob Naghene Hall, Val had driven him back to the village, and made the disquieting announcement that the cat appeared to have escaped from the house. Satan was, according to Val, roaming the wilds of the moors.

  Had that been the truth, Rob would have instigated an immediate search.

  But he knew it was an outright lie, which he played along with.

  Satan was dead, blown up in Gerry’s real car. Rob had made it clear to Val that his cat was female, which she obviously had no idea was a lie on his part, and now Satan had miraculously disappeared from her house, so Val had no need to produce another black cat in her place.

  It’s almost as though mysteries have been concocted in order to arouse my curiosity and keep me here.

  Well… it’s succeeded.

  Stan himself was another mystery. At first glance, Rob had assumed Val and the caretaker to be brother and sister, and though it was quite clear that the pair could not abide one another, that did not necessarily mean they were not related.

  In much the same way that Val unnerved him, so there was something about Stan that frightened Rob. Glad that, overall, the man kept to himself, Rob watched him work from a distance, scrutinizing him carefully from the first floor windows as he tended the grounds. Even though it was winter, Rob could see how much love and attention Stan afforded the grounds; he had also made an effort in starting the repairs on the stone walls surrounding the estate.

  Once or twice, however, he had looked up directly at Rob, who had stepped away from the window in panic. He could not tell whether Stan had actually seen him, or merely sensed that someone was watching him.

  That was a sensation that Rob himself had begun to feel.

  It started the first night he spent at the house; the unshakable feeling of eyes upon him, watching his every move. Forever watching over his shoulder, Rob had seen shadows flitting about the house, but nothing substantive, and so he put it down to nerves.

  Events of the past few days had turned him into a jumpy nervous wreck, unsure of what to believe or who to trust. If anyone was watching him in the house, he felt certain it was Stan, who definitely had a spare key and who most likely knew of more than one secret entrance. If there was one thing Rob was convinced of it was that the house had to have secret passages. Old houses always did as far as he was concerned – they certainly did in his books anyway, and as he had researched houses of the eras he wrote about, he knew that priest holes and secret smugglers’ passages existed in a number of older houses.

  Having thoroughly explored the house and found no such evidence of secret rooms, Rob decided at last to take a trip into the village. The provisions Val had given him to tide him over the weekend had dwindled away, so the cupboards needed fully stocking.

  As he stepped through the door of the shop, having met no villagers on the way in, he smiled at Val, who was behind the counter filling shelves. ‘Good morning, Val. How are you today?’

  Val turned as he entered and returned his smile. ‘I am very well, thank you. And how have you settled into Naghene Hall, Rob?’

  ‘Yeah, I’m settling in nicely, thanks. It’s so utterly peaceful. I’m going to get plenty of writing done there this winter.’

  ‘That is encouraging news. I do hope Stan has been behaving himself?’

  ‘He’s kept out of my way, which is a relief. I’m not sure he likes me, and I think the feeling might be mutual!’

  ‘Oh? Has he done something to upset you?’

  Rob waved his hand dismissively, unwilling to discuss the matter with the doctor, whom he was still uncertain whether to trust. ‘I rather get the impression that you’re not that fond of the bloke either!’

  Val finished stacking the shelves and turned to face Rob. ‘It is not really a case of not liking him, just… well, he always acts as though he owns that house!’

  ‘I see… so who does own Naghene Hall, Val?’

  ‘My father, actually. All of the houses in the village belong to him. Father employs Stan as the caretaker of Naghene Hall, which is usually let on a short term lease. He treats Stan rather like a son, which I guess is why he behaves as though he owns the house.’

  ‘He didn’t like it when I asked him to help me remove those horrible bars from the groun
d floor windows.’

  ‘Those bars were put there for a reason. But never mind, it is irrelevant since they cannot be removed anyway.’

  Rob nodded. He wanted to know what possible reason anyone could have for putting the bars up in the first place, but he was not sure he would like the reply, so chose to ignore the statement. He was more interested in why Val had not informed him that the house belonged to her father before. ‘Does your father live in the village as well?’

  Val shook her head. ‘Like myself, he has been on an extended absence from the village. I am expecting him to return before the end of the month, all being well. He never did spend much time in the village.’

  ‘A big-shot businessman, away on business? No doubt he has fingers in many pies.’

  Val chuckled. ‘Something like that. He is very powerful, but keeps to himself most of the time. He and I have never really seen eye to eye, but it is always good to see him every so often.’

  ‘Well, I’m not surprised he doesn’t live in Naghene Hall. The house is actually quite creepy.’ Rob shivered in an exaggerated manner.

  ‘Few people get past the gates, so the fact that you are actually in the house is a minor miracle. But then, I get the impression you do not scare easily, Rob.’

  ‘I’d be a pretty poor horror writer if I scared easily! Having said that, I must confess that Naghene Hall does give me the willies. I shall stick it out though… the atmosphere is certainly conducive to writing a horror novel! I guess the change of scenery was just what I needed.’

  Rob started pulling items off shelves, placing them on the counter top. ‘I need to stock up if I’m going to stay though.’ He turned to face Val. ‘Any sign of Satan yet?’

  The doctor shook her head. ‘Not yet, though I remain confident that she will come back to the village when she gets hungry or lonely.’