Haunted Lancashire (The Haunting Of Books 1-3)

by Jack Lewis

  Even looking at him made her head throb from where he’d hit her with his crutch. The bastard locked me up. Left me alone in the cell.

  She pointed the crossbow at him. She didn’t want him to get the mistaken idea that she wasn’t prepared to fire a bolt through his neck. She didn’t know if she really would, but it seemed sensible to convey that impression.

  “Loe, let’s talk,” he said. His voice was quiet. Calm. Friendly, even.

  “Talk from where you are. Not another step.”

  He nodded. “There’s a way to end this,” he said.

  “Alt?” shouted a voice.

  Loe didn’t turn around to look, but she knew it was Mag. She and Jay must have been watching from the window.

  “Alt?” said Mag again, sounding closer now.

  Damn it, she’s coming outside.

  Alt seemed emboldened by his sister’s shouts. He took a step toward Loe.

  “One more, and I’ll do it,” said Loe.

  He took another step, clearly testing her. She saw a glint of an expression on his face now. Not kindness - that had been an act.

  Resolution. Resolution and guilt.

  And then she noticed the knife in his hand.

  She took a breath and prepare to pull the trigger.

  With a great crash, another shape pounded out of the tree line. Bulky, black, with a misshapen head, three curved horns, steam rising from its nose.

  It was just ten feet away. Ducking its head, it charged at Loe.

  She turned, pointed the crossbow, and fired.

  The bolt tore through its eye. Rather than fall on its back, the beast completed its charge, stumbling for the last few feet and then collapsing face-first into the mud. It gave a single, painful snort, and then was silent.

  Loe backed away from it. She watched it twitch. Blood poured from its face and mixed with the trail of rainwater.

  It’s dead.

  A hand grabbed her.

  It was Alt, next to her, gripping her hood with one hand, raising the knife with the other.

  “Alt!”

  Just as Alt plunged the knife down, Mag barreled into Loe, pushing her out of the way. There was a scream, but Loe found herself on the ground with her face in the rainwater.

  When she got to her feet she saw Alt stumbling back, and Mag lying on her back with a nasty wound in her chest.

  Jay came tearing out of the hall, skirting around the body of the beast and rushing to his sister.

  Alt faced Loe. Though he was shocked at what he’d done, he hadn’t dropped the knife.

  “Look what you’ve done!” he said.

  Loe began loading the bolt. She jammed the crossbow against the floor, fixed the bolt in place, tried to pull the lever back. The bow resisted, either through Loe’s tiredness or because it was a piece of crap.

  Damn it. She needed to keep him talking.

  “Me?” she said. “Look what I did? You just stabbed your sister!”

  “It needs to be you, Loe,” said Alt. “We can’t stop the curse, but we can feed it. Give it something to satisfy it. If we feed it your blood, give you to it…”

  “You’ve got this all wrong.”

  “No, Loe. No, no, no. The book said so.”

  “The one we found in the cell?”

  “They knew. One of our ancestors learned how to stop it. My great-great-great-grandfather, Altair, was clever enough to figure it out. But he was alone here, just like father. He didn’t have anyone to feed to the curse. We do. It’s lucky that you came here, Loe.”

  Damn it, she was so tired, so on edge, and her hands so slick with rain that she just couldn’t load the bolt.

  “It’s bullshit,” she said, straining.

  “No, Loe. The book is quite clear.”

  Screw this.

  “You shouldn’t believe everything you read,” she said.

  She stepped forward. She raised the crossbow, and before Alt could raise his hands, she smashed it into his head once, twice, and again, until he hit the ground.

  The beast was dead, Altair was down. Loe was cold, wet to the bone, tired beyond belief, but there was no time to waste.

  She ran into the hall and began spreading kerosene over the carpets, sloshing it into every room, every wall, until the container was empty.

  And then she went back outside, pausing at the front doorway to strike a match.

  As the rain fell on the forest, as the wind snaked through the trees and wrapped around her, Loe flicked the match, saw it light, and rushed away from the building.

  She watched flames tear through Harrow Hall, feeling nothing as the fire ate through the wood, and the house began to collapse in on itself.

  Chapter Twenty

  Six Months Later

  It was a lovely evening. The sun was starting to work its way down behind the hills in the distance, but for now, it cast an orange glow over the forest, the trees, the leaves, the muddy ground strewn with pine needles. Tent canvas gently flapped in the breeze, water spat from a pan boiling over an open fire, and sheep bleated in the distance.

  Loe leaned against the oak tree, resting her shoulder against the heart carved into it. She felt no pain in her chest, no throbbing in her head, just a state of relaxation. If she cared to, she could easily let the breeze carry her consciousness away on a gentle trip into the air, way above Harrow Woods, where she’d see the miles and miles of oaks, pine trees, saplings. She’d see Eldike in the distance, and she’d see the hills beyond them, rolling peaks that dominated the countryside for miles around and made her thankful she was here to see such a sight.

  While she was soaring so high, she’d ignore the sight that begged for her attention. The blackened splodge on the ground, a giant burned stain that had once been a grand home.

  “Hold long is this going to take?” said a voice.

  It was Jay, sitting in front of the fire and watching the pan intensely.

  Mag, lying on her back, swatted him, missed, and contented herself by saying “Shut up and let it do its thing.”

  “Just think,” said Jay. “It’s the last time we’ll see this place.”

  “Does that bother you?” asked Loe.

  Jay stared beyond her, in the direction of where the hall would have been. Even if it were still there, the trees would have blocked it from view.

  “I never spent enough time in this place to be sentimental about it. Truth be told, I wouldn’t even have come out here again. When you suggested it, it felt right, somehow. Spend one night out here before we sign the contract.”

  “At least they aren’t going to tear the trees down and build houses on it,” said Loe.

  Mag sat up. She looked radiant; the last six months had treated her well. They’d treated them all well, actually. Loe felt better than ever, and Jay hadn’t had a drink since finished the Harrow Hall rum supply.

  “We’d never have sold it to a property developer,” said Mag. “As much as we all wanted rid of this place, that’d be scummy.”

  “Yeah,” said Jay. “Don’t get me wrong. I hate this forest. I hate every single tree, every single leaf. But to sell it to someone who’s going to bulldoze it down? That wouldn’t be fair.”

  Loe nodded. “It belongs to the birds now. And the rabbits, squirrels, whatever else lives out here.”

  “That reminds me. The solicitor said we need your bank account details, Loe.”

  “Why?”

  “So you can get your share, of course.”

  Loe tipped her head. “My share?”

  Jay grinned. “It needs to go four ways. What, you think we’d cut you out?”

  Loe felt herself choking up a little. “I just didn’t think…”

  “You’re family,” said Mag.

  Jay nodded. “Right. Even if you weren’t, I saw you shoot that demented cow-thing with a crossbow. That alone was worth a share in the sale.”

  Loe took a deep breath. It was either that or tear up even more. Family. When she first came out here to meet her brot
hers and sister, she’d never expected that. It had been too much to hope for.

  She still found it hard to think about Alt with any warmth. Jay and Mag had explained that Alt had problems growing up and that he’d struggled with them for years. What they hadn’t known was that a place like Harrow was the worst place for him to be, with its curses and books full of conspiracies and secrets.

  He was getting help now, and Loe had agreed to go with Jay and Mag to see him in the facility a week’s time. She wasn’t looking forward to it, but it wasn’t fair not to.

  But that was in the future, and right now she wasn’t all that interested in the future. She only wanted to look at the here and the now. To enjoy spending time in a forest that had no longer held any fear over her. One that might have been dangerous to the Harrow family, but would be dangerous no more. Now it was just a piece of nature, and it didn’t deserve to bear the stains of curses and sordid family histories.

  The Forestry Commission would take ownership tomorrow, and then the place could flourish under their stewardship as a nature reserve. Families could come here to stroll amongst the trees, and there’d be nothing watching them, nothing lurking, no beasts prowling, no caretakers turning it into a maze.

  It wasn’t just Loe and her siblings who were free. With no anchor holding it in place, no caretakers to maintain it, the curse lost its hold over everyone it had hurt.

  The poor people trapped in Harrow Hall over the years. The girl in the cells, the ghost in the book room, others who Loe hadn’t seen but had lurked in the manor. Gone, all gone, finally able to rest.

  At least, Loe hoped so. With Harrow Hall gone, that had to be true.

  Yes, she’d just enjoy spending tonight outdoors, and in the morning she’d get in her car, which the police had recovered near Emory’s house, and she’d drive through Eldike and then beyond, out of the village and into the open country, and who knew? Maybe she’d just keep driving for a while.

  She and her car had a deal, and Loe had stuck to it. She’d already spent some cash getting it fixed up, and now it could take her anywhere.

  At least now, she had an anchor to come back to when she was done traveling. Jay and Mag. Her brother and sister. People she could return to whenever she felt alone.

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