The Golden Key - Marian Womack Page 0,1

his childhood dreams?

The dismal construction had been such a fixture of his nightmares for so many years, and yet had disappeared all of a sudden as soon as he put Norfolk behind him, went off to be educated. Almost every night he had traversed its corridors, looked up at the sky through the collapsed ceiling, dreading, always dreading the approach to that mouldy room at the passage’s end. The house stood on a flat stretch of yellow land. The formal garden had run wild, overgrown, and he could hear a faint murmur of water. Some of the outer walls were blackened, and part of the ceiling was gone. The dim light, flat as the land itself, drew endless unmoving shadows.

It was a hollow carcass, home to foxes and mice, and to the jackdaws that flew to and fro around its triangular gables. Branches were overhanging the opened rooms, the floors covered in brown dirt, stones, broken pieces of flint. The dreary salons and bedchambers were all livid with mould, so that the fireplaces looked as if they had been painted in many shades of green by a madman. Ivy had crept in through the windows, and fungi of many different colours, shockingly vibrant, spread their silent empire over the walls, painting maps to unknown realms.

The house spoke of lives coming to abrupt ends, of broken promises. It spoke of endless possibilities, both seen and unseen. Its layers of unmoving time made him uneasy: there was something odd, slightly off-key. You could not hear the birds, the wind rustling. Like a place neither here nor there.

* * *

Why had it reappeared now, after all these years, with the inopportune insistence of a long-lost friend one has no time for?

He knew, deep down, what the house meant. A place to escape to, it came back to him during those first feverish hours without Viola, with its faint aura of a long-lost memory; the river accident had triggered its return. Just as mould and decay covered its imagined walls, so the memory of the house had silently conquered his nightmares, leaving no place for Viola, for the treacherous Isis.

What Sam could not remember was whether the building was a true memory, or something that he had imagined, part of some vivid childhood make-believe, a long-forgotten game of hide-and-seek with the shadows. He had no recollection of the property existing in this world. But then, he had been there once, had he not? He could not simply have imagined it, not in all its sumptuous decaying detail.

Samuel Moncrieff had never been lost, and had never wanted to be. It was different now.

* * *

Sam’s arrival in London coincided with the first signs of Christmas. Little lights charmed passers-by from behind cloudy shop windows, and Albert trees sprouted here and there. The festivities welcomed him with their air of a season out of time, and came and went quickly; a sad, subdued affair.

‘Samuel, my boy. The only thing we ought to concern ourselves with is your health. I have instructed Mrs Brown to provide for your every need.’ Sam’s godfather, Charles Bale, had a house in Saffron Hill Road, a large number of friends associated with the Spiritualist cause, and too much time on his hands. His robust disposition, cheerful eyes and fondness for amusing company were at odds with his prominent position in one of those societies occupied with exploring the darkest corners of our universe. Bale was one of the most senior members of The New Occultist Defence League, funded some years previously to ‘defend those interested in Spiritual communion from the misunderstanding or aggravation caused by the non-Spiritualist-minded’. Showing a rare delicacy, the older man had not been inquisitive about the tragic accident that had brought Sam to his door. He had asked no questions, and demanded no answers. And so Sam had the chance to gather his breath. London, even if looked out upon from a window, did not look back at him with reproach: a welcome change. College life lay behind him, forever gone. He was capable of admitting that much to himself.

A few weeks after Sam’s arrival, the Queen’s passing changed the mood of the capital once more. To his godfather’s delight, advertisements now kept sprouting everywhere for lectures on Mesmerism in working men’s clubs, or for assemblies and raffles to gather funds for séances. Victoria’s death had suddenly rekindled the interest in their dusty cause: most of the papers proclaimed new ghostly sightings and bewildering phenomena, usually involving