Chapter Three

Sarah

The gatekeeper's house was exactly how Sarah's grandmother had left it the day she had her stroke. She pushed the door open, moving the pile of mail that had landed in a scattered pile on the floor.

Sarah took a step through the threshold and covered her nose with the sleeve of her baggy black cardigan. The air was grim, leaving her no other choice but to breathe in the stench of rotten bin waste. She took a quick look around; everything had been left just how her grandmother had left it the day that she was taken into hospital. Sarah would have come back here sooner but her grandmother’s health had deteriorated rapidly, and the doctors told her that her death was inevitable.

Sarah made a retching sound as she entered the kitchen. Flies circled the overflowing bin as well as the remnants of a cooked chicken that had been stripped down to the bare carcass by maggots.

“Jesus Christ, where do I start?” Sarah muttered under her breath.

A dark, ominous feeling drew her eyes south of where she was standing. She noticed the small blood splatterings on the beige linoleum and knew that must have been where her grandmother had fallen. She took a step back and crouched so that she could give it a thorough inspection. The coroner’s report had indicated that the cause of death was due to a stroke but Sarah thought that there may have been more to it than that. Apart from the bump on the side of her grandmother’s head, she had suffered an injury along the base of her throat; two puncture wounds that looked deep enough to cause some concern. Sarah looked around to see if she could spot something obvious lying around on the floor, but there was nothing.

Sarah was told that the milkman had found her grandmother unconscious on the kitchen floor. He knew that she lived alone and often made conversation with her during his visits. When she failed to answer the door, he had the sense to walk around to the back of the property and peer in through the kitchen window. Thank goodness he did, or else her grandmother never would have made it to the hospital.

Sarah thought about calling him up to arrange her own delivery, and to thank him for what he had done for her grandmother. She walked over to the kitchen door and discovered that it had been left unlocked; the key had been left protruding from the lock, so she gave it a twist and heard the metallic click. She felt safer with the house more secure. Even in the middle of nowhere, you never could be too careful.

If Sarah could get out of doing all the dirty work, she would. She had the mammoth task of completing all the cleaning and unpacking chores. There was no way that she could shuck the responsibility if she wanted a peaceful night’s rest tonight. The kitchen was the first of the five small rooms on her hit list, needing to rid the rancid stench as quickly as possible. She threw everything that had perished into the bin and took it out to the wheelie bin at the end of the front path. Bats fluttered across the night’s sky, forming dark silhouettes against the inky-sky. She hurried back inside and began attacking every dusty surface with cleaning products.

As soon as the worst of it was cleaned and the bleach fumes had died down, she closed the upstairs windows, one by one. The house was freezing cold and her own breath formed clouds of condensation in front of her face. She stopped what she was doing to apply a dab of hand cream on her chapped fingers; the sore skin was shrivelled and Sarah regretted not having worn rubber gloves.

Now that the house could pass for sanitary, she put on the small blow heater to warm the living room. She then tipped fresh coal into the fireplace and threw on a couple of lighter blocks. While balancing in a crouched position, she managed to reach for the box of matches on top of the mantle. The first strike against the side of the box ignited a spark which burst into a yellow flame, then Sarah held it against one of the lighter blocks until the flame began to feast.

This was like going back to basics, building fires and sitting around it for warmth. She had to make sure there was enough coal to see her through the winter. There was no doubt about it. The dwindling stockpile that her grandmother had kept in the coal shed had all but run out. She gave an amused snort as she absorbed the ridiculous notion of adding coal to her monthly shopping list. Living out in the sticks meant that she would have to keep stock of a certain number of things, including keeping her fuel tank full in her car.

Sarah spent the past few years of her life taking full advantage of having gas central heating and hot running water. This reminded her: if she wanted a hot bath later, she would need to switch on the immersion heater and allow it to heat for at least an hour.

Sarah rubbed her cold hands together and held them open-palmed in front of the small developing flames. The tips of her fingers began to tingle as they thawed and her body trembled until the heat breathed life into her once again.

She pulled her cardigan over her hands as she stood, turning to analyse the dated room with a fresh set of eyes. The green leaf-patterned wallpaper in the living room had faded over time, peeling at the corners with patches of black mould in each of the four corners of the room. The walls were uneven and the door frames were all warped, but Sarah felt confident that a lick of paint and a touch of style could drag this place out of the sixties and into the modern-day world.

She made herself a cup of tea and had to use powdered milk because she hadn't thought to bring any fresh along with her. A shopping trip to Frodsham was now on the cards for tomorrow. All that she found in the pantry worth keeping was tins of fruit cocktail, three tins of spam, and a jar of Bisto gravy granules that still had three months left until it went out of date.

The hours rolled by and Sarah soon lost track of time. As soon as she sat down to drink her cup of tea, she checked her banking app on her phone and saw that she had been paid exactly at five o'clock, just like Francis Heartly had promised. She now had enough funds to set her finances straight for at least another month.

Rain splattered against the windows, lightly at first, then progressed to a heavy downpour. The small front garden became awash with brown muddy puddles. Sarah glanced out through the window; the vast Cheshire countryside appeared bleak in the fading light. As the storm clouds swirled as far as the eye could see, they stretched out, touching the hills that were far away in the distance.

One thing that unnerved Sarah, was that when it went dark outside and she was sitting inside with the lights on, it meant that she couldn't see out, but whoever was on the outside looking in, could see inside perfectly well.

She shook the silly thought away and chuckled to herself, “Who on earth would be peering in through the windows, all the way out here in the middle of nowhere?”

She knew it was a silly childish notion as there was nobody around for miles. Yet, for her own peace of mind, she drew the curtains closed. It made her feel safe as if she was all wrapped up snugly in her own little cocoon.

Sarah switched off the living room light then changed into her pyjamas beside the fireplace, basking in the warmth of the crackling embers. The heat licked her skin, bringing a soft rouge colour to her unusually pale cheeks.

She didn't much feel like sleeping upstairs in the cold bedroom when it was already toasty warm downstairs. She opted to sleep on the worn, floral-patterned sofa, instead. She covered herself in the multi-coloured crochet blanket that her grandmother had made with leftover pieces of wool. She reached for the remote and turned on the television, flooding light into the fire-lit room from the screen. Her body relaxed into the threadbare sofa as she caught the end of a film. Sarah had seen it dozens of times and as she finished the last of her tea, her eye-lids began to feel weighted. Sleep was catching up with her and it left her no alternative than to put her mug on the floor and snuggle into a comfortable sleeping position.

Thoughts began to bob to the surface of her mind; she still had her grandmother's funeral to think about, not that there would be anyone in attendance besides herself. Her grandmother didn’t exactly have many friends and Sarah knew of no other family members who she could invite. She had never met any of her extended family members and her grandfather was never spoken about. Sarah often toyed with the idea of tracking him down but she was worried about what she was likely to discover. He must’ve hurt her grandmother an awful lot if she refused to bring up his name.

During the visit to Mr Heartly, Sarah agreed to hold the service in the nearby crematorium. She opted to keep her grandmother’s ashes in an urn and scatter them here amongst the flower beds. Her grandmother loved her garden and Sarah knew that was what she would’ve wanted. All these thoughts about funerals had given her a headache. Sarah didn't want to seem morbid but she wished her gran had kept her parent's ashes, instead of laying them to rest miles away, back in their home town of Knutsford. Even though it was still within Cheshire, it was still a good hour’s drive away from where she was now. Sarah liked the thought of having at least one of her family member’s close by.

She rubbed her weary eyes. They had started to sting and water with fatigue. Each yawn brought with it pools of moisture that she wiped away with the pad of her forefinger. The hypnotic glow of the coal fire burned in beautiful shades of red and orange, drawing her eyes towards the dancing flames, heating her skin in a blanket of warmth. Now that her eyes had become way too heavy, she was unable to stay awake and finish watching the show. The sounds played on in the background until they blended together, fading into nothing. She snuggled into the blanket, curling her knees up to her chest and drifted off to sleep, letting the TV play on until it switched to standby.

The bright winter sun shone in through the threadbare curtains, crisp and sharp, right in her direct line of sight. Sarah's eyes stung and watered as she squinted to see the time. When her blurry vision cleared, she gasped and sat bolt upright. Her eyes darted around the change of scenery, realising that this was not the same place that she had fallen asleep the night before.

Sarah massaged her temples as she strained to recall herself going to bed. She knew that she hadn't gone upstairs. She wasn't known for sleepwalking. This was a complete and utter mystery. Now wide awake through having an early morning shock, she couldn't possibly just lie there and wonder. All the stress that she had been under recently had clearly wreaked havoc with her sanity and now she couldn’t even recall going to bed.

She flung the duvet off her and swung her legs over the edge of the bed. The first attempt she made to stand to her feet had her falling back down onto the mattress. Whit mist formed like a fog in her brain and covered her vision in a blanket of white mist. Nausea bubbled in her churning stomach and the pressure began to pound in her temples. Sarah massaged her forehead to mitigate the pain then trailed her hand along her head, smoothing down her sleep-tossed hair. She grasped her loose hair in one complete bunch, in an attempt to move it to one side across her shoulder.

Sarah hissed in pain, feeling her hair pull away from where it'd been stuck to her neck as if welded to the spot. The column of her throat throbbed as if someone had drilled through the delicate skin and bruised the entire area. Sarah began to second guess whether she had, in fact, stumbled to bed in a sleep-drunken state and injured herself along the way.

She had to force herself to stand but her feeble attempt caused her knees to buckle beneath her; she stumbled against the 1970’s style dressing table and managed to land her backside onto the box stool. Dizzy and disorientated, she rested her elbows along the mahogany dresser, sending toiletries and loose change clattering onto the carpet.

She wondered what on earth had happened last night to make her feel so sick and forget how she got to bed?

Sarah forced her head up slowly, feeling as if all the blood had rushed to her legs. Her limbs shook like jelly and her body trembled through lack of energy as if she had been skipping meals for days. Her eyes flared wide in horror at her own gaunt appearance. Sure, she always looked pale, but never did she look so ghostly. Her skin appeared as pale as paper, almost transparent as if dampened by the rain. Her eyes were encased in two sunken dark circles and her lips were a pale blue, just like the early morning sky.

Her eyes trailed along her pitiful reflection in the mottled mirror, landing on the two perfectly inlined puncture wounds at the side of her neck. Blood had run into the collar of her nightdress and spread into a dark stain. It was just like the wound on her grandmother’s throat, only Sarah’s was angrier and much more inflamed.

She felt the bile begin to creep up her throat, falling to her knees she made it in time to vomit into the small plastic bin at the side of her dressing table. It left her weak and lethargic. As far as she knew she hadn't left any windows open. The front and back doors were bolted shut and the keys had been removed from the locks for safe measure. She crawled back up to her feet and scrambled around until she managed to get down the stairs.

The house was just as she'd left it, undisturbed, not a thing out of place. Her house keys were on top of the microwave right where she'd left them.

Shaking from head to foot, Sarah felt as if perhaps she had been bitten by an insect. Her work colleague had contracted malaria from a mosquito bite and she hoped that nothing like that had happened to her. She was speculating now, flinging ideas into the air.

She managed to make herself a sweet cup of tea and contacted Francis Heartly.

Sarah held the phone to her ear with a shaky hand. "Hello, Mr Heartly,” she spoke in her frail, tremulous voice. "It's Sarah Brixton here. I’ve had some kind of accident during the night. I fell asleep on the sofa and woke up in bed but have no recollection how I got there. I may need medical assistance and you did say that I could call you if I needed anything.”

Mr Heartly seemed anxious and assured her that he would leave immediately.

"Thank you,” she replied, ending the call.

"Drink this, it'll help." Francis held a delicate china teacup to her lips. The strange crimson tonic that he produced held an element of transparency; it wasn’t too hot and it tasted sweet despite looking unpleasant. Sarah took the cup from him and finished the tea in three large gulps. Whatever it was began to work instantaneously, spreading a warm tingling sensation throughout her body. She could feel it start to migrate from her centre and travel along each of her veins until it thrummed beneath the surface of her skin like a surgical band-aid.

Francis checked each window and placed a small muslin pouch in each of the windowsills.

"It's important you keep this repellent here, don't move it,” he warned. “It really does work, you know. Nothing will crawl in during the night, just as long as you take my advice." He shot her a stern look as if she ought to do as he said.

"Thank you for coming out of your way like this." She clutched her elbow awkwardly, feeling slightly uncomfortable standing in front of him in her nightdress. "And for the groceries." She gestured toward the kitchen. He'd even put them away for her too. It saved her a trip into town which meant she could rest up and recover from . . . whatever the hell it was.

Francis gave a tight-lipped smile in response, rocking back and forth on the balls of his feet. "Well, if there's nothing else, I better get going." He reached over to where he'd placed his car keys on the mahogany sideboard in the hallway. It was ugly and tarnished through years of neglect. Sarah always hated it but it served a purpose. Maybe when she found something else to replace it, she would dismantle it for firewood.

Sarah brushed her fingers along the gauze that Francis had used to keep her wound clean after he'd bathed it. "Actually, I'd like you to accompany me over to the manor,” she asked, not wanting him to leave her alone just yet. "I'm curious to see inside but I'm afraid to go there by myself. If you come with me just this once, it won't be as bad the next time I go." She cringed waiting for him to say 'no'.

His keys jingled as he dropped them into his trouser pocket. Sarah took that as a confirmation that he was going to stay. The relief she felt as it lifted her chest coaxed a breathy smile.

"As you wish, Miss Brixton. So long as you're feeling up to it,” he accepted, flinching his eyes with concern.

Sarah was quick to respond with, “I’ll be fine, honestly, I just need to shower and change and then I’ll be ready to go.”

Francis’s lips were downturned as he gave a nod in acceptance. “Alright, take your time, I’m in no hurry,” he assured her, then sauntered into the living room to wait.

Sarah hurried away to change. She felt anxious about stepping foot in the creepy old manor but at least she could search for clues whilst she had some company. Baring in mind that she must keep the gauze dry, Sarah detached the shower hose and angled the flow of water over herself. Whatever Francis had given her to drink had boosted her energy levels to maximum capacity. Sarah felt as if she had consumed about ten espressos all in one go. It had taken barely any time at all and in record timing, Sarah was flouncing down the stairs, fully dressed and eager to go.

Francis was already waiting for her at the foot of the stairs, greeting her with an appraising smile. “You look much better, Miss Brixton,” he complimented.

Sarah rolled her eyes and grinned, “Please, call me Sarah,” she insisted, wanting to cut the formalities.

Her comment seemed to please Francis Heartly. If Sarah had paid enough attention, maybe she would have noticed the swell of emotion that brightened his features. But Sarah’s thoughts were occupied elsewhere: Tenebris Manor.