Angel Manor (Lucifer Falls Book 1) (5 page)

“There are lots of entrances, so that could be possible. She was nuts, but I find it hard to imagine her living like this. Don’t think she could abide cobwebs. The place was always a bit cluttered, but very clean, though I don’t see how this could be undisturbed. The paramedics must have used the front entrance.”

“Maybe they got in through a back door too?” Bam bit her lip.

Oliver shrugged. “Big house might have gotten the better of the old lass? If she was mentally unstable to begin with? You said she was depressed. Big house, all her kids dead… maybe she went loopy and embraced the filth?”

He gently pushed Bam aside and stepped into the entrance hall. With care, the three friends picked a path between broken chairs, vases, lamps, and even a rotted settee, while broken porcelain crunched under the soles of their feet. When Oliver opened the door to the main hall area, a stale smell assaulted their nostrils.

The main hall area was as disorganised as the entrance, with a large chandelier, made from hundreds of crystals, lying forlorn in the centre of the room. More broken furniture was scattered across the floor, and there was barely any wallpaper left on the walls.

“This place is depressing.” The spark seemed to have left Oliver’s eyes, and his shoulders slumped. “‘Batty’ doesn’t even begin to cover this. I dread seeing what the rest of the house looks like.”

The young man shrugged and shook his head. He walked to the white doors to the East Wing and opened them.

“What the fuck?” Oliver’s voice sounded hollow. “Why is that walled up?” He stepped aside to reveal red brick and friable grey mortar.

“My aunt… she was pretty paranoid about this place. Not sure what about, but she was always acting crazy about it.” Freya shot them a look between a grimace and a smile. “I’m not surprised she had parts of the house boarded up.”

Freya spotted another worn set of doors on an adjacent wall. With a few strides, she reached them and pulled them open, but again, she found nothing but a flat expanse of brick and concrete. “This one is blocked too.”

“This one isn’t.” Bam stuck her head past the doors she’d opened. “In fact… this wing doesn’t look too bad. Maybe she lived in here.” Freya and Oliver made their way over to Bam.

Something grabbed Freya’s ankle and she screamed. When she looked down, she saw that part of a broken lamp had caught her leg, and she laughed in relief.

“Jesus, woman, you scared the shit out of me.” Bam clutched her heart. “This place is creepy enough without you adding to it.”

A deep red flush settled over Freya’s cheeks. “I’m sorry, I’m just a little on edge. This house…” Her voice faded away, but Oliver offered her a sympathetic look. Freya shook her head and pulled her leg free from the lamp.

The wing that Bam found was untouched, and though every room was filled with big clunky furniture, the place looked relatively clean. There was some dust, but nothing a quick wipe wouldn’t fix. And the smell was a lot better here too. There was a lingering odour of old people, but not of rot. The wallpaper was a soft yellow colour, spattered with a dainty white fleur-de-lis pattern, and the floor was polished cherry parquet.

“This is how I remember my aunt. A lot of… stuff… but clean and tidy. Terrible taste in decor, though.” Freya picked up a porcelain figure of a little Dutch girl from a display cabinet.

“Well, at least we can work with this part. I think we could turn this floor into our own living accommodation. Then we work from there to turn the East and South Wings into hotel rooms. They’re bigger, right?”

“I think so.
You
have the floor plans.” Freya glared at Oliver. “I just have vague memories from fifteen years ago.” She rolled her eyes, but Oliver wasn’t watching. He wandered around the living room, opening drawers to cabinets and dressers while his fingers lightly caressed the furniture.

“There’s a lot of stuff here. We need to figure out what we want to keep.” Oliver held a crystal figurine of a dolphin between his fingers. “Maybe we can even sell some of this stuff online, or to an antique shop or something, to help finance the remodelling. The house is in a worse state than we could have imagined, so we’ll need every pound we can get our grubby little fingers on.”

“I’d like to keep this though.” Freya pointed at a tall grandfather clock. It was a handsome antique, and instead of numbers, the clock had angels carved in the brass dial. The figures were rendered with incredible detail, and on the top of the wood stood a last angel holding a tiny trumpet.

“I remember it from when I was little, and I’ve always liked it. You should hear it chime on the quarter hour. It’s very pretty.”

“These decorative plates look pretty old.” Bam stood on her tippy-toes and pointed at one of the round metal plates that lined the wall. “They look like they’re made of gold, but it’s probably something fake. I mean… if they were real gold, or even just gold plated, it would mean there was a fortune here, right?” There was a soft hesitation in the short girl’s laugh, a tuft of pink-tipped blonde hair escaping the bun at the back of her neck as she bobbed up and down. All three looked up at the wall. There were seven plates in total, hanging at regular intervals, and each of them gold. Oliver and Freya exchanged an excited glance.

“I remember these,” Freya said, while Oliver climbed up onto a cherry-wood dresser. “My aunt was very proud of them. There was something about them, but I can’t remember what.”

The dresser groaned under Oliver’s weight, and for a moment, he froze. Then he shifted slowly, and the dresser showed no further signs of protest. He lifted one of the plates from the wall. It was about the size of a serving tray, but much thicker. Seven symbols were carved around the rim with an angel moulded in the centre. He climbed down and flipped the plate over, his brow furrowed with concentration.

“This thing is heavy.” He inspected the back, his fingers gliding over the surface. “I wish I had a magnifying glass.”

“As if you know anything about carat marks.” Bam snorted and leaned over the plate, her fingers sliding over the gold in search of a mark. “This could be something.” The tip of her finger pointed at four little symbols incised into the metal. “Lemme see.” Oliver held the plate out for her inspection, and Bam manoeuvred both him and the plate towards the light from the large Victorian windows.

“Yup, these are definitely gold markings.” She squinted, bringing her face closer to the object. “It’s not solid gold, because I see an H.G.E. mark, but the plating is 18-carat, which is pretty good.” She looked from Oliver to Freya, shock and excitement mingling in her face.

“What would that mean? How much would they be worth?”

“I don’t know, but each should be at least a grand judging by the size of them, depending on how much gold is on the plating. I’m thinking probably more.”

“A thousand pounds? That’s amazing.” Freya felt her heart flutter, and she blessed her strange old aunt for her expensive taste.

“So, are we doing this?” Oliver turned to Freya as he held up the gold plate. “Are we selling these and getting our hotel?”

“I thought that was the plan?” Freya looked from Oliver to Bam, and she saw a look of worry in their eyes.

“We weren’t sure if you still wanted to.” Bam bit her lip and looked at Freya. “You’ve been a bit weird ever since you set foot on the island. We thought you might be chickening out.”

“I do feel a bit weird. And to be honest, it doesn’t help that half of what we’ve seen of the house looks like it’s come straight from the abyss. But we said we would do this, and if we can find an affordable builder who can work wonders with houses that leak brown gloop, then I’m in.”

Oliver laughed, and he carefully set the plate down so that he could hug Freya. “I say we go find the nearest pub and celebrate. Maybe find a bed and breakfast too, because I don’t know if I’m so keen on sleeping here tonight. At least not until we’ve had that strange stuff investigated.”

Chapter 2

Bam woke at five AM after a short, uncomfortable sleep. Her night shirt was drenched in sweat, and her head throbbed with a dull but incessant ache while her stomach churned with stinging acid. She couldn’t remember her dreams, but she knew that they must have been disturbing. The small bedroom in the Redwood House B&B was still cast in darkness, and next to her in the bed, Freya groaned a little.

“Stop thrashing around.”

Bam felt a hint of irritation. “I’m not thrashing, I just can’t get comfortable. This bed is too damn small for the two of us.”

“Well, get used to it. We’ll be spending more time together until we find out if the hotel is safe to live in. We can’t afford three separate rooms.”

“I don’t see why Oliver gets his own room and we have to share.”

“Because he’s the guy.” Freya’s voice sounded muffled through the soft, white pillow.

“As if we haven’t slept in the same bed as him before. It shouldn’t make a difference.”

“Fine, we’ll rotate. Whatever. Just please stop moving around. I feel sick enough as it is. I think I had too much cider. It went straight to a hangover. Didn’t even get a nice buzz.”

“I feel sick too.”

“Well then, maybe you had too much cider as well.”

“I drank diet Coke.”

“Then you had too much diet Coke. I don’t know. Just stop fucking moving and we can still be friends.” Freya turned around and pulled one of the extra pillows over her head.

“Maybe it was something we ate.” Bam bit her lip and tried to remember if there was something they’d had in common from the menu, but she couldn’t think what it might have been. Oliver had ordered a burger, Freya’s was fish, and she’d had a vegetarian dinner of stuffed peppers and goat’s cheese. There was no link between their meals.

“Or we inhaled something nasty in that house.” Her voice was a whisper now, and the thought sent tiny sparks of fear flashing through her brain. She sat up straight in the bed, a soft snore escaping from the pillow next to her.

“Freya.” She pushed her friend’s shoulder.

“What?” The voice sounded angry.

“What if the house poisoned us?”

“If it did, let me die in peace.” Freya turned around and pulled the covers over her shoulder.

“I’m serious.”

“The house didn’t poison us.”

“How do you know?”

“I just do.”

“I’ve heard stories of people dying because they visited a tomb. Something about deadly spores or something.”

Freya sat up, her face looking tired and pale under the long strands of black hair.

“When my aunt died, they did an autopsy.”

“So, there was nothing suspicious about her death. What’s your point?”

“I’m sure when they found her body a lot of people entered the house. Doctors, probably police officers. That brown stuff can’t have just grown overnight, so they probably saw it too. Don’t you think they would have investigated it to rule it out as a source of her death?”

“Maybe.” Bam shrugged, unconvinced.

“We’ll make some calls tomorrow okay? If we’re not dead by then.” Freya rubbed the top of her nose. “Though Lord knows, death sounds like a pretty sweet option right now. Just go to sleep.”

“Yeah.” Bam felt silly, so she slid back under the covers. Freya glanced at her, expecting her to say something else, but then she followed Bam’s lead.

“Don’t worry. Let’s just try and get a few more hours of sleep. You picked a fine fucking time to freak out about the house, that’s for sure. Just leave the stressing to me, and you go to sleep, okay?”

Bam closed her eyes and tried to relax her breathing. Something felt wrong, and she wondered if Freya was just being laconic or if she herself was overreacting.

***

Oliver woke from a dream. Sweat dripped from his forehead and his stomach tightened with cramps as if he’d swallowed glass. With shaking fingers, he peeled off his t-shirt and lay back down on the cold, moist sheets. A deep breath escaped from his lungs. He felt sick, and when he closed his eyes, he could smell the stale odour of Angel Manor. His mind reeled as he thought back to the nightmare which had plagued his sleep.

Angel Manor had been restored to its former glory. In his dream, he had walked through the rows of angels in the middle of the night towards a red-haired woman standing in the open front doors, a diaphanous nightgown revealing all her curves in the light of the moon. Her breasts pressed against the fine material, and he’d felt something stir in his loins.

“I’m yours now.” The woman’s voice was a low whisper, and for a moment, Oliver wondered if the words had come from her lips or if the house itself had spoken. “Come and claim me.” She turned and ran into the house. Despite his misgivings, Oliver had run after her.

The hotel looked different in his dreams, not broken and old, but beautiful and whole. The floor shone under his feet, and the furniture looked in mint condition. A crystal chandelier sparkled with bright luminescence, casting thousands of stars around the entrance hall. The main hall was now a reception area, just as Oliver had envisioned it, and a fresh-faced receptionist in a Victorian black dress with a high collar and a blonde bun on the top of her head nodded at him as he walked by. There were people milling around, each regarding him with a reverence that made him feel like a king.