Grimdark

by Shannon Morgan

Genres: Occult & Supernatural; Horror; Gothic

Synopsis

A mesmerizing, atmospheric modern gothic story set in a sinister English manor house where a woman discovers her destiny winding through centuries of previous incarnations . . .

Teetering on the edge of the North Sea in Norfolk, Grimdark Hall is both grim and dark in name and nature. When Cló and Jude Honeyborne arrive from Toronto to claim Jude’s inheritance, Cló is unsettled by the foreboding ancient building and the hostility of Jude’s sisters, who stalk her every move.

But Cló is drawn to the strange energy of the treacherous fens and the haunting sadness of a drowned village in the bay where ghostly church bells toll thirteen, sweeping her back into another woman’s memories . . .

In 1645 Euphemia Figgis was accused of witchcraft and burned at the stake, screaming a curse on the Honeybornes as the flames consumed her. Now, flashes of Effie’s life torment Cló at every turn.

Cló isn’t the only one who’s lived before:  an odd little girl lurks about Grimdark claiming to be the reincarnation of a notorious pirate, and waiting in the shadows is a darker, vengeful incarnation who has hunted them both through the centuries in search of a medieval treasure.

As echoes of Cló’s past lives converge in present threats, she must confront a final reckoning of old betrayals and relentless greed to end an eight-hundred-year-old quest for vengeance.

Publisher: Kensington Books

Print pages: 336

Sample

Purple, Cló decided, smelt like the lavender cloaking the flat landscape of Norfolk in a knobbled skin, bloating the air that drifted in through the open car window with its sharp-sweet fragrance. Purple tasted like the wide skies and the distant lilac haze of the horizon. And if purple were to have form it would be as round and cushiony as the lavender bushes in their neat rows weathering the July sunshine with friendly stoicism.

“Cló . . . Cló? . . . Cló!”

Cló snapped to attention guiltily.

Jude shook his head with a fond smile. “You were well away with the fairies again.”

“I like the fairies . . . what did I miss?”

“Nothing important. I was bitching about the state of the roads. I’d forgotten how narrow they are.”

“It’s a dreadful name, Grimdark Hall,” said Cló, her face lifted to the sun, eyes half closed.

“It suits the place. You’ll see soon enough.” The warning in his tone echoed his fingers tapping nervously on the steering wheel as he navigated the twisting lane between flint walls.

“It can’t be that bad. Look around us—it’s gorgeous! All these crooked lanes and flint cottages. Then we’re in glorious forest that would rival anything in Canada, and then it’s wide and open and feels as if the edge of the world is just over there.” Cló pointed out the window where the fens stretched flat and endless beyond the lavender fields.

Jude laughed, the fine lines around his blue eyes crinkling in the way Cló loved most. His laughter was what attracted her to him when they’d first met. He was not conventionally good-looking; his brown hair was too long, his cheekbones too sharp, his eyes too deep-set. He wasn’t tall, shorter than Cló by a good inch, but he was attractive in an unsettling way.

“Now you’re sounding like a tourist,” he said. “Next you’ll be calling it quaint and twee. You’ve been to England before; not sure why you’re so enthralled by it all.”

Cló pulled a face. “I was twenty-one and backpacking. It was a long time ago. And I love this because it’s where you came from.” The moment the words were out of her mouth she knew she had said the wrong thing.

Jude’s face shuttered as it always did at the briefest mention of his childhood home, though they were hurtling along the lanes to get there. His past was a barrier Cló rarely managed to breach. Not a secret as such, more a distant land Jude wished never to return to, always skirting around a direct question, turning away with a haunted gloss in his eyes. At first, his reticence had felt like a test of strength of their relationship, but in time she’d come to realise it wasn’t a test at all, but protection and a deep desire to prevent the wound in his soul from infecting their lives together.

Until a month ago, Cló had not pried or probed. Like a bargain made in a fairy tale to ensure their continued happiness, she had carved their marriage around the dark pit of Jude’s past. She’d only broken their tacit bargain when Jude received the letter.

“There must be something you like about this place,” said Cló, prodding the barrier gently.

Jude stopped his nervous tapping to grip the steering wheel until his knuckles whitened. “Don’t look at me like that,” he said, not taking his eyes off the road. “I get that you didn’t have family and lived in foster homes, and I grew up in the Hall, but sometimes no family is better than one without love.”

Cló swallowed the hurt Jude hadn’t meant to inflict. “It can’t have been that bad,” she said in a small voice.

Jude’s fingers went back to tapping the steering wheel, his nervousness edging towards irritability.

“Talk to me, Jude,” said Cló quietly. “Don’t let me walk into your family blind.”

They drove a few miles before he sighed and said, “I can’t remember a single time when my mother hugged me. Not once. She was a ghost, living in a fog of drugs. My father was never around to see my mum’s decline until it was too late, too caught up in politics and his mistresses. And my sisters . . .” His lips tightened. “Constance was a bitch, and I doubt she’s changed since I left. Ruth is . . . odd. There’s no other way to put it. And she was sly, always watching me.”

“They sound awful.”

“They are,” said Jude grimly. “Well, not Ruth so much, but she follows Constance in everything. If you can catch her alone, she’s not so bad.”

Cló’s joy in the sunny day withered to fretful worry. His obvious loathing of his sisters gave a dark inkling to the shape of Jude’s childhood and what lay ahead at Grimdark Hall. It reinforced that moment when he’d received the letter bearing the news of his parents’ death in a car accident. His shock had been something she understood too well, for her parents had died in similar circumstances. She’d quickly realised her empathy had been misplaced when his shock hadn’t deepened to grief but anger that the Honeybornes had managed to track him down after he’d broken off all contact years before. And that had been nothing to Jude’s horror to discover he had inherited everything—the Hall, the lands and whatever money might be scrapping about—when he had been told he’d been struck from his father’s will.

Sighing into the billowing silence, Cló admonished herself for giving in to worry and smiled with false brightness. “Tell me what I must or mustn’t do to make this easier for you.”

His eyes flicked her way in astonishment. “You are utterly perfect in every way and don’t have to do or not do anything.”

“You know what I mean, Jude.”

His fingers drummed on the steering wheel once more. “Don’t apologise . . . ever,” he said finally. “Constance will see it as a sign of weakness.”

“Then I’m screwed,” said Cló, a perpetual apologiser.

“And try not to say too much about Canada; Constance still considers it a colony and will lord it over you, even though it’s all bollocks. And she’ll—” His expression knitted into a dark frown. “She will take issue with your physical appearance. She would find fault with the King, and she certainly won’t keep her thoughts to herself.”

“Then I’m doubly screwed.” Cló looked down at her thighs spread across the seat, overflowing the edges like the underside of a mushroom, her stomach sagging below her enormous breasts. Her hand rose to her eyes, one blue, one brown, well used to the second looks she got. “I’m sorry,” she whispered, her throat knotted with tears.

“I knew I shouldn’t have said anything.” Jude jerked the car across the road into a layby, switched off the ignition and turned to Cló. “You are the kindest, most compassionate, insanely imaginative, funniest woman I know,” he said with soft intensity. “I can’t tell you how proud I am of you, that you are my wife. You are perfect as you are and you have nothing to be ashamed of.” He smiled and wiped a tear away from her cheek with a finger. “This is why I didn’t want you to come. I know Constance will try to hurt you to hurt me. It’s what she does, it’s what she’s always done . . . but I’m selfish, and I’m so glad you’ve come. I will need reinforcements.”

Cló smiled weakly when Jude asked, “You okay?”

He kissed her hard and sweet before starting the ignition again, saying, “Just do what I do and avoid them as much as possible. God knows the Hall is big enough that we shouldn’t cross paths too often . . . or at all,” he added darkly. “And it’s not forever. We’ll get the formalities sorted out, then we’ll leave. Nothing could make me stay there longer than we have to.”

They drove on in silence for miles. Cló was aware of Jude darting worried glances her way. She was not helping herself with the image she was building of Constance as a human marabou stork, truly one of the ugliest birds. Yes, with a jowly chin like the marabou’s gular sac that brought to mind an elongated scrotum. Oooh, and a beaky nose and small, beady eyes. She’d be disappointed if Constance turned out to be small and drab as a house sparrow.

“Who are you talking to?” said Jude, a smile in his voice.

Cló grimaced. “Myself?”

“Bollocks. You were having an intense conversation with someone in your head.”

She bit her lip, not wanting to share what she’d been saying to Constance in the privacy of her mind.

“Come on. Be your best friend?”

“You are my best friend,” she said by rote, coaxed into a reluctant smile, loving the intimacy of their corny inside joke. “I was thinking it’s strange we both come from Norfolk,” she lied.

Jude raised his eyebrows. “Your family came from Norfolk,” he qualified. “But that was four hundred–odd years ago.”

Orphaned at eight, the only thing Cló had inherited, apart from loving memories of her parents, was a family bible with the names of her ancestors written on the flyleaf. It stretched back to 1645, when two young people had taken the brave decision to sail to the New World from Ipswich. She was proud of her ancestry and hoped to do further research while they were in Norfolk.

“Wouldn’t it be funny if we came from the same area?” she said.

“God, I hope not,” said Jude fervently. He softened his harsh tone with, “I wouldn’t wish Grimdark on any of your ancestors, and certainly not on you.”

But all thoughts of ancestors vanished when they rounded a tight corner in the lane.

Like a spangled eiderdown, the North Sea spread out before them. An army of wind turbines stood to attention far out to sea, warily eyeing the Darrow Cliffs, colourfully layered in chalk and rust-red carrstone, wrapped around a horseshoe bay. Perched precariously on the knife edge of the cliffs, Grimdark Hall brooded in sullen defiance of the sun.

“You have windmills!” Enchanted, Cló’s attention swung from the three black windmills with white sails behind the Hall. “And a cute little village . . . and an old ruin!”

“That’s the Hermitage.” Jude smiled, infected by Cló’s enthusiasm. “It’s one of the oldest parts of the Hall. It used to be a hermitage lighthouse—they’re quite rare—and it’s supposed to be haunted.”

“Oooh! And ghosts!”

“And don’t forget the witches and pirates.”

“Pirates? In England?”

Jude laughed at her incredulity. “The Barbary corsairs were active along the English coast, and there were the Dutch privateers, of course. It got pretty bad here at one stage; that’s why the walls were built along the cliff—to combat piracy.” His eyes grew round with teasing wonder. “On dark and stormy nights lights are seen in the Hermitage, and a strange chanting has been heard that no one can understand. But everyone knows it’s the ghost of a shipwrecked pirate.” He grinned at Cló sideways. “There’s enough here to keep your fertile imagination in serious overdrive.”

Cló almost wrenched her neck as they flew past a modern building, quickly reading the modest sign for Grimdark Seabird Research Centre. “You didn’t tell me there was a research centre here!”

“Didn’t think there was any point, as we won’t be staying long.”

But she was already mentally planning a visit in the next couple of days. It would be sacrilege for an ornithologist not to pop in, perhaps see if there were work opportunities . . . She clamped down on the idea immediately. Jude was right, they wouldn’t be here for long. There was no point looking for a job here when she had a perfectly good job back in Canada. And once the estate was tied up and sold they’d return to their lives, and Grimdark would be nothing more than a dreadful memory for Jude and a wistful what-if for Cló.

“Maybe a change of scenery will be a good thing for us,” she put forward hesitantly.

Jude’s eyes flicked to her with a frown.

“It might help us fall pregnant.”

The word dropped between them like a pebble into a dark pond, sending out cruel ripples of haunting pain. Three miscarriages in the past three years had eroded Cló’s dreams of a family into a pool of despair she was in constant danger of falling into.

“Please, no! Any child conceived in Grimdark will have an unhappy life . . . Christ, sorry, Cló,” he added quickly, at her sharp indrawn breath of shock. “I didn’t mean it like that. You know I want a child as much as you, but not here, not in this place.”

She nodded and turned to the window to hide her grief. The lane twisted along the edge of the cliffs, the boom of waves in the horseshoe bay loud on the warm air. A lone red kite fluttered gently on the thermals.

Like a dog unable to leave a bone alone, she said, “I spoke to Dr. Kilkenny before we left Toronto. He thinks I may not be able to carry boys, as the—the miscarriages were all boys.”

“You didn’t tell me about that. Is that even a thing?”

She shrugged. “Evidently some women can only carry one or other of the sexes to term. It might be my problem.”

“Our problem.” He took his left hand off the wheel and put it on Cló’s thigh. She closed her hand over his. “But not here,” he said, gently. “We’ll try again when we get home.”

Moments later, Cló was distracted from past hurts as they turned off the lane, passed through imposing gates and onto a long avenue of old beech trees. The forked branches laced overhead like woody fingers in an arched tunnel of light and shadow. Reed-throttled marshes flashed between the trunks, serenaded by the sharp rattle of a mistle thrush hidden in the verge.

Cló wanted to gush her wonder at the natural majesty sculpted by human endeavour, but Jude’s dark expression as they neared his ancestral home forbade it.

As they broke from the avenue, an enormous gatehouse reared up before them with dark walls winging away on either side. It was taller than Grimdark Hall, taller than the ruined, spindly Hermitage to the right that crimped and shimmered in the heat, with every appearance of falling into the bay with the slightest suspicion of wind. They drove through the deep arch of the gatehouse into a cobbled courtyard.

Cló’s first sight of Grimdark Hall took her breath away. It gloomed forbiddingly, commanding all it surveyed from the protection of high walls. Everything about it was dark. Its knapped-flint façade menaced under the glaring sun. A profusion of black turrets, towers and finials jostled for space amidst a legion of chimney stacks marching in decorative pairs across the roof’s geography of valleys and peaks. Tall windows gave little warning of what lay within.

The Hall did not stand alone. A huge baroque fountain flounced up from the centre of the courtyard. A walled garden cosied up to a chapel, flourishing gargoyles from every surface. Old buildings, all dressed in knapped flint, huddled like dark-loving toadstools against the perimeter walls; stables, breweries and dairies from a time when Grimdark had housed hundreds.

“When you said you’d grown up in a country manor I was expecting something a lot humbler,” said Cló, in rare reproach, too stunned by the sheer hugeness to process the wounded aggrievement colliding with her rapture of Grimdark untarnished by previous expectations.

Jude switched off the ignition and rested his forearms on the steering wheel to peer glumly at the two women standing on the terrace that swept around the Hall above a wide staircase.

“Sorry,” he said, and puffed out a heartfelt sigh. “I never wanted you to be touched by Grimdark, not even in words.” With reluctance he got out of the car and came around to help Cló out. He stood between her and the two women in an oddly protective way, shielding her from her first proper view of his sisters, or perhaps their view of Cló.

She took his hand and looked him in the eye, searching for shame that she was his wife, this fat, tall, odd-eyed foreigner. But she read nothing from his closed expression.

She gave his hand a quick squeeze of encouragement when he muttered, “Let’s get this over with.”

Stomach skittering with nerves, Cló pulled down her flowery dress that had seemed perfect for the sunny day this morning, but was now crumpled by the drive up from London. Aware she looked like a flowery blancmange, she wished she were thinner and shorter, that her hair wasn’t a heavy dark cap on her head which she’d never managed to style properly, that her eyes weren’t odd-coloured, that she was someone else altogether.

Cló straightened her shoulders, which she tended to stoop to make herself look smaller, and clung to Jude’s hand as they walked across the ocean of cobblestones and up the vast staircase.

She put on her brightest smile to convey an impression of confidence she didn’t feel. But as they drew nearer, her smile faltered. There were no responding smiles from Jude’s sisters.

Hatred. It leached off the Honeyborne sisters, spinning towards Cló with spider silk stickiness.

“What on earth have you done to your hair?” demanded the sister with iron-grey hair fiercely permed into a helmet on her head. She glared at Jude’s long hair tied up in a messy bun stuck through with two chopsticks. No greetings or hugs, not so much as a cold, “Hello.”

“What I want to do with it,” snapped Jude, bristling defensively.

His tension was a physical thing, coursing up Cló’s arm from their clasped hands, setting her on edge even further. She raised an eyebrow at Jude to encourage introductions.

“This is Cló, my wife,” he said, his face softened when he looked at her, then hardened again when he turned back to his sisters. “Cló, these are my sisters, Constance and Ruth.”

“How—how nice to meet you finally,” Cló stuttered.

Two pairs of round green eyes pinned her to the spot.

She cringed and turned to flee back to the car, but Jude’s hand anchored her to his side and she stood frozen like a stunned rabbit.

The sisters were much older than Jude by a good twenty years, and they were day and night in every aspect. Constance, the eldest, was nothing like the marabou stork Cló had been imagining, but more like a belligerent shoebill; big boned, with the rounded shoulders of a rugby player and a ruddy, heavy face of someone who’d spent all hours outdoors in truculent disregard of the weather. Her eyes crawled up and down Cló’s body, noting the crumpled dress, the rolls beneath straining against the fabric before returning to her face. Her sneer made it clear Cló was exactly the sort of pathetic wife she had imagined Jude would bring home.

Withering under Constance’s obvious loathing, Cló smiled tentatively at Ruth Honeyborne . . . and stared in astonishment. As wispy as a newly fledged egret, fluffy hair floated around her neck like an apologetic cloud. Short and thin, Ruth had none of the green-eyed intensity of Constance, but a watery vagueness, her eyes magnified by bottle-bottom glasses. The faintest of birthmarks adorned one cheek in the shape of a cross, which she touched self-consciously when Cló’s gaze passed over it. But it was Ruth’s outlandish apparel that astonished Cló. Adorned in a bright red tailcoat with gold trim, and black trousers tucked into high black boots, she held a long whip that trailed on the floor behind her like a reptilian tail.

One of them was wearing a strong perfume. Cinnamon, apples and lilies. Sickly sweet, it made Cló think of death. It had to be from Ruth; Cló couldn’t imagine someone as masculine as Constance wearing any perfume at all.

“An American,” said Constance to Ruth as though Cló wasn’t standing right in front of them. Ruth nodded and peered at Cló, head cocked to one side like a curious sparrow.

“Canadian,” Cló said apologetically, very conscious of the sharpness of her accent. She felt a terrible urge to curtsey.

A dreadful silence welled up, pulled taut by resentment sparking between the Honeyborne siblings. Cló could understand the Honeyborne sisters’ resentment. Here was the black sheep son returned to inherit everything they held dear, while they would receive only a small yearly annuity for the remainder of their lives and right of abode in the Hall. It must’ve been a bitter pill when the will was read out. Cló glanced guiltily at Jude, hoping he hadn’t read her disloyal thoughts.

“We’ll be in the Blue Suite,” he said.

Constance’s jaw locked pugnaciously. “We had thought you would be more comfortable in the Rose Suite, but”—she forced herself to shrug unconcernedly—“as you will.”

Jude stalked past his sisters, dragging Cló with him.

“Dinner will be at eight in the Silver Dining Room,” Constance called after them, then in a purposely loud whisper, she added, “Dear god, he’s married an overfed mouse.”

“She’s rather large for a mouse,” said Ruth, speaking for the first time, in the surprisingly high-pitched voice of a little girl. “And did you see her peculiar eyes? Quite gave me a turn.”

“Yes . . . her eyes,” said Constance thoughtfully.

Cló whipped around to see the sharp, knowing glance the sisters shared.

“Don’t listen to them,” said Jude through clenched teeth. He put his arm around Cló’s shoulders protectively. “They want you to rise.”

Cló swallowed the hurt tears tightening her throat and nodded, sensing two pairs of green eyes drilling holes into her back as she and Jude stepped through the huge double-leafed doors into Grimdark Hall.

Cló’s jaw dropped.

“Vile, isn’t it?” said Jude, scowling at the vast room.

“Vile? It’s gloriously extravagant!” Cló cricked her neck to study the satyrs pursuing voluptuous women through swirls of colour on the ceiling. Golden cherubs beamed cheekily from huge columns. An ornamental fireplace took up much of one wall, and sculpted men, clad with a single fig leaf, peered down superciliously from their lofty plinths.

Jude shook his head, smiling. “You are such a tourist. I hate the baroque style—so overdone. A pissing contest in vulgarity.”

“Stop being a snob,” Cló said mildly. “Is the whole place like this?”

“No, just this and the ballroom.”

“I thought this was the ballroom.”

“No, this is the Great Hall, as opposed to the Little Hall that is only marginally smaller than this,” Jude explained with little pride or care. “The whole place is a hodgepodge of styles. Each generation had to add something, and now it’s a ghastly jumble of bad architecture.”

“And now you’re being a purist,” Cló teased, beguiled by the hodgepodge. Happily, she couldn’t tell one style from another if it had slapped her in the face.

She left Jude’s side to wander into the middle of the hall, and turned slowly in a circle, cloaking herself in dust motes glittering like pollen on the sunrays streaming through the stained-glass windows.

She slowed her gentle spinning, her delight in the gaudiness fading. Perhaps it was the Honeyborne sisters watching her sullenly from the terrace, perhaps it was Jude’s aversion colouring her vision, but the brightness and charm from a moment before dulled. The building tightened around her like a scowl, the cherubs no longer beamed but viewed her with suspicion, the blank-eyed stare of the statues followed her with hostility.

She caught Jude watching her with amusement. “You’ve already given the place a personality,” he said.

“Just getting a feel for it.” Cló believed all buildings had a personality. Some felt like a home the moment you walked in, some cold and snooty. Others merely gloomy and unloved. And then there were the houses shadowed with dreadful, bloody secrets that seeped from their very walls. Grimdark Hall fell into the latter category.

Shaking herself of silly fancies, Cló hurried after Jude as he opened one of the many doors facing onto the hall.

Grimdark was a labyrinth of rooms running into each other. The echo of their footsteps lingered in the long hallways. Feeling like Alice who’d fallen down the rabbit hole, and cursed with a similar curiosity, Cló opened every door they passed. Dust-shrouded bedrooms led to sitting rooms and bathrooms. Ornate staircases rose and fell. Surprising crannies led to nooks. Dour men and women frowned down from age-darkened paintings.

Skin prickling into goose bumps, Cló glanced over her shoulder, sensing she was being followed. No one was there, but she could imagine the sisters stalking them. They seemed the sort who listened at keyholes.

“Where is the Blue Suite?” Cló asked, almost walking on Jude’s heels.

“Somewhere along here.” They travelled down yet another hallway lined in green carpet, the gloomy portraits replaced by stuffed trophies, fur and feathers motheaten and rank with the sickly sweet odour of decay. Glassy eyes scrutinised Cló as though trying to decide what manner of creature she was. Their gaze was not friendly.

She shuddered at the thought of walking down the hallway under the weight of those gleaming eyes every day, wishing Jude had chosen a different room for them to stay in.

“Ah. Here it is.” Jude opened a door that looked much like every other, then wheezed, “Christ!” as he dislodged a surge of dust on entering the room.

The Blue Suite was very blue. The cobalt canopy and drapes of the enormous four-poster bed matched the grimy curtains and aged carpet. Sapphire fabric lined the walls. A door led to a sitting room with spindly chairs upholstered in violet, which looked priceless to Cló’s uneducated eye, not daring to test their strength by sitting on them. Another door led to a dressing room, and yet another to a dated bathroom finished in walnut and azure tiles.

Cobwebs had invaded the chandeliers; more had laid siege in every corner. The air was foul with mould and wood rot. . . .