Sorry it’s taken me a bit longer than expected to get this chapter of the story finished, but I finally got some time to do my last editorial pass over the past weekend, and here it is. I hope for anyone who has read the first two chapter, this one keeps the interest going…
Tony
Chapter 3
The Matherson House
It was ten past noon when I finally made it to the Matherson estate, and while the sun was high in the sky on that unusually cloudless day, that place was stuck five minutes from dusk as if it were deep in the Louisiana mangroves.
A sallow, necrotic shadow hung over the house, despite sitting high above Glenmorton’s northern cliffs, and from atop the rise, I could see the bruised smear of the sea on the horizon, gnawing endlessly at the Glenmorton coastline.
A wrought-iron gate greeted me like a sentry before the short path leading up to the mansion door—its twisted black design adorned with oxidised whale motifs and a brass placard that read Carrow Hall.
Subtly was never a word used to describe the Mathersons, and despite no direct cross of paths with their kin, I knew the stories, and they were many. In truth, like all the old whaling family, they all remain infamous to this day, dragging their wealth from the belly of the ocean into cathedrals and castles that remind us all how far they’d gone for their glory. Royalty rarely bred modesty.
Lady Eleanor Matheson met me at the door. She was tall, thin and brittle around the mouth, like the cracks you see in the salt flats of New Mexico. Her silver hair twisted around her head into a high knot like it belonged on the prow of a whaler. And her eyes—sharp, ocean-blue—held more life than I expected, but they flicked beyond me, looking through me as though checking to see if I’d brought the past to her door.
“Mr Fairchild,” she said, voice dry as an old ledger. “Good. Thank you for coming.” She looked me up and down and smiled a thin, knowing smile. “You look exactly as I imagined.”
“I usually disappoint,” I replied, extending my hand. “A pleasure to make your acquaintance.”
She returned my greeting with a limp handshake, once without warmth or welcome, just the grim satisfaction of being in charge, distracted by what has to be done, not by the politeness that leads to that point.
“Follow me,” she said, then she led me inside.
The air changed as soon as I crossed the threshold—scented faintly with camphor and old velvet, it felt heavy in the lungs. The enormous hallway was cavernous with heavy drapes holding back any strangled light pawing at the windows. Various ornately gilded frames enveloped paintings of vast whaling ships mid-harpoon—leviathans of oil and grease, the great fountains of the Matheson fortune born in blood.
I listened to every faint echo and thump from deeper inside the manor. In the depths of the roof, far above my head, I heard the ancient beams that supported the roof structure groan like my father’s last weeks before he passed away from consumption. When every breath was an effort, and every step was a drag.
Matherson didn’t speak as she led me along corridors that seemed to stretch longer than the building should allow. The carpet we walked on was thick and piled with the fibres of a distant land, patterned in the style of the Raj, while the colours remained worthy of the sea.
We stopped outside a nondescript door, one that didn’t match the carved architraves of the others—simple walnut, blackened at the corners, with a warped brass handle worn smooth from use.
“This is it,” she said. “Reginald’s study. In truth, I haven’t gone in since the night I found that infernal book. His journal.”
“It frightened you?” I said.
“I couldn’t breathe. Like it wanted to show me its power over the living.”
I took a deep breath. Supernatural investigations were not my thing, and my biggest fear was opening that door and feeling nothing. How can I earn my fee if I sense and feel nothing of what is tormenting my client?
“I’ll leave you to look,” Matheson said. “Come to the parlour when you’re done, and we can talk.”
I opened the door and stepped inside, and immediately the cold hit me like surf spray in winter. It wasn’t a draft, nor the absence of heat. It was all around me, a presence, like a garment of ice that chilled my soul. The kind of cold that felt aware.
I took my time to look around the study, taking in every inch of that time capsule of masculine decay. Stacks of books, many on oceanography and obscure mythologies, were stacked in shelves that lined every wall. A model schooner half-built in a glass case sat on the ancient wooden desk in the centre of the floor space, and a whalebone cane rested across the high-backed chair pushed tight to the desk.
An open book sat in the centre of the desk. Thick black leather bindings, as if swollen from damp. Was this the journal that remembered the sea? Told of old Matheson’s descent into madness?
I pulled a pair of patent gloves from my coat before touching it, as the oils from our hands can damage ancient pages and taint the leather beyond repair.
I heard a cough from behind me, and Eleanor Matheson had appeared at the door. “Apologies, Mr Fairchild, I needed to look. Would you like some tea?”
She stayed outside the room, one hand pressed to her chest like she was holding something in.
“Do you mind if I take this?” I said. “I’ll be careful with it. I promise.”
She nodded.
“Anything else you think I should know before I start?”
She hesitated, and I caught a flicker of something pass through her eyes—it looked like…regret, maybe. Or guilt. Whatever it was, it didn’t last. And I was sure that it would return later for a second look, once I got further into the case.
“There is something,” she said. “A smell. It happened when I first opened the journal. Like salt. And something else…a rich scent of copper, like something dead but not rotting.”
I took one last glance at the room before I closed the door. The temperature didn’t rise when the latch clicked.
I followed her to the parlour, where the grand fireplace sported a raging fire, but barely made a dent in the chill I now felt. Lights flickered all around, candles burning with varying intensities, all dancing to the tune of draughts unseen and unfelt where I sat.
Matheson poured us both tea, though she set hers on the squat table and didn’t drink.
“I’ll stay close by,” I said. “Give me a day to study the journal, and then I’ll come back to you with a plan.”
“If you need anything else—”
“I’ll let you know,” I said, finishing my tea.
I didn’t ask why she hadn’t burned the journal. Why hadn’t she sold the estate and moved to the country, never to come back? In truth, I already knew the answer.
Guilt is her jailer, while penance is her fear.
It took me thirty minutes to return to my cabin, where I placed the journal beside the tank. Yes, I had taken the octopus with me, as I had no idea how long the case would take me away from my digs. Octopus drifted toward me, her tentacles stretching out without touching the glass. As I watched, her body darkened slightly, a blotch of warning ink spreading down her mantle.
I walked to the tank, opened the small case of food I stored on top, and dropped three small fish into the water. “Enjoy,” I said, as the sprats swam off in the direction of their death.
I lit a cigarette and sat on the bed, then pulled the journal from my case.
I cracked the spine and instinct took me, making me shiver and check the walls, the door, as if I expected the spirit of old Matherson to contact me. But nothing happened. No chills, no smells.
The first page was blank, but the corner was smudged with a thumbprint in something that wasn’t ink.
I turned to the next.
And read the first lines of the entry at the top.
“We should not have gone ashore. The island was not on any map, and we should have taken that as our first warning.”