There may be a clue in these chapters - look out for a link!

Preface

My name is Dante, a name I have given myself to

protect those around me. I tell this story as a

warning to you. Those who play with fire will surely

be burned. Those who open the gates of Hell shall

surely be consumed. I am a Ghosthunter – one who

can discern spirits. Perhaps you will understand all

that I am about to tell you.

This is a true story…

1878

Dark Matter

Dry, crisp leaves fell to the ground around the trees that led to the house. Nothing stirred as the midnight owl hooted discontentedly as it sat on the gnarled gargoyle that looked down to the black carriage below. Two white horses shivered in the darkness, their eyes flashed bright and fearful. They danced nervously as the coachman slid from his seat to the ground and in one continuous action opened the door. It was as if he had done this many times before and gave no concern for the many whom he carried within the carriage.

     ‘All is well,’ he said gruffly to the occupant of the coach and pulled up his collar to face the night. ‘Will there be anything else?’

The passenger grunted a reply as he pushed by the coachman and walked up the three wide steps to the varnished door that stood slightly open. The man pushed against the door with the tip of his black cane as if he were too superior to touch the handle. A warm draught of air blew about him as he stepped inside and dropped his cape to the floor, discarded his hat and gloves along with his walking stick.

     ‘Bring me port, lots of it,’ he snarled at the butler who hid in the shadow behind the door. ‘I do not want to be disturbed.’

The man walked on, not waiting for a reply. He crossed the darkened hallway and took the wooden stairs two at a time as he muttered to himself. A long case clock struck the hour with twelve steady chimes. He picked a candlestick from the small table and cherished its meagre light as he turned the landing. For a moment he looked up and admired the vaulted ceiling and the faces of angels that stared down at him. He smirked and snivelled as he wiped the dew from his face with the cuff of his coat.

Slamming the door to his room, he placed the candle on the mantelpiece and was soon seated by the fire. It burnt softly in the grate as if it had been waiting just for him. The man looked inquisitively into the dark shadows as if there should be a guest waiting for him. The room was stark and bare. There were two chairs by the fire, a table and ragged curtains across the window. The floor was polished board. It hissed quietly through the narrow gaps as if the house was breathing. Spirals of dust blew upwards in small, elfish, mistrals that danced about his feet. He quickly pulled the high backed chair closer to the dulling flames and waited.

The door opened. A butler placed a silver tray of port, bread and cheese on the table next to the fire. He had done this many times before. He knew not to speak. To leave without saying a word was what his master wanted. He had no time for servants with small talk and chitter - chatter. Without even a sigh or breath, the servant turned and left the room. The man pulled on the whiskers of his beard and then took the decanter and poured himself a large drink. With old, worn fingers, he broke a piece of bread in half and wrapped it around a slither of cheese with the delight of the most stoic, epicurean sybarite. He ate loudly, slurping as he chewed, moistening the bread with gulps of Garrafeira.

     ‘You need not think I don’t know you’re here,’ he said in a whisper as if speaking to someone he did not trust. ‘I know this is the night and the hour that we agreed upon twenty-one years ago.’

There was no reply. The man put down his glass and picked a log from the hearth and placed it with peculiar dexterity on the fire. It crackled loudly and spit cinders of red ash. He sat back in the chair and looked about him. His eyes searched shadows, as if each patch of darkness were a cloak of invisibility for someone or something that lurked beyond human sight. The candle he had placed on the mantle flickered as if blown in the wind as a chill breath blew upon him.

     ‘So you are here? You are just as you were before – too afraid to take form and let me see you face to face,’ he snorted angrily as he spat cheese on the floor. His words echoed coldly.

     ‘You have a good memory my friend,’ said a voice in the gloom behind him.

The man didn’t turn or even look astonished that the darkness should choose to speak. He simply leant forward, picking another piece of cheese to dip in his port-wine. Then as if preparing to fight, drew a breath through his teeth.

     ‘Is this really the day you have come for payment?’ he asked as calmly as he could as his foot twitched in its tight leather boot. ‘Could we not postpone it a while longer?

There was a gentle laugh from the other side of the room. The man turned as the darkness grew more intense and became solid before his eyes.

     ‘We agreed and I will not let you go back on your word,’ the shadow said curtly as it formed to the shape of a man. ‘I have come for what is mine and it shall not be taken from me.’

     ‘Surely there must be another way?’ the man asked as he sipped from his drink. ‘I have much that you could take instead of what we agreed.’

The fire appeared to glow even brighter. The flames leapt up the chimney back as the shadow came closer to him. The man looked on as the darkness sat in the chair opposite him. It were as if a swirling of smoke and fog had formed the outline of a long, thin body. In the midst of what looked like a head were two red eyes that blinked incessantly.

     ‘I have travelled a great distance for this night and your fears are not my concern. I will take what was promised to me.’

The form took shape until it was that of a man. It was dressed in long, black trousers and leather boots with a bone-studded jacket of skin. Several spikes of thick black hair grew from a bald head that appeared to be too small for the broad shoulders on which it was mounted by a short, thick and muscular neck. What the man noticed the most was the colour of the other’s eyes. In the light of the fire, they burnt like coal and followed his every movement.

     ‘We have aged since we first met,’ said the man as he studied the thickening shadow that now comfortably filled the chair opposite. ‘The years have not been good to us.’

     ‘In my world we are not exempt from the ravages of time. Though our days are longer and not governed by the sun and moon, we still grow old,’ he replied, ‘eventually grow old…’

     ‘Then not all ghosts are immortal,’ said the man as he drank his port. ‘Do you eat and drink in your world?

     ‘Of that we have no need, we live in that place between the stars that you cannot see.’ He stopped and looked intently at the man who huddled like a thin toad by the fire. ‘All these questions will not take my mind from the fact that you owe me something precious,’ he replied.

The man held out his hand and slowly opened his fingers.

     ‘Here is the ring,’ he said as if it were a fairground trinket.

The other man leant forward and took the ring with his finger. He stared at the large red stone mounted in a ransom of gold.

     ‘It is not just the ring I come for, but also the hand on which it lived and gave it life,’ replied the dark, thickening shadow as it shuffled in its seat. ‘Would you try to cheat me of my prize?’

     ‘It would be foolish,’ he replied sadly.

     ‘You summonsed me all those years ago to do your will. A party game brought me from my place to this. I used my power for you and broke every law of this and every other universe in which we live. For this I will have to give account.’

     ‘You have slipped back and forth through the ages; don’t give me the excuse it was a benign favour to an old friend. I called and you gladly came. Came, to be paid a price higher than that you should receive,’ he shouted his reply. ‘I have followed your life through the ages of mankind. You may not be immortal but one hundred years of my life is just a second in yours. You tricked me in to this agreement, as you have done to others in times past…’

     ‘We agreed, the ring – the hand and the life of the one who wore it. I have waited twenty one years and will not be disappointed.’

     ‘Very well, so mote it be…’ he said as he put down the glass and dug into the deep pocket within his coat. ‘Take it.’ From within he took a small parcel the size of a song thrush wrapped in white cloth. He looked at it as if it were of great price and then threw it to his companion. ‘You have all that we agreed upon – the debt is paid.’

Layer by layer, the shadow-man slowly unwrapped the cloth. First he took from it a bandage of hessian. Then without saying a word he carefully removed the final wrapping until he held an elegant, dead and lifeless hand severed at the wrist.

     ‘A man who keeps his word shall be rewarded,’ he said with a shudder of his bones as driblets of dark matter fell from all about him. They hissed and sparked as they dropped to the floor in stinging praise. ‘I take it that this ended in death?’

     ‘A sacrifice I will never forget,’ the man replied.

[1]

There had never been a time like it. It had rained all summer. The roads from the far side of town were flooded. Even on the last day of term the sky was winter dark. I dreaded the holidays, but I would never have expected that within three days of leaving Westwood School, I would be a suspected killer. Hunted and chased like a wounded animal in a place from which I had no escape, and even my girlfriend wouldn’t believe me.

It had rained since my sixteenth birthday. May 1st. My mother had said that it wouldn’t rain for long. That it had to stop sometime, but the rain kept pouring. Day and night. She said things like that as she gazed aimlessly out of the window of our kitchen across the lawn that led to the wood and the river far below.

Dark day was followed by dark day. Even when I watched 501 News the weird, hippy guy in the suit and tie told me that yet another cold front was coming in from the Atlantic. There could even be snow. It was July. I had even taken the unusual step of speaking to Mr Oldenburg, my fat, greasy haired geography teacher. Oldenburg had told me dismissively that weather was the weather and there was nothing either he nor I could do about it. He had ranted that there was no such thing as Global Warming and that history would show that it was just like the Medieval Warm Period where they grew grapes in Scotland.

     ‘Dante…(everyone called me Dante – even my mother, though my name was Zack,) the Chancellor can’t tax a warm period,’ he had shouted as he threw me out of his room.

I knew that Oldenburg didn’t like me. Well, not since I had set fire to his desk in Year Ten. It had been an experiment. I had got the magnifying glass to see if the sun could light the paper on top of the pile of homework. The fire chief said that it must have smouldered for at least an hour before bursting into flames and burning down half the school.

As I walked the street, I couldn’t help thinking that all was not well. The trees were in bright green leaf. It was July the 21st, 4.35pm and yet it was like a midwinter day. The sun was blocked out by thick black cloud. It thundered and rumbled. Thunder cracked from cloud to cloud. Lightning strobed on the wet road. There was a bitter wind that rattled the branches of the tress like a thousand swords ready for battle. I looked up at the sky and thought that this was not going to be a good start to the six-week vacation. Forty-two days of rain - two more than Noah.

If there was one thing I hated, it was being out in the thunder. It made me shiver…not with cold, but with fear. It always brought back the same memory. When I was five, my father had taken me on a rowing boat on Lake Windermere. It had been a clear sunny day. He told me he was taking me to the house on the island to meet someone. It had all been a great secret, even from my mother.

When we were far out away from the shore a storm had come. It had hailed so hard that my father had told me to hide in the bottom of the boat and had covered me with his jacket. I can remember peeking out from time to time as the thunder crashed and lightning cracked. I saw my father was bleeding with the cuts from the hail. Bullets of ice fell from the sky with enough power to smash into the water like falling meteors. They hissed as they exploded around the boat. Dad rowed for the shore as fast as he could. It was as if he knew he had to get to the side of the lake before something terrible happened. I could feel the boat heave and yawl as I hid from the bombardment of ice. I was shivering, cold and frightened.

I would never forget that day. It was the last time I ever saw my father. When the storm passed and the lightning was no more, my father was gone. The rowboat was empty and I was alone. Strange thing… death. It leaves a big hole in your life that doesn’t seem to fill in. It stares at you every day and won’t go away.

Walking in the tree lined street brought back the same fear. Thunder rolled above me, lightning crackled and the trees seemed to shake.

I feared the storm. Storms took people away, just like what had happened to my father. One minute he was there, the next he was gone. That was what storms did.

In a way, I hoped it would happen to me. I counted on my fingers the good things and the bad things of getting taken by a storm. Good was winning three fingers to two.

If I were to vanish, then I would not have to go to Sixth Form College ever again. Six weeks seemed a long time, but like every year, I knew it would soon be September and it would be the night before school. My mother would have cleaned my clothes. Who wears clean jeans? She would have bought me a new bag, shoes, and of course the traditional pencil case – which I would purposefully lose on the first day. That was one good reason for being stolen.

Stolen was what I had said to the police when they had found the boat floating in the middle of the lake. They had asked me where my father was and I had just said the only word that had come into my mind…stolen…

It seemed to fit what had happened. Something had come down in the storm and taken him away. All that was left in the boat was my father’s coat and his watch. It was funny that the one thing I could remember of my father was his smile and his gold teeth. He had three at the side of his mouth. They shone as he laughed – he laughed all the time. It was the last thing I remembered of him, the only thing I remembered of him.

The other things about being stolen were that I wouldn’t have to go to Sixth Form College or have to endure that day in August when the exam results would be posted on the school wall for everyone to see. I knew that Ben Harvey would be there counting how many A*’s he had and how many C’s I had managed to scrape. The thought made me feel sick. Being stolen would solve all that.

Being stolen would also solve the problem of Reggie. Out of everything, she was the biggest problem of all. It had been three months, eleven days and seventeen hours since I had agreed to become her companion. It was her description and not mine. She said she didn’t want a boyfriend…that was too… antediluvian …whatever that meant. Reggie did that. Always changed things. The one thing about Reggie was that she was beautiful. A young Madonna and I couldn’t understand why she chose me. The downside of being her companion was that her head was in a weird place, the sort of place where reality didn’t matter. Gothica, she called it. I knew she was weird when she asked for my number – she made me repeat it time and again – 07772719151 call me – it was Orange – the best…(or email me at zackdante@googlemail.com)

Her world was dark, filled with sad girls in black lipstick, Tarot cards, Ouija boards, Fleet Foxes and My Chemical Romance. I didn’t mind being just another accessory like a pair of earrings or handbag. Hanging around with Reggie was in some ways the best and most unexpected thing that had ever happened to me. I got major respect – she was hot.

Yet, Reggie was a problem in so much as she dressed as if she lived in Victorian England. She loved black…to her black was the new black and would always be black even in summer. It didn’t seem to matter this year, as it fitted the weather. But, knowing Reggie, if I was stolen, then she would be as well. And she would be there – (wherever it was you went) – before me. She had become stranger over the last few weeks. This was about the time she had started to hang round the magic shop. It was called Jack in the Green, after some bloke with a beard called Jethro Tull who played the flute - he wrote a song with it in the lyrics. The guy who owned the shop was called Milton. He was a lot older than us and said he could do magic. Not bringing rabbits out of a hat or card tricks, proper magic – dark stuff.

I had tried to end my companionship with Reggie at least three times, but she would somehow always manage to talk me out of it. She had a smile – a smile that could melt ice. It was warm, luscious and very beautiful. Reggie was completely mad, but completely gorgeous. She was an insane mix of vampire and soap star all wrapped up in a crinoline frock over tight jeans, black boots and leather gloves. She would lick her lips and pout and you couldn’t say no.

What annoyed me most about her was that she was a walking dictionary. Reggie always had a word for the day. She would try to use it in every sentence and in every conversation. It got so bad that I hated going with her into Starbucks. She would try to order her Mocha with her word for the day. That was why I hadn’t seen her since Tuesday.

That Tuesday afternoon I had come out of school, gone into town and sat at our favourite Starbucks seat upstairs by the toilet next to the dying palm tree in a terracotta pot. Reggie had gone downstairs to order the drinks. It was her turn to pay. It was always her turn to pay. She had a job.

I heard her ask for the coffee.

     ‘I would like to propound that we should drink two Mocha’s?’ she had said to the bewildered assistant who thought this was some kind of Gothic greeting.

     ‘We only have skinny milk,’ came the reply.

     ‘Propound …pruh-POWND… the transitive verb: To offer for consideration; to put forward; to propose,’ Reggie had replied dramatically through tight, black lips.

I had sat upstairs and cringed. Even though she was beautiful, she could be a real pain in the butt. It was then that I had picked up a newspaper, something I never did. I started to read. It was only so I wouldn’t be seen. I could hear the argument getting more serious downstairs. I didn’t want anyone to know that I was with the beautiful, but clearly psychotic Gothette in tight black dress and Doc Martin boots. The one who was now arguing loudly with the Chav behind the counter who insisted that she could speak English as ‘gud as any -un…whatever…’

It was then that I had seen the advert in the back of The Trader. It was the freebie paper with the recycled news from the week before. It was always packed with jobs, cars and devices to cure hernias – whatever hernias were. My mother thought it was great because it was just the right size to go in the bottom of the cat’s litter tray – and she said it was ultra absorbent, though she never read it at all.

There, just under the advert for a Psychic and Tarot card reader called Madame Serapis, (who was really the fat ugly woman from the dry cleaners next to Waterstone’s), was a small ad.

It was the cheapest money could buy. Four lines in a miniscule font that got smaller with each word.

STUDENT WANTED. (MALE IF POSSIBLE.) MUST BE ABLE TO WORK HARD.

EVENINGS AND WEEKENDS ONLY. GARDEN, POND AND HOUSE SITTING DUTY.

GOOD RATE OF PAY.

CONTACT DR HUBRIS . ASPEN HALL. THROXENBY. CALL IN PERSON 5.00pm FRIDAY 21ST JULY

I tore out the advert and put it neatly into my beat up, old wallet.

As we drank our coffee we had argued. Reggie stormed out. It was all over one word…pretentious. I didn’t know what it meant, but it sounded good. I had said that it was Reggie’s most endearing quality. She in return tipped Mocha down the front of my trousers. I went into the washroom and used the hand dryer to get the coffee dry. It stained and made me look as if I was incontinent. That was days before, and she hadn’t called or sent a text since

Now, I walked down the lane, I could see Aspen Hall on the hill above me. It was surrounded by fields. There was an avenue of oak trees that looked hundreds of years old. At the bottom of the avenue were the gates to the house. They were rusted and broken and looked like the ribs of a dead whale. The gate on the right hung limply from the ornate column-post, topped with a gargoyle that stared menacingly.

It was a weird place to go for a job and when I got there I wasn’t sure. Something made me feel edgy and frightened.

Strangely, the road didn’t go up through the avenue of trees. It veered incongruously to the right as if it had been changed at some time in the past and the avenue would never be used.

I stood at the bottom of the drive and looked up. The rain had finally stopped. The thunder rumbled in the distance. Aspen Hall looked miserable and bleak. The windows on the top floor were all shuttered. It was as if the house had stood empty for years. I could see an old car outside the front door. There was a man washing it in the last drops of rain. I looked at my watch 4.45pm. I was early for the first time in my life.

As I walked up the road I began to regret telling my mother about the advert in the Trader. She had said it would be a good thing to get a job – get some money for college – take Reggie for a coffee. The idea of me working had become such a thing in her mind that she went on about it every morning that week. She did that. Since my father had disappeared she had become obsessive. She cleaned constantly and worried about the tiniest detail of my life. I expected to see her hiding behind a bush to make sure I went or even turning up at the house to tell Dr Hubris how good I was at washing up – which was a total lie.

When I got close to the house, I looked back. To my surprise, the gates that I could see to be rusted and broken, began to close on their own. I looked up to the house. It was even drabber and darker than before. The rain started again. It was heavy and bleak. It reminded me of Lake Windermere. Outside the house on the wet granite steps, next to the red Bentley, stood Dr Hubris.

[2]

There was the distinct smell of muscle liniment in the hallway of the house, the kind of stuff old people dowsed on sore muscles. I knew it well. My grandfather used it all the time. He would put it on to keep warm and save on heating his flat. It would burn on the skin and give the old man a red glow as if he was sunburnt. Yet here, it was out of place. The house was beautiful. A large ornate staircase swept to an upper floor in an entrance hall as big as a schoolroom. There was a grand piano that looked as though it had never been played. On the opposite wall was an old mirror with a gilt frame as big as a window. The room seemed to go on forever. Yet the whole place felt empty. It was more like a museum than a house and echoed as we walked.

Dr Hubris didn’t speak. He led me briskly through Aspen Hall. It was larger on the inside than it had seemed on the outside. The rooms were each the size of a house with ornate ceilings, fine curtains and Persian carpets. On every wall were oil paintings. At first I didn’t pay much attention to them. But, as I looked closer, I noticed they were mostly of the same woman at different times of her life. She was thin, elegant with warm, blue eyes. She stared down from the portraits as if she would speak out my name as I walked by.

Dr Hubris walked quickly through the rooms dragging me along in his wake. He walked faster and I found it hard to keep up with him. His brogue shoes clicked against the wooden floors as he led me deeper within. It wasn’t the pace you walked inside, well, not if you lived in an ordinary house.

     ‘The Library,’ he said as he galloped in one door and out the other. I glimpsed a room stacked with books on old oak shelves and dark walls. There was a fireplace, desk and chair and nothing else. It smelt of tobacco. ‘The Parlour,’ said Hubris as we walked through the next room. He began to slow down. ‘The Orangery… sit …’ Hubris pointed to a wicker chair.

I sat in the chair. Hubris stared at me as if I had done something wrong. The chair creaked and moaned under my weight like it would to break at any time. I wasn’t that big. I weighed eleven stone, four pounds, I was six feet tall, six two if you counted the spikes of my blonde hair.

The Orangery was full of large plants. They loomed everywhere. Some climbed the walls and across the ceiling. Grapes hung down and on several trees in large red pots were bright oranges. It was like a jungle. Beads of water trickled down the inside of the glass and small birds flew from branch to branch.

Hubris stared at me as he sat next to a large wood-burning stove that heated the room.

     ‘Why are you here?’ Hubris asked in a quiet voice as he pulled fluff from the sleeve of his tweed suit.

I didn’t know what to say. It was 5.00pm – where were the others? I thought, as I listened to a long-case clock chiming the hour far away in another room.

     ‘Am I the only one?’ I asked. Hubris raised an eyebrow as if he didn’t know what I was on about. ‘The job – the one advertised in last weeks Trader.’

     ‘I never advertised the job,’ Hubris said honestly. ‘I am totally astounded you are here.’

     ‘But I read it. I was in Starbucks. It said you wanted someone to look after your garden, pond and house. Be here at five o’ clock today and here I am.’ It sounded like I was already arguing. I took out my wallet and looked inside, sure I had put the ad next to the five-pound note.

Hubris got up without speaking and left the room. I put the wallet on the table and checked my pockets looking for the ad. A few moments later he was back holding a copy of The Trader.

     ‘Is this the one?’ he asked as he began to ruffle through the pages towards the back where the jobs were.

I looked at the front page. It was the one with the picture of the flooding at the farm where all the pigs had drowned.

     ‘That’s the one. The advert’s under the one for the Tarot card women – the one who works in town, I have it at home,’ I replied, knowing that when he opened the pages the ad would be there.

Hubris stopped turning the pages. His eyes searched the text. There was something about him that was so familiar.

     ‘You mean this advert here?’ he asked as he folded up the newspaper so that it framed the advert neatly.

He handed me the newspaper. There was the picture of Madame Serapis. She stared at me just as she had done in Starbucks. I looked at the page. There was no ad. I started to panic as I turned the page, opened the newspaper and put the sheets on the marble tiled floor and spread them out to look. Hubris waited patiently. He breathed heavily as if he expected me to reply immediately.

I got off the chair and down on my knees. The floor was cold, the marble tiles dug in to my skin. Frantically I checked the date on every page. I could feel my pulse racing and beads of sweat trickling across my forehead. It was as if I was in a race. I looked up at Hubris, he wasn’t smiling.

     ‘I’m sure it was here. I saw it. I told my mother. That’s why I’m here. You let me in. I told you who I was and everything. If there’s no job why did you look as if you were expecting me?’ I could feel I was on the verge of shouting. I began to panic, I knew what I had seen and yet I couldn’t find it. It was like one of those dreams when you’re getting a train and you can’t find the ticket. I was in a strange house with a weird looking guy in a tweed suit, who hadn’t advertised the job at all.

I tried to think if I had told my mother where the job was. I knew I had said everything, but wasn’t sure if I had said where. Kids get murdered by weird guys like this, I thought as I reached into my pocket. I could feel the keys of my mobile phone. I knew how to text without being seen. I had done it so many times in class. I pressed the first key. There was silence. The phone was dead. I slipped the phone from my pocket and looked at it quickly. The screen was blank – no power.

I wanted to run. I had heard about men like Hubris. Get kids to their houses and then kill them. It was all I could think of. He seemed to smile at me. His eyes gleamed brightly.

I knew I wouldn’t get by him. The chair next to the wood burner was too close to the door. The man could grab me easily. It wasn’t the fighting that frightened me. Dr Hubris was in his fifties – he was old, but he looked quite strong. I had seen a picture of him on the wall in the hallway. Hubris was in a rowing boat with some other men.

I clutched the phone and thought I could smash it in his face if he tried anything. I just felt there was something weird about him. He looked sad – not your usual stalker – just sad - as if he’d lost everything.

Hubris sat in the chair by the stove and smiled. His face wrinkled as he tugged the strands of hair in his goatee beard. He pushed the gold-rimmed spectacles from the tip of his nose to the top of his head.

     ‘The trouble is. I was going to advertise the job and then forgot to post it,’ he said as he reached inside his tatty tweed jacket and pulled out a crumpled envelope. ‘See for yourself. The advert and the cheque are still inside.’

Hubris handed me the envelope. I tore it open. There, just as he said was a neatly typed piece of headed paper. It had a wolf crest over the address. Aspen Hall, Throxenby. It was dated two weeks ago. There was the advert, just as I had read it.

     ‘I couldn’t believe it when I saw you walking up the drive. When you said you were here about the job I just had to let you in and find out how you knew.’ Hubris said as he stood up and picked an orange from the tree and handed it to me.

     ‘It was in the paper. I read it. You’re just winding me up.’ I said as I put the orange in the pocket of my coat. I just wanted to get out of the house. In my mind I retraced the way to the front door. I knew that if I could just get by him, I could easily out run him.

     ‘Then go and check at the newspaper office. Ask them if I have placed an advertisement. See the original copy. I don’t know what you saw in Starbucks but it wasn’t the advert for this job.’ Hubris seemed indignant. His voice was sharp and he stared at me with his deep eyes. ‘I certainly don’t play games. It is as much a mystery to me as it is to you. How do I know you aren’t just a burglar coming to see what there is to steal. I should tell the police.’

     ‘I’m none of those things. I’m telling you the truth. I read about the job. How else would I have known? Did you tell anyone?’ I asked.

Hubris stopped and thought. He looked even more perplexed. For several seconds he stared and stared. I realised why he looked so familiar. It was because he looked like my father. There was a vague resemblance.

     ‘I told no one. There is no one to tell. I live here alone. I have a flat in London and the house in Throxenby. I just don’t understand how you have come for a job that only existed in my head and on that piece of paper.’ Hubris looked about him anxiously. ‘I think you better be going.

Hubris got up from the chair and gestured for me to leave. I struggled from the floor and picked up the leaves of paper folding them neatly. Without asking I slipped them into my coat pocket.

     ‘But what about the job?’ I asked as I followed Dr Hubris back through the rooms to the hallway. The last thing I wanted was to go home and tell my mother I didn’t get the job because I’d dreamt up the advert.

     ‘I don’t think it would be right.’ Hubris said as he opened the front door.

I sighed and looked back into the large hallway with its ornate staircase and gold chandelier. It had obviously once been a proud house. Now it was drab and dusty with cobwebs on the ceiling and dust on the wooden floor. The only thing that looked as though it had been cleaned was the painting of the woman that towered over us both.

     ‘Who’s that?’ I asked as I stepped – almost pushed from the house by Hubris.

     ‘My wife,’ Hubris replied as he turned and looked at the picture.

     ‘She is beautiful,’ I replied as I stepped from the house and on to the gravel drive.

     ‘I know, but beauty doesn’t last. We are robbed of our youth and then comes death,’ he said as he sighed.

     ‘Is she… dead?’ I asked cautiously.

     ‘I think so. She went missing, a boat accident. They never found her.’ I shuddered when he spoke. Dr Hubris saw my hand shaking. He looked me in the eyes. ‘You’re different,’ he said, ‘Familiar in some way. Did you say your name was Dante?

I nodded and grunted a reply. The rain had stopped. For the first time in ages there was a gleam of sunlight breaking through the clouds. I said goodbye and shrugged my shoulders as I walked off. I didn’t want to look back. I always hated saying good-bye no matter who it was I was leaving.

     ‘There is a job – if you want it.’ Dr Hubris shouted after me.

I stopped, turned and looked back at the house. It was now in a deep black shadow. The sun burnt around it as if the house were an eclipsing moon.

Dr Hubris smiled. He looked taller than before. His tweed suit hung baggily from his shoulders.

     ‘When?’ I asked.

     ‘In the morning. It’s always best to see the house in the morning. Come back at ten and I will show you round and you can start work,’ said Hubris. ‘Just a trial – for a week. You can see if you like it.’

     ‘Tomorrow?’ I shouted back as the thunder rumbled far away.

By the time I reached the gates at the bottom of the drive it was raining again. I looked back at the house. A light burnt in the attic window. I could see the shadow of someone moving in the room.

It was then that my phone vibrated and chimed three times. I picked it out and looked at the text. It was from an unknown caller. I pressed the button. The words came on the screen

R U SURE U KNW WHT U R DOIN?                                                     back