The Circle Line (The Complex Throne Book 1) Read online

  Suddenly, Aleksy caught sight of a small bright blue flash out of the corner of his eye, a tiny burst of silent static lightning. He stopped abruptly and quickly turned his head, realising that he was passing a narrow passageway into an adjoining tunnel. He blinked, the shape of the blue light echoing on his retina. A movement drew his headtorch and his gaze to the floor where a sizeable rat sat washing its face, its beady eyes catching the glare of his light. Smiling to himself, and pursing his lips to resume his whistle, Aleksy made to continue walking when another movement caught his attention. The dark archway before him had seemed to darken momentarily, if it was possible for something as dark as the inky blackness of the space beyond to dim still further. Aleksy had the sense that someone, or something, had just passed by. Looking back towards the rat Aleksy could see it now lay dead. As he moved closer he saw that it had fallen completely still, its glassy eyes staring into nothingness, its body partly crushed as it something had just fallen upon it. He suddenly felt nervous and his skin prickled as he neared the brick wall. He leant through the archway and swept his torch across the darkness beyond.

  The first thing that was evident was that this tunnel was dramatically colder and Aleksy's breath fogged in front of his face, caught in the light of his torch. The tunnel was evidently disused, the tracks were buckled and warped and the floor was thick with a deep white dust which lay across rubble and other detritus. Seeing nothing out of the ordinary Aleksy set down his tools and slipped into the adjoining tunnel, his feet crunching strangely on the white powder. A low hum seemed to emanate from somewhere in the darkness. He turned his head trying to seek the source of the noise. He was sure that there would be no trains running at this time of the night. He walked to an arched alcove, pausing in front of it. His torch beam did not seem to reach the back wall as it should have done. Indeed it barely seemed to penetrate the void. Looking down he saw that more of the white dust seemed to be swirling into the tunnel he was in, already covering the dead rat behind him. He bent down and scooped a little of the dust up onto his fingers. It was freezing cold and, as he watched, it melted on the warmth of his fingers. The impossible realisation dawned on him. He was holding snow. But how? He looked around at the thin layer of white and noticed a set of footprints which seemed to begin at the alcove ahead of him. A sudden chill crept over him as he realised that the prints pointed towards him, and past him. Someone else was here. A sudden metallic bang from his tools caused him to jump as something shifted in the bag back in the other tunnel. Startled, he looked again towards the archway and suddenly felt a presence behind him. A shiver of fear ran down his spine. He tried to turn and move away but found he was unable to move. It was as if he had been paralysed and fixed to the spot. Then a pressure seemed to press against his entire body at once. The light from his headtorch flickered and died as the pitch of the hum increased. With a shout forming on his lips Aleksy felt himself begin to lose consciousness and then the darkness consumed him and he fell into oblivion.

  Sam snapped awake, already holding his breath, listening for the sound he knew had woken him. He felt his heart hammering in his chest and he quickly pressed his eyes tightly closed but his ears rang in the silence as if the very air hummed around him. Not even the sounds of his grandfather's friend, Valerie, sleeping in the adjacent room reached him. He tried to replay his thoughts to remember the sound. Had the stairs outside his door creaked? Had he heard a whispered voice from behind his bedroom door? Was there someone there? A presence? His slim body shivered involuntarily at the thought.

  His imagination began to betray him and he quickly tried to suppress the thoughts coming into his head. He woke like this fairly regularly, sure each time that some sudden sound, a sigh or footfall, had entered his subconscious but never waking quick enough to hear it again. The problem now was getting back to sleep. The silence scared him as much as the dark and he dared not open his eyes for fear of what he might see. So, he lay perfectly still, unsure what was worse, turning his back on the door or facing it to see what came through it, straining his ears for the slightest sign that there was some other human habitation in the world, someone other than him, alone in his bed with the ghosts.

  Eventually, he heard a solitary car approach on the road outside and he hurried to fall asleep while the reassuring sound was still audible but the thrum of the engine soon changed pitch as it passed the house and moved away. Silence reigned again, returning the faint hum to his ears. Then, again, there was a noise, a soft thump from the other side of the door. Sam squeezed his eyes still tighter so that shapes danced across the inside of his eyelids, as he waited for the nightmare to end. He tried to tell himself that no-one had ever been hurt by a ghost. They just glided around didn't they? Grey and indistinct shadows. The thought was no comfort and his heart continued to pound in his chest, the noise of his heartbeats a train moving over tracks, duh-duh duh-duh.

  But no other sounds reached him until much later, when the soft buzz of Valerie’s faint snores began to filter through from the other end of the hall. The spell of silence was broken and he fell back into the uneasy and troubled world of sleep.

  Chapter Two

  When he next opened his eyes the curtains glowed dimly with the light of day. Sam pulled them open to let the morning light fall into the room. There was not much. The sky outside was slate grey and, raising himself on an elbow, he could see that the garden was hazy through mist, the yellows and browns of the fallen leaves blurry on the green lawn. Raindrops speckled the window.

  His eye moved to the framed photo standing on the sill. It was his favourite photo of his grandfather, taken years ago, before the old man's mind had begun to wander. The man in the photo looked back at Sam, his eyes twinkling behind black-framed glasses, the wind catching his straight grey hair and lifting it slightly.

  Falling back into the bed Sam sighed, trying not to think about what lay ahead today. But that only allowed his mind to return to the sounds he had heard in the night. It had been months since he had woken like that. Perhaps the noises had been the ghost of his grandfather, here to say goodbye before they buried him in the cold damp earth. More likely it was the impending funeral that had shaped his dreams. Sam ran a hand through his tousled brown hair and pressed his eyes closed again. It seemed stupid now, to think of ghosts. He wished he could be braver but he had never felt comfortable in the house and especially at night when he felt, so often, as though someone was watching him.

  It would not be any easier now that his grandfather had gone. Adam Hain had been Sam's entire family and he missed him like he had never missed anything. The feeling was a hollowness in his chest and he kept thinking what it must have been like at the moment that his grandfather had departed this world. Had he woken? Tried to cry out when he realised that it was to be his last breath? Had he been scared? Sam couldn't imagine Adam Hain being scared of anything and he comforted himself by imagining his grandfather making peace with the past and then deciding to pass on. Sam wasn't sure whether the suddenness of it all was a good thing or not. Life had been difficult for some time. His grandfather had been becoming increasingly agitated and paranoid before the end and Sam had often had to put a brave face on his own sadness. It had been awful to see a once strong and proud man become so confused, rambling about people and places that didn't make sense. And now, Sam was alone.

  Downstairs, dressed in a black suit, black tie and white shirt Sam ate a silent breakfast with Valerie. She had moved into the house a week ago, the same day that Sam had found his grandfather lying stiff and cold in his bed. She had been a friend of sorts to Adam but Sam knew that his grandfather had only truly cared for him, the only surviving member of his family. Indeed that care had come with a dedication that had sometimes bordered on zealous over-protectiveness. Valerie looked at Sam and gave him a sad smile as she nervously stroked her grey bob, her hand shaking slightly.

  ‘How are you feeling, dear?’

  ‘I'm okay.’ he said, although he could not disguise the w
aver in his voice.

  ‘We need to leave at ten.’ said Valerie, ‘It’ll be better to arrive before anyone else. Have you got your reading?’

  Sam stared into the depths of his cereal and tapped his breast pocket.

  ‘Good boy.’

  Sam wanted to point out that he was not a boy. He was an adult. But Valerie had been kind in keeping him company in the otherwise empty house and, as well as not wanting to upset her, he did not have the energy to disagree. Besides, sometimes he did feel like a child and that made him feel angry at himself. Today he felt more childish than ever after his disturbed sleep. The great hollowness in his chest seemed to become a heavy weight that pressed against his stomach and he began to feel queasy. He mumbled an apology to Valerie, pushed away the half uneaten breakfast and crept away into the house leaving Valerie to sit back in her chair, tears pricking her eyes.

  Sam took himself into the front room, which overlooked the narrow road and the woods beyond. A fine drizzle was still falling, coating the window in a thousand tiny droplets. Sam knelt on the sofa, his arms propped on the windowsill, his nose and forehead flattened and cold against the glass as he stared into the trees. Refocusing his eyes he looked at the reflection of the room behind him. He could see the doorway into the hall. Unnerved, he left the room and ran up the stairs into his bedroom.

  Sam had always felt uncomfortable in the hallway and on the stairs. That part of the house felt somehow oppressive and was prone to strange changes in temperature, often growing cold quite suddenly. Sam often thought he could hear a hum, like electricity cables running nearby. He found the hair would rise on his neck sometimes.

  The only thing that Sam liked about the hallway was the painting of the girl. His grandfather had painted it before Sam was born and it had hung in its space at the top of the stairs for as long as Sam could remember. The girl was, thought Sam, the most beautiful person that he had ever seen. Her portrait looked slightly to the right of the frame, her green eyes focussed on the middle distance. Long dark hair framed the smooth tanned skin of her face, a scattering of freckles dusted her nose and cheeks. Each time Sam ran up the stairs he would fix on her face, trying to ignore the creepiness at his back. Sam had once asked his grandfather who the girl was but Adam's face had clouded over and he had made it very clear that he did not want to discuss the girl. Sam had never broached the subject again and now her identity would forever be a mystery to him.

  But as much as he disliked the hallway it was the cellar which Sam disliked the most and he rarely ventured down into it. The house was clearly quite old and there were hatches in the cellar where coal would once have been poured down into it. Now it had white walls and a strip of fluorescent lighting which, at least, made it considerably brighter than it once would have been. But it was still a place that Sam seldom ventured. The dark hole in one wall made him particularly nervous. The hole had been made by the removal of a section of brickwork, big enough for a man to crawl into, or out of. The black space beyond ran under the hallway. The house had been abandoned when Adam Hain had come across it in his youth and he said that the hole had been there then. Local legend said that the disappearance of the former tenant had been something of a mystery.

  Adam had filled the hole with his store of large pieces of wood. There had always been wood around. He had been a keen amateur carpenter as well as a decent painter and had carved various fantastic figures, squat men and strange animals, which now sat around the house on shelves and windowsills. Sam even vaguely recalled that his grandfather had partially rebuilt the house himself. But, the cellar had always been Adam Hain's favourite room and had never seemed to make him feel nervous. He had used it as a workshop and kept his various tools down there with firewood and odds and ends in different stages of repair. On one wall, above a battered dartboard, there even hung an old sword, spotted with rust.

  Just before they were due to leave for the funeral Sam crept out of his bedroom. He could hear Valerie singing softly to herself downstairs. Sam had known her all his life. She lived half a dozen houses away, nearer the centre of the little village. When he was little Sam used to go to her house to choose a toy from a vast store which she kept in a spare room. Valerie's house was almost as strange as his own but for entirely different reasons. She made a living from painting illustrations for reference books on plants and insects and she always had leaves, twigs and flowers in pots dotted around the house. She had once given Sam a number of swallow-tail caterpillars. His grandfather had found him an old glass fish tank and together they had watched them eat, build their cocoons and hatch, a miracle of natural transformation as their pale yellow and black wings flapped as they dried. In his naive youthfulness Sam had wished he could change himself so easily, that he could undergo some magic transformation, that he could grow wings and fly.

  Sam forced himself to walk down the stairs, even though he felt a need to run. The feeling of unease was almost familiar so often did he feel it. Valerie was in the kitchen. She turned to greet him and Sam could see that she had been crying again. In his misery he had all but forgotten that there would be other people just as sorry to be attending Adam Hain's funeral today. His grandfather had not had many friends but, having lived in Pluckton for most of his life, he had got to know many of the others living in the village well enough. Crossing the kitchen, Sam awkwardly gave Valerie a brief hug and she hooked her arm in his and gave him a smile as they left the house.

  Arm in arm they left the house and turned towards the village church where the service was to be held. Sam saw that the family next door already had their carved Halloween pumpkin in the window, its triangular eyes fixed on the woods opposite, its jagged teeth curving upwards in a half smile. Sam’s eyes slid back to his own house and he felt his heart skip and his stomach lurch. There at the upstairs window, looking out towards the woods, just as the pumpkin had been, was an indistinct face. Sam gasped. It was clearly there, although he could not make out the features from this distance. He looked to Valerie to see if she had seen it too but her gaze was fixed on the church spire ahead of them. He released her arm and turned back to look at the house but the face, if it had been there, had gone. All he could see was condensation. Patterns on the glass. Unsettled he quickened his pace.

  Pluckton Church was the oldest building in the small village which lay in a natural fold in the land, surrounded by fields and woods. The church was small, plain on the outside but pretty inside, with stained glass windows along one side and rows of golden brown wooden pews set between pale grey stone columns. Sam still felt unnerved as they passed underneath the huge horse-chestnut tree that towered over the lopsided graves and the cracked and worn paving stones. Valerie pushed open the large wooden door and they stepped inside. The vicar, Reverend Allsopp came over to greet them. Sam and his grandfather had rarely gone to church. Adam Hain had not been a religious man, but very occasionally Valerie had coaxed them into walking through the dark to midnight mass on Christmas Eve. In a way it was odd that Adam had elected to be buried in the traditional way rather than be cremated. The vicar knew them anyway. The village was small enough that he probably knew everyone.

  ‘Good morning, Samuel.’ said Allsopp, patting Sam gently on the shoulder, ‘A sad day’ he added as he straightened his thick glasses, which never seemed to stay high enough on his nose. He gave a glum smile to Sam's unhappy nod and then strode away between the pews, humming softly, his white and black gown billowing after him.

  Despite its small size Sam had never known the church to be crowded. Today was no exception. There were not many mourners at the funeral. Adam Hain had kept to himself for the most part and with no surviving family, other than Sam, there were few people to fill the wooden pews. Only a handful of people huddled together in the first few rows. Most of them were fairly elderly. Adam's few friends had been of a similar age and so staff provided by the undertakers carried the coffin down the aisle towards its place on the trestles at the front. Sam watched as it drew near. It was made
of a light coloured wood, with intricate carvings on each of the sides. The front showed a bird with outstretched wings rising from a bed of flame and as the box passed Sam could see that the sides depicted strange scenes with large temples and small houses behind odd creatures and misshapen figures. With a start Sam realised that his grandfather had made the coffin himself. The tableau was typical of his unusual work and the characters seemed to be similar to those small wooden carvings that still lay around the house. Turning as the coffin passed him and reached the front Sam realised that Revered Allsopp was not particularly impressed by the designs etched into the wood, a slight frown creased his brow and Sam quickly stopped his intent study of them, anxious not to offend.

  It was hard to believe that there was actually a body in there, thought Sam, although the coffin certainly looked heavy enough. The weight was evident in the way the pallbearers moved and grunted as they set it down. But, all the same, it just did not seem real that his grandfather was within that wooden box. Sam could feel the eyes of those who had come to mourn on his back as the coffin was set in its place at the front of the church and the pallbearers retreated.

  Reverend Allsopp startled Sam out of his thoughts with up-stretched arms and sudden proclamation of God's love, followed by a particularly booming ‘Amen.’ He led the sermon, even managing to slip in a reference to heathen imagery, before all but shouting the hymns. It was just as well that he was loud for there was little other sound in the church. He gave little pause save for Sam to give his short reading, a passage apparently chosen by his grandfather.