The Boy In Winter's Grasp

THE BOY IN WINTER’S GRASP

  Sample Chapters

  John D. Scotcher

  www.john-d-scotcher.co.uk

  The Boy In Winter’s Grasp will be released in full on October 20th 2014

  © Copyright 2014 John Scotcher

  Edited by Delena Silverfox

  Front illustration by Silviu Sadoschi

  Published by Pearson Treehouse Ltd

  TABLE OF CONTENTS

  Chapter One. The Master of Cragtop.

  Chapter Two. Christopher.

  Chapter Three. Being a gentleman.

  Chapter Four. Alton.

  Author’s Note.

  Chapter One. The Master of Cragtop.

  Albert hated Friday mornings. It wasn’t that his paper round was any harder, and he didn’t spend any more time tramping over the wet Derbyshire moors. Though the winter chill seemed particularly harsh this morning —it had been getting steadily worse all December— that was nothing compared to the clutching in his stomach.

  Friday was the day that he delivered the papers to Cragtop.

  Albert’s round was long. Sometimes if he was lucky, his father —who owned the general store— took pity on him and ordered his brother to help. On those days he could be finished in time to get to Mrs Lane’s reading lessons in the church school. Even on the slowest rounds, when he dangled his eleven-year-old legs into the brook for an hour, or took a mug of tea with Thomas the shepherd, he'd still be back in time to join his friends on the school wall at break time. There they would talk in excited voices about the war, how they would join up and beat their way to Germany.

  “We’ll teach the Kaiser!” his friend Harry had said yesterday, then gone on to tell the boys exactly how. Mrs Lane had eventually come out to see what all the laughing had been about, scolding them and telling them they sounded like monkeys. Albert hadn’t been laughing, though. He had already realised that Friday was just around the corner and his feet felt like lead weights.

  Now Friday was here, Albert just wanted it to be over. He took his bag, pulled his coat over a thick jumper, and crashed out into the winter morning. He sped through the first part of the round, pushing papers with careless determination through people's doors, his feet turning almost before the flaps snapped shut.

  When the bag was finally empty, trying not to think too much, he raced back to the shop. It was only when he found himself staring at the irregular pile of papers for Cragtop House that his butterflies returned.

  Thankfully, Cragtop didn’t take a daily paper, but the Friday delivery filled a whole bag. Usually there were about forty items, sometimes many more. The delivery was made up of such a variety of papers, magazines and more, that Albert often found himself stopping to look as he packed them.

  Some were regulars. From Fleet Street came every issue of the Times. From Scotland came the Herald, Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. From Manchester the Manchester City News. Occasionally the front pages of these newspapers with stories of the situation in Europe caught his attention, but he was usually too jittery to stay distracted for long.

  Along with the nationals, there were many local papers with articles about lads joining up, gossip about members of the parish, and notices that surely had meaning to no-one but the people who lived there. Albert had often wondered what it was that made these papers so interesting to the solitary owner of Cragtop.

  However, it was the odd assortment of magazines and pamphlets that unnerved him. Each week there would be a handful, their subject matter hinting at mysterious things quite out of place with Albert's world. Archaeological journals detailed discoveries of ancient tombs. Badly printed newsletters from obscure societies with articles that were even stranger. Some were so worn by their journeys that they were falling apart.

  Most Albert could not open, as they were sealed in brown paper, but many of these had the name of the sender on their reverse. Even the names seemed scary; “The Society of Light from the Silver Dagger”, “Journal of the Flowered Knife”. They made him think about folk tales that he had occasionally heard from the old men of the village.

  Once, in late November a small white booklet had arrived that was not in an envelope. Instead the pages were glued together, needing a paper knife to separate them. An address label was fixed to the front cover, just below the booklet's title; “On Controlling Fiends and Monsters”.

  He'd shown his father, who had smirked and cuffed him on the back of the head. All that mattered as far as his father was concerned was that a man paid his bills and kept a civil tongue in his head. There, the Master of Cragtop was faultless.

  He glanced across at his father as he stuffed the last of the papers into the bag. The stern-faced man was busy with an early customer. It wouldn't do to be here when he was done. His father was very free with his cuffs.

  Albert pulled the bag up onto his shoulder and headed back out into the cold. He turned left and began to trudge through the snow towards the outskirts of the village.

  He didn't know very much about the owner. Cragtop was perched high on the rocks a few miles from the village. It had always seemed to attract strangers. Like his predecessors, the current owner had been the subject of village gossip when he arrived in 1911. He lived alone, apart from an elderly manservant, and had made no attempt to make friends with the locals in the three years since.

  There had been wild stories about him from the villagers. “I hear he mined in Africa,” Thomas had said, buying tobacco in the crowded shop one morning. “Got rich finding diamonds on land he stole from the Boers.”

  “He’s the mark of a slave trader, if you ask me,” Old Clem had replied. Old Clem had once been to sea and so considered himself the authority on most things beyond the village. “It’s in the eyes. I saw ‘em all over in the old days. ‘Orrible buggers.”

  Like anything fresh, though, eventually he had become old news and the villagers had found other things to talk about. On the rare occasions he was seen in the village, people would nod politely and perhaps say that they saw him, but other than that no-one much cared.

  Albert thought differently: The owner of Cragtop was a wizard.

  Albert lingered by the entrance of Cragtop, summoning the courage to walk through the rusty iron gates capped with dangerous-looking spikes. From the gates there was a half-mile walk through a steep-sided valley. If those gates closed behind him, Albert knew he was trapped. Nothing, not the nagging weight of the bag or even the dirty sleet soaking through his coat and chilling him so much it was hard to breathe, would make him take another step until he was ready.

  From here everything became a tried and tested plan that he'd used and constantly improved since he was first forced to deliver to Cragtop. The plan had a simple goal, to be in and out of the grounds in the shortest amount of time and draw as little attention whilst there as possible. That way he would be as safe as he could be, though he didn't think that was safe at all. He closed his eyes and muttered a few words of encouragement to himself. Then he started forward through the gateway.

  Tall trees grew tightly together, struggling for the light, before the sides of the valley climbed too high and cast the grounds beyond into shadow. Branches crept over the driveway, creating a gloomy tunnel that bent around to the west. Albert followed the bend, walking briskly and keeping tight to where the light was dimmest and he felt least exposed.

  A single bird whistled a lonely song in the otherwise silent wood. Animals seemed to shy away from this place. Albert had seen no signs of life here. In fact the only thing he had once seen was the body of a cat, just in from the gates. It had been stretched out with its paws up, as if trying to ward off so
mething, its eyes wide open in terror. He had bent and looked, but had been unable to see any reason for the cat to be dead.

  Beyond the trees, the drive opened out into a slim valley. There grass grew in thick clumps and occasional heathers sprouted up. At the far end the valley began to rise beyond a second copse. There above the trees, Cragtop lurched into the grey morning. The angles of its tall grey rock-built chimneys and high arched windows gave it the constant feel that it was about to crash to the ground.

  The whole building just looked precarious. Dark stone carvings of lions and wolves clung to the walls, shadowing the doors and windows they surrounded. From one side of the house a cold, moss-covered wall ran out to the ruins of an outhouse, a grim shell with a caved-in roof that could hide all sorts of dangers. Albert had never gone near it.

  He crept out from the hood of trees into the valley and quickened his pace, fixing his eyes firmly on the drive in the distance. He knew if he picked up his pace he could get across, leave the papers, and be back by the entrance in less than five minutes. Even in the brief time he had been under the trees the morning had darkened. The drops of sleet had become fatter and colder, turning to snow. He pulled the collar of his sopping coat tighter with his free arm and pushed on across the grass, his heart pounding.

  As he marched he began to recite under his breath in a hollow reedy voice. “Her eyes are as bright as they were the first night, when we danced to an old fashioned tune. In a dusty old schoolhouse on Saturday night, how we laughed as we waltzed round the room.”

  The song always made him feel better. He knew if he marched in time he would have delivered the post after the fourth time he had sung it.

  “You came from the valleys to the dark city alleys, to care for the young and the poor. And me a young soldier with medals galore, that I'd won in the African war.”

  He sang the rest of it as he tramped over the grass. The wind rocked the trees audibly. It whistled against his ears, making his voice sound very small. When he reached the end of the song, he counted eight steps in his head then began again, clicking wet fingers to mark the time.

  He reached the far end of the drive by the end of his third recitation, and began to feel some relief. He was getting close to the house.

  He began again. “Her eyes are as bright as they were the first night, when we danced to an old fashioned...”

  Then he saw them.

  There were three of them, standing off by the furthest trees to his right, just where the valley side began to rise sharply. They stood motionless, watching. Two were men in simple white shirts that were soaked to the skin, not that they seemed to have noticed. The third was a woman, a step or two ahead of the others, one leg tensed as if ready to spring forward and rush him.

  The woman was the clearest to him. Weathered skin stretched painfully tight over a bony face that looked desperately hungry. Her eyes bore straight into him, her mouth seemed to hang open, as if she were trying to suck in his scent and taste it on her tongue. Her face seemed somehow wrong, too pinched up and sharp to be entirely human. Albert remembered the title of the pamphlet “Controlling Fiends and Monsters” and a rush of adrenaline pumped into his body, making his legs and arms tingle.

  The woman took a step forward. One of the men behind her reached and grabbed her arm, yanking her back. She snarled at him but didn’t try to free herself. After a moment all three of them turned and walked into the darkness of the woods. The woman looked back once, just before she disappeared.

  Albert gasped, suddenly rooted to the spot. He thought about dropping the papers where he stood and leaving, but if there was a complaint to his father, he'd be beaten so hard he wouldn’t be able to sit on the wooden school seats for a week. That prospect forced him to be brave.

  He willed his legs onward up the drive, wiping away tears of fear. A person in the trees could get from where those three had been to the house almost without being seen at all. Albert picked up his pace until he was almost running. His eyes stayed firmly on the trees. He was ready to drop his burden at any time and turn for home. The canvas bag swung heavily, threatening to overbalance him. So he loped along, the effort he was making out of all proportion with the speed he was going.

  Finally he reached the porch. He gripped on the bell rope and pulled hard three times. Somewhere deep in the house a bell rang. Immediately Albert began to pull out the papers. He started dumping them in a messy pile on the door step, all the while stealing desperate glances into the woods. Nothing seemed to be approaching.

  The papers seemed to take ages to pull from the bag. Eventually they were all on the pile. All that remained was to be sure that someone was coming to get them. Albert listened at the door, shifting his weight from one foot to the other. He strained his ears for the creak of a floorboard that would tell him he could escape.

  “Boy.” A whisper that sounded like tearing paper froze him.

  He turned back toward the dingy woods. A short distance beyond the tree line three figures crept towards him, black silhouettes against a grey background.

  “Boy,” the voice repeated, all silk and poison. “Boy, come to us.”

  Albert's legs were jelly. His feet below felt glued to the ground. He stared into the woods. The creatures began to edge nearer. A tiny voice in the back of his head was calling out to him, reminding him about something, but he couldn't for the life of him make it out. All he could focus on were the dark shadows growing closer to the edge of the woods.

  There was a sudden click. The entrance door to Cragtop unlatched. At the noise the three figures in the wood shrank back and disappeared. Albert gasped aloud, his senses coming back to him.

  Run! That's what the little voice had been saying. Run! Albert grabbed his discarded bag from the porch entrance and, summoning all the strength his young legs could muster, he raced back down the drive.

  As he ran, crashes and cracks of wood being crushed underfoot followed him from within the trees. He shot a look into the darkness and caught a brief glimpse of three shapes racing along at the side of him, then he burst into the valley leaving the woods and house behind. He didn't look back again as he tore across the grass.

  Finally, when he reached the comparative safety of the gates, he stopped and glanced back. Everything was still again. He leaned forward, resting his weight on a tree trunk and struggled to catch his breath.

  “Now, what did you see to make you so scared?” A thin hand with long elegant fingers clamped onto his shoulder and pulled him around.

  Albert stared up into a cold merciless face of the Master of Cragtop. Eyes, with irises so dark they were almost black, stared back at him.

  He came nearer; Albert could feel hot breath on his face.

  “Answer me, boy.”

  Then Albert knew he was doomed. With a sob he screwed his eyes shut, fear making him wet himself. It ran down his leg and onto the slush below, blossoming into a little yellow puddle.

  The man looked at the puddle and pushed Albert roughly away from him. He fell into the road and bashed his head on the rough stone. Blood dripped into his eyes, stinging them and making it hard to see. He raised his arms to ward off blows, whimpering, but none came.

  “Your father will hear about this, boy. I imagine you will be soundly beaten.” The pitiless voice came again, a little further away now.

  Albert looked up, wiping blood from his eyes.

  The Master of Cragtop stood looking back at him, his angular face unmoved. Then he turned, as if he had lost interest, and walked off into his grounds. A black walking stick clicked along at his side as he took long confident strides. His long coat, which reached from his bony shoulders to the ground dragged through the sludge underfoot. He disappeared around the bend in the track without turning back again.

  Finally, Albert sobbed with relief. A beating from his father, though painful, was suddenly preferable to any of the other fe
ars that he turned around in his mind. As the click of the cane quietened into the distance, he clambered to his feet and limped away towards the village.

  The Master of Cragtop could sense them watching him as he strode across to the house, three pairs eyes from the darkness. He stopped and faced the trees.

  “Whoever that child saw,” he said in a sharp voice, “remember this. The next time I find someone other than me has seen you, there will be consequences. You still have families that you could put in danger.”

  A single howl came from the darkness, a howl so full of hatred that the Master smiled to himself. They still had fire, for all the good it would do them. He would miss his gypsies when they were gone.

  He reached his study ten minutes later. The room was dim with the only light seeping through the open hallway door. His butler, Pope, had already placed the pile of papers by his favourite leather chair and was building a fire in the great stone hearth.

  Next to the papers, on a small single-legged table stood a mug of steaming mulled wine. Its rich smell was enticing. He lowered himself slowly into the chair, listening to the satisfying creak as its arms took his weight. Then he reached for the mug of wine and sat back for a moment savouring the dark fruity aroma.

  “How is he?” the Master asked Pope after a moment.

  Pope carried on with his task, placing the last logs in a pyramid around a pile of kindling. “No change, sir.”

  The Master nodded. “Leave me.”

  Pope struck a match against the hearth and touched its flame to some scrunched-up newspaper at the very centre of the fire. Once sure it was lit, he rose silently to his feet and left the room, shutting the door behind him. The Master closed his eyes, listening to the soft crackles as the flames quickly caught on the dry wood.

  It was not long before the firelight was bright enough that he could detect its flickering behind his eyelids. He sighed. It was time to start work. He opened his eyes and glanced around.

  The study was full. Every space, every table, every bookshelf was packed. Books battled for space with piles of periodicals and papers. Squashed amongst them were collections of letters, bundles of drawings, maps and boxes.

  To his left a series of shelves were filled with books of science, from the earliest ideas of the ancients, to those of more recent authors such as Darwin and Freud. Another pile of books on languages towered to the ceiling from one side of a large oak desk in the centre of the room.

  On the other side of the desk were piles of books claiming to explain magic. Of the whole room these seemed to be the least read. A layer of dust had settled on them. Under the desk, the periodicals that the paper boy had found so disturbing lay looking almost as underused.

  The Master’s red leather armchair was clearly the centre of activity. The books within reach were the most thumbed, some left open on particular pages. Close by also were a pile of storybooks and legends from the ages nestled among penny dreadfuls and adventure magazines for boys. Next to them another pile seemed mainly concerned with artist's visions of hell and terror.

  In front of the leather chair, just to the left of the giant fire where the light would illuminate it the most, was a vast wooden board. Loosely pinned folders covered the board from top to bottom. From many folders newspaper clippings and other bits of paper stuck out. On each folder there was a photo or drawing of a child.

  By the pictures each child's name and age was written in the Master’s flowing script. “Harold Bonnard. Eleven. Baker’s son. Northampton.”, “Claire Albiston. Thirteen. Dressmaker’s daughter. Glasgow”, “Alfred Frumpton. Nine. Orphan. London.” And so it went on.

  The children ranged in age from nine years to sixteen. All sections of society were represented. The children of thieves were placed next to the children of lords.

  Some folders had other notes on them scrawled in red ink. Angry exclamations such as “the doctor’s treatments are working” and “her grandmother still won’t die!” ran across the folders in large accusing letters. On others, a dark blue ink seemed to show a more positive reaction; “looking at having her committed”, “won school prize for creative writing”.

  A handful of the second kind were marked in their top right corners with stars. These folders were the most thumbed, with creases and tears where they had been regularly examined.

  The Master sipped his mulled wine, cooled enough for him to drink now, and calmly watched the pictures. He allowed the young faces staring back to wash over him, their features seeping in and refreshing his memory as they did each Friday. Then he drained the rest of the drink, took the top paper from the morning's pile and began to read.

  For the next few hours he pored over the papers. He scanned the contents on every page thoroughly. Occasionally he would sit up as a story caught his attention, gripping the item he was reading with tightened hands. Most of the time he would read part of the article and then dismiss it. Then he would settle back down into his chair.

  Twice though, he found something that he was looking for. Once at eleven o’clock, just after Pope had brought in a pot of steaming tea and some fine Derbyshire sponge from the village, and again at three o’clock, when his mind was beginning to wander from the task at hand. In both cases he pulled out a handsome little pair of ivory handled scissors from a drawer in the table and cut out the article. Then he got up from his chair and walked to the folders on the wall, slipping the article into one.

  The first time the folder was that of a girl, “Edna Palmer. 10. Butler's daughter. Malham.” The girl had a single star on the corner of the folder. For a second the Master hovered his pen over that corner, considering whether he should add another star, then he shook his head and sat back down.

  The second time was far less exciting. The article was dropped into a virtually empty folder, with the face of a smiling eleven year old boy called Billy on the front. The Master didn’t even glance at the photo, as though the boy hadn’t even begun to register properly in the league that he had set up on the wall. He reached for the servant's bell by the door, thirsty again.

  By the time Pope had brought a new tray of tea, the Master was reading Thursday’s Times. He could feel his attention waning and sat higher in his seat, willing himself to keep concentration on the front page.

  The articles meandered around domestic politics and the war. Pages two and three were much the same. There was nothing that attracted his attention. The Master felt his eyes drooping. He rested the paper on his lap and poured himself a cup of the hot tea. He turned the page and lifted the tea to his mouth.

  He saw the article straight away, and his heart missed a beat. It was small, in the top corner of page five, the society page. Many people would probably have glanced at the headline and turned over. The Master though, leaned forward, his mouth slightly ajar, reading the words with wide eyes.

  Son Of Novelist Returns Home Disgraced.

  Lieutenant Frederick Flyte, eldest son of the late renowned novelist Sarah Flyte, has been returned to England from Belgium. During an action in Ypres, Lieutenant Flyte attempted to lead his men from the field after suffering some kind of episode.

  Before being returned home Lieutenant Flyte stood in front of a military tribunal. It was reported that he was confused and unaware of his circumstances. Lieutenant Flyte’s father, General Sir Robert Flyte sent a statement from his post in Northern France, in which he asked the court to take into account his son’s distinguished service record including the earlier awards of two commendations for bravery within the past two months.

  He also asked the tribunal to take into account the death by suicide of Lieutenant Flyte's mother, the novelist Sarah Flyte. Mrs Flyte had suffered terribly with melancholia over some years. Since her death, doctors have warned that the latest research indicates such conditions could be hereditary. Mrs Flyte, famous for her popular series of children’s books on King Arthur and the Round Table,
walked into the sea at Brighton three and a half years ago and drowned herself.

  No formal decision was reached at the tribunal. A postponement was settled upon, and it is expected that the trial will continue should Lieutenant Flyte become fit enough.

  The Master re-read the story twice, the teacup frozen in his hand, until at last he set it down with a crash. He leapt up, clutching the paper, and strode to the desk. With his free hand, he swept the books onto the floor. They landed with a crash and a great cloud of dust. He slammed the paper down onto the now empty desktop, then turned and raced for the board.

  He began to pull folders off the board, glancing quickly at the image before discarding them onto the floor.

  “Where are you?” he said out loud, his movements becoming more urgent.

  His eyes flashed. There was his goal, hidden behind another folder. He reached up and pulled it from the wall. A photo of a pale, slight boy with sensitive eyes and dark unruly hair shyly smiled back at him. In the corner, there were already four stars marked, and all over the folder notes had been scribbled – “His mother has killed herself.”, “Deeply imaginative child”, “Disappeared for five days and won’t say where!”.

  Next to the photo was the boy’s name. “Christopher Flyte. Fifteen years old. Alton.”

  The Master walked back to the desk and set the folder next to the article. He smiled down at the picture of the boy and picked up his pen. He leaned forward and made a fifth mark in the corner, then stood quietly and stared down at the picture.

  Behind him, the door opened and Pope looked into the room. “Is everything all right, sir? I heard a crash.”

  The Master nodded without turning around. “The waiting is over.”

  He lifted the folder to where Pope could see it. “Christopher Flyte has just received his fifth point of attention. We move tonight.”

  Pope nodded. “Very good, sir.”

  The Master scribbled an address onto a scrap of paper and thrust it towards his servant. “Set the Gypsies moving. They will need to be there as soon as they can. And they’ll need to take the child.”

  Pope frowned. “He may not survive a journey.”

  The Master was unconcerned. “He’ll not need to survive for long.”

  He glanced down again at the self-conscious eyes of Christopher Flyte staring from the photo. “Before the boy goes, bring me what he holds.”

  Pope looked wary. “Are you sure that I can, sir?”

  “There are charms to protect you. Put it into the box and bring it to me.”

  Pope returned a few minutes later. His complexion had gone ashen and he trembled slightly as he set down a slim, plain wooden box.

  The Master noted his colour with amusement and walked up to the box. He lifted it, feeling the warmth of barely contained energy from within, and slipped it into his inside pocket. “The old things will be gone soon, Pope. I can draw on this no more.”

  “Until the cycle is completed, sir.” Pope said.

  The Master nodded. “Traces of us will need to be gone tonight. In the downstairs cupboard, you will find two bags. Leave the larger of the two for me and take the smaller. In it you will find a little money for accommodation.”

  “Very good, sir.” Pope nodded and made to leave the room then stopped, looking a little embarrassed; the expression breaking his calm appearance. “Best of luck, sir.”

  The Master turned back to the paper and placed the folder next to it once again. He smiled to himself and seemed to stand straighter, as if a great worry had been taken from his shoulders, then he turned and strode to the door.

  It took about three hours in all to get everything set. The few of his gypsies that remained at the house had disappeared off on the road whilst it had still been light. Pope had made his farewells by bringing in a final pot of tea that was now cold. The Master looked around the hall way, glancing at some of the great, beautiful things he had put there. Then he turned and walked out of the front door, leaving it open behind him.

  He trudged across the valley, keeping to the path, dipping in and out of black, moon-cast shadows of the trees. His breath misted out in front of him as he walked. He felt free once again. There was nothing more exciting to be at the start of a great adventure with no one to be responsible to and nothing to come back to.

  He stopped, closed his eyes and whispered an incantation.

  The Master didn't like to use power in this way. Spells were of course useful, but he preferred the ones that were not so showy. In this case, though, using more mundane ways to get the same result would take time he didn't want to waste.

  He had been saving the incantation for this very moment and he was aware of how its loss would feel. Still that didn’t prepare him. The rush of loss was a physical pain, starting in his throat as he mouthed the words. It was as if the very air was being sucked from his body. The wrenching feeling spread down into his lungs, his stomach, his guts, his muscles until it seemed that every part of him was being sucked at, an essence ripped away. His sight dimmed and for a long moment he could see nothing.

  Then, as quickly as it had begun, it was over. The wrenching stopped so suddenly he stumbled forward where his weight had been counterbalancing against it. He dropped to one knee, laying his arms across the other. He bent his head down and listened.

  Behind him, from within Cragtop a dull whump sounded, and then suddenly the entire building was ablaze. Flames licked every wall, burst from every window and door and spread out towards the woods around. The heat was so intense, the Master could feel it from where he knelt. The glow in the sky would be seen for miles. He needed to be away.

  Summoning his strength, he pushed himself up and shuffled onwards towards the gate. With each step he felt a little more able to continue, and by the time he reached the road he felt almost normal again. It would be like this now, each trick, each spell would drain him until he had a new source of power. Until the cycle was complete.

  He turned southwards and strode down to the main highway some miles ahead. There he would turn towards Birmingham with its great chimneys and smoke and then onwards to the south and his goal.