Aungier House

The sun begins its ascent into a grey haze of morning sky like a cracked, watery egg yolk spilling its yellow into the ether. Leavings of a bonfire thickened the air before daybreak and now the smell lingers in the back of the throat as the inhabitants of Aungier House stir and rise for All Soul's Day.

The day will be heavy with the promise of rain and deceptively cool beneath the close fuggy atmosphere. On days like this everything seems faintly damp to the touch, as though the humidity has breached even the thick walls of the chapel where the household has been asked to gather for a short service that morning- Lord and Lady Valdemar, their family, friends and employees, all sat together beneath the same vaulted roof for a sombre half an hour devoted to the dead, watched by the baleful marble eyes of carved martyrs.

As the clouds bear down from above, something else seems to bear up from beneath the very foundations of the house. And that, indeed, seems to epitomise the day: the house seems to have become a hinterland suspended between-- between what? How can a day celebrating ends feel so much like a beginning, so much like something new and alien?

Tonight a crescent moon will hang in a drunken Cheshire grin over the estate and glow moodily between grey streaks. There won't be enough light to work without a lantern if insomnia should creep upon you, and it will be far too easy to imagine the white feet of Valdemars past retracing their steps across the estate.

And Lord Valdemar, locked in his room since the morning, will be awake all the while.