An Excerpt from Chapter One of my Novel
One of my hopes with this Substack is that subscriptions will help me dedicate more time to writing my novel. It’s only fair, then, to give you a taste of what you’re supporting. Below is an excerpt from Chapter One of my novel in progress. It is still a draft, and there may well be an error or two, but it’s a fair representation of what I’ve been working on. I hope you enjoy it.
To find out what happens in the rest of Chapter One—do they visit Kirkbride Hall? Is Ethan right to be so afraid?—please subscribe, and wait for the next instalment.
Chapter OneThe old manor house on the hill had stood empty and alone for as long as anyone in Middlewood could remember. Fourteen-year-old Ethan Parker studied its hulking shape through the open window of Peter and Hannah’s treehouse. Dozens of chimneys, towers, parapets, and high gables framed a jagged silhouette that broke the hill’s smooth line. The house’s many windows mirrored a darkening sky. A storm was coming. The old oak tree on the wild lawn outside the house bent and jerked in the wind that rose off the ocean below the hill. And behind the house, the dark mass of Potter’s Wood churned.
Ethan shivered and turned back to Hannah, who sat against the tree trunk that reached through the rough, timber floor. “I don’t think it’s a good idea,” he said.
“Ethan,” Hannah said. “I knew you were going to say that—but it’s a brilliant idea. Peter, what do you think?”
Peter Townley looked up from the book he was reading. “Sorry, what?”
Hannah growled at her twin brother. “I was saying we should go to Kirkbride Hall! We can’t sit here in this treehouse all holidays doing the same old thing—I’ll go mad. No one’s been inside the house for decades. Imagine what we might find there! Old furniture, paintings, and…and… I don’t know. But that’s the point, isn’t it? It’s a mystery. Haven’t we always wondered?”
“But I’m reading,” Peter said, flashing his eyebrows at Ethan, suppressing a smile. He held up the book to show him the cover: a cloaked figure on a dark horse against a snowy landscape. “Have you read this?”
“No,” Ethan said, shaking his head. Peter was the only person he knew who read more than he did. “Any good?”
“It’s really good,” Peter said. “You can borrow it when I’m done.”
Hannah stomped her foot. “Can we please focus on my brilliant plan?” she said.
Kirkbride Hall was ancient, over 450 years old. No one now living knew who had built it or why it had been suddenly abandoned, some 100 years ago, left to peel and slump and shudder in the sea winds. But there were stories. Ethan, Hannah, and Peter had grown up collecting them, catching snatches of whispered conversation on the bus as it passed beneath the hill’s shadow, or from older children on the playground when the wind made the trees creak and sway, or from their parents at parties when they forgot they were still in the room. Some said the house had once been a madhouse or a school for lost children. Others, that it was built for an exiled king from a dark, troubled corner of Europe. Or that it had been cursed. Or that it was a doorway into another world or realm, a tear in the soft fabric of reality.
Some said that on cold nights strange lights flickered behind the windows and sounds—odd and eerie—could be heard carried down the valley on the wind.
“What about the disappearances?” Ethan asked Hannah.
It was well known that people had disappeared into Kirkbride Hall. The last owners, a hundred years ago. Some children from Ethan’s grandfather’s time. And always some friend of a friend’s friend, a nameless child who had inexplicably snuck out of their room at night—or perhaps fled, running from some dark fear—to creep through the sleepy streets up to the old house, drawn by an impulse or a dream or a strange music or a voice on the wind, never to be seen again.
Hannah frowned. “Just rumours. Stories people tell to spook us. If the house was actually dangerous, it would have been torn down by now.”
“I suppose so,” Ethan said, not quite convinced.
The treehouse had grown dim as the sky leaned toward evening, and it groaned in the wind that gusted through the garden, carrying the salt scent of the sea. On the walls, Peter’s latest pencil sketches—an old face, an autumn tree, hands, a wet street, a tower on dark cliffs—fluttered on their pins like leaves.
Hannah’s brow furrowed. “Remember that time we found the cave?” she asked.
“Of course,” Ethan replied. “The Bright Road?”
Hannah nodded.
It had been the summer they were ten. Hannah had found the cave in the cliffs a twenty-minute bike ride along the coast.
“You made me go inside first,” Ethan said. “You said there was treasure in there.”
“Well, there might have been,” Hannah replied.
Peter laughed. “You came out screaming.”
Ethan smiled. “Yeah, well, it was very dark, and I touched something cold and slimy.”
“It was just seaweed,” Hannah said, laughing.
Ethan shook his head. “No. It turned out to be seaweed, but first, in my head, it was many horrible things.”
Hannah smiled. “Exactly! The point I’m making is we played in that cave all summer. We brought in candles.”
“And books,” Peter added. “And food!”
“And we saw the Bright Road!” Hannah said. She stood and went to the window.
Ethan remembered the Bright Road, they’d talked about it often since. One night, they’d stayed in the cave until it grew dark and the moon, full and bright, had risen over the restless sea. The reflection on the water looked like a bright road.
“It was so beautiful,” Hannah said, her voice now low, distant. “Do you remember? I remember thinking if we were brave enough, we could follow it, the Bright Road. We could get away from boring old Middlewood and go… I don’t know, somewhere else. Somewhere better. Somewhere magic.”
She ducked her head, and Ethan saw her flush.
“I guess my point is,” she said. “The cave worked out, didn’t it? It was worth doing, even if we were a little scared to start.” She looked back out the window. Ethan followed her gaze to the dark shape of the house, a fractured crown on the hill’s round head.
“I just want to walk the Bright Road,” she said. “I want a big life. Don’t you feel there’s something in that house, something good waiting for us?” She turned to them. “So, what do you think? Kirkbride Hall?”
Peter glanced at Ethan, then said to his sister, “I’m in.”
They both then turned to Ethan. He hated that he hesitated. He did not know what he thought he might find in the crumbling rooms and dark corridors of Kirkbride Hall, or whether he believed the stories about the disappearances. But not knowing was enough to make his skin prickle and his heart race. He was not brave like Hannah and Peter. He had always trailed a step behind, let them go first, listened to the quiet, persistent voice of his fear. But he knew also that he wanted to follow them—had always wanted to follow them. After his mum had moved away when he was seven, leaving him alone with his dad in their sad, quiet house, the Townleys—Peter, Hannah, and their older brother Jonathan—had become like family. They’d pulled him into the bright orbit of their lives, the loud meals and laughter and games and talk and books.
And adventures.
Ethan remembered Hannah’s Bright Road and his own longing to follow it, to go with Peter and Hannah, to leave behind his small, cautious world. Would he ever be brave enough? he’d wondered then.
Peter pushed his blonde hair out of his eyes. “Ethan, you don’t—”
“No, let’s do this,” Ethan said, not letting Peter finish. “It’s just a house, right?”
Hannah grinned. “Yes, totally, just a mysterious, slightly creepy old house on a hill. It will be brilliant.”
Ethan laughed. “Hannah, I’m beginning to think ‘brilliant’ doesn’t mean what you think it means.”
“No, it will be brilliant,” she said. “Let’s go!”
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Oh I'm SO locked in!!!!