But first things first, he needed power.
William sounded like a mad man as he hyped himself up to go down and check the cellar. Poker still in hand, lit candle in the other, he kicked the door open and gazed down into the gaping mouth of shadows. The groan of old hinges only added to the reality of horror.
“Come on, Willy-poo,” William said, practically jogging on the spot. He thought using his childhood nickname would help soothe him, but it only gave him the ick. “Don’t be so pathetic. It’s only a dark and smelly cellar, there isn’t anything that’s going to get you.”
What about the spiders?
Curse his over-imaginative thoughts.
William had never liked the dark for as long as he could remember. Holding the candle and poker like a sword and shield, he began his descent.
Old wooden steps moaned beneath William’s weight. One seemed close to breaking as he stepped on it, the wood worn from lice, age and mould that was heavy in the air. He was halfway down when thunder rumbled outside. He picked up his pace.
“It’s not so bad,” he encouraged himself as two feet hit stable, solid ground. “Is it?”
Spiders, his thoughts reminded him.
“Shut up, brain.”
There was a narrow window at the far side, the glass overcome with vines from overgrown bushes beyond. He no longer needed the candle, so he placed it on the bottom step. However, William didn’t drop the poker.
He followed the thick wiring nailed to the top of the wall until he reached its heart. In the end, the fuse box was easy to find, and he almost hated himself for not trying the night before. The scariest part of the ordeal was that the fuse box was engulfed in silver twines of cobwebs. Cursed beasts. He could almost feel their tiny eyes following him from the corners of the ceiling, making him move quicker. One of the juicy-bodied monsters sat perched atop the fuse-box’s lid. Furry legs, a large posterior and no doubt fangs to rival Dracula. It took him three attempts to smack the creature away with the poker, only to get this sinking feeling that the disgruntled spider would go off, gather an army of more and come back for revenge.
If anything was going to make him rush, it was that ever-present thought.
William was no electrician, but luckily, the fault with the electrics was a simple one to fix. The mains switch had been flicked downward, likely turned off during the years it had been empty. The second William knocked the switch up, the entire house seemed to come alive – more so than it already was.
The single bulb erupted to life above him, bathing the cellar in an amber glow. In the dark, William couldn’t have comprehended the sheer size of the cellar until the light exposed every nook and cranny. Almost every wall he could see was riddled with damp. Splotches of black mould raced across the stone, devouring the aged furniture and items leant up against it. If William thought the spider on the fuse box was bad, it was nothing compared to the knots of cobwebs that had claimed every forgotten corner.
Not wasting another second, he left the spiders in peace, offering a silent apology to the king he’d disturbed.
William spent the rest of the day exploring Hanbury. He coughed on the dust that filled the air as he tugged back the sheets from the furniture. He threw them all outside into the hallway until the dark wood-stained floor looked like it was covered in snow.
On the ground floor, he discovered a dramatic dining table in a room with grand cabinets filled with crockery and a soundless grandfather clock. There were numerous bookcases and beds with dreary-looking pillows throughout the many rooms. Sleeping on the sofa seemed like a five-star luxury compared to the options that the rooms presented. But he was determined to find himself a room he could set up in.
Of the five options, he chose a bedroom with a front-facing window overlooking of the manor’s driveway and surrounding grounds. Unlike the others, it seemed to be in the best nick.
As he drew a sheet off what turned out to be a desk, he knew instantly whose room this had once belonged to.
Robert Thomas. The boy whose journal waited for him downstairs. His desk nestled beneath a bedroom window, just as the entry had said, overlooking the front grounds of the manor.
William’s mind went straight to the story. He’d not thought much about what he’d read, but what he did know was this was where Robert sat and studied. Most notably where he pined after Teddy.
The wind whistled against the glass, only further proving William’s thoughts as he noticed a cracked pane of glass. The one which had broken when Robert had slammed the window shut all those years ago.
William shifted around the desk edge, until he stood as close to the window as he could. He peered outside, only to see lashings of rain and dark clouds. There was a line of trees that stretched for as far as he could see, bent and dancing in the brewing storms.
No odd shapes running between trees.
It was almost mid-afternoon, and the sky outside the manor was completely black. The shroud of cloud cover was so thick that the pathetic bulbs and lights in the manor achieved nothing but deepening the shadows they cast. There had been a few rooms where the bulbs had completely burst, but he vowed to keep out of those until natural light was an option.
William’s earlier hopes of heading into the village for more food were put off for another day, but at least he had another bottle of wine and some dried goods that would last.
Just as he went to turn back from the window, William caught something in the reflection.
A figure flashed just behind his shoulder. Breath catching in his throat, a pathetic cry of surprise chirped out of him. He half expected Edward to be standing behind him, but by the time he turned to look, there was nothing there.
Clutching his chest, heart beating so viciously his ribs almost cracked, William tried to calm himself down.
