Five Stories High Read online

  First published 2016 by Solaris

  an imprint of Rebellion Publishing Ltd,

  Riverside House, Osney Mead,

  Oxford, OX2 0ES, UK

  www.solarisbooks.com

  ISBN: 978-1-84997-929-0

  ‘Maggots’ copyright © Nina Allan 2016

  ‘Priest’s Hole’ copyright © K.J. Parker 2016

  ‘Gnaw’ copyright © Tade Thompson 2016

  ‘The Best Story I Can Manage Under the Circumstances’ copyright © Robert Shearman 2016

  ‘Skin Deep’ copyright © Sarah Lotz 2016

  Arrangement and ‘Notes on Irongrove Lodge’ by Jonathan Oliver © Rebellion Publishing Ltd 2016

  Cover art by Oz Osborne

  The right of the authors to be identified as the authors of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

  This is a work of fiction. All the characters and events portrayed in this book are fictional, and any resemblance to real people or incidents is purely coincidental.

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the copyright owners.

  Nina Allan

  K.J. Parker

  Tade Thompson

  Robert Shearman

  Sarah Lotz

  Edited, and with a linking narrative by:

  Jonathan Oliver

  CONTENTS

  Notes on Irongrove Lodge

  Maggots, Nina Allan

  Notes on Irongrove Lodge

  Priest’s Hole, K. J. Parker

  Notes on Irongrove Lodge

  Gnaw, Tade Thompson

  Notes on Irongrove Lodge

  The Best Story I Can Manage Under the Circumstances, Robert Shearman

  Notes on Irongrove Lodge

  Skin Deep, Sarah Lotz

  Notes on Irongrove Lodge

  About the Authors

  Also edited by Jonathan Oliver

  NOTES ON IRONGROVE LODGE

  HISTORY TELLS US very little of the dwelling (entity?) known as Irongrove Lodge. Years of wading through esoteric texts have provided me with only a handful of references, and little idea as to where the house actually is, but a story in one medieval manuscript seems a good enough place to start.

  There was once a single room dwelling supposedly belonging to a ‘cunning’ woman, situated in a clearing deep in the forest. The walls of the shack were cracked and had been inexpertly patched. The roof was home to as many holes as rooks, which nested in the remaining structure. How anybody could live in such poor circumstances, few could imagine, yet folk were still drawn here to the heart of the forest. Some came to be cured of their ailments, or to seek spiritual guidance. Others were sent as punishment, and of those who entered with guilt in their hearts, nothing was seen or heard of again. Many came for reasons unknown, as if the house had called them, drawn them inexorably over its threshold. Few spoke of what they saw within.

  But there was one man. Burdened to the edge of insanity with what he had seen, he decided to lighten his load through confession to a priest. No, he could not say why he had been drawn to the forest and the house. He had no guilt in his soul, beyond that of a normal sinner. He led a simple but comfortable life and claimed to be happy with his lot. Still, he had left his home when all were asleep and walked deep into the forest, taking an unerringly direct path to the clearing, though he had never previously heard of the house or been told of its location.

  On his arrival, the door was open and pleasant cooking smells wafted from within. The night was cold and the warmth emanating from the house persuaded him to step inside. Of the interior, he could say very little other than that it was wreathed in mist or smoke. He walked further than could be accounted for by the exterior walls, and at points he ascended or descended. Once he found a window that looked out upon a vast city, its buildings rising to kiss the heavens, each window blazing with the most brilliant light. The sight sent him reeling and he lost himself for what seemed an unimaginable time in the depths of the house. How he had finally found the door through which he’d entered, he couldn’t say. He thought, perhaps, that he had met someone and given something of himself, and so had been allowed to leave.

  The priest writes that the man stopped talking then and an unsettling silence followed. When he opened the door of the confessional, he found the man within to be little more than a dry husk, his flesh stretched tight over his bones and his eye sockets empty, as though in telling his tale he had been consumed.

  A note appended to the manuscript at a later date tells how some time later the priest was found divested of his habit, naked, walking towards the forest.

  MAGGOTS

  NINA ALLAN

  For Karen and Helen Denning:

  to the butcher and baker

  from the candlestick maker

  with much love

  BEFORE I TELL you about the house, I need to tell you about what happened with my Aunty Claire. I didn’t let on to anyone about that, not for a long time. Not because I was afraid no one would believe me – I knew that anyway – but because I was afraid that not being believed would be the final insult to my sanity. The last step I would take in the known world before plummeting over the edge into cloud cuckoo land.

  When I was a lad, I used to think cloud cuckoo land was a real place, a place where birds went to hunt insects and engage in air battles or whatever else birds like to do when humans aren’t watching. Once I got into reading I discovered that cloud cuckoo land was an invention of the Greek playwright Aristophanes, who wrote about power struggles in the animal kingdom as an allegory for human politics.

  Now of course, talking about cloud cuckoo land is just another way for people to tell you you’re crazy. A place they try and pack you off to when they’re scared. Bedlam or the loony bin, trauma therapy. The ways they find to shut you up may change with the times, but the scared part stays real.

  1: York

  AUNTY CLAIRE IS my mother’s sister. She’s younger than Mum by five years. Normally when there’s that kind of age gap between siblings it leads to tension and jealousy, either that or they end up being distant from one another. Mum and Claire were always close though, and I remember Claire being round our house a lot when I was a kid. She was the kind of aunt you’d kill for, always doing cool stuff for me, like buying me a skateboard even when Mum had said no, taking me on the scariest rides at the funfair, making me an amazing pirate costume for Hallowe’en. It wasn’t until I was older that I found out how ill Claire had been when she was younger, how she’d once tried to kill herself.

  I was about fifteen when Mum told me that, and I was pretty shocked. It didn’t fit with the Claire I knew, not at all. Mum said Aunty Claire had been involved with some guy in the army. He was posted to Northern Ireland, and Claire was terrified he was going to get blown up by a car bomb. He didn’t, though. He met someone else instead, and when he next came home on leave he broke things off with Claire. She was devastated, Mum said, but it wasn’t just that. She was having problems at college, and awful nightmares all the time.

  “She used to watch all these awful films,” Mum said. “Horror movies. And books. She was always reading about germs that came out of the sea and contaminated people’s water supply, or alien creatures skulking in the wardrobes of empty houses, things like that. I don’t know where she got it from, or what she got out of it. Her appetite for this stuff, I mean. She used to say the books and films were just for fun, that they helped her see the world in a more interesting way. I told her she’d give herself bad dreams and I was right.”

  Mum said she c
ouldn’t help blaming herself for what happened. “I should have realised sooner, how bad things were. Done something.” She and Dad had only recently married, and so Mum mostly had her mind on other things. That’s why she and Claire became so close afterwards, Mum said. “I wasn’t going to let anything like that happen again.”

  When I asked Mum what kind of nightmares Claire had, she said she didn’t remember the details. “Just bad dreams,” she said. “The kind we all have.” I still couldn’t make it fit. The Claire I knew was a bouncy, colourful, mischievous sort of person. She liked going on the ghost train at the Knutsford carnival but she’d laugh her head off for the whole of the ride. The Claire I knew wasn’t scared of ghosts or zombies. She found them hilarious.

  When I was ten, Claire met Uncle Dave. They married soon afterwards, and had the twins about a year after that, which meant Claire wasn’t round our place as much as before, though we still got together as a family at least once a week. Mum didn’t seem too keen on Dave at first, but now I know that was just because she was worried in case Claire got hurt again. That changed after Rhys and Emma were born, though. Dave was over the moon about being a dad, anyone could see that. He’s a good bloke all round.

  Aunty Claire was abducted in 1992, when the twins were eight. She and Dave were in York for their anniversary – Dave always liked to take Claire away for the weekend, to a nice hotel or something. Emma and Rhys were staying with us. I remember because it was during my first term at college. I’d been feeling a bit homesick and decided to come home for the weekend. I’d forgotten the twins would be there, so it was all a bit chaotic, but in a good way. I let Emma borrow my old pirate costume. The three of us went off up the woods searching for buried treasure and came back to the house absolutely covered in mud. They were sweet kids. The weekend did me good. By Sunday lunchtime I’d forgotten how nervous and out of place I’d been feeling in my hall of residence and was even looking forward to going back. Then, while Rhys and Emma and I were doing the washing up, the phone rang. Mum picked up because she was closest. It was Dave. I heard Mum say “slow down, Dave”, and then “what?” and then she asked him if he’d called the police.

  I remember feeling weird, right then, the kind of hot, anxious feeling you get when you’re about to come down with the flu. As if something’s flipped over inside you and gone bad. I knew something was wrong, I just didn’t know what. I carried on chatting to Emma and Rhys, showing them where to stack the clean and dry dishes so I could put them away, but all the time I was straining to hear what Mum was saying and trying not to panic. All the bad feelings about college came flooding back. There was something in the tone of her voice, something that said everything you’ve cared about until now, that’s all gone.

  Eventually Mum hung up the phone and came through to the kitchen. Dad was still sat at the table, reading the paper. Emma was flicking a tea towel at Rhys, who was trying to catch the end of it.

  “I think we can say you’re excused, you two,” Mum said. She told them they could go and watch TV in the lounge if they wanted to. “That space thing’s on that you like,” she said, and smiled. Once they were out of the room Mum quietly closed the door and told me and Dad that Aunty Claire had gone missing.

  Claire and Dave had left their hotel soon after lunch. They wanted to have one more walk up to the castle. It was pleasant out: bright sunshine, plenty of people about. Dave stopped to look at some cameras in a shop window. He thought Claire was right beside him, but when he turned to speak to her he found she was gone. He walked all the way back down the street and along several nearby side streets but there was no sign of her. She couldn’t have wandered off, Dave said. She was there just a second before. Just a second. She couldn’t have disappeared that fast, even if she’d been running.

  “He was calling from a phone box,” Mum said. “In the middle of York somewhere. He sounded awful. Confused.”

  “Confused?” Dad said. Mum nodded. Her face had gone a horrible milky colour.

  “As if he couldn’t remember where he was,” she said. “I told him to go back to the hotel, that Claire was bound to head back there once she realised they’d become separated. That makes sense, doesn’t it? What should we do, Mike?”

  Dad didn’t say anything at first, but I could tell he was worried by the way he was looking at Mum. He knew all about Claire’s past history.

  “What would you like to do, love?” he said. “Would you prefer it if we jumped in the car and drove up there? Willy’ll stay here with the kiddies, won’t you, Will?”

  Mum glanced towards the living room door, the muffled sounds of what lay beyond it: Emma and Rhys, bunched up on the sofa watching Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan. Not to get them upset.

  “Could you, pet?” Mum said. She only ever said pet when she was distracted – she had this thing about not wanting to sound too northern. Dad used to wind her up about it something rotten. I said yes, of course, even though I’d been planning to head back to college straight after tea. I knew I couldn’t go anywhere, not with this going on. Mum went in search of the number of the hotel Dave and Claire were staying at, so she could call and leave a message that they were on their way. Dad was just fetching their coats from the hall when the phone rang again.

  It was Dave, calling to say that Claire was right there beside him and hadn’t he made a fool of himself?

  “Where was she?” Mum said, after Dad had handed the phone over. I could hear Dave’s voice at the other end, chattering away, the way people do when they’ve had a fright over something that turned out to be nothing after all. People in that situation want to relive every detail, have you noticed? To experience the whole drama again, only with the fear removed.

  “Are you sure you’re both all right?” Mum said. She turned away slightly, shielding the phone with her body. There was more of Dave chattering, then Mum said, “OK then, if you’re sure. Don’t be stupid. We’ll see you this evening, then. Oh, they’re fine. Watching that space thing. No, not a thing. Bye, then.”

  She replaced the receiver and turned to face us. “Well,” she said. “Claire was there all the time, apparently. Dave went haring off in the wrong direction and she couldn’t catch up with him.”

  “Why didn’t she call out?” Dad said.

  “She did, or so she says. Only Dave was in such a state he didn’t hear her.”

  “Is Aunty Claire all right?” I said.

  “She’s fine, pet. Dave says they’ll be checking out of the hotel as soon as they get back there. They’ll be home in a couple of hours. They’re going to come here for supper. Stay if you like?”

  “I should get back, really. I have lectures in the morning.”

  “Whatever’s best, love. Dad’ll run you to the station.”

  Mum seemed OK again, back to normal, on the surface, anyway. I said that would be great, and went to gather my stuff together. I was back in halls by about six o’clock. I called home from the payphone by the porter’s desk. Dad answered. I asked if Dave and Claire were back yet and he said oh yes, about an hour ago. I could hear Mum’s voice in the background, saying something to one of the twins.

  I should have felt relieved, but I didn’t. I couldn’t have said, even to myself, why that was. Just the feeling that whatever it was wasn’t over, the kind you get in a horror movie, when all the characters are celebrating because the monster or the serial killer or whatever has been fought off, but the audience knows – you know – that something really bad is about to happen.

  I didn’t feel well. I didn’t feel like myself. The afternoon I’d spent playing in the woods with the twins seemed an age ago, like something that had happened in a film. I wondered if I’d caught a chill, rolling around in the mud like that, or if it had happened before, on the crowded train home on the Friday night, all those commuters and grandparents and sixth form students crushed up against each other, coughing and sniffing, the muggy, diseased heat of dozens of alien bodies.

  I touched my forehead. I did have
a temperature. That was most likely all it was, then, the bad feeling: a cold virus taking hold of my respiratory system. I thought it would be good to make myself a cup of tea or Ovaltine, then remembered I had no milk in the fridge. I wondered if the eight-till-late opposite the halls of residence might still be open. I looked at my watch – it wasn’t even seven yet, so no problem. I was feeling dizzy now, too. I made it to the shop and back, stupidly proud of myself for venturing out again. A pint of semi-skimmed, a packet of chocolate Hobnobs, three chicken and mushroom Cup-a-Soups, that should last me the next twenty-four hours at least, not bad for pirate treasure.

  I hoped I hadn’t given my cold to Rhys or Emma, poor little devils. I wondered if they were safe, then wondered why I’d thought that, when I knew they were with their parents.

  I put the TV on with the sound turned right down and lay back on the bed. I woke soon after midnight, with a painful crick in my neck, my throat burning like a bastard and my nose streaming. The television was still on – an old episode of The Rockford Files. I think it was the theme music that woke me. My dad loved that show.

  I pulled my clothes off and my jimmies on then climbed into bed properly. I couldn’t tell if I was hot or cold but I thought it would probably be sensible to get under the duvet. I passed out pretty quickly but found myself awake again a couple of hours later, feeling like shit and with a terrible thirst and unsure of whether I’d even been asleep in the first place. Sleep felt like a dream I’d been having: sweat-soaked and unsettled and murky with danger. I was like that all night. When morning came I felt so rough I was tempted not to get up at all but I did, I think only because the bed was coming to feel so repulsive and sticky I just had to be out of it.