Mirrored Mansion Ch 01

Hello and welcome to my first ever fiction. After being a reader here for many years a member for less, I've decided to have a crack at it myself. All going well this will be a multi Chapter story that uses the first few chapters to set the scene before things take off a bit qucker.

The Mirrored Mansion

Chapter 1 - The Weight of a Name

Late afternoon, and Kezley Peverel guides a rental Kia up a single-laneway of Holloway's approach. The sky is greying, as evening sags toward night. Drizzling rain keeps the intermittent wipers flicking back and forth. Each curve of the laneway brings the entrance nearer, framed between tunnelled beech trees, the branches gnarled black and leafless, arcing overhead.

At the final bend, the woods break. Holloway House stares out across the valley. Not so much derelict as brooding, its face slicked with rain, a few windows bandaged in plywood and cheap sheeting. The laneway ends at a set of iron gates corroded to the colour of Corten steel, each bar capped with a thorn, and flanked by two stone eagles the size of children. Their beaks blunt with lichen, wings spread, feathers chipped, the stone scabbed and patched by time.

Kezley, a name his mother gave him to make him sound posh, or Kez as his friends call him, stops at the gates and steps from the car, a wad of keys in hand, to unlock the chained and padlocked gates. The solicitor's assistant had handed him the keys with a wry smile on his way to the estate, as if she knew something but said nothing. The gate resists, then gives with a sighing groan, the iron voice of years unlived. Back in the rental, through the gates, the driveway meanders to the house. As he drives closer, its details sharper: the grotesques on the guttering, the rippled glass of the side porch clouded by a century of grime. Everything so still it feels staged, some elaborate set piece waiting for the actor to miss his cue.

Kezley brakes, lets the engine idle, then kills it. The silence roars back, the thrum of rain, the sizzle of wind in the yews, somewhere a rook croaking. For a moment he does not move, just tracks his own breath fogging in the dimming light. No point waiting for a welcome. He checks his reflection in the rearview: face lean, eyes at once pale and dark by sleeplessness, a hint of silver at his temples now. Not quite the villain of family scuttlebutt, but close.

He opens the car door. Cold, wet air knifes in. Boots hit the mud with a slow, deliberate squelch. Kezley stands, stretches, inhales. The grounds slope away in a tangle of overgrown lawns, rhododendrons crouched along the foundation. Every surface shines with dampness. He adjusts his battered coat--black leather, heavy, a gift from another life--and shoulders the duffel from the passenger seat. It's a familiar weight.

There are four massive stone lions, one at each corner of the boundary wall. Even in ruin, they keep their pride, the suggestion of muscle in their carved flanks and the stare of eyes no rain could erode. A second, smaller pair of lions awaits on the balustrade of the moss-clotted stairs leading up to the main doors. He wonders if anyone has walked this path since the funeral, or if the estate has simply grown more itself in the absence of its line.

He places a hand on the nearest lion. The stone is cold, unyielding. The face--mouth open, teeth bared in the formal suggestion of a roar--reminds him of his father's worst moods, the ones that curdled a room. He pats the head, as if in benediction, and climbs the stairs.

The Cumbrian rain is fine but insistent, working its way into collar and cuff. He sets the duffel down, before pulling the bundle of keys from his coat. Kezley remembers the words of Mr. Aldric Horne, the solicitor --"The property comes with obligations, not all of them strictly legal, Mr. Peverel."And for a moment, the knot in his stomach draws taut. Ancestors, he thinks, all ghosts and failure. All watching, measuring, waiting to see if he will last a single night. The front doors are warped, the left one a half-shade lighter from some unremembered fire or sun. He fits one key into the lock. It turns, a rusty protest.

Thunder grumbles, low and distant, threatening more rain. Kezley squares his shoulders. He lifts the duffel. He hesitates, just a fraction of a second, and wonders--How long has the house waited for me? How long has it taken measure and weighing the sum of Peverels, found each wanting? He thinks of his mother's stories, and he is cold with anticipation. He pushes open the door. It swings wide on ancient hinges, the threshold gaping like a mouth; he steps into the dark.

_______

Twilight seeps slowly and ambiguously through boards and glass. Kezley finds himself standing in the grand foyer, the echo of the door's closing ricocheting up three stories of shadowed void. The air is a wet wool blanket, the stink of black mould and ancient fabric thick enough to taste. He breathes shallow, adjusting to the climate. No lights, of course. He feels for the panel to his right--finds it, flips the switch anyway. Nothing. "What!. The power was supposed to be connected yesterday," he says out loud.

He sets the duffel on the floor, shrugs it open. Gloves off, he flexes his fingers and winces at the cold. A thick draft pours through the corridor, winding around the balustrades. Kezley fishes out his flashlight from the duffel before thumbing the trunk release on his rental fob, hears the distant thunk as the latch pops. Steps outside, boots slapping wet stone, and retrieves the rest of his gear: sleeping bag--faded green, seams straining; pillow, once blue, now marbled with uncertain stains; a new cooler with some basics, as he returns inside.

He shoulders the supplies to the foot of the main staircase. It spirals upward in a slow, decadent arc, marble veined with old neglect. The banister is slick and cool to the touch, ends in a lion's paw carved with what must have been reckless expense. Finding an empty room, he drops the sleeping bag inside, fluffs the pillow half-heartedly, then sits with his back to the wall. The foyer, he notes, is vast enough to make him feel smaller than a schoolboy. Smaller than a memory of a boy.

He unsnaps the cooler. The sound is a tiny pop, too clean for the place. He peels away wax paper--pizza, cold and congealed, pepperoni haloed in grease. He studies it for a moment before eating, wondering if the preservatives in the cheese will outlast him here. He takes a bite. It's bland, sour at the edge, but it fills the silence. He works through two slices, chewing slowly, hands slick with oil. His stomach tenses against the taste but welcomes the bulk. The third slice he leaves in the wax, not even bothering to fold the paper over it.

The settling dark nudges him toward something like comfort, or at least acceptance. He drapes the sleeping bag across the thin camp mattress, arranges the pillow where he can lie and see the stairs, the foyer, the sealed doors beyond. He lays out flat, arms crossed over his chest. It had been a long day travelling. After a long flight from New Zealand, hire car and a stop past the solicitor's office, a further six hour drive to the estate, he was jet lagged and tired.

He closes his eyes for a moment, just to rest them. The room doesn't vanish--behind his eyelids, it blooms richer, details emerging in remembered strokes: the scorch mark near the library arch, the hairline crack running the length of the entry tile, the place above the fireplace where a portrait once hung. Each detail is inherited, some directly, some by way of whispered story or from his childhood.

He opens his eyes again, already cold despite the layers. The sleeping bag barely cuts the chill. He rolls onto his side, listening to the slow tick of water somewhere deep in the house. He thinks of the solicitor assistant--thick glasses, lips pursed as she turned the key in her palm. "The east corridor is to remain locked until you are ready," she'd said, "and it's best not to rush readiness." He'd laughed at the time, assuming it was a flourish. But now, with every ache in his back magnified by stone and damp, he thinks of the door. The lock, heavy as an anchor, the colour of riverbed silt. He pictures himself opening it, what he might find--rot, rats, nothing--or worse, something that would be forced to recognise him, welcome him, demand his name.

Kezley's pulse rises, just slightly, at the thought. He folds his arms tighter. Shifts, restless.

The last of the light drains from the ceiling. He shivers, then looks again to the top of the stairs, where the corridor to the east waits in shadow, a promise or a threat. He lets the dark come, not ready yet, but knowing soon he'll have to see.

_______________

By seven, the night outside is full and thick, black velvet laced with rain. Inside Holloway, it's not so different; dark, a living thing, pressing in on every wall. Kezley shuffles awake from where he'd dozed. The cold has stiffened him. He blinks, shakes out the worst of his thoughts, then hauls himself upright. He finds the flashlight in the duffel. It's heavy, LED, meant for the kind of work where the power never comes back on. He clicks it to life, a bright beam slices the shadows. The foyer is even emptier now, the marble stairs receding into a kind of twilight gloom that the flashlight only partly tames.

He begins the survey downstairs, his boots thumping in the hush. First, the kitchen: a long, galley-style affair at the back of the house, colder than the rest. Cupboards gape, some with missing doors. The counters are lined with dust and mould, a palimpsest of dinners long since scraped into the bin. He runs his gloved finger along the edge of the sink, comes away with a line of grey fuzz. The flashlight finds the ceiling, beams up into a world of webbing--old spiders, new spiders, nothing in between.

Above the sink, a rack of utensils hangs at a crooked angle. The metal is rusted; the knives brown as dried blood. In the back corner, a cast-iron pot sits on the stove, its lid sealed by a rind of what might once have been stew. The fridge, when he tugs it open, releases a breath of air so foul it makes his stomach clench. He closes it, gagging, and moves on.

The next room is a hallway, portraits lining the walls, the ancestors arranged in unbroken sequence. Each face is rendered in cold, merciless accuracy: eyes blue or brown, all cut from the same granite. There are Peverels with swords, Peverels with books, Peverels in uniforms from wars the world has forgotten. Kezley stops at a middle-aged man whose eyes seem to catch the light and throw it back. The resemblance is disquieting. He touches the frame, and smudges dust across the nameplate. "I know you," he mutters, but cannot say why.

Further down the hall, the wood panelling buckles around a hidden door. The knob is gone, just a dark hole. Kezley prods at it with a finger, but it doesn't yield. He marks it for later and continues.

The library, next. The door resists, swollen by decades of damp, but he leans into it until it pops free. The room is almost warm, maybe. Shelves line three walls, heavy with books whose spines have split and wept their glue onto the shelves below. He traces a finger along the bindings, picking out familiar titles: treatises on law, geology, the occult. The last gives him pause.

He pulls a volume at random. The cover flakes away, but the pages are whole. He opens to the middle, runs a finger down the columns; the language dense and baroque. Latin, mostly, or a bastard cousin. A note in the margin, written in spidery hand, catches his eye: "Do not speak to the dark before it speaks to you." He closes the book, shoves it back, and wipes his hands on his jeans.

A gust rattles the loose pane of a tall window; the sound sharp as a pistol shot. Kezley flinches. The flashlight beam wobbles, dances across the ceiling. It takes him a long moment to breathe normally again, to feel anything but the echo of his own pulse. He laughs, too loud, not naturally--and mutters, "Fuck's sake, Kez," just to say something out loud.

He moves through the rest of the ground floor in a daze. Each room is worse than the last, cluttered with the wreckage of other lives: a parlour with armchairs collapsed in on themselves; a dining room where a single glass remains upright on the table, as if waiting for a toast; a study so full of old mail and crumpled newspaper that the floor is invisible beneath the drift. He catalogues it all mentally, then with the camera app on his phone, quick snaps in the flashlight's glare. Each image a record, a tether.

Eventually, he reaches the archway to the east wing. The door is newer than the rest, solid, painted a dull institutional grey. The handle is black, unremarkable. He knows what waits beyond: the corridor, the sealed room, the thing he's meant to face when "ready." He raises the flashlight, squares his shoulders, then checks his watch. 7:47. Late enough.

He does not go through. Not tonight. Instead, he stands a moment, listening to the silence pooling on the other side. He imagines it has weight, substance. He wonders if the thing in the east wing also hears him, breathing, trembling, deciding.

He turns, pulls the door shut behind him, hears the latch seat with a click that sounds almost like relief. For a long moment he stands, hand on the knob, steadying himself. Then he returns to the foyer, ascends the stairs to the faint outline of his makeshift bed, to the only light left in the house.

______________

He beds down where he started, at the top of the grand stair. The floor cold against his spine, sleeping bag pulled up to his chin, the pizza wrapper a greasy flag at his side. The only light is from the phone, screen dimmed to a faint blue glow, and when he clicks it off the house becomes an organism--breathing, shifting, settling around him.

The wind slips in through a dozen cracks, each one a different pitch of whistle. Somewhere above, water ticks into the pipes, a distant reminder of lost luxury. The east corridor, even sealed, radiates presence: a low, uneven pulse, like a heartbeat in the stone.

He cinches the bag tighter, wishing for the extra layer he left in the car. The damp is an animal, clawing through coat and fleece, hunting for skin. He flexes his calves, feeling the ache of a long flight, a long drive and longer nerves. It's a fight to relax--muscles want to be ready, on their mark, but he forces himself flat, lets the thin mattress take his weight. The taste of cold pizza lingers, a sour afterthought. He breathes shallow, listening to the spaces in the house. The echoes of his own motions return to him a second too late, as if someone else were moving in parallel, just beyond the reach of the light.

There's a scrape on the landing above, a single deliberate sound, and he holds his breath. Waits. Nothing. But the silence afterwards is changed--sharper, tuned. He imagines the house as a vast lung, each inhale drawing him deeper, every exhale tightening the walls around him.

He rolls to his side; dust motes swirl in the air, visible only in the few moments when headlamp or phone flares. The rumble from the east wing is deeper now, less sound than vibration. He feels it through the floor, up the bones of his spine. His pulse is a counterpoint: fast, then slow, a tremor in his chest.

He tries to think of anything else: old jobs, old friends, any place he'd rather be. The hours creep. He drifts, wakes, drifts again, never quite losing the sense of being watched. Sometimes he dreams of laughter, a woman's voice in the next room, but wakes to nothing but the heavy pulse of the house and the ache of his own breath. At some point, he becomes too tired to care. The chill settles, the sounds blur into a single lull. His hands unclench. His breathing evens. And in the hush before true sleep, he thinks; briefly, fiercely of what waits for him in the east wing, and what waits for it, in him. Then the thought slides away, lost to the mansion's restless dark. And Kezley sleeps.

Well we are away and hopefully you enjoyed the chapter. Please feel free to send along some comments, I'd love to hear your thoughts.

A big thanks to my editor Mike, who has taken on a newby and has been very helpful.

Chapter 2 is not far way.

Red.