These Lifeless Things

Jack Fraser
Jul 21, 2017 · 8 min read

The valley floor is broad and flat. The sheltering mountains rear up, lower slopes covered in gorse and bracken, their rocky peaks jaggedly impressive. To the south, the loch lies pearly smooth and distant. It’s awkward to get here, the road hardly a road at all, single track, a central strip of grass pushing through the tarmac. There’s a farm to the north, where I crossed over the pass; a river, all lazy loops and winding curves. It’s beautiful, but in this wild landscape beauty is a by-product of geography, a footnote almost. I pass a great grey cairn of head-sized river pebbles; the torn-off silvered stumps of harvested plantation spruce fill the steep slope of the western spur behind me.

I cross a bridge and keep walking. Beyond the loch, I’ll climb to another pass and be out of this space, tight on the map yet expansive on the ground, airless, almost silent. The sun’s hot, and I have a blister coming. I’ve seen no one since I descended to the valley floor this morning. A buzzard watches me from a fence post and I see two ruinous cottages, long abandoned; only gable walls remaining. My boots crunch on the fine gravel of the track. How long has it been since anyone drove this way?

I stop for lunch in the shade of an oak tree and pull the map from my pocket. Another track branches off, looping to rejoin this one close to where it gets a number and changes colour from the broken-edged white of ‘unmade’ to the yellow of a minor road. The scarlet running-stitch of a public footpath darts along the track, and marked on the map alongside it are two standing stones. It might be interesting, to follow the loop.

Somewhere in the distance I hear the guttural whir of a magpie.

After half an hour on the side track, I’m sweaty and cursing. It’s overgrown and brambly as hell. It’s also muddy, and climbs steadily in a way undisclosed by contour lines. I have to walk almost beneath a pylon, fizzing and humming. Reaching the point where the standing stones should be visible, the track cuts deeply between towering hedges and I can see nothing at all. Then it swings sharply south, entering an oak wood, the trees twisted and ancient. The sun goes in, tempting me to turn back, but I must be half way, surely. I trudge on.

It’s darker beneath the moss-hung trees, very quiet. Laid across the path is a long bone, bleached white. I regard it thoughtfully. From a sheep? Femur, or tibia, I guess. It looks quite human.

The track grows wetter. There are no footprints or tyre tracks; no one’s been up here for a long time. The trees bend and fold above me. The oaks retreat, replaced by huge elephant-skinned beeches; an avenue, almost. There are twenty or more on each side of the track, which flattens out, broadens, ending in a gate dwarfed by unruly rhododendrons. A very average five-bar farm gate, tied shut with pale salmon-coloured binder twine, set between gateposts which are rather grander than one might expect. They tower above me, one empty, the other still home to a broken carved creature, proudly supporting a smashed shield. It’s so thickly covered with lichen it’s hard to see what it’s meant to be; lion, griffin, or — what?

I stand on the lowest bar of the gate and look across a great expanse of wind-blown knee-high grass to an entirely unexpected mansion, vast and decayed, trees waving where the roof should be, ivy crawling round empty windows.

“Cool,” I say, aloud. “Can’t beat a really big ruin.”

I fight to untie the binder twine — the footpath allegedly cuts through here — but it proves recalcitrant. I climb over.

I stand for a moment in the shadow of the trees. Something about the exposed nature of the approach to the house is rather disconcerting. I glance about, but there are no other buildings in sight, and no people or animals or — anything.

The track’s just about visible, crossing the grassy expanse. Presumably the front of the house is on the other side. On this side, stacked four high and twelve across, as high as the first-floor windows, are the shiny black drums of silage bags, unexpected beside the elegance of pediments and architectural detailing. A very slight rise in the level of the track means the view appears as I approach the building. More grass — once lawn, I suppose — descending to parkland, the occasional tree. A curve of woodland to the right, and ahead the loch, a puddle of soft pewter; the mountains stretch and climb beyond. It’s a fine view for any house. There’s blue sky to the east, but dark clouds are banking from the south-west.

I can see trees growing in the empty rooms, huge ground-floor windows with great stone mullions, the indented frieze above the smaller windows on the third floor. Where it’s visible between swathes of ivy, the house is the dark grey of pencil lead, the stone seeming to suck in the available light.

I have the very distinct impression I’m being watched, but the dotted red line on the map indicating ‘footpath’ reassures me. Anyway, I remind myself, they don’t have trespass laws in Scotland. Right to roam, and all that.

I look through one of the enormous windows. It’s twelve feet high at least, and the room within is full of sycamore saplings; the ceiling gone, the floor collapsed. A door in the far corner leads through into another room, equally leafy and mysterious. On the far wall, fragments of plaster bulge away from the laths beneath. Through the gaping hole in the floor is a basement room, full of darkness.

I glance behind me, down across the lawn towards the woods. There’s nothing there, of course.

The grand porch has collapsed, there’s no access via the front door. Another pair of windows. Laid out on the sill of the nearest is a sheep skull and a row of teeth. The slow curl of the left-hand horn is half-scarlet, wound with embroidery silk or string. Skulls are interesting, to me, not sinister. If it weren’t for the thread, I’d be tempted to take it. The teeth are presumably sheep’s teeth; wide flat molars, long-rooted incisors. I hover for a moment, staring, and then move on to the next window.

Some of the surround has fallen, providing a lump of masonry just the right size. Dropping my rucksack, I step up, onto the hip-high windowsill. I look up through a criss-cross of iron floor supports. In the room above a fireplace hangs; carved stone, mantel. Down here, the floor is carpeted with ferns.

I hesitate for a moment, and then jump down into the room. A sense of floor polish and sunshine, quiet dustiness. I shake my head and once again it’s gloomy, chill. A long time since these floors were polished. In fact, the floor’s invisible, concealed by the spread of ferns, and I step cautiously, afraid of plunging into the room beneath, sidling closer to the wall.

A door to a larger room, with an actual full grown tree in it; another intricate fireplace; shreds of wallpaper. A shiny hart’s tongue fern grows from a crack in the wall. I look up, see more wallpaper in the room above, a roof timber angled awkwardly.

Moving slowly onward, avoiding the holes in the floor, I wonder why this grand and elegant place stands neglected and crumbling. Stepping through another door I find myself in a badly-damaged room, an internal wall collapsed, intricate plasterwork mouldering, dark smudges. Smoke damage? I imagine the crackle of flames, acrid smoke filling the rooms. The iron joists make me think the house is late Victorian, even early twentieth century. Built in that long summer decade before the First World War, perhaps. Another flash of sunlight and floorboards, an imagined distant piano. I shiver, and turn right, into the hallway, a great wide space where the staircase once curved upwards.

“There was a fire,” says a voice from above. I start violently, jumping, literally; hand to chest. A figure stands in the doorway above me, balanced between two long-vanished rooms.

“Before there was a house there was a cairn,” says the person. I can’t tell from here if it’s a deep-voiced woman, or a slender boyish man. “When they cleared the stones they found a skeleton. The villagers said it shouldn’t be moved but he didn’t care. The laird. All this land was his land, he said.”

I step backwards, peering up.

“They said the house was cursed.”

I clear my throat. “And was it?”

“Oh yes,” s/he says, simply. “Always something. The well ran dry, the staff wouldn’t stay, the horses lamed.” The person above me walks carelessly across a joist, not appearing concerned or unsteady, to the matching doorway directly above me. I move backwards again, into the burned room.

“Three sons lost in the first war. And one left — damaged. It killed their mother.”

I think it’s a woman, now she’s closer, although the shadows make it hard to see clearly. She walks through the empty space of the doorway, and by the time I’ve turned to look after her, she’s dropped, somehow, to the floor, and is standing before me. She’s tall, with dark hair cropped close, but I can’t quite bring her into focus. I think it’s the light in here, filtered through ivy and the gloom of years.

“The fire took the floors,” she gestures, “and the staircase.”

“Was anyone hurt? When was that?”

“Nineteen twenty-four. A party. Too much wine and dancing. Too many candles.”

I picture flat-chested flappers in strappy shoes, ostrich feathers, pearls.

“Or so they say,” she adds. “No one comes here now.”

“You’re here, though.”

She dips her head in agreement. “And you,” she says.

I shiver, my hand on the windowsill. If I had to run, where would I go? Back up to the gate? Or down, across the lawn, towards the distant loch?

Although why would I run?

She walks across the room, without looking at the holes in the floor, to stand by the other window. “You’re alone?” she asks.

I ignore this. “Do you live locally?” She hasn’t the trace of an accent.

“I live here.”

“Really? It doesn’t seem very — weather-proof. Don’t you get wet?”

“No. Do the others know you’re here?”

“What others? I thought you said no one comes here?”

“They never left,” she says.

Okay, so now I’m properly spooked.

“I’d better go.” I try not to sound nervous. “I need to be beyond the loch by this evening.”

She steps closer. “Can you see it?”

“See what?”

“How it was, before?” She makes an expansive gesture with her arm. “Persian carpets, wallpaper from Liberty? Long afternoons, croquet on the lawn?”

Again I think I hear a distant piano. I look towards the sound and when I look back, there’s furniture; glass in the windows. I blink, and it’s gone.

“I thought so,” she says. “I can always tell.”

I can feel the hair standing up on my arms. I don’t like this at all. I don’t like this strange woman, I don’t like this place, and I don’t like being here alone.

“I’d better go,” I say.

“Don’t go. There’s more to see.”

“I haven’t time.”

“There’s always time, here. It passes very slowly,” she says, “very slowly.”

I sit on the windowsill and swing my legs over. I try to remember route of the footpath. It crosses the lawn in front of the house and heads for the wood, I think. I pick up my rucksack.

“Nice to have met you,” I say, unconvincingly. There’s no reply, and when I look back, of course, there’s no one there.

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Jack Fraser

Written by

Writes stuff, edits things, looks at rocks

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