Paul John Lyon is the author of THE BENNINGTON BOY and THE GIRL WHO DREAMED A WAR, amongst others. He lives in the north of England.

Find more of his stories atpauljohnlyon.com

Flowers of the Moon

Paul John Lyon

Flowers of the Moon Copyright © 2019 by Paul John Lyon. All Rights Reserved.

This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

To the moon.

Art thou pale for weariness
Of climbing Heaven, and gazing on the earth,
Wandering companionless
Among the stars that have a different birth,
And ever changing, like a joyless eye
That finds no object worth its constancy?

— To the Moon
Percy Bysshe Shelley

Prologue

5th November 1945

The sky that night burned orange and red. A familiar palette for the fifth of November, especially now the war had ended.

The blue was altogether new.

Outside the gates of Whitestone manor, a Wolseley 14/60 police car idled, the custom blue domed light on its roof turning sluggishly after years of war inactivity. In the driver’s seat, Constable Bernard Grieves buried his head in his hands as he tried to forget what he’d seen, but he couldn’t shake off the images of the burned bodies; permanent shadows seared into the lawns of the estate by the fires still raging all over Whitestone.

He’d counted three fires in total. One fire lit for celebration; a tall pyre topped off with a Guy shivering under the touch of flame. More alive, it seemed, than those on the lawns. The second fire, a burning arrow laid across the lawns, pointed at the manor house, where the third fire wrapped its red fingers around the manor house and peeled back brick to reveal the blackened skeleton beneath.

The young constable mouthed a prayer, “God our Father, your power brings us to birth. Your providence guides our lives, and by your command we return to dust.”

Only dust remained from what Grieves had witnessed. Now his duty remained to find names for the nameless dead before Sergeant Porter arrived.

Then what? he asked himself. The Sergeant will be no more use than I. Less so, if I’m honest. There are too many questions here, and no answer could make sense. Fire doesn’t leap so far. Fire can’t so quickly turn people to ash, can it?

What do I know of fire? he thought. I’m not Sherlock Holmes, just an unlucky sod not fit enough for the bloody war. I’m useless beyond the polishing of my whistle and my evening stroll around the village. Is this even a crime to begin with?

The horrid stench of charred meat rode in on the night air. Grieves pictured a roasted pig in his mind, its skin crackling under the lick of flame.

It isn’t a pig, he had to remind himself. It’s burned flesh, man. Burned men and women. Burned…children.

Bile seared his throat. A flush as hot as flame singed his forehead.

Come on now. Get it together. I have a duty here. I’m a police officer, for God’s sake.

He didn’t feel much like performing his duty. He wanted to return to the tiny station house with little more to task him than the occasional village drunkard or making up Sergeant Porter’s water bottle for the old man’s many naps.

This will pass, he told himself. Chin up and chest out. It’ll all be over with soon enough.

He took two deep breaths. A whiff of petrol from the car provided momentary relief, but vanished as he opened the car door and a thick fog of burned wood and charred assaulted his nostrils.

Constable Grieves’ stomach lurched. There would be no escape from the stench until he’d written the names in his notebook. No reprieve until Sergeant Porter arrived and gave his orders, if the old sod had any real orders to give. It was going to be a long night.

A crowd gathered in the courtyard just beyond the ornate gates of Whitestone. Even at a distance, he could see the fear in their eyes.

I can’t let them see me rattled, he thought as he approached. They’ll be scared and looking to me for some order. It’s my job to calm them and keep the peace. Chin up, chest out, man.

“Are any of you hurt?” Constable Grieves asked as he reached the group. With each word he felt himself taller, stronger, and more able to ignore the horrific sights he’d witnessed.

The children giggled nervously as they ran in and out of the aprons of the older matrons. The young maids and housekeepers passed terrified whispers to each other, but none dared a voice. A handful of men tried hard to stand strong. They barrelled their chests, puffed on cigarettes, but none had found a voice just yet.

“Is there any here who need medical aid? Please, tell me now,” Constable Grieves asked.

One man, tall and lean, with a thin line of a moustache sat beneath his sharp nose, spoke up. He stepped from the back of the huddle and met the constable with a firm handshake.

“I’m the unfortunate wretch who must witness his family home and legacy destroyed this night. Excuse me, but I’m at a disadvantage when it comes to your name, constable?”

Grieves had no such. A quick walk through the halls of the manor house before the war showed a dozen portraits of the man’s forebears, all possessing the same long, thin frame and sharp nose. This was Lord Whitestone.

“Constable Bernard Grieves, milord. I attended a few of the Guy Fawkes celebrations before the war, but I never did meet you in person at that time. I’m sorry I have to be here under such circumstances.”

“Your man, Sergeant Porter, is it? He’s the one who usually pays us a visit.”

“He is, sir.”

“What of him tonight?”

“He’ll be with us in short time. A half hour at the most.”

“Of course.”

“Are you injured, milord? Is anybody else in need of aid?”

“We are all fine, thank the heavens. You have no need to worry on that front.”

“Are you sure no others were hurt, milord?”

The blackened figures on the lawns returned to Grieves’ mind. Hurt wasn’t word enough for what had befallen those poor souls.

“I’m sure. Now, what is it you would have us do? What happens now?”

There was an edge to Lord Whitestone’s voice the young constable didn’t recognise as shock or fear. It was as if the man was in a hurry to be somewhere.

“We wait for the fire engine to arrive and then…”

Constable Grieves wasn’t sure what came next. There’d been no fires in the village during the war. No bombings either. Peace and obscurity had brought the young children out from the cities to stay at the manor house in the first place.

“My Sergeant will deal with the matter,” Constable Grieves said, finding his voice. “He’ll call in others if need be. Until his arrival, might we discuss the events tonight, milord? I’d like to get as much information as I can to help everything along.”

“There will be others, do you think? Other officers?” Lord Whitestone said, the edge still in his voice.

“That will be up to my Sergeant.”

“Can your good self not deal with this matter? I do not wish to put any of my staff through more hardship. It would be especially worrisome to the children, wouldn’t you agree?”

Constable Grieves scanned the children as they played hide-and-seek between matronly arms and pinafore folds. They didn’t look too disturbed by what they had witnessed, but they were children, and if Grieves knew one thing, he knew that children were made from sturdy stuff.

“I can’t make that decision, milord,” he said.

“But you could, could you not, make your own judgement if I were to inform you of the details in full? An accident is all. A tragic accident none could have foreseen. Is that not enough?”

“That’s all well and good, but I’m afraid I still have to make a report. I’m sorry if it causes any undue hardship on the children, but this is the way it has to be.”

An apprehensive look flitted across Lord Whitestone’s face. It reminded Constable Grieves of a spiv he’d nabbed in the local pub with a suitcase full of nylon stockings and counterfeit ration books.

“There’s no way I can convince you to keep this matter between you and I?” Lord Whitestone said.

“I’m sorry, milord, that won’t be possible.”

Lord Whitestone glanced nervously over his shoulder at the huddled people behind him. “Constable, if we might talk in private, I would be most appreciative.”

“Milord?”

“Before the Sergeant arrives. You did say he would be here shortly, yes? More officers to follow also?”

“I did.”

“Then we must talk now, I fear.”

“Yes, milord, of course.”

They walked toward a maze of hedges, the fires casting a flickering path before them.

“I assume you wish to know what happened here tonight, in full,” Lord Whitestone said.

“I do at that, yes,” Grieves said as he retrieved his notebook and pencil from his pocket. He licked the end of the pencil and readied himself to write.

“I must warn you that what I tell you now, nobody will believe, least of all your good self.”

“Milord?”

Lord Whitestone reached inside his jacket. He fumbled there for a moment or two until he found a slim silver case. With a click the contraption snapped open to reveal a row of cigarettes. “Constable?” he said, holding the case forward.

“I don’t partake. Please, would you continue with your description of tonight’s events, if you wouldn’t mind?”

“Yes.” Lord Whitestone slid one of the cigarettes from the case and fixed it between his lips. The case back in his pocket he patted his jacket and trouser pockets, then laughed.

“Milord? Are you sure you’re all right?”

“Pardon me, constable. I just find the circumstances somewhat amusing.”

What could make any man laugh on such a night? Grieves wondered. Had the man gone mad? Was it too much for Lord Whitestone to comprehend all the surrounding horror?

“The circumstances?” Grieves asked.

“Yes. Here I stand, my legacy engulfed in flames. All this flame and fire and I’m left lacking for the same.”

“I’m not sure—”

Lord Whitestone mimicked the striking of a match. “I need a light for my cigarette. Do you happen to have any matches?”

“Yes, I see now. I do happen to have some matches on me.”

Grieves retrieved the box of stick matches he used for lighting the stove at the station and handed them over.

Lord Whitestone struck one and lit the tip of his cigarette. “Obliged,” he said as he took a long drag and let out a rushed, sigh of smoke.

“You were saying, milord?”

“Yes, yes.” A worried look suffused his face. “Well then, let us get down to the bones of the matter, shall we? I hate to ask this of you yet again, but I must. Would you consider marking the events of this night as an accident, constable? I ask you out of the kindness of your heart, would you spare me, and the name of my family, the ruination that is sure to follow?

“Ruination?”

“The truth will surely ruin my family’s name.”

“Milord, please tell me what happened here.”

Lord Whitestone sighed. “What happened, I dare only guess at. My part in this horror, I need not guess. I will make my confession to you, constable. The truth and only the truth. You must take down what I have to say, every word, for if I am to lose all then someone must bear witness to my folly. Will you promise me as much?”

“I will, milord. Are you saying you’re responsible for the fires?”

Lord Whitestone stared at the flames as they licked up into the air above Whitestone. “My selfishness, my stubbornness is to blame. It was my hand that planted the seeds and watered them to begin with.”

“Milord, you seem unclear. Are you confessing to starting the fires? Were you responsible or not for the people who died here tonight?”

“Where to start?” Lord Whitestone said, his eyes a burning reflection of the fires. “Was it the night I received the news so dire about my daughter? Was it then, do you think?”

Constable Grieves’ held his pencil over the paper. “Milord?”

“Or was it later? How much later? Love is to hate as fire is to water, yes? The loss of love can turn a man inside out and make him a monster in no time at all. Is it the broken heart that cannot be mended, that we refuse to be mended, which turns us cold and selfish from the inside out?”

Grieves lifted his pencil off the pad. “Please, milord. I must ask you to be clearer in your declaration. Were you or were you not responsible for the death of those poor people here tonight?”

“Deaths, yes, but it was life that brought us here. Life despite the closeness of death, don’t you see?” Lord Whitestone’s eyes fixed on a point far beyond the fires.

“Milord, please. You’re not making any sense. Tell me what happened here.”

“They died because of me. They died because I could not for the life of me, for the life of her, ever let go.”

The young Constable made a single note on the page – Her?

“Her?” he asked.

Lord Whitestone nodded towards the fires engulfing the manor house and an impossible shadow cast at the heart of the blaze.

Is that a girl in the manor house? Grieves thought.

She hadn’t been there a moment before when Grieves had chanced to follow Lord Whitestone’s gaze, but he couldn’t deny what he was seeing. There was a young girl trapped on the upper floor of the manor house.

Grieves’ arms fell to his sides. His grip faltered on the notebook and pencil. They fell to the ground at his feet.

“Dear God, man! What have you done?” he said.

“I wish I knew,” Lord Whitestone said, his voice that of the penitent, the sinner and the guilty all rolled into one.

“If that girl comes to any harm, I’ll see you hang, you just see if I don’t,” Constable Grieves said, then broke into a run in the direction of the manor house.

Lord Whitestone watched as the constable disappeared into the smoke, then he scooped up the fallen notebook from the ground. Under the flickering light cast by the fires, he read the last entry. A single word.

Her?

1

“Come on now, you can do it,” Patrick Hill said.

His car rattled and coughed around him, then fell into a hopeful silence.

“That’s it. Just a little further now. Just a little further,” he whispered.

Not a little, a lot. Sixty miles from London to the grounds of Whitestone, but the car hadn’t cleared the outskirts of the city yet. A betting man might put a flutter on it never reaching the motorway.

The car had spent its former life as a Volkswagen Golf, but ten years of Frankenstein repairs had turned it into a new creature. It now had a red bonnet and two green wing panels, each of a different shade. Dark blue bootlaces kept the wing mirrors in place and half of an old key permanently lodged into the ignition meant he would never have to worry about losing his keys.

Patrick Hill whispered a plea to his car and whatever God might be listening, “Come on. Just a few more miles. Pretty please.”

Up ahead the traffic thinned out to a single black cab. The lights turned green as if God had spared a little pity on him.

Patrick stared at the peeling roof of his car and through to whatever deity might linger in the skies above.

You picked this moment to listen? he thought. Where have you been the last thirty years?

The car coughed and spluttered in reply as though about to take a final breath and mock him and the God who’d pitied him.

Patrick glared at the roof.

Now you’re just taking the piss, aren’t you?

God didn’t answer and neither did the car. He took both as a sign.

A more tangible sign of his improving luck had arrived in recent weeks. He felt the sharp edge of the letter in his pocket, a reminder of just how close his redemption might be.

Dear Mr Hill,

As per our recent correspondence, I will expect you at Whitestone no later than midnight on the 15th September. Please do not be late, or my offer of employment will be rescinded.

Yours Faithfully,

Raymond Stoppard

No later than midnight, such an odd way to phrase things, he thought.

Patrick felt time pressing in on all sides, but he couldn’t check his mobile phone as it lay dead on the rear seat. Even when charged it clung on for minutes not hours now. Only Jesus could help him now.

On the dashboard, a plastic Christ stared back at him, the backlit clock in his sacred heart marking the hour. The ‘one careful lady owner’ had left it there when she’d sold the car. She’d thrown in some advice too, for no extra charge, ‘Jesus will keep an eye on you. He did for me. Not one accident while he watched over me.’

Patrick had no interest in Jesus’ watching eyes, only the heart, and by the beating of Jesus’ backlit heart it was ten-thirty. An hour and a half until midnight.

If you’re still listening, God, now would be a good time to give me a hand, Patrick thought.

The car growled contentedly beneath him as if in response, not a cough in earshot.

Maybe there is a God after all? Patrick thought. He’s partially deaf, but there all the same.

The thought gave him some comfort. Patrick imagined the God that had listened to him as an old man with hearing aids on the table beside him, doling out small miracles to all the losers halfway between bad pasts and better futures.

I still have to get there on time, God or no God. No later than midnight. What if I arrive later than midnight? He’s not going to turn me away, is he? I should have asked him why the weird bloody deadline to begin with.

I’m dealing with a posh crackpot, that’s all the explanation needed. Look at how he advertised this gig with a simple block of text in the Sunday Times classifieds. There are a thousand hungry freelancers who’d tear each other to pieces for a chance to ghost-write the history of Whitestone, and he advertised the position as if he was looking for a paperboy.

My luck must have changed, Patrick thought. All I need is for it to last a few more hours.

The car chugged on another half hour and reached the motorway without all the wheels falling off.

“That’s the spirit,” Patrick said. He patted the wheel like the head of a good dog. “If this thing pays off, I’ll do you up like new.”

He wouldn’t. In his mind he’d spent his pay cheque and all the royalties from the secret book on Whitestone he meant to write after the gig was up. He’d buy a new car. A car all the same colour, with windows and wing mirrors, not a bootlace in sight. He’d replace Jesus with a touchscreen. A soft computerised woman’s voice would croon the directions for him.

Take your next left, and take your next right.

His car didn’t croon now. If there was music in its grunts and groans it was a funeral dirge. A song Patrick was sick of hearing.

By the beating of Jesus’ sacred backlit heart, it turned 11 o’clock and Patrick needed something other than a dirge for company.

He turned on the radio and static filled the interior of the car. Patrick whispered the dial to the left, left again, then paused. The current of white noise ebbed. He moved the dial right twice, three times again to the left, then a long, sustained glide right.

A familiar slide of guitar surfaced out of the static, then the hiss of cymbals and a jangle of piano. The bluesy growl of Jim Morrison’s voice rode the wave in from fifty years in the past.

Patrick smiled.

Morrison suggested a swim to the moon. For the first time in a long time, Patrick believed it was possible.

2

With a heavy metallic cough, the car died. The last of its life spilled out from the headlamps onto a sign stuck into the ground.

WHITESTONE

Patrick squeezed his eyes shut and saw the sign floating behind his lids.

It’s real, he told himself. It must be real. God, I hope it’s real.

It didn’t feel real. He slowly opened his eyes and the letters WHITESTONE haunted the darkness before him.

Did I make it?

No later than midnight.

Patrick checked Jesus’ Sacred Heart for the time: 11:45.

In a film there’d be a bomb with the minutes clearly marked on an electronic display, he thought. There’d be a coloured wire to cut and with a second to spare, a sweating hero would snip the correct one.

He’d tried to write those last-second screenplays himself one failed year amongst the many failed years, only to lose faith and let the wire go uncut every time. There wasn’t much money in letting bombs go off, or screenplays with unhappy endings. There was money in being a ghost, though. Becoming a writer who’d happily haunt the history of Whitestone for a man like Raymond Stoppard.

No later than midnight.

How serious is he about the deadline? Patrick thought. Probably just serious enough for me not to test him, I’d bet.

Patrick flicked the overhead light on and stared into the deeper dark beyond the car. The white letters had faded like smoke. Somewhere beyond was the manor house, but he couldn’t see it. It seemed impossible for such a grand estate as Whitestone to hide in the dark.

Getting darker.

The car gave a final deathly cough. A moment later the overhead light blinked out and the headlamps turned off.

Patrick felt his skin tighten. There’d been a chance to find his way with the meagre splash of light from the headlamps. At least then he’d had a destination he could stumble towards. But now?

He strained again to see in the dark.

There should have been a private road with ornate lamps to guide the way. There should have been bright white security lights attached to the grand gates of the estate triggered by his approach. He’d expected, at the very least, a few spot lights to show off the manor house at night.

Patrick stared into the surrounding night. There was nothing to find in the pitch. One darkness looked much like the next and the ghostly letters weren’t even a camera flash memory now.

What kind of crackpot asks someone to arrive at night and then leaves the whole place in darkness anyway?

Same kind of crackpot who’d hire an unemployed hack like me with more white space on his CV than ink, that’s who. I was a lucky bastard, but maybe my luck has run out.

Surely, Stoppard can’t be such a fusspot that he’d judge a man lost in the dark? Patrick thought.

They’d corresponded through letters. Stoppard had shown an arrogance all too familiar with the upper-class, but without meeting the man, Patrick couldn’t be sure.

Please do not be late, or my offer of employment may be rescinded.

May be rescinded. Not will. May be. It wasn’t much hope to go on, but he would take it.

Patrick stared into the darkness, and wondered which way he could go when there wasn’t even a faint star in the sky to guide him.

Put your faith in Jesus, he thought, and smiled at the notion.

Patrick leaned forward and grabbed the Jesus clock around the head and yanked. The cheap plastic statue tore away from the dashboard and left a pair of sandaled feet behind.

He held the plastic Jesus out like a torch; the red light from the clock set in the sacred heart guiding the way as he headed into the dark. The words of an American preacher he’d seen on a late-night satellite TV channel ran through his mind—Jesus is the light and the way.

He doubted he and the preacher meant it the same way.

3

A heart danced in the darkness.

Aster giggled like a child as she watched it from the windows of Whitestone. She clasped a hand over her mouth and lost a squeal in the flesh of her palm.

Don’t scare it away. Be quiet now.

On feet as quiet as whispers, she followed from window to window, watching as the heart zigzagged on the grounds below her, streaking the darkness with red trails of light.

Where are you going, little heart? she thought. Where have you been? Are you here to visit me?

The heart was a confused butterfly in the darkness.

Aster wasn’t so confused. She needed to hold the butterfly heart, and she wouldn’t wait another moment to do so.

But how to trap a heart?

Like I would trap a butterfly. It moves like a butterfly, so I must catch it like one.

And how to catch a butterfly?

Doubt crept in like an early evening chill. What if there was no way to catch the heart? What if—

The library!

The books in the library trapped hundreds of butterflies between their pages. Not real butterflies, but colourful drawings of them with green, yellow, and red wings, their Latin names nestled nearby - Callophrys rubi, Colias croceus, Vanessa atalanta. There were instructions too, she recalled.

She closed her eyes and saw the ancient words floating in the darkness, followed by a single striking image.

A net! To catch a butterfly, I need a net. But where do I find one?

Aster turned from the windows and caught sight of her white dress in motion. She stifled a giggle as she grabbed the hem and yanked it high in the air and quickly dropped it down like a parachute.

Perfect. The heart won’t be able to escape now.

Aster swaddled an imagined heart beneath the butterfly net of her dress. She unwrapped the folds as if tissue wrapped around precious China. The heart was a beautiful winged thing, smaller than any butterfly she’d seen.

“Don’t be afraid. I’m not going to hurt you,” she whispered.

The heart fluttered nervously at her voice.

“Hush. It’s going to be okay,” Aster said, as she trapped the imagined heart next to her own and danced on through the upper halls. “You’re home now.”

Home, yes. It had to be home. Why would the heart visit if not to find its home? To find me. Hearts sought other hearts, like all the stories in the library books.

It’s out there, not in here yet, she reminded herself. I must catch it for real!

A moment of panic twisted her toward the window. She stared onto the night-soaked grounds. The heart had stopped its dancing flight and now was stuck in the darkness like a pin in a map.

Aster broke into a run and came to a stuttering halt at the top of the spiral staircase. Below, she spied the long shadow of Mr Stoppard cast out across the cold white tiles of the entrance hall.

“Where is it we think we’re going, Aster?” he shouted up to her.

“I was just…”

“You were just…what? Being where you shouldn’t be?”

Aster’s stomach lurched. “I…not really, no.”

“Then what is it you’re up to?”

She didn’t want to confess her discovery. He would chastise her for her silliness. He would tell her in detail how it could not be.

“It’s no time of night for all this foolishness, don’t you think?” he said.

She hung her head, not in shame, but in practice. Best to let Mr Stoppard think he’d won. Best not to argue, for he could talk until the moon waned. “I suppose not,” she said.

“Yes, most definitely not. And might you tell me, Aster, why I find you on the east wing, precisely where I forbade you to be?”

Why should I explain my comings and goings? she thought. Why is this corner of the manor house out of bounds and no other? I’m not a child. I haven’t been a child for an age. Yet he still treats me as one.

Anger warmed her cheeks, but a thought of the butterfly cooled her quickly enough. No time for anger with the lonely heart out there in the darkness waiting for her.

“I was bored,” she said.

“Bored?”

“Yes, I was bored.” She started down the twist of the stairs towards the hard shadow waiting below. “Don’t you get bored, Mr Stoppard?”

She stepped past him into a dark not as thick or black as that of the east wing. There were no lamps lit, but everything shined with the silver-grey of an accustomed darkness.

“I have my chores, my duties, and my preparations. There is little time for boredom,” Mr Stoppard said, his shadow following Aster as if it were her own.

At the far end of the hall, a set of high-backed chairs huddled before an open, unlit fireplace as if anticipating the coming warmth. Aster rested her hands on the shoulders of one, her face turned away from Mr Stoppard.

“Every night is the same, always the same. How do you not grow tired?” she said.

“I don’t, that’s all. Now let’s not have any more of this nonsense tonight, shall we?” Mr Stoppard offered the shadowed crook of his arm.

He’ll walk me back to my room, as always. Worried, as ever, that the house itself will come alive and do me harm.

It never would harm her, she knew. The house whispered to her as did the ghosts in the gardens. It whispered then, an exciting suggestion – Leave, Aster! Run to the gardens and find your butterfly heart! Run!

If I run, he’ll catch me. If he doesn’t catch me, he’ll follow and find the heart before I do.

“Fine,” Aster said, as she twisted away from his shadow.

Just a hop, skip, and a jump away the twist of the spiral staircase beckoned. She’d used the twirl of black polished iron as slide on many nights before this.

If I jump the spiral and ride it down, I’ll beat him. He won’t be able to catch me. I’ll reach the heart first.

Aster didn’t hop, skip, or jump. She dragged her feet through invisible mud as she walked away, until she reached the black twist of iron and placed a hand on top.

One ride down, and I’ll be out of the door. I’ll reach the gardens where the heart waits for me.

“Aster?” Mr Stoppard said, catching her distraction.

She held onto the edge of the spiral staircase, frozen. A silence as long and dark as any shadow in the manor house grew between them. She counted it in years, not seconds. Decades passed, and an unfounded hope grew.

Tonight, he won’t bother me. Tonight, after he sleeps, the heart and I must meet. Tonight, will be the night when I roam without Mr Stoppard’s watchful eye on me.

Tonight.

4

“You’re late, Mr Hill.”

Patrick waved Jesus’ glowing red heart at the darkness, but couldn’t locate the owner of the voice.

“Is that you, Mr Stoppard?” he asked.

“Of course. Who else might you be expecting?”

The words ran cold across the back of Patrick’s neck as Mr Stoppard stepped in behind him. The voice had no anger, only annoyance, as though Patrick was a naughty child caught eating sweets before dinner.

“Sorry. I wasn’t sure if I was even at the right location or not. It’s so dark out here.”

Patrick brought Jesus around to cast light on the man in the behind him. The red bulb heart illuminated a ventriloquist’s dummy. Mr Stoppard’s skin had a waxy polish to it. His eyes heavy dark shutters. His mouth a straight line separating the hinge of a jaw. To top it all off, a dicky bow sat at the centre of his starched white collar. Patrick raised Jesus up an inch or two looking for strings or a guiding hand.

“You’re in the right place, Mr Hill, but I’m afraid it’s the wrong time. Did I not state midnight, and no later?”

“Yes. No later than midnight, I believe you wrote.”

“Exactly. No later. You are late, Mr Hill, by a good fifteen minutes.”

“I’m sorry. I did arrive before midnight, but there are no lights on out here. That’s why I’m walking around in the dark.”

“You were to be here before midnight, Mr Hill. Our arrangement could not have been clearer. I warned you of repercussions, did I not?”

“Yes, but—”

“But me no buts. I need a man who is punctual and reliable. A predictable man, if you will. A man who’ll follow the rules I set down. Are you such a man, do you think?”

“I can be all of those things, believe me.”

Mr Stoppard eyed Patrick as if gauging the depth of a puddle. “I did not ask much from you, Mr Hill, barring a simple punctuality. I wonder what other disappointments would be in store if I did hire you?”

“If?”

“I must admit your tardiness is worrying to me. I will not allow Whitestone to be home to any loafers or ne’er-do-wells.”

Patrick stared into the eyes of the man hoping for some glimmer of humour, but couldn’t find any.

“We got off on the wrong foot, that’s all. Give me the night and I’m sure you’ll see I’m your man.”

“The night, you say?”

And all the nights after, Patrick thought, because I don’t have anywhere else to be but here. “If you still have doubts by the morning, I’ll leave,” he said.

“And if I should decline your request?”

Patrick searched the darkness. The night had swallowed his car whole. “Then I’ll be in your hair for a lot longer. That I can promise you.”

“Are you threatening me, Mr Hill?”

“No, merely stating a fact. Even if could find my car again in this darkness, I won’t be able to see enough to fix it. Give me until the morning, when there’s at least a little light out here. Just one night.”

A thick silence followed.

If he turns me down, what next? Patrick thought. There’s no going back now. No home, no money, nothing but a life that isn’t worth calling such.

“The night? Just one night?” Mr Stoppard said.

“Just one night. You’ll see I’m the man for the job.”

Silence repeating, interrupted only by the wind as it danced around the pair. Finally, Mr Stoppard gave his declaration.

“Fine. One night it is.”

Patrick stopped a sigh of relief escaping. “Might take me less to convince you I’m the man for the job,” he said.

“We’ll see,” Mr Stoppard said as he walked back into the darkness. “We’ll see.”

5

Aster danced defiantly from window to window, ignoring Mr Stoppard’s warnings.

Where are you butterfly heart? she thought.

She dared to peek out into the night, but the heart no longer beat its wings in the darkness below.

What if it’s gone forever? she thought. What if Mr Stoppard frightened it away? Hearts are skittish things and as easily scared as butterflies, aren’t they?

Aster returned to the staircase spiral, and after a moment of hesitation to check for lurking shadows beneath, she launched herself side-saddle onto the banister.

Eyes closed, she let the world pull her down in a ticklish spin. The night air rose beneath her dress as she hurtled towards the floors below. A moment before the banister ended, she opened her eyes and jumped.

She descended as a helicopter seed, her dress a whirligig of motion around her, and landed silently on the floor.

Where to now? Which direction does a heart travel? North, South, East, or West?

To the North lay the rusted and weed strangled gates of Whitestone. To the East, the hedge maze, where even hearts might get lost. To the West, a topiary zoo of animals long forgotten. To the South, the glasshouse and the haunted lawns.

North, South, East, or West?

Aster reached the grand dining hall and danced to the windows.

Where are you, Mr Stoppard? North, South, East, or West? She knew the pattern of his evening strolls. First, to the gates to rattle the rust on them, then out past the unkempt animals of the topiary zoo and into the maze, before the last long walk across the shadowed lawns to the glasshouse.

She closed her eyes and counted his steps as if they were her own. To the gate and back, out past the skeletons of the topiary zoo, then—

The maze. Mr Stoppard will be in the maze.

Aster stared into the dark beyond the dining hall windows. She thought she saw the glint of Mr Stoppard’s watchful eyes, as keen as a cat.

A chill touched her face, and Aster pulled herself away from the window. She pressed her back into the shadows of the nearest wall.

He’s not watching. He’s in the maze. Now’s my chance. I can find the heart before he finds me again.

Aster’s skin prickled as she thought of the heart waiting for her. She rushed away from the dining hall and to the grand doors of Whitestone, where she slipped out as quietly as a shadow would on hot summer’s day.

A starless sky above, but Aster’s white dress was a comet tail streaking through the darkness. She ran until the shadows on the haunted lawns were behind her, and the bones of a dinosaur rose out of the black tar night – the glasshouse! An ancient beast with a rusted steel skeleton, skinned in green glass and vine. In the belly of the beast, she saw the flicker of hope. The red butterfly flutter of the heart.

I found it! It’s here!

Aster scanned the dark to her left and right as a child might check for traffic on an empty road.

Before her, the broken hopscotch pieces of a path led to the glasshouse. Stomach tickled with feathers, she hopped, skipped, then planted two feet firmly together as if about to stand to attention. Another hop, a skip, and one more hop, left Aster in a flamingo pose, one foot hanging over the edge of a stone, touching the dark.

Don’t fall now. If you fall you must do it all over again!

Who says so?

Those are the rules of the game.

Tonight is not a night for rules.

Aster stifled a giggle at the thought. She hopped. She skipped. She jumped.

Blink!

Her heart fluttered wildly inside her chest. She hung in the air, frozen like an icicle from the lip of a windowsill.

Blink!

She fell.

The heart floated inside the dinosaur belly of the glasshouse. It zigged and zagged and then — blink! – vanished.

Aster dropped to the ground just beyond the hopscotch path. Her arms wrist deep in the night, her dress a pond lily, she fixed on the glasshouse and waited, eyes wide.

Waited.

Where did you go to? Where have you gone? Come back, please come back.

She waited.

A faint red glow throbbed in the dinosaur’s belly.

Wait for me, butterfly heart, Aster thought as she left the broken stones behind and ran towards the glasshouse.

Wait for me.

6

Jesus’ heart flickered and died in Patrick’s hand. He shook the plastic statue as a bartender would a cocktail mixer. Jesus returned from the dead temporarily, only to die again. Patrick shook once, twice, three times, but Jesus did not rise again.

“What are you playing at?” Mr Stoppard asked.

Patrick shook Jesus again, as though it might be answer enough. “Let there be light?” he said, but the joke never reached the man stood before him.

“I’ll switch the lights on,” Mr Stoppard said, walking towards the darkest corner of the glasshouse. “Try not to be too impatient, Mr Hill. I fear an impatient man at Whitestone is as bad as a tardy man. Both are a recipe for disaster.”

Patrick stood alone, the smell of soil and dying leaves invading his nostrils. Something grew in the glasshouse, but what?

A constellation of white fairy lights strung beneath the glasshouse dome flickered to life to provide an answer. Their weak glow illuminated the flowerbeds below.

Patrick leaned in for a closer look.

The flowers in the beds had closed their petals in a coffee-foam swirl. They seemed to glow.

“Moonflowers, Mr Hill.”

Patrick turned. “Excuse me?”

Mr Stoppard ignored the question. He leaned over the flowerbed, his hands behind his back, his heavy eyes closed as he breathed in deeply and held the breath like he didn’t want to lose it.

“Moonflowers. Ipomoea alba to be precise, in their most common form. They have a subtle fragrance, almost imperceptible, but it is there, I assure you.”

“Moonflowers?”

“Indeed. By all rights this strain shouldn’t grow in such a cold climate. It’s quite the oddity, but we have managed to cultivate them here at Whitestone. No, not cultivate, they thrive here.”

“I’ve never seen a flower like this before,” Patrick said.

“You haven’t seen the half of it.”

“What do you mean?”

Mr Stoppard reached down and ran his fingers underneath the edge of one of the flowers. It seemed to shiver under his touch.

“They haven’t bloomed yet, but when the moon rises, then you will see how truly magnificent they are.” Mr Stoppard’s enthusiasm dropped in a snap. A stern look returned to his face. “I do apologise. I’m getting ahead of myself. I shouldn’t make promises when your visit here might only last the night. Please, follow me.”

He turned from the flowers and pointed towards the far end of the glasshouse.

This is my chance, Patrick thought. He’s excited about these flowers. If I keep him talking, and show I’m interested, he’s more likely to let me stay. “Can I ask you a question about the flowers?”

“Later, if I decide there is a later that is.” Mr Stoppard pointed again to the far side of the glasshouse.

“Please. You can’t leave me in suspense. You said something about waiting for the moon. I didn’t hear you incorrectly, did I?”

“You did not.”

“What did you mean by that?”

Mr Stoppard lost all hardness in his face as he gazed again at the flowers. “Fine,” he said, the false tone of defeat in his voice. “I’ll humour you, Mr Hill.”

“If you would.”

“This strain is rare, and quite unique to Whitestone. There are no others like it in the rest of the world.”

Got him, Patrick thought. “In the world?” Patrick reached down to touch the edge of one of the oddly shaped plants.

Mr Stoppard moved quicker than his age would suggest as he shot a hand in front of Patrick’s probing finger. “Do not touch them.”

“Sorry, no harm meant.” Patrick stepped back.

“None meant, but maybe some done. Did you not hear what I told you about the rarity of these flowers? Would you treat any other precious object with such a casual disdain?”

“I’m sorry, okay. I didn’t realise.” Great, I had him and I buggered it up. What next? Should I tap dance on his precious flowers for an encore? “I assure you; I have no interest in tampering with your flowers. Lesson learned.”

“I have no interest in whether you have an interest, Mr Hill. It strikes me that you might be a man who doesn't follow instructions. Is that so?”

“I’ll not touch your flowers again, I swear,” he said.

“I’m to take you at your word, am I?”

“It’s all I have, for now. I won’t need to be told twice, that much I can guarantee you.”

Mr Stoppard nodded to himself. “If you’re to stay here, Mr Hill, there will be a strict set of rules you must adhere to.”

“Of course, that’s only fair,” Patrick said.

“You haven’t heard my conditions yet.”

“Your house, your rules.”

“Yes, quite right. Firstly, you’ll be restricted to your room, the library, and the kitchen during your stay. You will have no access to any of the upper floors, the east wing, or here in the glasshouse. I will not risk my precious flowers.”

Mr Stoppard walked towards the far end of the glasshouse and Patrick hurried after the man.

“Okay,” Patrick said.

“I must also insist you are in your room no later than midnight each night. At that hour I will come to lock your door and if you are not there, you will be asked to leave for good shortly after.”

“A curfew?” Patrick asked, confused.

They reached the far side of the glasshouse and an ornate iron patio table. On top of the table sat an old-fashioned oil lamp with a wick at its centre. The pungent smell of kerosene filled the air.

“You may call it what you wish. I call it the terms of your employment,” Mr Stoppard said, leaning down to the lantern. He produced a long match out of his pocket and struck it against the side of the iron table. It crackled to life, sparks jumping wildly off its tip. He waited for the flame to become a steady orange before unhinging the door on the kerosene lamp and touching the flame to the wick. The lamp flickered to life and pushed their giant shadows out across the interior of the glasshouse. “I do not know you from Adam, Mr Hill. Midnight is my time to sleep, so it will also be yours. I do not think I would rest easy if I imagined you creeping about the manor house at all times of the night.”

“I wouldn’t do such a thing.”

“Good, then you’ll have no problems retiring to your room by midnight, will you?”

“What if there’s an emergency?” Patrick asked.

“There won’t be.”

“But what if—”

“There won’t be, and that is final.” Mr Stoppard held up the lamp to inspect Patrick’s face. “And now we come to the most important rule of all. You are, under no circumstances, to ask me any questions other than those I deem worthy of asking.”

“Excuse me?”

“You are here to write a history of Whitestone under my guidance, nothing more. You’ve no doubt heard the rumours and fairy tales about the house and are curious as to their validity, but I will not answer any questions other than those pertaining to the book I have commissioned you to write.”

It wasn’t such an odd request, Patrick had to admit. And the rules, although cautious, were a better alternative than returning to the city and nothing at all.

“Okay. So, don’t go anywhere, be in bed before twelve, and don’t ask any stupid questions, right? That seems straightforward enough.”

“Let’s hope so.”

Patrick’s eyes caught a flash of white in the dark just beyond the glasshouse windows. He narrowed his vision, but the white was gone again in a blink.

Was that a dress? he thought. A girl in a dress out there?

He blinked again.

Can’t be, can it? No, it’s probably just a trick of the light from this bloody old oil lamp. I’m seeing things. Imagining them.

He cocked his head to the right and squinted. Although the dark remained, he couldn’t quite get the idea of a girl in a white dress out of his mind.

“What is it, Mr Hill?” Mr Stoppard said.

Patrick stared into the night, but the white had vanished. “Will you allow me to ask you one stupid question before we begin?”

“I’d rather none, but if you must, please, go ahead.”

Patrick nodded toward the grounds beyond the glasshouse windows, where for a moment the dark hadn’t been so dark and not so empty.

“Are we alone here?” he said.

7

Mr Stoppard assured him they were most certainly alone. And it would stay that way if Patrick remained at the manor house working on the book. No visitors or guests allowed during his employment.

That employment would take place mostly in the library on the ground floor of the estate, but Patrick could, if he so wished, work in the stately bedroom provided for him. A desk sat in that room with a stack of yellow legal notepads, an expensive silver writing pen, and a tumbler full of freshly sharpened pencils.

Patrick wasn’t about to complain about the lack of modern conveniences. Pen and paper would suit him for what he had in mind. He’d begun to formulate his plan when Mr Stoppard showed him through the library.

A grander room he hadn’t seen before. Book shelves reached from floor to ceiling, crammed with serious leather-bound tomes and more personalised family scrapbooks. A carved antique desk dominated the centre of the room with a cherry red leather chair behind it. Duplicates of all the supplies Patrick found in his room were at hand alongside an oversized leather-bound copy of the Oxford English Dictionary.

“A gift,” Mr Stoppard announced, pleased with himself as he waved toward the massive book.

“For me?”

“Of course, for you, Mr Hill. Who else would have need of it when only you and I are here?”

And the girl in the white dress? Patrick thought, but dismissed the idea as he ran his hand over the cover and the plan formed in his mind. “Thank you,” he said.

At double the size of the writing pads, Patrick saw an easy hiding place for his forbidden notes. Between the As and the Zs, he would smuggle his secret history. At the end of the month, he’d walk away with the dictionary and the true secrets of the manor house tucked under his arm. But he had to make sure.

“I can take this with me when I’m finished?” Patrick asked.

“A gift is a gift, Mr Hill. Consider it part of your terms of employment.”

“Are there any other terms?”

There were. At five each night he’d show his workings to Mr Stoppard. Dinner to follow at six. Questions asked and answered during that one hour, dependent on suitability. If Mr Stoppard couldn’t answer the questions, then the library might with its collection of scrapbooks and documentation on the history of the estate.

It was good enough for Patrick. He would have all the time he needed.

That first night he lay awake for a long time in the darkness, thoughts of the future in his mind.

I’ll leave for the library as soon as morning comes. I’ll finish the writing Stoppard hired me to do and if he comes to check, all he’ll see is a man thoroughly engaged in his work.

One for you, one for me, Patrick thought.

For every page of his dull history, I’ll write another of the real history of Whitestone. I’ll discover the secrets of this place, and I’ll hide them between the Aardvarks and Zebras in that big dictionary down there. In a month’s time, I’ll walk out of here with all the secrets of Whitestone.

When sleep finally found him, Patrick didn’t dream of his future, but of Aardvarks and Zebras, and a girl in a white dress who danced through the dark and called out his name.

8

Aster was a trick of the light as she followed them. She could not be caught, she would not be caught, not now the heart had vanished and a more interesting creature had taken its place.

A man.

The stranger was Mr Stoppard in reverse; short not tall, plump instead of lean; soft edges replacing hard. He wore a beard as unkempt as the leaves on the topiary animals. His hair was a dark brown bird’s nest. His clothes had the look of autumn leaves about them, and one of his boots peeled at the bottom like tree bark. He was a man as lost as any of the ghosts on the lawns, Aster thought with some pity.

She trailed him and Mr Stoppard as they walked from the glasshouse over the hopscotch path towards the manor house. She followed, shadow to shadow, from kitchen to library and back, and she listened. She heard.

They talked of dull things in dull tones. They talked of the history of this and the history of that. They talked of times and dates and dinner at six.

Mr Hill was his name and through all the talk, he looked bored.

He’s just like me when I listen to Mr Stoppard, Aster thought, and stifled a giggle at the thought. We could be friends.

Friends. The word sounded strange and alien in her head, yet so very normal. Maybe this Mr Hill will be my friend? she thought.

As if he’d heard her words, he’d turned and stared out of the library window into the darkness where she stood.

Aster held her breath.

Can he see me? she thought.

Mr Hill turned away and continued talking, uninterested in what the shadows might hide.

Aster let her breath go free.

He doesn’t see me. I’m a shadow, nothing more. He doesn't see me, but he will. I’ll visit him, and we’ll be friends. But first, I must find him alone.

She followed, shadow to shadow, to the north wing and the grandest of the bedrooms. She watched as Mr Stoppard waved the man a goodnight and took out a heavy key to lock the door.

The locking was a thunderclap in the silence. She jumped under the embrace of the thick red curtains she’d taken as a hiding place.

Please don’t look, Mr Stoppard. Let this be the night you can’t find me, please.

Aster held her breath as Mr Stoppard walked toward her.

Please don’t find me. Let me go this one time.

Mr Stoppard came to a halt. He sniffed the air like a dog curious about a new scent. He searched left and right puzzled by the surrounding emptiness. He shook the confusion from his head, rocking ever so to the left and the right, then moved on.

Aster waited for his footsteps to fade before she unwrapped herself from the curtains. She stepped lightly as a breeze as she approached Mr Hill’s bedroom door. She glanced once over each shoulder.

Only silence waited behind her, there was no sign of Mr Stoppard.

Aster pressed her palm against the bedroom door. The room was a sleeping dragon beneath her touch. She felt the creature’s slow heartbeat.

A sharp spike ran through her chest as though the imagined dragon had opened an eye and stared directly at her.

It’s only my imagination. There’s no reason to be afraid. It’s just a room, just a...

The thought trailed away as Aster heard the rustle of paper beyond the door, then two thuds as if something dropped and dropped again. A celebratory whistle followed, then a yawn. At last, there was the soft moaning of bedsprings.

No dragons here, she thought, only Mr Hill.

She leaned down before the lock on the door. She’d read enough in the library books to know how a door might open with just the right tools, but she didn’t have just the right tools. What she needed was Mr Stoppard’s key, and he slept with it under his pillow like a last tooth that the fairy might replace with a fortune.

A voice doesn’t need a key, she thought. A voice can travel beyond the eye of any lock.

Aster dropped to her knees. She closed one eye and pressed the other to the lock. The room beyond was dark and silent. The man, if sleeping, slept quietly.

Surely, he can’t be asleep yet? Aster thought. From the rustle of paper to the moan of the spring was no more than a minute. A minute more had passed since then. There wasn’t time enough to find a dream.

Not sleeping, no, just waiting for sleep in the dark like me.

Just like me, she thought with a spiral tickle in her stomach. Does he lie in the dark with a head full of excitements like me too? Does he plan all the adventures he might have and all the places he might go, just as I do? Is Mr Hill the same? Is he just like me?

Aster knew how to answer the questions. She cupped her hands around the eye of the lock.

“Mr Hill?” she whispered. Her voice travelled the room and came back to her, fainter, unanswered. “Mr Hill, can you hear me?”

A reply came, but not from within the room. A hand fell on Aster’s shoulder from behind. A silence followed that was all too familiar.

“Aster?” Mr Stoppard said.

9

The white Carrara marble skirting the edges of Whitestone manor is not, as legend would suggest, how the estate earned its name.

These words began the first hour of the dull history Patrick Hill started to write the next morning. He followed one uninspired sentence with another.

The family name of Whitestone first appeared in the pages of the Domesday Book of 1086.

Unless the lineage of the gentry tickled your fancy, the official history of Whitestone would put most to sleep. Despite this, Patrick wrote with a kind of vigour he hadn’t felt in years. The dull facts flowed quickly as he anticipated the real work to follow. He already had the opening paragraph for his own, secretly written, book in mind.

Remember, remember! The fifth of November. For those attending the festivities on the grounds of the Whitestone estate in 1945, there would be no way to forget that night.

A better opening than he would ever write for Mr Stoppard. The sentence had some flab, but a few cuts here and there would see it right.

That was all to come soon enough, but it was the following months and years Patrick anticipated the most. His book uncovering the truth of the Whitestone fires would nab him a literary agent for sure. The agent would secure a book deal. A book deal would lead to the selling of the film rights. And so on and so on, a cascade of happily ever afters.

Some aspects of the plan weren’t as solid in Patrick’s mind as he’d like, but he was sure a book detailing the true events at Whitestone was a hit waiting to happen. What little literature surrounding the subject was second-hand at best. Police officers and detectives who’d covered the case had long since died, taking their memories with them. The details of the deaths had vanished alongside mislaid documentation. All that remained were the years upon years of rumour and speculation.

Until I write a new history, Patrick thought, stroking his ego. Until I uncover the mystery.

An hour passed in daydreams of his future fame and fortune, before he returned to his task. He opened one of the scrapbooks he’d taken from the shelves and ran his finger over a newspaper clipping detailing the lengthy renovations performed on the estate. A moment later he started to rewrite the words already printed on the page.

A costly renovation of Whitestone began in 1935 at the behest of Lord Albert Whitestone. The east wing of the mansion house was to be repurposed for the care of his daughter, Aster, suffering at the time from tuberculosis. Unfortunately, she would perish in 1939, some six months after the work reached an end.

The next hour crawled, and the flow of writing became a trickle. The true history of Whitestone hid away in some nook or cranny he had yet to explore. But first the pages for Mr Stoppard.

Lord Albert opened the doors of Whitestone in the winter of 1939 to child refugees as part of Operation Pied Piper. Although the evacuee operations ended officially in 1946, some of these children would remain at the estate until as late as 1947.

The refugee story held Patrick’s interest more than stuffy descriptions of renovations and family history. He thought it might interest a publisher too, if he came up empty on his secret history. He tucked it away into the back of his mind as a possibility before carrying on.

After the fires, and with the last of the children gone from the manor house, a restoration of the damaged east wing of Whitestone began in the summer of 1948, overseen by the architect...

Patrick lay the scrapbooks and photo albums before him like a fan and flipped through them to locate the article he’d skimmed over earlier detailing the second round of renovations to Whitestone.

A yellowed newspaper clipping with the headline—WHITESTONE RISES FROM THE ASHES—detailed the project and the hiring of the architect. He would, according to the paper, ‘Return Whitestone to its former glory’. Patrick paused as he read the faded name on the old newspaper clipping.

LAWRENCE STOPPARD

A relation to the Stoppard who ran the building now? Patrick wondered?

His interest piqued; Patrick turned his attention to the photo albums. A faded, sepia collection of pictures documented the workers who’d spent time at Whitestone through the years. Chauffeurs and chefs, groundsmen and gardeners, nurses and nannies stared out at him from the past, and Patrick began to wonder if the architect was amongst them.

He found the man in a book with an inlay card on the front reading: 1945. The photo album was slight compared to those that had come in the years before. Patrick flipped through pictures of sour-faced old matrons and younger, smiling chambermaids. He rushed past the images of children stood outside the gates with tags hanging off them like they were the last products in a going-out-of-business sale. On the last page of the album, he found a photograph that made him rub his eyes and check the clock on the wall.

Another hour had passed. It wasn’t enough time to feel the blurring effects of word blindness, but it was hard to process fully the image before him.

The architect who would resurrect Whitestone was aged around 60. He was tall, with angular features. He had heavy lidded eyes and thin line of a smile. A dickie bow sat under his collar.

He looked exactly like Mr Stoppard.

10

Patrick walked to the window. A thick fog blanketed the grounds of Whitestone beyond; its hedges and mazes myopic under the mist.

He rubbed his eyes, fearing tiredness from too long staring at the work on the desk. But it wasn’t his eyes at fault. The picture he’d seen in the scrapbook was real enough.

He’d never seen a son look as much like his father, or a father look so much like his son.

Or Grandfather?

The Mr Stoppard Patrick knew was sixty, if a day, and that would put his birthday sometime in the late 50s or early 1960s. This man in the photograph, this ‘twin’, was in his sixties too in the late 1940s, which fit for him being a grandfather, but it didn’t feel right.

Could a grandchild and grandparent share such identical features?

There was no other explanation, but Patrick’s curiosity led him to burn the morning away in a fruitless search for an answer.

Angry with himself for wasting time, Patrick returned to his writing, but another hour writing the dull history turned him back to his own, secret history of Whitestone.

Remember, remember! The fifth of November.

Patrick stood by the window and imagined the terrified victims of the fire shambling through the mist towards him as they must have on that 5th November in 1945. Burned alive, their charred bodies were little more than shadows cast on the lawn. They’d remained nameless since that night, with only gossip as eulogy, but they’d not remain nameless forever, he vowed. They were the sad war children with tags hanging off them. The adult caretakers and teachers who’d come to work at Whitestone in that troubled time. They stared at him from the photo albums.

Which of them had died though? Who had succumbed to the fires? Where to begin?

Where I’m not supposed to, he thought. I’ll start where that old fart, Stoppard, doesn’t want me to be.

Patrick left behind the dull history behind, and crept from the library, through the halls of Whitestone, towards the spiral staircase of the east wing. He stopped at the bottom and stared into the darkness of the upper floors.

Why don’t you want me to go up there? What is it you’re keeping from me, Stoppard? Is that where the truth of this place hides?

Patrick checked his surroundings. Whitestone was a frozen lake, and silent as any midnight, yet he felt like eyes were upon him.

What if he catches me snooping around? At least working as his ghost-writer I’ll have a paycheque at the end of the month. Am I going to risk it all for the pie-in-the-sky notion of a book deal further down the road?

It’s only pie-in-the-sky if it can’t happen, he thought. I’ve got the opportunity of a lifetime here. I can’t blow that chance now, can I?

He couldn’t.

Patrick left the icy lake of Whitestone’s main halls behind and headed up the spiral towards the dark above. Before he’d reached the top, his nostrils began to twitch as the smell of charred wood wafted down from above.

Smoke?

The fires at Whitestone had consumed the upper floors of the east wing, leaving the rest blackened, but not destroyed. Was it possible for the smell of smoke and fire to linger for over seven decades?

Nostrils twitching, Patrick ascended. At the top he stopped himself.

What if the architect never completed his task? What if Mr Stoppard doesn’t want me up here because it’s dangerous?

He could think of no rational reason why they’d leave it untouched for so long, and cast aside his doubt as he dipped his foot into the dark like a freshly run bath.

“Mr Hill? Mr Hill are you in your room?”

The voice slapped his ear. Patrick jerked forward and snatched at the twisted metal banister, one hand grabbing iron, the other hand air. For a moment he steadied out, but his momentum was unstoppable. He dropped quickly into the dark.

Patrick’s eyes slammed shut. Both hands shot out to find the floor.

“Mr Hill? Do you hear me?” Mr Stoppard shouted from below.

Patrick’s palms slapped down hard, and a cloud of grey ash billowed up into his face.

“Mr Hill?”

I’m a fool! Patrick thought. All this bloody ash all over me. He’ll know where I’ve been.

“Mr Hill!”

Patrick pushed himself off the ground and checked his hands. Both palms were black with soot.

If he doesn’t see the ash on my face, he’s going to bloody well see my hands!

Patrick frantically wiped his palms across the front of his jeans and regretted the motion immediately. The faded denim material was now tiger-striped.

Brilliant. Look at the mess I’ve made now.

“Hello? Mr Hill, do you hear me? Are you up there?”

Patrick risked a lean over the banister. Mr Stoppard stood in the main hall three floors down, looking up.

Patrick jerked his head back.

Did he see me? Did he notice me? What if he’s waiting for me to show myself again?

Patrick peeked down the centre of the spiral staircase.

No more Mr Stoppard.

Doesn’t mean he’s gone for good, Patrick thought. The only way out of this mess is if make it to my room before he finds me. Even if I make it, I’ll need to change out of these clothes. I’ll need to wash this crap off my hands and face. It’s impossible.

Patrick’s hand tightened on the spiral banister.

The banister?

Jesus! I can’t go down on that. I’m not a ten-year-old kid. It’ll probably collapse as soon as I put any weight on it. Even if it doesn’t, I won’t make it down a floor before I fall off.

The sound of footsteps returned, getting louder.

Louder.

He’ll climb the stairs and find me at the top like a scolded dog fresh from the mud.

With no time for prayers to the deaf God, Patrick hopped onto the banister and let go.

The spiral took him down with a speed he wasn’t expecting and threw him off two floors down. He hit the ground in a roll and popped up onto his feet like a gymnast, then froze in surprise at his accidental agility.

“Mr Hill? Is that you up there?”

The voice thawed him, quickly, and Patrick tip-toed towards the end of the hall, where the double doors connected the east wing to the north.

“Mr Hill? Are you up here? Mr Hill?”

Patrick pulled the doors open and winced as the hinges on the doors moaned liked tired old men rising from their chairs.

He must have heard me. There’s no way he didn’t hear me.

“Mr Hill? Are you up there?” Footsteps followed the voice.

He didn’t hear. The old bastard didn’t hear me.

Patrick inched through the open doors and broke into a run, ignoring any sounds he made now. He’d left the door to his room open and slipped through, his hands in the air so as not to leave a mark on the paintwork.

No time for washing up or dressing down now. It would take a half a minute to undo his shoes. Another half a minute to shuck and hide his jeans. A minute more to wash the ash and soot from his hands.

Turn the shower on! Get in the bathroom and turn the shower on, pretend you’re—

“Mr Hill?” The voice was impossibly close, just beyond the bedroom door.

Patrick searched the room, and finding no obvious route of escape, he dove under the covers and pulled them up over his head.

The bedroom door opened a moment later.

Patrick made a groaning sound beneath the sheets as if he was still sleeping.

“Is there something the matter, Mr Hill? Why didn’t you respond when I called?”

Patrick groaned, he rubbed the shoot from his face as best he could on the underside of the sheets, before he raised his eyes above the covers. He blinked a few times to sell his lie.

“Mr Stoppard?”

“You were sleeping?”

Patrick yawned. “Taking a nap,” he said.

“A nap? At this time of the afternoon? You can’t possibly be tired.”

“Not tired.”

“Then why are you sleeping at this time of day?”

He had no excuse of his own, but he remembered an excuse he’d heard an author use in a biography. “It’s my method,” he said.

“A method for what, may I ask?”

Patrick kept the sheets above his nose, and made sure his blackened fingers didn’t poke up above like worms welcoming the rain. “When I hit a wall on the writing, I’ll take a nap for half an hour or so. It gets the creative engine running again.”

“And what was the problem you faced on the very first day of our endeavour?”

“Excuse me?”

“What problem necessitated a restarting of your creative engine? There was a problem, I take it? This ‘method’ of yours is not applied without need, I would hope.”

A lot to hope. Patrick had no clever second-hand biographical story to cover himself this time. He blurted out a single word in panic.

“You,” he said.

“I?”

No use for it now, no way to back out. He’d meant to ask, but not in this kind of way. Now he couldn’t turn back. “I found a picture in the photo albums. Lawrence Stoppard, I believe. He was an architect.”

“Yes? What is it you want to know about him?”

“I mean, you look so much alike. I just wondered…”

Mr Stoppard shook his head. A pity came into his eyes. “An architect, as you already know. My grandfather, as any sensible man would assume. Did you have some other notion?”

Patrick shrank. “No, I mean…” he said, unable to find anything else roaming around in his brain.

“I assure you, Mr Hill, my grandfather’s involvement with Whitestone, while paramount to securing my future, is little more than a footnote in the history I want you to write.”

“Not worry so much as bother me.”

“Why so?”

“The resemblance to you was so uncanny. I suppose it threw me off a little.”

Mr Stoppard nodded. “I see,” he said.

“The nap helped, if that’s any consolation.”

“I suppose it’s better than what I imagined you might be doing. For a moment there…” Mr Stoppard glanced back to the bedroom door and the hall beyond.

“You thought I was was roaming about the grounds, you mean?”

“Exactly.”

“I wasn’t.”

Mr Stoppard nodded. “Your engine is running again in fine fettle?”

“Yes.”

“No need to dawdle then. Let’s get you back to work, sharpish. There’s still plenty of time left on the clock.”

“Of course,” Patrick said, but Mr Stoppard didn’t move from the door.

“I do understand the beds here are quite the comfort, but not so good you’d want to spend the day in one, Mr Hill. Let’s get moving.”

“Sure.” Patrick wasn’t sure of anything at all. He hadn’t napped, but it felt like he’d woken from a dream nonetheless. One of those embarrassing dreams where he stood naked in front of a classroom, all eyes on him. Any moment Mr Stoppard would see his sooty hands and face, then the embarrassment would be for real.

“Are you going to stay in bed all day? Is that your plan?”

“No.”

“It doesn’t look that way to me. You’re wasting the day away here. Come on, Mr Hill. Rise and shine.”

“Can you give me a moment?” he asked.

“A moment for what?”

I’ll tell him I’m naked. He can’t possibly insist I get out of bed if I don’t have any clothes on.

But why would I be naked? Who the Hell naps naked? He’s not going to believe me, and what if he doesn’t care? What if he’s one of those old public school or army types who spent half their life in the company of naked men? I’m going to have to come up with something better.

“I’d like to freshen up before I get back into it,” Patrick said.

“Poppycock! You can’t have slept for so long you’d need to wash. Unless…you haven’t been up here all morning neglecting your work, have you?”

“No, no. Half an hour, forty minutes at most, like I said. That’s all I needed.”

“I’m beginning to wonder about your suitability once again, Mr Hill. You do test me, you know. Come now. I’m not paying you to nap.”

“Yes, well…I…”

“I’m growing impatient, Mr Hill. Please, don’t test me any further.”

“Listen, I just want to say…” Patrick began his apologies as he pulled the sheets down from his chin, but forgot them immediately as he saw his hands.

They were spotless. As clean as if he’d just washed them in the bathroom sink.

“Yes?” Mr Stoppard said.

Patrick turned both hands over, happy and confused at the same time. He peeked beneath the sheets to see the marks on his jeans had vanished too. He reached up to his face and felt nothing but the wiry stubble of a beard that had never grown in fully.

Did I dream it all? Patrick thought. The smell of burning, the soot on my hands, the slide down the spiral staircase, all of it just a daydream?

“I’d just like to say…”

“Out with it, man.”

Patrick dropped his hands to his side. “I’d like to say this bed is a dream to sleep on.”

“Well, I’m glad of it. Now, back to work, Mr Hill. No more dawdling.”

“Of course, Mr Stoppard. Of course.”

11

In the days that followed, Patrick managed to convince himself the journey into the ashen dark of the east wing was nothing more than the dream he thought it to be. He refocused entirely on his work. Work that would soon show unexpected results.

Each day at five he met Mr Stoppard in the library and rationed out the completed pages to satisfy the man’s requirements. Stoppard approved paragraphs with angular green ticks in the margins. Red Xs littered most pages like a forgetful pirate’s treasure map. Patrick rewrote on request as he planned for the fourth week dedicated solely to the completion of his unsanctioned work. And now that work had a focus.

In amongst the scrapbooks and clippings, the ledgers and accounts, Patrick found the names of the dead. Thirteen in total.

The children first, photographed outside the gates of Whitestone, tags hanging from their jackets. Eliza, Tom, Joe, Chris, Peter, Mary, and Lucy. They’d arrived in 1939, part of the first wave of Operation Pied Piper, their names clearly marked in the guestbook, but unlike the others who’d returned to homes and lives, there was no more mention thereafter. Other, luckier children had their histories written out clearly: ‘1st January 1946, returned home to London’, ‘12th December 1945, With Aunt in Sussex’, ‘20th November 1944, Gone with sister to Brighton’.

Adults next. Six of the fateful thirteen. The first, a nurse by the name of Aggie McDowell, puzzled him for a little while. No photographs existed of her in the scrapbooks and albums like the rest of the staff, but payments existed from 1935-1945 in a ledger of accounts. The date was a puzzle too. 1935 was four years before any of the war children arrived, so why the need for a nurse?

For the daughter, Aster, he realised. Suffering from tuberculosis, she would have needed a full-time nurse and Aggie fit the bill.

The pattern repeated. Jane Marshall, French teacher. Albert Frodsham, gardener. James Bartleby, sports instructor. Colm Spencer, chauffeur. Tara Carlton-Howell, music instructor. All hired within a few years of the children’s arrival, but none had entries for their leaving, just like Aggie McDowell.

Thirteen gone without explanation, police investigations or newspaper reports. They existed as names in guest books and ledgers. They smiled at him from a forgotten past in the photo albums.

Maybe they didn’t die? Patrick thought. The war was over by the time the fires ravaged Whitestone. What if they’d left before that night? What if their departure wasn’t in the books for some altogether benign reason?

His gut wouldn’t have it. He’d found a strand that once pulled would unravel the whole mystery.

Patrick pulled.

He pulled and pulled, and from the loose strands he stitched the histories together, but it was always a half-finished patchwork, never the full quilt. Something was missing, he could feel it, even if he couldn’t see it.

How had the fires started? Why were the victims ignored throughout the years? Was there a cover-up of some kind, and who would benefit?

The days passed like a dream. The notes for his secret history were almost a book in themselves. Too numerous now to slip inside the oversized dictionary, he stowed them under the heavy mattress of his bed like a guilty teenager in the 90s would pornographic magazines.

Patrick pulled. He pulled and pulled until there was nothing left to pull, and then, dejected, he discovered a photograph.

It was madness, but…

12

A key clicked in the bedroom door. The nightly signal Patrick’s curfew had begun. Alone now until dawn when Mr Stoppard returned, he had plenty of time to follow madness into the dark.

“Good night. Sleep soundly,” Mr Stoppard said from the other side of the door.

“Night,” Patrick replied, hoping to keep the tremor of excitement out of his voice.

There would be no sleep, not tonight, not with the name rattling around inside his head.

Aster Whitestone.

The images he’d found in the photo albums chronicled her life from a child with fierce dark eyes to shy teenager, eyes lidded with a painful self-awareness. She’d posed with her father before the gates, outside the maze, and beside the topiary where she petted the hedge lion like a docile cat. Each year a new photograph marked the passage of her years, but always, Aster wore a white dress and had her hair cut into a dark black bob.

She was here in the history of Whitestone. As shimmering as the pearl veins running through the Carrara marble, or the fairy lights strewn beneath the ceiling of the glasshouse. As much a mystery as the strange flowers in their beds.

The image he’d found only confirmed Patrick’s feelings. An impossible photograph he’d stumbled upon and ignored at first, but now he couldn’t get it out of his mind.

In the photograph, a group of the child evacuees stood before the strange flowers in the glasshouse. Behind them, the vague blur of a girl moved past the windows. A girl with black, bobbed hair and a white dress.

At first, he dismissed it as a trick of the light, just as he’d seen a girl in the darkness on his first night at Whitestone. But he couldn’t hold onto the explanation for long. It was Aster Whitestone in the photograph, he felt it.

He checked the dates again. A handwritten note on the back of the photograph marked it December of 1941, and from all other accounts, Aster had died in 1939.

Was she alive in the photograph a year after her death?

Alive or a ghost? he asked himself on more than one occasion, but just as quickly dismissed the notion. Ghosts didn’t exist. That silly notion belonged to terrible reality TV shows and fakers.

As Mr Stoppard’s footsteps disappeared along the halls of Whitestone, Patrick stepped up onto the alcove beneath his bedroom window, undid the latch at the bottom of the frame and pushed it open. The ledge beyond was one brick deep, wide enough for both of his booted feet. The drop wasn’t enough to cause vertigo, but enough to break a few bones if he slipped.

Patrick felt the night’s cold whisper at his ear. He stared out at the thick wall of darkness beyond Whitestone, where even the stars couldn’t sprinkle their light.

He’d come prepared with a battery-powered torch he’d found in the kitchen, fixed to his forehead with string as an improvised miner’s lamp

Stood on the ledge, looking out into the night, Patrick felt no fear, only certainty. He’d pulled the last strand and found the key attached, which would unlock all the secrets of Whitestone. That key was Aster Whitestone.

In an innocuous account ledger, the truth began to reveal itself.

9th November 1935 - For the installation of secured doors and windows on the upper east wing – £2-8-4d to Bolton & Sons of Chelmsford.

A further entry strengthened Patrick’s suspicions.

December 15th, 1935 - Fitting of thirteen steel reinforced window shutters and extended ratchet fixings with poles to east wing, upper floor– £3-4-3d to Carpers of Sheffield.

The renovations weren’t meant for the care of a girl with a debilitating disease such as tuberculosis. Steel doors and windows with locks had no other purpose than imprisonment to Patrick’s mind. And at some point, during that time, Aster escaped for long enough to appear in the background of the photograph.

As Patrick inched along the ledge, he ran through his theory.

The initial work on the east wing began in 1935. Shortly thereafter, Lord Whitestone had ordered the upper rooms secured and hired the nurse, Aggie McDowell. An early version of a psychiatric nurse, he assumed.

Didn’t matter, as the ledgers spoke the truth, even as the Lord of the manor carefully crafted another reality. The world saw a man concerned with the well-being of his ailing daughter. A doting father, who’d embarked on costly building work in aid of her convalescence. Secretly, he’d built a prison to keep the dirty secret of her madness hidden.

No wonder Stoppard doesn’t want me nosing around the east wing, Patrick thought. That’s where I’ll find the truth.

Or I find more soot and ashes.

The thought stopped Patrick’s progress along the ledge. He’d managed to stow the strange incident in the darkness to the back of his mind. It was one more dream lost in the dream of the days.

Was it a dream? he wondered. Did I fall asleep in the bed for real and not just as a last-minute excuse I gave to Mr Stoppard? It felt real, but it couldn’t have been real, could it?

Patrick shook the doubts away.

I’ll know soon enough. No more guesses and deductions. I’ll find the shutters Lord Whitestone had installed. I’ll find some proof of Aster’s imprisonment up there, and then it’ll be real.

Patrick resumed his creep along the ledge, but didn’t get far before doubt stopped him a second time.

Why wasn’t the truth already out there? Others had visited Whitestone in the years after the fires. Other hungry journalists searching for a story. Had none probed into Aster Whitestone and her fate? Had none gone over the account ledgers?

None got close enough, he told himself. None had access to the library. None were as lucky as me.

Patrick edged the window open on his right and dropped down into the hallway. He tip-toed to the spiral staircase, and stood at the bottom, the light from his improvised miner’s lamp lost in the darkness above.

A chill ran through him. An irrational whisper floated through his mind.

What’s lost in the darkness, wants to remain that way.

Like what? A ghost?

I don’t believe in ghosts, he reminded himself as he started to climb the spiral.

He forgot the reminder as he reached the top of the staircase.

She danced through the dark, her white dress a comet trail behind her. Where she danced the black retreated only to close in again as she moved away.

An ageless girl.

A ghost.

Aster Whitestone.

13

Aster played the shadow game.

Each night as Mr Hill worked, she whispered her way to the any nearby darkness deep enough to hide her to watched. But it could go no further. No matter how she yearned to speak to him, or hear him speak to her, Mr Stoppard had warned her of the consequences.

He would send Mr Hill away without further ado. That was how he’d said it, ‘Without further ado.’ There’d be no second chances.

Mr Stoppard’s threat was real. She recalled those she’d played the shadow game with before. Mr Harris, with hair as black as ebony. Mr Canterbury, with a neck like a red tree trunk. Miss Solomon, with lips tied in a perfect pink bow. She’d wished to make friends with all of them, but Mr Stoppard had foxed her at every turn. He’d sent them away before she might even whisper their names or they whisper hers.

She wouldn’t allow the same fate with Mr Hill. Better to be a shadow for as long as possible, and then, then…

…then…

A lock clicked into place. She heard it across the manor house like the cracking of damp wood in a fire.

Mr Stoppard had locked his door, and Aster’s excitement grew. Now the night belonged to her, she could dance any dream she pleased. Fussy old Mr Stoppard couldn’t stop her.

She danced through the halls; from shadow’s embrace to shadow’s embrace. She danced a dream of Mr Hill and how it might be if Mr Stoppard wasn’t around to ruin everything.

“Will you be my friend, Aster?” Mr Hill would say.

“Yes! Yes!” she would reply in a shout, breaking all of Mr Stoppard’s stupid rules.

“Forever?” Mr Hill would say.

“Until the moon falls from the sky!”

Lost in the dance, Aster almost missed the man.

Mr Hill!

He stood at the top of the spiral staircase, his face a mask of fear.

Why is he scared? she thought. Why is he scared of me? I’m not anything to fear, am I?

The thought stole the dance from her. In all her imaginings, Mr Hill wasn’t afraid. He’d smile and speak her name softly, gently.

Aster checked the darkness behind, afraid Mr Stoppard might have woken and played his own shadow game, before she held out her trembling hand towards Mr Hill.

His eyes shined in the cast light from the contraption fitted to his head. He opened his lips just wide enough for a word to spill out, but none came.

Aster had a word. She wrapped her trembling hand around Mr Hill’s arm and pulled.

“Follow.”

14

This is a dream. I’m dreaming. I never stopped dreaming, Patrick thought.

He followed like a bumbling drunk as Aster danced him through the dark.

Where her feet touched the ground, sparks of white light burst and spattered the black. The upper room was a Dalmatian of colour in her wake. She moved joyously through the retreating blackness, splashing white like a child would water from rain puddles.

I’ll wake soon enough, Patrick thought. I’ll be in that bloody library face down in a book, or beneath the sheets in my bed.

The east wing took shape as Aster danced. The spots of light where her feet fell gave way to pools of overflowing colour. Time sped up. Day turned to night turned to day in the space of six steps and back again before the seventh. An impossible moon glowed behind the window and trapped her in its silver spotlight.

Aster danced on, and the world turned from silver to gold as the moon fell and a sun rose, only for the silver to return in the time it took to lose a breath.

It’s a dream, he reminded himself. It must be. But what does it mean? What is it telling me?

Aster danced on, pulling him with her.

Moonlight paved a silver path before her, towards a set of grand double doors.

The truth of the dream is beyond those doors, Patrick thought.

If it is a dream.

It is.

What if it isn’t?

Impossible. IM-POSSIBLE.

Aster pulled at Patrick’s hand. Her touch felt real.

This isn’t real, no matter how much I want it to be. It can’t be.

Aster brought a finger up to her lips. “Quiet,” she whispered, as she parted the doors like curtains, then pulled Patrick out into an impossible night.

15

Mr Hill was a funny one, Aster had to admit. Funnier than any of the other visitors she’d played the shadow game with. He reminded her of the lost ghosts haunting the lawns, unaware of where they were going to or how they would get there.

The ghosts were as confused as ever. They stood, open-mouthed, as Aster danced Mr Hill past them and onto the hopscotch path.

One step to the right, two to the left. A hop and a skip into the glasshouse together!

“Follow me,” she said, leading Mr Hill towards the flowers.

A spiral tickle grew in her stomach as the moon rose high above the glasshouse, and its long icy fingers reached inside to brush the flowers in their beds.

Under the white touch of the moon, the flowers yawned to life, their petals taking on the shape of stars.

The same moon touched Mr Hill’s face. His eyes widened, and he smiled like a child who’d caught a snowflake on their tongue.

Mr Hill looked to Aster, his eyes asking a question his numbed lips couldn’t form: Is this real?

Aster nodded, as she led him from one flowerbed to the next.

His eyes asked another question: How?

“Follow me,” Aster said, pulling gently on Mr Hill’s hand, but he wouldn’t move.

“Please,” she said, and pulled a little harder. Mr Hill might stay that way all night, thawed only when the moonlight faded, she knew.

“Please,” Aster said, but it was as if she was no longer there. “Can you hear me? If you can hear me, just say something, anything?” she said.

Mr Hill hadn’t heard, but a reply came from the night beyond the glasshouse.

“Aster, is that you?” Mr Stoppard said.

16

“You’re awake, at last.”

Mr Stoppard stood beside Patrick’s bed; his wooden face waxed with annoyance.

Patrick cracked the sleep in his eyes. He couldn’t remember when he’d crawled into bed. He couldn’t remember much except the motes of a dream trapped behind his eyes.

We danced through the east wing and towards impossible doors. There were stairs behind the doors. Stone steps a body wide, sandwiched between old brick.

“What time is it?” Patrick said, pushing himself up in the bed.

“Ten.”

“Did I oversleep?”

“Can one oversleep from a nap, do you think?”

“A nap?”

“Yes. You had some soup for your lunch, and you came up here for a nap a few hours ago. Don’t you remember?”

Patrick’s head was full of cotton wool and lead. He shook a ‘no’, and it hurt.

She took my hand in hers. Time sped up around us, but then stopped at the centre.

Patrick pulled himself off the edge of the bed, and the world took on a spin around him. He closed his eyes hoping for the spin to stop.

“I think you should go back to sleep. You don’t look so rested to me,” Mr Stoppard said.

“I’m fine,” Patrick said, but in the darkness behind his lids the world continued to twirl.

Be still. Be as still as you can.

A chill sweat broke out across Patrick’s forehead.

Be still.

Be—

Patrick rocked forward and vomited.

“Oh, dear. You do seem to be quite sick, Mr Hill.”

Patrick tried to nod, but another violent spasm took him, and he vomited again.

“Something you ate, no doubt. I do try to be careful with the meals I prepare for you. Very careful indeed.”

Patrick’s eyes filled with tears; through the blur he saw the mess he’d made.

A red puddle stained the floor.

Blood?

He vomited again, and as the last spasm left him, he lifted his head and saw the blurred shape of Mr Stoppard leaning over him.

“Soup,” Mr Stoppard said.

“What?”

“Tomato soup. You had it for lunch. It’s become somewhat of a favourite of yours over the last month.”

“Tomato soup?”

Mr Stoppard nodded towards the red puddle on the floor. “From the colour, I’d say the soup was the most likely culprit.”

Patrick’s throat burned. The desire for water forced him up onto shaky legs.

“I don’t think you should be going anywhere in your condition,” Mr Stoppard said.

“I need a drink.”

“I’ll get it for you. Please, sit down, Mr Hill.”

Patrick dropped onto the edge of the bed and lowered his head.

We danced out through the night, across the lawns, amongst the silent dead.

“Here you go.” Mr Stoppard returned with a glass tumbler of water from the bathroom.

“Thank you,” Patrick said, then tipped his head back and poured it down like a vodka shot

“Less hurry, Mr Hill. Sip, don’t gulp. You’ll make yourself worse.”

Patrick stopped himself mid gulp.

“Okay,” he said.

“I think you should try to sleep. I’ll clean up the mess in the meantime.”

“No, please. It’s my fault. I should...”

“Rest, Mr Hill. I’ll clean.”

A cold shiver ran through Patrick’s body. His head tipped forward like the lead in it had dropped down into his chin. Sleep was close, but not close enough to blot out a thought.

Did Mr Stoppard say I’d been eating tomato soup for the last month?

“I’ll check in on you later,” Mr Stoppard said. “You’ll be hungry again in no time, no doubt. You’ll need something to replenish the nutrients you’ve lost.”

“Last month?” Patrick asked.

“Excuse me?”

“You said something about me liking the soup this last month. What did you mean by that?”

Patrick sipped at the water. It didn’t taste right. There was a metallic edge to it.

“I’m not following you, Mr Hill. I meant exactly what I said. Over the last month you’ve showed a preference for tomato soup for your lunches. There is nothing more to it.”

“The last month?”

“Yes.”

“I can’t remember eating tomato soup at all,” Patrick said, his confused brain trying to count the days in his head, but he couldn’t arrange them into any kind of an order. They were as much a dream as the dance through the east wing with a girl who couldn’t possibly exist.

“I fear this bout of sickness has muddled your brain. At first you had no taste for it, but once the first month of your stay was out of the way, you gained an appreciation quite quickly.”

“First month?”

“Yes.”

“Wait, how long have I been here?”

“Excuse me?”

Patrick shook his head, and his brain banged painfully into the sides of his skull.

“How long?”

“Eight weeks tomorrow, Mr Hill.”

“No,” Patrick said, rising to his feet.

He stumbled across a floor as unsteady as a ship deck, and grabbed the edge of the desk on the far side of the room.

“Mr Hill? Please return to your bed. You’re in no shape for these kinds of shenanigans. Do you hear me? It’d be better if you slept.”

A tidy desk waited; pencils returned to their tumbler, silver writing pen asleep on its satin bed, yellow pads all lined up in a row to the right

What’s going on? he thought. I’ve never left a desk tidy in my life. Who did this?

Patrick squinted to bring Mr Stoppard into focus. He found no guilt on the man’s face. But who else might have done it?

Aster Whitestone danced through Patrick’s mind. A girl who might be a ghost. A ghost that might be a dream. A dream that…tidied desks?

A laugh bubbled up in his stomach, but he lost it to a new thought.

This is all Mr Stoppard’s doing. He’s the phantom desk tidier. Has to be.

Why, though? It doesn’t make sense. Unless…unless…

Patrick’s legs started to shake. He glanced at the four-poster bed.

Were the notes still under the mattress?

Patrick started back towards the bed on his unsteady legs.

“Good. At last, you’re listening to sense,” Mr Stoppard said.

“The book,” Patrick asked, as he sat on the edge of the bed.

“The book?”

“The one we’re writing, Mr Stoppard. How is it going?”

“You are feeling under the weather if you can’t remember such details.”

“Humour me, please.”

“I’ll oblige because of your weakened condition. We completed the book this very morning.”

“To your satisfaction?”

Mr Stoppard inspected Patrick like a curiosity in a quaint shop. “The book is fine.”

“You’re sure?”

“As sure as can be.”

Patrick shook his head.

The moon reached in through the domed roof of the glasshouse. I felt warm and welcomed under its touch.

If I’ve completed the book, it means the weeks passed just as Mr Stoppard said. But I don’t remember any of it.

“No need for any rewrites?” Patrick asked, feeling the desperation in his own voice.

“None. I’m quite satisfied with the service you provided.”

“Oh,” Patrick said.

“I fear Whitestone’s spell is upon you, Mr Hill. I sense you’re hesitant to leave, yes?”

“Is that a roundabout way of asking me to go?”

“Excuse me?” Mr Stoppard said.

“Now I’ve finished the work, you’ll want me to go, like you said? I mean, I still have to get my car fixed and that could take some time, but—”

“No, Mr Hill. In your condition you wouldn’t make it out of the gates, let alone the end of the road. You’ll sleep, that’s what you’ll do. Everything will fall into place once you’re rested.”

“You’re sure?” he said.

“Of course.”

Why is he so accommodating? Patrick wondered. None of this feels real.

It didn’t feel real, but he wasn’t about to pass up the offer.

“Thank you,” Patrick said.

“Drink your water and sleep, Mr Hill. Everything will make sense when you wake. I promise you.”

“Sleep,” Patrick said, but sleep was the furthest thing from his mind.

17

Patrick had no strength to lift the mattress with his hands, so he climbed beneath, pushing it up with his back.

Gone. The notes were gone

It’s over, he thought. Stoppard figured out my plan, but why hasn’t he insisted I leave? Why would he want me here if he knows I broke his trust?

Patrick couldn’t find any logical reason, but an illogical one offered itself quickly enough.

He wants to punish me. God knows how, but this is part of the plan. Confuse me first with all this talk of the weeks going by, and then—

Patrick’s head banged. His throat burned. He reached for the water on the bedside table and brought it to his lips. The metal taste was sharper now, and the back of his throat closed off automatically.

What the—

Patrick twirled his finger in the glass.

A silver dust spiralled at the centre, then dropped to the bottom and collected there.

What is that? Is that—

Did Stoppard drug me?

His eyes fixed on the red mess on the floor, as an answer thudded into his brain.

No wonder I don’t recall the missing weeks. The bastard drugged me, and I’ve been out of my head for God knows how long.

And if I’ve been out of my head, then…

What if the books in the library, my notes, Aster, are all an elaborate drug-fuelled hallucination?

What if…

What if…

What if he’s trying to kill me?

Patrick rose on shaky legs and dressed himself as quickly as he could, before he left the room behind and crept his way to the grand double doors of Whitestone.

He opened them enough to slip his shadow through, and followed quickly behind.

A thick, black soup covered the world beyond the gates of Whitestone. An empty universe without any stars to guide the way.

Not so empty.

“Mr Hill? Are you sleeping?” Mr Stoppard’s voice followed him from within the mansion house.

He’ll know I’m missing soon enough. It’s only a matter of minutes before he starts searching. Got to get back to my car and pray it’ll start.

As he reached the gates of Whitestone, he felt the cold stab of watching eyes between his shoulder blades.

Don’t look back, he thought, then promptly glanced over his shoulder.

The mansion house watched him from a hundred windowed-eyes, but Mr Stoppard was the pupil of none.

Bastard will be here soon enough, Patrick thought, as he pulled on the gates. And pulled again, but they had no give to them.

“Mr Hill? Where have you gone to? Mr Hill, can you hear me?” Mr Stoppard’s voice echoed throughout the halls of Whitestone.

Patrick whirled around and searched the courtyard for a hiding place. To his right lay the lawns, and the topiary, the maze, and further still the glasshouse. To his left, the garage.

He ran.

“Mr Hill? Are you out here, Mr Hill?”

Patrick fumbled the side door of the garage open, and stumbled into the darkness beyond, as Mr Stoppard walked out onto the courtyard.

“Mr Hill? Are you out here?”

Patrick’s heart thundered, but couldn’t drown out the sound of approaching footsteps.

He’s clocked me. Well, fuck him! If he comes in here, I’ll crack the mad old get in the head with—

Patrick balled his fists, but they didn’t have enough strength in them to worry a paper bag.

Find something to hit him with. Must be something in here heavy enough.

Patrick pawed the wall, tracing it until his fingers touched the rusted edges of a set of metal shelves.

Bingo! Got to be something heavy on here.

At first, he found cobwebs and dust, then his hands fell upon something familiar, and his heart did a hopscotch jump.

The improvised miner’s lamp!

Patrick’s closed his fist over the device. He could do damage with it, he knew. The D-Cell battery that powered it had enough weight.

That old bastard must have put it here out of my reach. That proves he’s trying to mess with me. That proves—

It proves I wore this bloody thing when I met Aster. It proves at least that much is true and not some drug-fuelled dream. And if that part is true, then…

Outside, the footsteps grew louder, steadier as Mr Stoppard walked across the courtyard, and stopped just beyond the garage shutters.

Patrick held his breath and gripped his improvised weapon tighter.

Let him come, he thought. I’ll crack the old bastard in the head.

The footsteps started up again, but in retreat, and soon the manor house swallowed them, along with Mr Stoppard’s voice, “Mr Hill? Mr Hill? Where are you?”

Patrick let out his held breath.

Got to get out of here.

How though? Not through the locked gates, or over the high walls. That left the rear of the estate, where the grounds ended and the woods began.

I wouldn’t make it a mile, he thought. Even if I did get that far, I’d still be in the middle of nowhere in the middle of the night.

Patrick gritted his teeth.

A rhyme he’d heard on an American kids’ TV show crawled into his ear.

Can't go over it,

Can't go under it,

Can't go around it,

Got to go through it!

Not through it, but through him. Mr Stoppard.

Patrick hefted the improvised miner’s lamp in his hand, but it felt weak now. If he wanted to confront the mad old bastard, a hammer, or a shovel would fair better.

Must be one in here somewhere, Patrick thought. There isn’t a garage on earth that doesn’t have a few tools knocking about loose.

Patrick traced the edge of the metal shelves, but found only more dust.

It’ll take me forever doing this blindly, he thought. I need some light. I have some light.

Patrick found the switch on the side of the torch, and held his thumb above it.

If I keep low enough, and don’t turn it on for too long, I might get away without Stoppard noticing me in here.

He didn’t want to give himself away, but Patrick switched on the torch in his hand and swept the dark before him.

The light uncovered a frost of cobwebs untouched for decades, but not a spanner nor a wrench in sight. Then the light touched upon a more familiar object.

Is that my car?

The light danced along the patchwork edges of Patrick’s car and poked inside to highlight every tattered and torn corner. It brushed against the dashboard and Jesus’ amputated feet stuck to the surface.

Why did Stoppard bring it in here?

I know why. It’s here so nobody will find it. It’s here so there’s no traces of me when he…when he…kills me.

The sick old bastard. I’ll…I’ll..

How did he get it in here? He can’t have had it towed, that would mean a witness. So that means…?

Patrick opened the driver’s side door, then eased himself in behind the wheel. He reached for the ignition and the broken key permanently lodged inside. Eyes squeezed tight; he turned the key.

The car coughed twice, then growled to life. The headlamps blinked awake.

“You sweet gorgeous bastard!”

It settled into a pleased rumble beneath him. The headlamps dimmed to a contented yellow.

I’ll cut out through the rear of the grounds and double back onto the road. I’ll find the nearest village and whatever half-asleep copper lives there, then I’ll have the old bastard nicked!

For what crime? I have no evidence. I can’t prove any of this. All I have is a bad feeling and a handful of weird dreams.

Dreams he couldn’t shake. Dreams of the moonlight streaming in through the glasshouse roof. Dreams of a ghost; a child who couldn’t be; Aster.

Dreams that might just be the side-effects of some unknown drug.

What if they aren’t dreams and the ghost of Aster Whitestone still haunts this place? What if she’s trying to tell me something?

He didn’t believe in ghosts, yet—

She danced me out to the glasshouse where the strange flowers grow. Is the truth of Whitestone buried there?

I could stay, he thought. I could lock the old bastard up in his room for the night. That’d be time enough to investigate the glasshouse properly. He wouldn’t dare report me after what he’s done.

Then I’d have everything I needed for my book. I’d have everything I need for my future. I’d have—

The garage shutters shook open. A long shadow crept in under the edge and across the bonnet of Patrick’s car.

18

The shadow spoke.

“Where is it we’re think we’re going, exactly, Mr Hill?” Mr Stoppard said.

Patrick stared but couldn’t speak.

“I would advise against a journey on a night like tonight.” The shadow held out a hand, palm up. “Rain, it seems.”

Patrick saw no rain. He’d felt none when he’d run from the house and heard none either.

“Rain,” he said, barely able to get the word from his lips.

“You sound quite perturbed, Mr Hill.”

“No,” Patrick said.

“Dreadfully sorry if I scared you. I didn’t mean to.”

Patrick couldn’t see Mr Stoppard’s face, but he had the feeling the man had the smile of a snake in the company of a mouse.

“I’m fine,” Patrick said.

Mr Stoppard’s shadow stroked the car’s bonnet. “Everything in working order, I take it?”

“Excuse me?”

“The car, Mr Hill. It’s working, I take it? Took some doing, I’ll admit, but I do relish the challenge.

Patrick nodded stiffly. “You did this?”

“Who else?”

“Why?”

The shadow fell over Patrick.

“I might have given the exterior some more attention, I suppose. There’ll be plenty of time later for such things.”

“Time?” Patrick asked.

“We live with the clock ever ticking, and it grows louder every year. Do you hear it now, Mr Hill? Tick-tock. Tick-tock.” The shadow cupped an ear. “Louder and louder with every passing moment. Hickory-dickory dock. The mouse ran up the clock.”

A cold mouse ran from the rhyme and up Patrick’s back.

“Some spend their lives in the pursuit of stopping clocks.”

“Excuse me?”

“Take the lepidopterist who pins the wings of a butterfly and freezes it beneath glass. The model train enthusiast building his perfect, unchanging worlds in miniature. The plastic surgeon who shaves years off alongside fat and bones. Each, in their turn, is doing what they can to deny the ticking of the clock.”

“I don’t know what you’re driving at?”

“A few do stop the clock, Mr Hill.”

“What?”

The shadow moved across the bonnet like melted tar. Mr Stoppard stood beside the car, hands behind his back.

“The question we must ask is, ‘How do we dance and yet stand still?”

“I don’t know,” Patrick said.

“Oh, you do. They always do.”

“They?”

“You were trying to leave, weren’t you, Mr Hill?”

“No.”

“Yes you were. Out of all who came before, you are the most trouble. I should have known when you arrived late for our first meeting.”

“I wasn’t late. I wa—”

Mr Stoppard brought a finger up to his lips. “Hush. Let’s not bother with the charade any longer, I’m growing tired of it.”

“What?”

“Let us be clear. You’ll never leave Whitestone, Mr Hill. It’s not the way of things.”

Patrick’s hands tightened on the steering wheel.

“I’ve done my job. I don’t owe you anything. If I want to leave, I’ll leave.”

“Is that so?”

“That’s so. Want to make something of it?” Patrick spoke through gritted teeth.

“Have it your way, Mr Hill, although you won’t get far, let me assure you. They never do.”

“Are you going to stop me?”

Mr Stoppard walked out to the gates of Whitestone, opened them, and ushered Patrick’s car through. “I’ll be seeing you soon,” he said.

“Not bloody likely,” Patrick replied, as he drove out into the darkness beyond Whitestone.

A moment later the rains came and drummed against the world.

19

A dog growled in the night.

Aster opened her eyes at the sound, confused. It wasn’t a dog, no. It was a familiar yet alien noise weaving in and out of the pounding rain.

Aster ran to the window and stared into the soaked world beyond. Two red eyes looked back at her from beyond the open gates of Whitestone.

Not eyes. Lights. The tail lights of a car.

She spied a familiar shadow crammed inside the car. A man short and round instead of tall and lean. A man soft instead of hard.

Mr Hill. Mr Hill was still here.

Mr Stoppard had threatened to send him away before Aster woke. She would never see him again, yet here he was.

Not for long. The red lights blinked out, fading in the dark, unknown world beyond the gates.

I could make it known.

The thought itched her skin.

I could make it, Aster thought. The staircase will take me. Then it’s just a hop and a skip, and I’ll be at the side of the car.

What about Mr Stoppard?

Aster pressed her face against the cold glass and felt the rain tap at her.

Mr Stoppard stood by the open gates, happy with himself as he waved Mr Hill away.

No. I can’t let him go, Aster thought.

She ran and leaped onto the spiral staircase with both eyes closed. She jumped at the bottom, leaped, twirled, and danced out into the rain; eyes still closed.

Time slowed as she danced. The rain stopped and held fast all around.

Time rushed to catch up as she opened her eyes. The world started moving again, but it was an almost empty world.

Mr Hill’s car was gone. The gates were closed, and only Mr Stoppard remained.

“What is we think we’re doing, Aster?” he said.

20

Lightning flashed and the thunder roared. The rain fell like howling dogs.

“Stop acting the fool. This weather will do you nothing but harm,” Mr Stoppard shouted at her.

“Don’t care,” she said.

“You will. Get inside. This is no place to be on such a night.”

It’s exactly the place to be, only the time is wrong, only the company is out of place, she thought. Your company, Mr Stoppard.

Mr Stoppard strode toward her. “I don’t much like you interfering, Aster. You could have hurt yourself. What game do you think you’re playing?”

It wasn’t a game, but it had felt like play in the company of Mr Hill. Now he was gone.

Aster crossed her arms.

“Stop this tantrum at once, young lady,” Mr Stoppard said.

“No.”

“Come now, Aster. Let’s get you in out of the rain before you freeze,” Mr Stoppard lifted up the side of his jacket to place over Aster’s head.

She shook him away.

“Aster, don’t do this now.”

“Do what?”

“You know what.”

“No,” she said, shaking her head.

“Stop this foolishness. We don’t have the time to stand out here playing silly beggars. No time at all.”

Mr Stoppard clasped his hand on Aster’s arm and pulled.

She pulled away.

“So, you’ll stay here forever, will you? Is that your wish?”

What does he know of wishes? Aster thought.

“Yes,” she said.

“Why are you always so stubborn? You can’t wait out here forever, you know that,” he said.

“I will.”

“You can’t, Aster. Not now.”

“I will.”

Mr Stoppard’s shoulders sagged. “You can’t stay here, Aster,” he said.

“I can.”

“Please, just do as I—”

“No!”

“You can’t stay out here, you’ll—”

“Why not?”

“Please, trust me. Just follow me inside.”

“Why?”

“Can’t you trust me? All I’ve done is solely for your wellbeing. Trust me.”

Except send Mr Hill and all the rest away, she thought. “I’ll stay,” she said.

Mr Stoppard slowly unfurled his grip and nodded towards the skies. “It’s always the same. You don’t remember. You never do, but you will in time. That is both the blessing and the curse of our condition.”

Something colder than the rain ran across her skin.

“What condition?” she said.

“It will all make sense in time. In time it always does.”

“What does?”

Mr Stoppard checked his watch. He checked the skies. “Soon enough. We must prepare ourselves.”

“Prepare for what?” she said.

“For when Mr Hill returns.”

“He’s coming back?” she said.

Mr Stoppard nodded. “He will, yes. They always do.”

A trapped butterfly, suddenly gained its freedom within her. “How do you know he’ll come back?” she said.

Mr Stoppard turned his gaze out to the black lands beyond the gates.

“He has to return. There is no other way.”

The butterfly landed on her chest, and settled coldly there.

“What do you mean?” she said.

“He will return, as they all do, and he will die just like the rest. He will die, Aster, so that you and I may live. You’ll remember in time. You always do.”“

21

The world drowned, and every movement felt like a push against a black tide that threatened to pull Patrick down forever.

The car rolled to a stop as he lost control of his legs, and his feet slipped off the pedals. He slumped forward on the steering wheel, barely able to hold himself upright. Both arms had turned to heavy anchors at the end of long, sodden ropes.

Oh, Christ. The drugs he used on me haven’t worn off, he thought.

Patrick clasped his leg with both hands and dropped it onto the accelerator pedal, only for it to slip off and jerk to one side.

Come on. Work for fuck’s sake. Work.

He stared at his leaden foot, knowing he’d still have to operate the clutch and the gear stick even if he did manage to make it stay on the pedal.

Oh, Christ. I’m a sitting duck out here. He’s going to find me.

How far did I get away? Am I far enough away to be safe?

Every muscle strained; Patrick turned to look behind from where he’d come.

Lightning flashed across the rain-soaked world and illuminated the gates of Whitestone, only fifteen feet behind him.

Fuck. I don’t stand a chance. I don’t—

A red glow on the back seat caught his attention. The beating redness of an impossible and Sacred Heart—Jesus!

I thought I threw the statue away on that first night I arrived here. Did I throw it away, or was that another drug-fuelled dream I had?

Doesn’t matter, it’s a sign.

A sign of what, his drug-addled brain couldn’t quite grasp, but it felt like hope.

Squinting, he brushed the side of the statue three times before his confused mind could tell his confused hand what to do, and he curled his fingers around the head of the plastic Jesus and lifted.

Hallelujah! Praise the Lord!

In his hand Jesus’ heart glowed red. Patrick turned the statue over and stared into the impassive eyes of the dashboard deity.

What now? What do I do now?

Collapse, his body answered.

The dark tide pulled Patrick down.

22

Aster wouldn’t listen. She couldn’t listen with fingers jammed in her ears and eyes closed.

“Aster, please. We go through this every time,” Mr Stoppard said, as he pulled at her hands.

“La-la-la-la-la.”

“Aster, stop this foolishness. It will change nothing. Step back from the gates now, and come with me.”

“La-la-la-la-la.”

I won’t open my eyes ever. I won’t take my fingers out of my ears. I’ll keep singing until Mr Stoppard goes away. I’ll sing until it all goes away.

“La-la-la-la-la.”

“Fine. If this is how you wish to behave, then so be it. You’ll remember soon enough, and then you’ll do as I say. You always do. You don’t have any choice in the matter.”

Mr Stoppard released his grip and stepped back.

Aster risked a peek through one eye. Mr Stoppard stood before her, arms folded, his face flickering like a lightbulb about to blow.

Aster continued to sing, but it was a lost song, fading as it went. “La-la-la…la….”

She’d seen the same strange flicker on his face before. She’d seen it all before, but couldn’t remember when, and where, and who, and…

…and she remembered it all. Flames stretched hot fingers high into a dark sky. Children below, dyed orange under the glow. A night filled with firefly embers and screams.

Aster pulled her fingers from her ears and opened her eyes.

She remembered.

She stepped out through her memories into another time, another world. A younger Aster, barely tall enough to reach the knees of the man she walked beside.

“You’re my precious flower, Aster. I’ll always be here for you, never forget that. Always.”

It wasn’t Mr Stoppard, or any of the friends he’d sent away from Whitestone. She knew the voice, but couldn’t find a name to match. It was a whisper at her ear before she slept. A soft lullaby.

“Sweet dreams my precious flower. Sweet dreams.”

He’d whispered her to sleep in that other time, in that other land of her memories.

Who are you? Aster thought.

A name hid in her throat, too shy to reveal itself. Aster closed her eyes and mouthed the alphabet, A through F, to coax the word out. A letter brushed her lips. F...F...F...

She could feel the name about to unfold like the petals on the flowers that woke in the glasshouse at the touch of the moon.

F...F...F...

The word faded as the fires rose, and the man burned away before her like paper touched by flame. Mr Stoppard returned. He shifted and shimmered in time with the fires as they reached up their orange and red fingers to find the stars. The laughter of children fizzed like lit sparklers in the air around her. A joyous terror of Tilt-A-Whirl screams followed, carousel shrieks, Big Dipper yells.

Aster stared into the fires.

One child dared not laugh or run. A shadow on the edge of all the joy. A girl in a white dress and bare feet. A girl whose eyes mirrored the flames.

In those mirrored eyes unfolded a future of endless nights. A future with only the moon and its flowers for company. Aster stared into that mirror and saw herself.

Mr Stoppard’s voice reached her then.

It is the only way, child.

That way was clear. She knew without knowing why. Through the night, across the lawns, down the hopscotch path to the glasshouse, as always.

Always.

Forever in the night, or one last day in the sun. You must choose.

She chose the night. Always the night. Always the glasshouse and the sleeping flowers there. Always the guests waiting, sleeping.

She remembered.

Mr Harris, Mr Canterbury, and Miss Solomon. Each had found their rest amongst the flowers. Each a bedfellow to her eternity.

Sleep now, Aster. When you wake everything will be better again.

Not this time. It was not all better. The night would never end, but it could. She knew it could. She’d been here before.

Aster stepped through the flames of the past. She walked into the fires and out again, towards the manor house; she was a lit candle in another year far away.

I wanted the night to end, she thought, but I couldn’t make it happen. I tried, but it was they who burned not I. They who died, not I. For I cannot die.

I cannot die. I cannot die. I can—

Tears ran down Aster’s cheeks. She reached out for help in that flaming past, but it was no use. Child and adult alike turned to shadow at her burning touch.

The fires of the past roared, and Aster ran into the manor house.

She touched the upper rooms with her torchlight fingers. The house blackened around her as she waited for forever to end, but the end didn’t come. The flames wrapped around her like a comforting shawl. They burned, but could not burn whole what she was, what she had become under the magical light of the moon.

Silly, silly girl.

Mr Stoppard’s voice found her in the blackened remains of some remembered night long after the first fires had died.

What do we think we’re doing, Aster? This was foolish, do you know that? Foolishness. Come now. Let’s make it all better.

The moonlight was silver and cooling to the touch. Around her the flowers unfurled as she did, reaching up to meet the light.

Aster shed the night and the fires.

The dance began again. The night would never end. She would forget.

Until the next time.

Until the next time.

Always.

“Aster? Come now, let’s make it all better,” Mr Stoppard said.

Aster opened her eyes. “No,” she said.

23

Aster ran, and found the shadows in the glasshouse. She buried cowered there, afraid to catch her reflection in the dusty glass.

Impossible. All of it, impossible.

The truth whispered to her from every part of Whitestone; as searing as flame on the skin, as cold as the touch of the moonlight across a sleeping brow.

It was true, all of it.

Who am I?

You are that which cannot die.

What am I?

That which breathes the moon as flowers breathe the moon. That which lives in night and dances there.

Why am I?

History danced before her in answer; a fall of autumn leaves, a summer rain, and a winter snow. A cascade of days, weeks, months, and years.

She saw herself sleeping in her bed. No, not sleeping, dead. An audience of mourners gathered around her. All but one marked with tears.

Mr Stoppard?

He stood at the edge of the crowd, his face that of the scholar fascinated by his subject. He took notes in a small black book.

The crowd soon parted, but Stoppard remained. He leaned into her ear.

“You will live again, Aster. I promise you.”

The dance of time continued.

The days before the flowers and the moonlight rolled before her eyes, when the glasshouse was new and the black tar night had not yet stripped the flesh from its bones. She danced through the long halls and took a blind leap down the winding staircase.

A face peered down at her from the top of the spiral. A man with a thin pencil line of a moustache on his upper lip.

“Aster, be careful. You could hurt yourself, child.”

F...F...F...

The face retreated, along with the word from her lips. The dance of time continued out across the lawns, along the hopscotch path, back into the shadows of the glasshouse.

Aster watched herself asleep amongst the flowers. Older, no longer a child, but not yet an adult. A man stood over her. The same man with his thin moustache who’d watched over her from the top of the spiral. His eyes softened by tears; he kissed her cold brow. His big hand held hers in a grip.

F...F...F... Father.

Father?

A new heat spread throughout her. A tickle in the stomach close to that of the banister ride. And with it a name: love.

“Goodbye, my precious flower,” he whispered from the past.

‘Father?” her voice reached out into the past, but there was no response this time. “Father, please.”

A bright moon spotlighted the glasshouse. She watched herself, under that remembered light, unfurl like the flowers surrounding her.

Time flipped like the pages of an open book caught in the wind. The flowerbeds changed before her eyes, and she the only constant in all of it.

A man appeared. Another man. A woman. All slept beside her in time, until they slept no more. Mr Harris, Mr Canterbury, and Miss Solomon. Black hair turned white in the blink of an eye. Red skin faded to grey. The pink bow of lips shrivelled to black. Dead, all of them. Others too. They all slept beside her, and they all wilted before her eyes.

Aster pulled herself back into the shadows of the now. She shook her head, but the past clung to her like cobwebs.

This wasn’t her past. She wouldn’t allow herself to believe the truth, not for the life of her.

What life did I ever have? My years are a dream, she thought.

As the glasshouse rusted, the hopscotch path cracked, the topiary animals moulted down to twigs, she remained.

I’m an insect in amber. I’m a butterfly pinned under glass. I’m a—

No!

The past echoed. She’d stood in the shadows before, afraid of what she was, what she had been, what she would remain for the rest of time.

No. Not this time. She would not sleep amongst the flowers. This night would end, finally.

This night would be her last.

24

Aster shadowed Mr Stoppard as he dragged Mr Hill’s body to the glasshouse. He whistled a happy tune as he pulled the body to the edge of the flowerbeds.

“You won’t feel a thing, I assure you. It’s as painless as can be,” he said.

He lifted Mr Hill’s body up by the armpits and dropped him into the flowerbeds like a sack of compost, then made a pillow of earth and rested the man’s head upon it.

“There. Now you’re ready. Just as it should be. Just as it has always been.” A touch of pride curled the thin line of his lips, but retreated as he turned and stared out into the moon-touched night where Aster watched.

Her heart jumped. She locked onto his eyes.

Does he see me?

Mr Stoppard’s eyes grew wide and terrified.

What is it? Why is he looking at me like that?

A shiver ran through Aster, but it wasn’t Stoppard’s gaze that put the chill on her. A silver white cloud plumed around her and blew out towards the door of the glasshouse.

The cloud became a fog, became a man. A tall man, with a thin line of a moustache darkening his upper lip.

Father?

Aster warmed at the sight of him, but it disappeared as another mist joined the first. A clouded copy of a man who stood in the present, and now walked out from the past: Mr Stoppard.

She watched, wide eyed as the two memories shimmered their way into the glasshouse.

“This will work? Are you sure?” Lord Whitestone said.

“The proof is in the pudding, milord. Besides, what do you have to lose now?” Mr Stoppard said.

“Everything, as you well know. What if she’s discovered? There’ll be no explaining this away.”

“Come now, did I not secure the building for you to prevent such an outcome? Have I not been inconspicuous in my dealings these last few years?”

“You have, Lawrence, you have. My worry remains, though.”

“I have seen it done. I have witnessed it with these two eyes of mine. The flowers work their magic and they will return her to you.”

Lord Whitestone shook his head. He ran a worried finger over the thin line of his moustache. “I want to believe, I truly do, but you must understand my hesitation. This is incredible, Lawrence, absolutely incredible.”

“From the moment of her diagnosis, the moment you called upon me for help, I have been here for you, milord. I have spent the better part of these last five years readying the manor house for this night. Do you think I would have spent so much time here if I did not believe in my work?”

“No, no. Of course not.”

“Then what have you to fear?”

Lord Whitestone gazed into the flowerbeds, his eyes unaffected by the presence of the body of Mr Hill as it existed in the present, or the other Mr Stoppard so close by. The past could not see the present, it seemed.

“And what price do we pay, Lawrence? What cost for this miracle?” Lord Whitestone said.

“You know the cost, already.”

“Yes…I’m afraid I do.” Lord Whitestone’s hand passed through Mr Hill’s body. He stroked the dirt beneath. “Who will it be? Have you chosen yet?”

“I have, and you’ll not concern yourself with those details. I assure you, whomever I have chosen has none who would miss him. Better out of this life than in for these chaps.”

Lord Whitestone shivered. “Chaps? I don’t like the sound of that.”

“Vagrants, vagabonds, wretches. Not a man Jack of them will be mourned. We’ll be putting these poor buggers out of their misery.”

“Do you think so?”

“I know so. The bottle would take most of them in the end. At least here they won’t have to suffer too much.”

Lord Whitestone lifted a handful of dirt from the flowerbed. “She’ll be the same, won’t she? My Aster? The same as before?”

“As like as can be.”

“Yet…” He let the dirt fall through his fingers.

“Yet, milord?”

“I fear for her, Lawrence. I fear what she’ll become. What kind of life will she lead? What is life if she has to spend it locked up and caged in the rooms we’ve built?”

“Life is life, my old friend.”

Lord Whitestone ran his hand through the dirt, his fingers passing through the now and the then.

Aster watched as Mr Hill’s body twitched as a leaf curling at the edges under an autumn breeze.

“I let my little Aster rest in peace, that’s my option, Lawrence. I bury her, as I told them all I had.”

“You won’t. You’ve come this far and you’ll go the whole way. If you didn’t want this to happen, we wouldn’t be standing here on this night, under this moon.”

Both men looked up into the sky above the glasshouse.

The moon looked down on the past and the present, its glare silvering all of Whitestone.

“I worry, that’s all. What happens if she’s not the same, if she’s not my little Aster any longer? What do I do then?”

“What do you mean by that?”

“What if she’s some kind of abomination?”

“She will be what she was, there’s no changing her. She’s not a monster.”

“And us?”

“Us?”

“Aren’t we monsters for what we’re doing? Aren’t we nothing more than killers, you and I?”

“No more than nature. No more than the dirt beneath these flowers here. Life feeds on death, does it not?”

“And yet I deny Aster her rightful death, do I not?”

“Not deny. Stall, perhaps, but she will find her peace eventually, as we all shall.”

“How? If what you say is true, then how can that which has already died, die again?”

The shimmering version of Mr Stoppard patted Lord Whitestone on the shoulder. “How does a plant die, milord?”

“I’m not sure what you mean.”

“To make sure a plant thrives, what must you do?”

“Feed it and water it, I suppose.”

“And if you don’t?

Realisation came to Lord Whitestone, and he nodded. “I see,” he said.

I died, Aster thought, as she watched the two shimmering memories talk. I died and yet I’m still alive. Not a ghost, no, something else. What though? What am I?

Memories rose like flames.

Fire couldn’t kill me. I ran through the flames once before and they didn’t burn what I am, but what can? How do I end all this?

Aster felt the years gather at her shoulders, and the nights cram in at her back, ten thousand and more of them.

She couldn’t take it any longer. She ran from the shadows and into the glasshouse.

“Father! Tell me what I am. Tell me how—”

The fog blew apart before her, thin tendrils of smoke curling up towards the ceiling. Aster reached up and snatched at them like they were dandelion spores.

“Father!”

Mr Stoppard’s cold hands fell on her shoulders.

“Come now. Stop this, Aster,” he said.

She struggled underneath his grip.

“I know you’re upset, Aster. I am too.”

“No!” she screamed.

“Listen to me,” he said, locking her down.

“I won’t. Not ever.”

“The past can’t harm you. It rarely returns like that, but it’s always the same when it does. It’s scary. I know you’re scared.”

Tears welled up behind her eyes. “I’m not scared,” she said.

“Yes, you are. You always are. Me too. When it’s my turn, I’m scared, at least a little.”

“Your turn?” she sobbed.

“Yes, of course. You sleep, then I sleep. I watch over you and you watch over me.”

“I do?”

“Yes, but you never remember. I’m the one who must remember for the both of us. That’s part of my job. My duty.”

“It is?”

A dam of confusion held back her tears. What was Mr Stoppard talking about? What did he mean?”

He reached up and stroked the side of her face with fingers as cold as marble.

“I came here to help resurrect you,” Mr Stoppard said, “but after your father passed, none other was left to tend the flowers. Who, but I knew their secret? Who, but I was here to give his life so that you could live? Do you remember now?”

“I want it to end,” she said.

“You always do until you sleep, and then you forget. You always forget.”

“No, I won’t allow it this time.”

“You always do, Aster. You’ll see. You’ll see.”

She did, and it was as clear as any moon in the sky. Fire couldn’t kill her, but there was a way to die. The fogged memories who’d stood before her speaking moments earlier had given her the answer.

Aster broke free from Mr Stoppard’s grip.

“What are you doing?” he said.

“Leaving,” she said, as she backed away towards the glasshouse door.

“You can’t leave. Don’t you get it? Don’t you understand?”

“I do. I really do, now.”

“I won’t allow it, Aster. I won’t allow you to leave.”

“You can’t stop me,” she said.

“I will and I must. If you die, then I too shall die, don’t you understand? There’ll be nobody to watch over me as I sleep. Nobody to bring the guests here to me. I can’t let you leave.”

Did I bring people here? she thought. I don’t remember, but I must have. I must have put them in the dirt just like Mr Hill.

Aster looked to the door of the glasshouse. Beyond lay the gardens, the ghosts, and the animal hedges. Further still the gates, and beyond them a land forbidden to her by Mr Stoppard. Now she knew why.

Plants died without tending, and so would she without Whitestone. Out beyond the gates lay the end of forever, and Aster meant to make it there at least one time.

“Goodbye,” she said, turning towards the door.

Mr Stoppard grabbed her by the wrist. “No,” he said.

“Leave me alone.”

“I can’t allow this. I won’t allow this. You’ll do as I say, Aster. You’ll do it for your own good as well as mine.”

She pulled, but his grip was tighter than her will. “You’re hurting me.”

“No. No I’m not.”

“You are!”

“You can’t be hurt, Aster. Don’t you understand? We’ll live forever you and I. We’ll live forever, but you must stay here.”

Hot tears burned Aster’s cheeks. “Let me go,” she said, pulling weakly against Mr Stoppard’s grip.

“I can’t. I won’t let you die, Aster. I can’t let you.”

“Please.” She pulled again, hoping to free herself. Hoping, wishing, and praying…

He wasn’t a ghost or a memory, but he moved with the ill grace of both. Mr Hill rose from behind Mr Stoppard, a clay plant pot held high over his head with both hands.

25

Patrick’s world was the view from a carousel out of control. Reality lived somewhere within the blur.

She lived. Aster Whitestone lived. Not a ghost, nor a dream, but something else altogether.

Trapped within the cold cocoon of poisoning, he could only listen as the ghosts whispered of men and women laid to rest in the soil like compost to feed a young girl and an older man.

They spoke of wretches and vagabonds, of men just like him. Now Patrick knew his fate.

Stoppard hadn’t invited him out to Whitestone to write a poxy book on its history. He was here as food for the eternal creatures who lived in the manor house.

His eyes fluttered open. The ghosts were gone, but Aster and Stoppard stood before the glasshouse door.

She wants no part of this, he thought. She wants to leave. If I can get her away from him, she’ll help me.

Hope was an antidote to poisons. He felt his fingers twitch. A sweat broke out across his forehead as he tried to lift his hand out of the dirt.

If I can lift a hand, I can lift a leg. If I can lift both legs then I my whole body will follow.

Sweat rolled down his eyelids as he pulled both legs out of the flowerbed and dropped them onto the floor.

Focus, he told himself. Focus.

He locked onto Mr Stoppard and Aster stood by the door to the glasshouse. They were the white smudge at the centre of a shining, swirling universe.

Patrick tried to stand, but an invisible tide washed across his legs, and he dropped back into the flowerbed.

I’ve got to get over there. I’ve got to get her away from him so she can help me.

I’m a fool. She’s as much a much a monster as he is, no matter how much I want it not to be true. If I don’t escape, I’ll be back on the menu in no time.

No, she isn’t. It can’t be.

What do I know? he thought. None of this is possible. People don’t live forever. They don’t lie down dead in flowerbeds and wake up alive. That’s not how the world works.

I’m not in the world right now. I’m at Whitestone. That’s as far from the world as can be.

Patrick willed himself back onto his shaky feet. The invisible tide flowed around his ankles, pulling him forward and back. He walked as if every step was new to him.

And what am I going to do when I reach them? he thought. Am I going to fight the old bastard? In this state he could blow on me and I’d tumble. I’ve got to find something to hit him with. A pair of shears or a rake would do.

Patrick scanned the ground around him. If there were garden implements, Mt Stoppard had hidden them in some far shadowed corner of the glasshouse. All Patrick could see were plant pots piled up against the sides of the flowerbeds.

He grabbed the nearest pot with both hands. It had the course grainy texture of clay and felt heavy enough to do some damage.

What if it doesn’t work? What if I don’t make it in time? What if he sees me before—

Patrick froze. He was a child at the edge of a swimming pool afraid to dive in.

Come on, come on.

I can’t. I can’t. I—

A scream filled the glasshouse and shattered his freeze. Teeth gritted, he powered forward towards them.

You bastard, Stoppard. You piece of shit. I knew you were wrong from the minute I met you.

Patrick raised the pot high and brought it down as hard as he could.

26

The pot shattered across Mr Stoppard’s head like packed snow. Slowly, he shook off the pieces, ignorant of any threat, and focused on Aster.

“It’s all your fault what happens now. If you’d just done what you were supposed to do.”

“What are you going to do to him?” she said.

“You already know.”

“Please, leave him alone,” Aster said.

Mr Stoppard grabbed her by the shoulders. “This is how it must be.”

“Not this time. Not this time. Leave him alone.”

“You’ll die, Aster. Do you understand me?”

The memories of all the named and nameless who’d laid their heads for the last time next to her burned brightly in her mind. Their future days traded for her future nights.

“No!”

Mr Stoppard shook her by the shoulders. “Yes. There’ll be no argument.”

“No. I won’t let it.”

“You have no choice in the matter. I tried to do it the old way, but you had to go and—”

Mr Hill jumped onto Mr Stoppard’s back. “Bastard! Bastard!” he shouted, as he locked his arms around the man’s neck.

Mr Stoppard plucked the hands from his neck and brushed Patrick off his back like a cobweb he’d accidentally walked through.

“Look away, Aster. You don’t have to see this,” he said.

Not this time. She couldn’t let it happen again.

She leapt onto Mr Stoppard’s back and dug her hands into his scalp until blood painted her fingernails red.

“Stop it with this nonsense, Aster,” Mr Stoppard said, as he reached up to swat her away.

“Run! Get away!” Aster screamed at Mr Hill.

Mr Stoppard turned a circle as he tried to shake her off.

“Go! Go now!” Aster screamed, trying to keep Mr Hill in focus. Two full turns later, and fear still had him pinned him to the floor.

“Stop this now, or you’ll be sorry,” Mr Stoppard said, as he locked a hand onto her arm. “I mean what I say, Aster. You stop this foolishness now!”

Aster pulled her fingers free from his scalp, then drove her hand into his shoulder, through tweed and shirt, into flesh and bone, until hot blood burned her wrist.

“God damn you, girl!”

She dug in deeper, down through him, wanting to yank the heart from his chest.

It ends now. I can’t let it happen again. No more night. No more night.

“Silly girl.” Mr Stoppard grabbed both of her arms and bent forward, pulling her over his head as if she were nothing more than sweater.

Aster tried to hang on, but couldn’t fight his strength. She dropped to the ground, head cracking the floor.

Darkness fell before her eyes, and a constellation of red stars pulsed through.

She blinked.

Mr Stoppard stood over her, blood splattered from chest to belt. He didn’t seem to notice either, only Aster.

“Are you okay? Are you hurt? Aster, can you hear me?”

He reached out to touch her face.

She slapped his hand away and scuttled back out of his reach.

“I didn’t mean to hurt you. You’ve got to believe me, Aster. I only want what’s best for you, child. You know that, don’t you?”

She saw death in his eyes. His death.

“Please, Aster. This is not how it is supposed to be. This can’t be how it ends.”

Aster pulled herself up off the floor. This wasn’t how it ended.

“No,” she said, as she grabbed Mr Hill by the hand, pulling him up onto his feet.

“You’ll die, if you persist in this. We’ll die for God’s sake. We need each other!”

It ends tonight, she thought.

“No,” she said, edging past the flowers and into the shadows.

Mr Stoppard’s fists balled at his sides. The veins rose in his neck and temples. “There is no time for this, Aster.”

There was time.

Time enough to dance.

27

Aster danced, and the world slowed.

Mr Stoppard couldn’t find her there. Fast or slow, however time fell within the dance, it didn’t belong to him, only to her.

So, she danced.

To the garage first, then to kitchens, where she gathered the tools that might end the night. Then out to the library, and into the long halls silvered by moonlight. Out through the maze, beyond the zoo of hedgerow animals, past the lost dead on the lawns, and across the hopscotch path to return to the glasshouse.

With each turn and twirl, she anointed the night with petrol, cooking oil, and brandy, and left behind a shining slug trail to follow.

Finally, she blessed each flower with fire water, and the dance ended.

Aster walked out from the darkness at the rear of the glasshouse, a match in one hand, and a matchbox in the other.

“What did you do? What have you don—” Mr Stoppard said.

She waved the unlit match before her face. “This night is the last.”

“It’s impossible. How did you—what have you—”

Aster scratched the match up and down the striking strip of the matchbox

“You’re a fool, Aster. A God damned fool. It will do you no harm, as it did you no harm the first time you believed this madness might work.”

Aster glanced at Mr Hill, curled up against the side of the flowerbed nearest her.

“I know,” she said.

“End this nonsense then, and take your place. This feeble wretch means nothing to you. He means nothing to anybody anywhere. Don’t you get it? I only choose those that won’t be missed.”

“No.” Aster held up the match for Mr Stoppard to see.

“You can’t die. You know that now, don’t you? Fire cannot harm you or I.”

“I know it can’t.”

“Then why persist in this charade?”

She waved the match at him again.”

“You can’t die, Aster. You tried, remember? Remember, Aster, remember,” he said.

She nodded. “I do,” she said.

“Then stop this right now. It will not end here. It can’t end here.”

Aster walked over to the flowerbeds. She climbed in amongst the petrol-soaked petals.

“No!” Mr Stoppard screamed.

Aster struck the match.

28

Cold, blue light streamed in through the car window and brushed Patrick’s eyelids. He wiped the sleep from his eyes, and with it, a nightmare.

Faded fragments, snippets of sounds and images came to mind, but not a full picture. Aster Whitestone dancing through the blackened upper halls where the fires had created a permanent night. A match flipping through the air. A wall of red and orange flame where the familiar silhouettes of an old man and young girl seemed to dance.

Patrick’s head pounded, and his stomach twitched with all the tell-tale signs of a hangover.

Did I get drunk before I left the manor house? Is that why I’m in my car right now, hungover? I finished the job, right? But did I ever finish the book I was writing for myself?

His time at Whitestone was a broken mirror; his thoughts trapped reflections in each shard. The renovations, evacuee children, fires, deaths hidden from records, the restorations, the girl...the girl...

A shard caught the light and, in that light, he saw Aster Whitestone dancing through the dark, the ghost trail of a white dress in her wake.

I’m losing my bloody mind. I had a nightmare, that’s all. It wasn’t real. None of it.

Felt real.

His head felt realer. It thudded, and he turned away from the bright blue light of dawn, only to witness a sky filled with black smoke behind him.

I’m still dreaming. I’m still in a nightmare.

Not a nightmare, Whitestone was burning.

Did I have something to do with it? Jesus, no.

Patrick stumbled out into the early morning chill, and trudged towards the estate.

The gates of Whitestone had snapped and dangled on their blackened hinges like like broken wings. Smoke shrouded the estate. The walls of Whitestone crumbled, revealing the blackened interior and the twist of a staircase. As he watched, it sighed painfully and unwound itself down to the floor. Deeper into the blackness, the books in the library took flight, but the flames yanked them back before they might escape.

The fire spread to touch the lawns, burn the mystery from the maze, and make skeletons of the topiary animals. A winding trail of flame led toward the black heap of bones that was once the glasshouse. A few white flowers poked through like stars in the night sky.

A dream flashed behind Patrick’s eyes.

Aster Whitestone took his hand and danced him through the rising flames. She danced him out through the night, and into the darkness beyond. She danced him—

Patrick shook the dream away.

Where is Mr Stoppard? Why didn’t he call in the fire brigade? There’s no way he could have slept through all of this, could he?

You don’t sleep through fire; you die from the smoke before the fire ever reaches you, he thought.

He cleared his throat, already feeling useless before he spoke a word.

“Mr Stoppard? Are you in there? Are you okay?”

The cracking of burned wood and the distant breaking of glass was the only reply.

Poor bastard probably didn’t even wake up. He probably died in his sleep. He died in a dream.

It all still felt like a dream to Patrick. He could picture that dream clearly. Aster Whitestone dancing in the dark, her hand outstretched for his. A moon as bright as bone in the sky. The world reduced to a blur. A lit match tumbling through air and falling onto...onto...

Patrick’s stomach lurched.

I didn’t do this. It wasn’t me. She did it. Aster started the fires.

She’s alive?

He was a house with all the doors open during a thunderstorm. The lost days and nights blew through him, tossing everything upside down. Lightning struck.

Patrick crumbled to his knees and held the sides of his head.

He saw himself in some lost night vomiting red onto the floor. He saw himself driving towards the gates, the world swimming before his eyes. He saw Mr Stoppard, a shadow waving him out of the gates. He saw silver sediment at the bottom of a glass.

Christ! He drugged me. The bastard poisoned me. That’s why I had all the bad dreams. I remember now.

I remember.

But he didn’t want to.

Patrick’s mouth filled with sand that turned to glass as it entered his throat.

No, it can’t be.

The wood in the fires cracked. Patrick watched as the events of the night before unfold within the noisy flames.

Mr Stoppard laid me down in the flowers. I was to be food for him and her. I was there as a sacrifice so that they could live...forever?

It’s a nightmare. I’m awake now. I’m awake.

The shadows flickered in the flames.

Patrick scrambled up onto his feet.

It isn’t true. It can’t be true. It’s a bad dream, that’s all.

He rose on unsteady legs and started to back pedal towards the gates of Whitestone.

I was out of my mind. Not drugged, no. Drunk, that’s it. I got drunk after finishing the manuscript for that old git, Stoppard, and I slept it off in the car.

But why did I drive out onto the road drunk? Why can’t I remember finishing the manuscript or getting drunk to begin with? Why can’t I remember if I finished my own book, but I can remember the dream?

Why do I remember her?

Because it wasn’t a dream, that’s why I remember her. She was real.

Real.

Patrick ran back to the road and climbed in behind the wheel of the car. He said a prayer to a half-deaf God, and the car started first time.

A half hour later, Whitestone was the dream he thought it to be.

Epilogue

5th November 1945

By the time Sergeant Porter arrived, the east wing of Whitestone was little more than smouldering ash. He met Lord Whitestone beyond the gates, with a courtesy tip of his cap.

“Have you crossed paths with my constable, milord? The lad goes by the name of Grieves. Bernard Grieves.”

“He was here, yes,” Lord Whitestone said, his face grim and apprehensive.

“Happen to know where the lad’s got to? I’ve asked them all out there on the courtyard, but none of them have the foggiest. Tends to follow his own path, that lad.”

Lord Whitestone fished out the matches Grieves had gifted him an hour earlier. He struck one and let the flame catch before lighting a cigarette from his case.

“I only spoke with him in passing. He did mention you might be calling in some other officers. When do you expect them to arrive, do you think?”

Sergeant Porter shrugged. “I’d have to call all the way over to Lewes to find a spare man, if they have any to spare that is. Unlikely though.”

“Pardon me?”

“There’s no foul play afoot is there now? It’s an accident, am I correct in assuming?”

Lord Whitestone looked toward the burning building.

“It is, yes. A terrible accident. But won’t you need to do a formal investigation?”

Sergeant Porter reached in under his cap and scratched his head.

“Those poor children have been through enough already. I’d like not to pile misery on top of misery, if I can help it.”

“Yes, I agree.”

“Now where did that lad go to? I tell you; he’ll be the death of me,” Sergeant Porter mumbled, as he shuffled away.

Lord Whitestone took a long drag from his cigarette and blew the smoke out to meet the rest in the air. For a moment it looked almost like a flower opening under the touch of sunlight, before it faded and was gone.

Dancing In the Dark

My fingers touched the home row. I saw Whitestone manor, glowing in the darkness of some lost English night; a grail to the lost soul that is Patrick Hill. His car dies in the darkness. He finds light, but it’s an unexpected light, and then…

…from a window in the mansion house, Uta appears. A vampire. A timeless thing that watches the man approach in the darkness. Then…

…Uta is Aster, and she’s no longer a vampire. She dances through the dark. An unknown creature, as lost as the man in the darkness beyond.

I lost Uta in that moment, although she would return in a later story, and found Aster. Or at least, I started looking for her.

Flowers of the Moon began as a weekend novella. A challenge to write a simple tale of an ancient woman who lives, and feeds, in an abandoned mansion somewhere out in that lost slice of England, where all the monsters quietly live.

That weekend turned to a hundred weekends, a hundred-and-fifty weekends, as I followed Aster through the blackened halls of Whitestone, as much in awe of her as Patrick Hill, the lost man who was also trying to find his way in the darkness. Where she came from, I only discovered as I wrote. Where she was going, I only knew when the final page came into existence a long time later.

In that time, I wrote in darkness, looking to find light, and where Aster danced there was light, of a sort. A starry glow, a ghostly comet trail left in her wake, where the history of Whitestone lived and breathed. I saw a war and fires. I saw the shadows of children burned into the lawns. Out of the black tar darkness, a glasshouse rose, its white metal bones those of an old dinosaur. And in the belly of this beast, flowers grew.

The flowers of the moon were little more than decoration in my original imaginings. Certainly not the title of the novella, or the centre of the tale. They grew in the dank earth that was Uta’s bed, but soon, blanketed by the moon, Aster slept there. Aster gave them meaning, and the moon became more than a night light for her slumber.

I think now to the beginnings and the ends of Flowers of the Moon; there were more than a dozen in total over the years. Along the way Aster turned from vampire to ghost, from ghost to something eternal, from child to woman, and woman to child. There was only one constant in the writing of the novel: the dance.

Aster danced, and I followed. Aster danced and I discovered. I took no notes. My research, if it could be called as such, was done long after the dance had ended. Details, added like the tags hung off the war children evacuated from the cities out to Whitestone.

Aster danced.

I followed.

I heard music in the darkness. Songs that had birthed Uta, now midwifed Aster. Elysian Fields Afterlife became my constant accompaniment. Now, where Aster danced, Jennifer Charles’ voice rose like smoke.

I followed where the dance touched and the music played. I found history there. I found silent ghosts haunting lawns. I found a topiary zoo, where the animals ran wild. I found ancient architects building prisons for eternity.

I followed, because in the end, I could not lead. No matter how I tried to steer the dance or shape the story, always, always, Aster would dance and the music would play, and I...I would follow.

Writing, in the end, is a dance through the dark. It is the joy of movement. Something that runs deep into the bones. It is best experience with eyes closed and heart open.

I invite you now to close your eyes and dance with me.

Paul John Lyon

December 2021

About the Author

Paul John Lyon's passion for fiction began at the age of ten when his grandfather gave him a box of well-thumbed paperbacks. Between the yellowed pages of those books, he discovered tales of detectives and criminals, spies and lovers, grand victories and grander defeats. More importantly, in that box were the seeds of a love affair that has lasted a lifetime. A few years later he was gifted a typewriter and began writing. He hasn't stopped since.