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    Perfect Circles
    Perfect Circles
    Perfect Circles
    Ebook534 pages7 hours

    Perfect Circles

    By Simon Kewin

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    About this ebook

    Desperate magic worked in the face of terrible danger. An old house with a hidden secret. An interview with a zombie. A woman allergic to the twenty-first century. A necromancer with evil written all over his face. Literally.

    An astronaut alone in the void of deep space. An alien starship capable of destroying all creation. A DNA Detective in search of the genetic code of The Beatles. A terrorist explosion trapped inside a bubble of space/time. A new life-form found in the quantum echoes of the void.

    Tilting at windmills in the twenty-first century. A dying woman's surprising final wish. The unlikely connections between a Manchester woman and a 17th century Renaissance man. A chance encounter on a motorway. A woman allergic to the modern world.

    Perfect Circles contains seventy-three stories originally published between 1999 and 2011. Stories range from the very short up to novella length.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherSimon Kewin
    Release dateMay 21, 2012
    ISBN9781476282596
    Perfect Circles
    Author

    Simon Kewin

    Simon Kewin is a fantasy and sci/fi writer, author of the Cloven Land fantasy trilogy, cyberpunk thriller The Genehunter, steampunk Gormenghast saga Engn, the Triple Stars sci/fi trilogy and the Office of the Witchfinder General books, published by Elsewhen Press.He's the author of several short story collections, with his shorter fiction appearing in Analog, Nature and over a hundred other magazines.He is currently doing an MA in creative writing while writing at least three novels simultaneously.

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      Book preview

      Perfect Circles - Simon Kewin

      Table of Contents

      Spell Circles

      The Standing Stones of Erelong

      Straight to Hull

      Museum Beetles

      Trompe-l’oeil

      Midnight in the Room of Clocks

      The Ghost Train

      A Sorcerous Mist

      Birth Mother

      The Magister's Clock

      A Zombie Walked into a Bar

      Meteorology For Beginners

      Just Desserts

      Guitar Heroes

      Angels

      Earthworks

      Cernunnos

      Bones Are Rising To The Surface

      Scarecrows

      KeyQuest

      Trick Or Treat

      The One Thousand, One Hundred and Eleven Gates to Faerie

      The Summoning

      Lucky Numbers

      Saved!

      The Great Forbidding

      Vampyre Slayer

      Lost In A Good Book

      Eccentric Orbits

      Terahertz

      wolF emiT

      The Armageddon Machine

      rho-m10

      22nd Century Genie

      A Loop

      Good Vibrations

      Ten Million Years

      Holy Mountains

      Not Better Than One

      Remembrance Day

      Second War Of The Worlds

      The Thirteenth Labour

      An Explosive Relationship

      The Long Walk

      Time Dilation

      Live From The Continuing Explosion

      Life Cycles

      Seek Alternative Route

      The Lost Art of Conversation

      She'd Always Loved To Travel

      Bees

      Dan Quixote

      Known to the Defendant

      Titania

      GSOH

      The Flying Incredulo

      The Square on the Hypotenuse

      Sunken Bells

      Introductions

      The Question

      Warning

      Body of Work

      The Heart of a Much Younger Man

      A Good Drying Day

      Black Beetles

      Flotsam

      Last Words

      Metal Recycling Here

      Human Statue

      The Wind Singing in the Wires

      Pieces of Her Mind

      The Great Melody

      Skydiving

      Ultima Thule

      The Flamingo Dancer

      The Gatekeeper

      Life Cycles

      Perfect Circles

      Landmarks

      Preface

      Title Page

      Body Matter

      Cover

      Spell Circles

      Fantasy Short Stories 1999-2011

      Simon Kewin

      Preface

      Spell Circles is a collection of twenty-seven previously published stories that come under the vague heading of fantasy.

      I don’t like genre labels, I must admit, and I use the term pretty loosely. Magic realism, slipstream, urban fantasy, high fantasy, dark fantasy: all are represented. One or two stories you could even consider mainstream, depending on how you interpret what occurs. I like that. As much as I enjoy a good wizardy romp, I also like stories that slip between the cracks and are harder to pin down. I hope you find something among the twenty-seven that floats your boat.

      When I first decided to collect together all my published stories in an anthology I had the idea to jumble up fantasy, SF and mainstream into one big multigenre mash-up. Eventually I decided to give people some idea what they'd be getting and divide the stories into fantasy (Spell Circles), science fiction (Eccentric Orbits) and mainstream (Life Cycles) and then to collect everything into one big volume (Perfect Circles). Genre labels may be restricting but they can also be useful.

      The oldest stories here – Midnight in the Room of Clocks, Lost in a Good Book and Bones are Rising to the Surface – date back to the last century as they were first published in 1999. Most stories are more recent, first seeing the light of day in the past year or two.

      The stories were not written with any sort of theme in mind, but as I was collating the anthology I did notice how frequently circles, cycles and loops kept cropping up. Perhaps my subconscious had this collection in mind all along...

      - Simon Kewin, January 2012

      For Alison, for giving me the time of day

      The Standing Stones of Erelong

      That's Erelong, child. That's where you were born.

      Mayve pointed down the hillside to the valley laid out beneath them. Elian, still breathing hard from the climb, squinted against the bright sunlight, the dazzling silver of the river winding wide through the valley. Between stands of trees she saw a patchwork of ruined stone buildings and, in a round open field, the circle of standing stones. Jagged white rocks rose from the ground in an uneven circle, like the earth's crooked teeth, like impossible summer snowmen.

      She remembered again, as she often did, the childhood rhyme Mayve would sing to her as she lay in bed. Your mother bade me sing you to sleep with this, as she did your brothers and sisters. As she was sung to sleep by your grandmother.

      Twelve-ten and one, two, three

      The standing stones of Erelong

      Through storm and sun and winter's freeze

      Stand the stones of Erelong

      Weariness from two weeks' walking was clear on the Wisewoman's lined face. She, too, breathed hard from the ascent. Once again, Elian regretted asking her to make the journey. But she'd had to see for herself and only Mayve, now, remembered what had happened here two decades earlier. She could never begin to thank Mayve for all she had done.

      Tell me, said Elian. Tell me again what happened.

      Mayve settled herself down on the hummocky hill-top, her breathing calming. A breeze moved wisps of grey hair about her face as she retold the story. Elian sat beside her, resting her head on Mayve's shoulder.

      Your birth was difficult, Elian, and the Wisewoman of this place was at her wit's end. She bespoke me through the flames and I flew here as quickly as I could, through storm and night. I landed somewhere on these slopes. But I wasn't the only one coming to Erelong that night. The Marauders descended the opposite slope over there, torches burning, calling out their harsh calls. I saw your family setting out to meet them, pitch-forks against swords.

      They couldn't run because of my mother. Because of me.

      That's right, child. Your mother was in no state to travel anywhere.

      Go on.

      I was exhausted and could do little. But in the moonlight I saw that threads of mist lifted off the river. I had strength enough to work it, herd it, blanket the Marauders with it. As they blundered around it was easy enough to coax them away from the houses with phantom shouts and screams. Simple magic but it gave me enough time to reach your mother and so help bring you into the world.

      And my mother? She knew every word of the story, of course. She never tired of hearing it.

      She'd been through a lot, lost much blood. She kissed you and handed you to me, pleaded with me to take you. I'd thought to stay and do what I could but it was the only way to save you. It took me a month to walk home with you swaddled to my chest. And then I brought you up as my own. And here we are.

      Elian nodded, imagining the scene that night, the shouts of the Marauders, the torches, the fog, the cries of her mother. In the quiet and the gold of sunlight it all seemed impossible.

      My people had magic. Perhaps they fought back after you left?

      Mayve sighed.

      Perhaps, child. But the Marauders were strong in those days. Every summer, when the ices melted, hundreds of wolf-ships sailed from the cold north to pillage. Your people wouldn't have held out for long. They had the wrong kind of craft. Theirs was wood and water magic, stone and weather. They could work wonders but they knew little of weapons.

      I'd like to go down now, said Elian. To see what is left.

      Are you sure of this?

      Yes.

      Elian picked her way among the stones, stroking the glassy rocks towering around her. They felt cold despite the heat of the suns on them, remembering the winter. She wondered whether her mother or her father had once touched them. Whether brothers and sisters she would never know had climbed upon them in their games. She closed her eyes, working her own magic, feeling into the stones for buried memories, ghostly presences. Nothing.

      They troubled her, though, the standing stones, and not just because of her history. She didn't understand what they meant, what they were for. They weren't even a perfect circle. Great effort had been expended to move them, site them, but some had been placed within the circle, for no reason she could see. One even lay on its side. Her family would have been able to explain their purpose to her. Now, no one could.

      She wandered among them, trying to understand. Mayve sat on a collapsed wall edging the field and ate red apples. When the light started to fade, the twin suns dipping behind the western peaks, she called over.

      We should leave here, Elian. This valley feels unquiet. We'll be safe back up in the hills.

      A few more minutes.

      She felt reluctant to leave. She'd begun to daydream about building a house here one day, coming back to Erelong to live. Could she do that? Among the ghosts of her family? She sat on the single, fallen stone and tried to imagine herself living there.

      The murmur of memory from the stone shocked her so much she leapt up as if burned.

      Elian? What is it? called Mayve.

      Carefully, Elian reached down again, fingertips to the stone, closing her eyes to feel what lay within the great shard of rock. Not memory, presence. She looked around in shock, as if seeing the stones for the first time. Understanding rang through her. She saw what her family had done to save themselves that distant night. Twelve- ten and one, two three. Because there weren't just twenty-five stones were there? She ran between them, counting. Thirty-eight. Wood and water magic, stone and weather. Such terrible, desperate magic, and all their hopes resting on a bedtime-rhyme sung to a new-born baby.

      Help me, please.

      What is it child?

      Put your hand on this stone. Feel it.

      It's only stone, child, it's just…

      The surprise on Mayve's face told Elian she hadn't imagined it.

      By the goddess.

      Elian looked at the stones around them. Which was her mother? Her father? Her brothers and sisters?

      I didn't see the stones properly that night, said Mayve, her voice hushed. I didn't think such a thing possible.

      Can we unwork the magic? After so much time?

      Mayve looked to her, then back to the stone. A look of something, regret perhaps, passed across her face. For a moment Elian thought she was going to refuse.

      It will be hard going, child. It will take days, weeks.

      Elian hugged the woman who had been her mother for the past twenty years.

      Then let us make a start.

      Ignoring the gathering darkness, the two women began the work of returning the thirteen stones to flesh and blood.

      Straight to Hull

      He'd meant to type Hull into his SatNav. He only realised he'd used an e when his dashboard began to smoke and melt.

      Museum Beetles

      A scream rang then like a bell through the great halls, bouncing down gilded corridors, off stained-glass windows and ornately painted panels like a maddened fly trying to escape the place.

      It was typical of Canto, of who he was and what he was, that he merely flinched at the sound. A single eyebrow was raised, a grey caterpillar amidst the larger, grey explosion of hair, but otherwise he might have been deaf to it. He continued with the meticulous analysis of the piece. In a great, blue, leather-bound ledger he wrote in tiny, neat letters, the ink black like the bodies of ants lying there in a variety of deaths. Early clock. Gold, brass and steel. Quasi-astronomical symbols on the face. Simple escapement mechanism …

      Only when the entry was properly completed did he set down his pen, push back his chair with a sharp grating sound, and, all wiry haste, run from the Hall of Clocks.

      He was old now. The seventy-seventh and current Curator had been writing his neat, ant-letters for nearly five decades. Still he moved quickly. Years of work with pieces large and small had kept him strong. He ran into the central hall. Giant skeletons filled the enormous space: long, ladder-necks stretching up, up into hazy, golden light that streamed through the ring of small, high windows at the very top of the space. The bone-heads lost in the beautiful, airless glow. Once, a young boy, he had sat and stared up at these huge creatures, wondering about how they could have survived in life when the great hall was the only place big enough to hold them. Now, his mind was all cataloguing and categorization.

      Another scream. The mammalian wing. He ran across the great hall, weaving between the legs of the vast skeletons and into the oak-panelled splendour of the twenty-mile corridor. As a young boy he had ventured far, far down there too. Had explored perhaps half-way along, glimpsing new rooms, new wonders all the way, before his nerve in the echoing dark had given way.

      This time he only went a short way down. A group of children were in the seventh Primate Room. Some he recognized, others were strangers to him, their clothes unfamiliar, from one of the northern or western tribes. They stood now in a silent circle around the stuffed body of one of the great apes, standing erect upon a low, dusty platform. Pan Troglodytes, catalogued long ago by the fourth or perhaps even the third curator. The head of the animal shifted a little, seemed to move and writhe as if the ape was trying to free a stiff neck after so many years holding the same pose, or as if trying to understand big, new ideas forming in its sawdust brain.

      He looked closer, stepping through the ring of children. Insects were devouring the head, writhing in a seething ball that spilled out of the eye-sockets and nose and mouth. They burrowed ferociously, as if each was desperate to get to the centre of the mass.

      They were familiar. For a moment, he couldn't place them. He looked around the ring of faces, their expressions horrified, fascinated, shocked. At the back a young girl that he knew a little stood apart. She alone looked pensive. Her hair was long and rather tangled.

      Anya. The Great Beetle colony. On the lower Coleoptery floor. They must be from there. Have you been that way recently?

      No, Curator. She thought for a moment, her face very serious. But that is only one floor down. She turned and walked quickly away then, clearly intent on going to see.

      He smiled. He was getting old. Perhaps, he thought, as he followed the young girl, it was even time to decide who would become the seventy-eighth Curator.

      They stood around the large, exquisite, model palace that had housed the Great Beetle colony for so many centuries. How many generations of the insects had lived and died inside the labyrinthine, rambling structure of gold and crystal?

      The two of them walked around slowly, looking for holes. Then Anya spotted it atop the highest dome, a small cupola with a ring of slits to let in the air. They watched as one of the shiny, metallic beetles wriggled its way through.

      Fascinating. After so many years they suddenly find out they can escape. Why now I wonder? Why now?

      I don't know, Curator.

      Why did they suddenly discover they were living in this golden prison? He spoke mainly to himself. I must go and check in the archives. See if it has happened before. See if they are dangerous.

      He hurried off towards the door, then turned.

      Thank you, Anya.

      The girl simply smiled.

      The archive was the sacred, secret room that only the Curators went in. It was where the index was, the records that made sense of everything else in the museum, that which gave all the objects their meaning.

      The walls were high with bookshelves: leather cliff-faces, red for the journals of the Curators on one side, blue for the index itself on the other.

      Anya sighed and put the volume down. The chair beneath her creaked in the still, dusty air. She was tired, feeling the aches of her age, her eyes prickling. She remembered that day more vividly than a great many that had come and gone since. It wasn't merely the first mention of herself. It was also the first mention of the escape of the Great Beetles. Strange that it should be the same day. Now, these decades later, it seemed as if the Beetles had always been there, scurrying away wherever she went, turning up in every corner and niche - crawling, devouring, destroying. Almost, it seemed, exploring.

      She had catalogued the Diaspora carefully, plotting their movements, trying to record what was being lost, trying to stay ahead of them. Now they filled all of the known halls and had probably spread out into some of the uncharted regions. Twenty years ago she had discovered the solar tower, its great, spiral staircase a single piece of polished brass. Doorways lead off to a whole series of unknown rooms full of intricate, strange machinery. At the very top, a small chamber with a circular, glass ceiling, reached after a full day of climbing and exploration. She had pushed open the green, copper door and seen the Beetles scurrying away.

      Curator? The voice at the door was quiet, respectful. But it must be something important for one of them to come and disturb her.

      She sighed. More and more she liked to be here, amongst the reassuring rustle of the indexes, the smell of ages and the calm. She was getting old. Everything seemed to make sense here. Out there so much was being destroyed. As fast as she could catalogue and re-catalogue, the objects were disappearing. The Beetles seemed to have worked their way into her consciousness, too. She found it hard to concentrate. Whenever she sat down to work on a piece, there would be movement somewhere in the shadows of her vision. A scurrying that seemed to be almost a deliberate distraction.

      And what had she found up there at the top of that staircase on that great day? It was, perhaps, the defining moment of her career, the event she would be remembered for. Now she found that she couldn't recall any of it. Her knowledge of those finds – glorious … dazzling – was fragmented, slipping away from her even as she tried to bring them to mind.

      She arose and walked to the door. Her hand was on the familiar, rattling handle when she saw the movement, tiny but unmistakable on one of the shelves to her left, little more than a candle-shadow flicker.

      Curator? Are you there?

      It couldn't be true, they couldn't be here too. She moved slowly to the shelf, carefully lifted down one of the volumes. Ten years' work of the forty-seventh curator.

      The pages were a filigree, just a lacework of tattered scraps. Where the Beetles had been, the words, the meaning, was gone.

      In the end, after nearly a day of working themselves up to it, they had to break down the door to get to her. She lay on a carpet of shredded paper; pages from all the books she had hauled from the shelves.

      They tried for a time to piece the scraps back together, but it was useless. So they made a pyre of the paper and, none of them speaking, set fire to their dead Curator's body.

      The fires burned brightly in the central hall. The bones of the giants made huge, shifting patterns on the tall, shadowed walls around them. The Curator looked down, back into the fire, moving in a little closer to absorb as much as possible of the delicious warmth. The books burned well, but too quickly. He watched as red leather smouldered and pages flared into flame, then reached behind him for another, ready to throw it on before the fire died.

      The hunters had returned with little to show again. Hungry, anxious eyes had glanced across at him as the people saw what had been brought back. Some small, pallid fish from the Turquoise Aquarium, a few dried-out fruit. It was not enough, never enough. They looked to him for answers, of course. But what answers could he give? Food was scarce; they had to forage further and further afield. And everywhere they went, the Beetles were there before them, devouring.

      He was sure they were larger than they used to be. Sure that they didn't used to fight back. When he was young, they hadn't used weapons had they?

      Gun left the group of hunters and came and sat down next to him. They were silent for a while. She would be tired from the long hunt. She would speak when she found the words. Theirs was an awkward relationship. At some point, he couldn't say when, this fierce woman, her small eyes like knife-pricks, had replaced him as their leader. In such times, it seemed, they needed strength; not ancient wisdom.

      Curator, tell me. The books we burn for fuel. Are there many left? When I was young I went into the archive and it seemed that they were endless.

      There are not many left now, Gun my friend.

      The woman, her furs ragged and tattered, nodded her head as if she had expected as much. She was no fool either. Intelligent in her pragmatic way.

      But are there any answers there for us? All that knowledge … She trailed off; her weariness seemed to have come upon her.

      The Curator looked into the flames. The knowledge, the meaning of it all … it crumbles away. There is little left now. I am sorry.

      Very well. She sighed, seeming to muster herself. Then I have something to suggest to you.

      The Curator said nothing; his authority was weak now; they no longer needed his assent to speak. He watched as a loose page from one of the books caught fire and burned. A thin line of angry red marched relentlessly across it, leaving behind a curled, crisp wafer of black. The ancient writing on it was destroyed - curious, angular letters, very small and precise. He watched as the words Simple escapement mechanism were consumed. He wondered about who had written them. About which ancient, forgotten Curator had laid them down with so much care and thought.

      Yesterday I climbed half way up the neck of the tallest of these giants, said Gun.

      They both knew this was forbidden. Tell me why, he replied quietly.

      Curator, I sat here and watched as the day came; saw the light coming through those high windows. And I wondered where it was the light came from. I wondered what was … outside.

      And you thought that you, that we, he paused, trying to understand these terrible new ideas, - that we could go there? That there was a place outside of those windows. Outside of here. That we could actually go to?

      Perhaps, Curator, yes. There is nothing here for us. We cling to life. It is forbidden by all our law, I know, but perhaps we should try anyway. Who knows what is out there?

      Who knows if there is an 'out there'?

      I am willing to climb all the way up and see.

      She was asking for his blessing, his assent at least, although she didn't really need it. They sat and stared together into the flames for long moments, watched as the books turned to smouldering cinders, shapes and faces appearing and disappearing in the shifting glow.

      He imagined himself ascending that swaying column of bones, a precarious staircase leading up to the roof of their world. He looked up into the darkness and found himself wondering what might be up there. What might be out there.

      I don't know if I can.

      Out there we will need you again, Curator. There will be much that is new and dazzling.

      But is it possible? That outside … He spoke more to himself than to her.

      Curator, we used to have such knowledge, our lives were discovery and wonder. Perhaps we could be that again.

      He didn't reply, but looked up into Gun's eyes, the fire bright in them. He looked around at the others, then back at Gun.

      He nodded.

      Far above his head, unseen, a fly crawled across one of the high windows. It came across a crack in the glass and crept through.

      Outside, it paused for a moment, before opening its wings.

      Trompe-l’oeil

      The painting's eyes followed Jenny around the room. Squee, squelch, squee, squelch. She’d always hated these modern art installations.

      Midnight in the Room of Clocks

      The Old House? The Hermit's House? No one lives there now do they? Used to be an old man who did. Never came out; never saw anyone. Just stayed locked up there in his own little world. People used to see lights coming on at night, but no one ever actually saw him. Don't know who he was or what he was doing. Children all thought the place was haunted, of course. I myself remember sneaking up to a window once with my gang of friends, before we lost our nerve and dashed away, giggling madly with relief.

      But he's gone now. Died up there they say: died as he lived, in the old house all alone.

      When I first came to The Old House it had stood empty for a little over thirty years. I had, I recall, been asked by its then-owner, a distant relative of the previous occupant, to look over the place and assess its value with a view to selling it and its contents. This owner lived abroad and had no interest in the place, I think. She wished to be rid of it and was seeking professional advice as to the price she could get.

      I knew all about the house, of course. It was widely known in the area, not only as The Old House, but also as The Hermit's House and even as The Treasure House. Its true name, I knew, was Blackstone Hall, after the family that had owned it for so long. Stories and rumours about the place were many, the stuff of local folklore. The family was ancient, its ancestry lost in the mists of history. Its members were known to have been collectors of all manner of strange artefacts and curios: the ancient, the alien, the bizarre. Then there was the Hall itself, built and rebuilt and altered over many centuries so that it had more or less grown into its current odd, rambling, ramshackle shape. People called the place The Treasure House because it was reputed to be full of ancient relics and contraptions, the product of generations of travel, investigation and collection.

      But the family had finally died out. The last of the line had been a shadowy figure: the man who came to be known as The Hermit. He had lingered on in the house for many years, keeping to himself, his only companions the long, dusty lines of his forebear's portraits, with their rich clothing from many different eras and their enigmatic expressions. But he, too, finally left to join them, and then the house stood empty, gathering dust and a dark reputation for thirty years. Until, finally, some remote relative from a forgotten branch of the Blackstone family was found and informed of her inheritance.

      And so it was that I came to the Hall and became the first person in three decades to turn that ancient iron key in the resentful lock and to push open the carved wooden doors of the Hall. It was a beautiful day, I remember: a hot and sleepy summer's day. The sort of day when there is no breeze and all the plants and trees stand motionless and drooping, as if slumbering in the sun.

      I clearly remember stopping on the threshold and seeing nothing but darkness within. I remember stepping inside and being filled with musty smell of the place. A smell of pure oldness: old wood, old stone, old fabric; an old, old house. I remember the contrast with the world outside, the sudden transformation from light and warmth and life to this cobwebby, airless place. It was as if I had somehow found my way underground.

      After that, I remember very little. Other details have become vague and indistinct. They seem unimportant now. I know that I never completed the job I was sent to do. I know that it was I, the antiquarian advisor to the house's owner sent to look over and value the place, who ended up making an offer to buy it. I distantly recall the owner's surprise at this, but also her eagerness to accept my offer.

      Since then my mind has been so fully occupied that I think rarely of those earlier times, of how I came to be here, of outside. The memories fade into dust.

      It was in the Clock Room that I first noticed something strange. I was making my initial survey of the house, passing from room to room in a state of mounting wonder at the profusion of objects I was finding. In my mind, the anticipated day's work was already beginning to stretch out into a week, a month, a year…

      But it was in the Clock Room that I found the start of the trail. This room is a jumble of clockwork devices: tin-toys, planetaria, automata, astrolabes and every conceivable sort of mechanical timepiece. All the clocks had long-since stopped moving, but I was struck as I looked about that all the clocks had stopped at precisely the same moment. All, that is, except one. One clock only, an old musical timepiece with a primitive escapement action, showed differently. It said twelve o'clock – midnight or midday – whereas all the others had stopped at six. Absent-mindedly intrigued, I began to examine this clock. I remember clearly unlatching the back of its oak casing and looking inside.

      Within, there was a small, delicate, Japanese lacquer-work box. Out of place hidden away inside an old English clock. I took out the box. Opening it, I discovered that it contained a smaller box - this one decorated with ornate lapis lazuli mosaic-work and silver filigree - and also a folded sheet of paper. The inner box rattled as, tentatively, I shook it. But it was locked and I could not open it. The sheet of paper was a page torn out of an old book: a thick, yellowed sheet of parchment, covered with indecipherable handwriting, like the magical runes of some ancient alchemist.

      Slowly, without knowing it, I became caught by that box and that piece of paper. I remember thinking they must have been placed there for a reason, and I remember wanting to find out what that reason might be. Where was the book the page had been torn from? How did I get into the inner box? As I went about the house that day, pursuing my survey, these questions troubled my mind more and more. I found myself looking at all the objects not as items of value, but as possible answers to the riddle.

      I remember coming to the slow realisation that this was a house with a secret. Somewhere within it, I realised, there was something, some treasure or wonder, which someone had hidden. Hidden with infinite subtlety and guile. Hidden at the end of a trail of labyrinthine complexity. That, among all the myriad artefacts and arcane curios filling the house, there was something which everything else was there only to obscure and protect. Like a book hidden not in a locked room, but in a huge library amongst a million other books.

      And who had created all these riddles? I have asked myself this question many times. Was it the hermit? Or some earlier family member? Was my predecessor in the house merely following the trail, or was he creating it? At the end I will understand all.

      And now here I am. How can I describe all the links in the chain that I have uncovered over the years between then and today? There are many, many. There was the day when, after being here for just three years, I found an entire room the existence of which I had previously been ignorant of. The Militaria Display: a dazzling collection of flintlocks and Samurai armour and boomerangs and halberds and broadswords, all hidden away in a room with no doors. A room I only found by virtue of a long process of meticulous measurement and charting. Or again, years later, there was the abacus with its oak beads set carefully to a particular number, the meaning of which escaped me for many months. Eventually, I discovered that the number was a date and that, by setting the planets on an old brass orrery to that date, a mechanism was triggered which opened up a secret compartment on the surface of the planet Jupiter.

      So many wonders, so many clues.

      But now I have made another discovery. In this, my thirtieth year of this long, terrible search, I think I have finally found the end. For some time, the clues have been moving back into familiar territory: old themes recurring as if I returned home after many years away. But instead, I have found - what? I do not know. This newest puzzle is the greatest of them all.

      The facts. About a week ago, I had only two clues left; two leads to follow. The first was that original box pulled innocently from inside a clock long ago, by a man much younger than I. For that is one puzzle that still eludes me. I have carried that box with me ever since, always hoping to find some means of opening it. But I never have. Often have I longed to smash it open, but I know I never can. If I do that, maybe I will destroy what it contains. All I can do is wait. Wait and wonder. A locked box, with no key. With something small and metallic rattling around inside it…

      But I digress. The other object: an ancient, iron implement of unknown function, like a button-hook, but oddly shaped. I had found it months earlier in the Egyptian Hall, concealed inside a sandstone obelisk covered with certain particular hieroglyphics which I had learned to look out for. It was a week ago that I found out the meaning, the purpose of this strange little implement.

      In the small passageway between the Map Room and the Chamber of Mirrors, surrounded by the hundred shelves and niches crammed with their Buddha-figures of gold and amber and rosewood, my attention was suddenly caught by a certain flagstone which my feet must have trodden upon hundreds, thousands, of times. But there was, I now noticed, a crack in it. A tiny sliver of blackness in the polished stone. A hole the same size as the tip of my button-hook. I had found my keyhole.

      Inserting the implement, I found I could turn and manipulate it down into the stone by a series of precise, smooth actions. Then it seemed to lock, and I found that when I pulled upwards, instead of the iron tool coming away, the entire floor-stone lifted slightly, held solidly by the metal instrument.

      By pulling harder, I was able to lift the entire stone out of its place in the floor. Underneath, I found a small cavity, filled with an old layer of yellow-brown sand. A few moments digging in this sand unearthed the treasure: a gold bracelet, inlaid with turquoise and sapphire, intricate in design.

      On its inside, I soon noticed, there were some marks: a line of tiny, deliberate etchings. A magnifying glass borrowed from the collection of microscopes, cameras, telescopes, prisms, glass orbs and lamps in the Observatory soon revealed their nature to me. Musical notes.

      And there is the great riddle. For it seems I have succeeded only in finding the centre of the maze. I have now, today, found out where the simple melody engraved upon the bracelet leads. Only one item in all this house produces that particular tune. Only one item! And even as I wind it up and make it pick out the delicate, sweet notes on its little, silver bells, I know I am lost. For it is the clock. The small clock set to midday - midday or midnight - opened with vague inquisitiveness all those years ago. My trail of thirty years has led me nowhere but back to the very place where I started, and all I have left is the little rattling, lacquer box, locked and with no key anywhere to be found to open it.

      The Old House? The Hermit's House? No one lives there now do they? Used to be an old man who did. Never came out; never saw anyone. Just stayed locked up there in his own little world. People used to see lights coming on at night, but no one ever actually saw him. Don't know who he was or what he was doing. Children all thought the place was haunted, of course. I myself remember sneaking up to a window once with my gang of friends, before we lost our nerve and dashed away, giggling madly with relief.

      But he's gone now. Died up there they say: died as he lived, in the old house all alone.

      The Ghost Train

      The worst of it was he'd had his heart-attack riding the ghost train. Now, however much he wailed and screamed, no-one took him seriously.

      A Sorcerous Mist

      Quirk stood on the quay, stared out to sea and swore. Nothing. A few yards of choppy, green sea, and then the whole world faded away into grey fog.

      He could hear ropes creaking in the thick, damp air. Men grumbling quietly to themselves. The hulls of the boats bumping and jostling against the wooden spars of the jetty, as if impatient at being tethered for so long. He could taste salt and smell the familiar, sharp tang of fish. But he could see nothing.

      For

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