Valley of Nightmares Read online

  “Got myself a ticket out of here, Lilly darling.” Cigarette smoke curls blue-grey from his lips and swirls in the air about his head.

  He is moving quickly away from me, and I hurl myself into the press of bodies. They are standing shoulder to shoulder, marble still yet somehow resentful of my actions. I call his name, but no sound comes from my urgent lips. In the distance, a boat is moored at the edge of a mirrored lake. From the mists, which drift across the water’s surface, a tall, robed figure emerges and beckons Ricky to go with him. As he steps into the boat, Ricky turns and gives me a cheery wave. Ceri is at my side, and she waves a solemn hand in an answering salute. Her other hand rests lightly on Shucky’s head. The boatman puts back his cowl and turns in my direction, revealing only black darkness beneath the folds of cloth. It is the Hunter. He is taking my friend.

  When I woke, my pillow was wet with tears, and when it came time to rise, I felt clumsy with lack of sleep and renewed grief. Over breakfast Ceri’s chatter washed over me.

  “Don’t be sad, Lilly,” she said, covering my hand with hers. I looked up in surprise. “He had his ticket out of there.”

  Our shared dreams no longer had the power to surprise or frighten me. Instead, I was oddly comforted by them. I returned the pressure of her hand, and we finished our breakfast in silence. I had decided we needed to work on her knowledge of British history, since this was an area that her Austrian school had not, for obvious reasons, covered. My mind was full of images of Celtic warriors, Roman invaders and Anglo-Saxon chieftains.

  “Don’t forget the Vikings,” Ceri reminded me. I nodded and then turned to look at her with my mouth dropping open in what I knew to be a deeply unbecoming manner. I had not spoken out loud. “They attacked Wales as well as England,” she said in the pompous tone she used when she thought she knew more than I did.

  “Ceri.” I wasn’t really sure I wanted to hear the answer to my question, “Do you…” I swallowed audibly. “Do you know what I am thinking?”

  She smiled brightly. “Not all of the time, just sometimes,” she told me jauntily. “And I don’t know exactly what you are thinking. It’s just an idea, like a blurry picture. But now and then it’s really loud, like you are shouting at me.” Ceri said it in the long-suffering manner of one who has every reason to complain but is determined not to do so. “That’s usually when it’s about the Hunter.”

  “But I don’t know what you are thinking,” I pointed out. Would I ever have a private thought again? Following hard on the heels of that fear came the inevitable worry that Ceri might be aware of my angst-ridden thoughts about Gethin. Knowing my luck, she would blurt it out to him over breakfast.

  “Then you aren’t trying hard enough,” she told me with a stern look. In that instant, our roles were reversed. This little, girlish seer with the far-reaching eyes had become my teacher.

  So I tried. I tried when we had lessons. I tried when we went out for walks. I tried as we ate our meals, and I tried when I lay in bed at night and Ceri was one floor above me. I tried so hard to read her thoughts that a dull headache prodded at my brain.

  “I can’t do it,” I confessed. “What do you do?”

  “I think you,” Ceri said unhelpfully. My face must have told her as much, and she tried to explain further. “My mind is normal, and then it whispers Lilly and my thoughts change. I link up with you. It’s like your mind is see-through.”

  “Can you make it stop?” I asked. We were sitting at the edge of the tumbling stream, idly tossing stones into the foamy depths.

  “Why would I want to do that?” Ceri seemed surprised.

  Her question made me focus more deeply on the link between us. It was of the heart, not the mind. I was trying to force my mind to achieve something that my heart was afraid of. Deep down, I was scared of the idea of Ceri sidling catlike into my subconscious. And I was terrified of opening a portal to her thoughts that I might not be able to close again. But there was nothing to be afraid of. Our souls were side-by-side reflections. We could choose to keep them apart or we could let them meet. I lay back on the fragrant bank and allowed the sweet confetti of those unfettered thoughts to drift through my head.

  I must have dozed slightly. I stopped thinking and let my feelings pursue the tumbled pathways of a dream. Ceri and I walked together in such perfect time that we shared a pulse, a tightly bound braid. A picture of Ceri, leaning over to scoop a large, flat pebble out of the water formed behind my closed eyes. It began as a washed-out, faded watercolour, but very slowly the colours deepened and darkened until it was a brushstroke perfect masterpiece.

  “You’re right,” I said, without opening my eyes. “It looks just like a fish.”

  She hurled herself upon me, squealing with delight. “You can do it, Lilly,” she chuckled as I caught her up, and we rolled down the bank together, landing in a heap at the water’s edge. “You can think me!”

  * * *

  “I can see the spirits within the lights,” I said softly. Gethin glanced up at the mountain, and I shook my head. “Not right at this minute. But I do see them. I think I have what Gwladys would call ‘the eye’.” And so does Ceri, I wanted to add. But I decided against bringing her into the conversation. There were too many things I couldn’t explain. And that which cannot be explained is all too easily dismissed as an overimaginative or disordered mind. I didn’t want to give Gethin any further cause to write me off as ditsy.

  “It’s just a mountain.” He sounded weary, as though it was something he had said a hundred times before. I wasn’t sure who he was trying to convince.

  “But there is something more to this mountain,” I insisted. “It has an aura of its own.” There were no lights to dilute the purity of the sky; we saw every single star. We stood side by side, regarding the hulking shape of Mount Taran, so close that I could feel the hairs on his arm just touching my flesh. It was a spell I didn’t want to break.

  I sensed his eyes on my profile in the darkness. “Sometimes it’s easier to ascribe an event to the paranormal, simply because we don’t have an explanation for it now.”

  “But perhaps sometimes the explanation we seek really is a supernatural one,” I reasoned. “All I know for sure is that the mountain—including the valley and, at times, this house—scares me. Are you listening to me?” I asked, turning to face him, astounded at the realisation that he quite blatantly wasn’t.

  “No, I was wondering what it would feel like to kiss you.” The whispered words, like fine crystal, touched my cheek. All of a sudden I wasn’t quite sure what to do with my lips. So I solved the problem by taking the initiative and kissing him. He stood marble still as I rose on the tips of my toes and very gently touched his lips with mine. It was barely a kiss at all, more an exchange of breath. A trading of secrets. But it shook me to the core of my being, and I could tell it had the same effect on him. His eyes fluttered closed, and he drew me, as one in a trance, into the shelter of his arms. His lips unlocked mine and scorched my heart. You will never truly know how you feel about someone until you kiss him for the first time, and in the aching intimacy of that moment, Gethin claimed me. He branded me. In future, when I dreamed of kissing, I would instantly return to this moment.

  “That’s what it feels like,” I whispered.

  “In that case,” he whispered back, “I think we might have to do it again.” So we did. Several times.

  “You are a very good kisser.” I leaned back in his embrace, studying him through half-closed eyes.

  He laughed and ran a shaky hand through his hair. “I think how good you are as a kisser has a lot to do with the person you are kissing,” he said, stroking my bottom lip gently with the pad of his thumb.

  “That,” I decided, after giving the matter careful consideration, “is by far the nicest thing anyone has ever said to me.”

  His look of incredulity broke the spell, and I pulled away from him. It was
there, like a third person sidling insistently between us. My past. I heard the dismissive gossip of the women in his “set”: Dreadful shame, darling, but what did the silly girl expect? No decent chap is going to seriously look twice at a girl from that sort of club.

  “Lilly?” He looked bewildered, as though he knew my mood had changed, but he didn’t know why.

  I smiled, in what I hoped was a bright, cheery manner. “Ceri will be waiting for me,” I said, as if kisses like the ones we had just exchanged were commonplace for me. I hurried back into the house. Much later, when my mind insisted on reviewing the incident, the images flashed before my eyes like a broken cine reel. And I began to wonder if, for him, those devastating kisses might merely have been a deliberate ploy to distract me from pursuing the discussion about the supernatural qualities of the mountain.

  * * *

  I always peeped in to Ceri’s room to check on her before I went to bed. She was sleeping soundly, spread-eagled across her bed like a starfish clad in flowered pyjamas. I closed her door and looked around for Shucky, but there was no sign of him. That struck me as strange. He was usually on duty, guarding Gethin’s door, once Ceri had gone to bed.

  The answer to the mystery of Shucky’s new nighttime regime was provided a few days later by the landlord of the Slater’s Arms.

  “Miss Divine!” I turned as Mr. Bevan, obviously having noticed me pass the window, bustled out of the low-beamed door of the pub. I waited for him to catch up to me, and the strong, sour smell of ale assailed my nostrils as he drew closer. He was a little man who had cultivated the most remarkable moustache I had ever seen. It gave him the appearance of a villain in a silent movie. I wondered if anyone had ever mentioned to him that he would look more at home tying a woman to railway line than drying a tankard on his apron.

  He grinned cheerfully at me. “That blessed hound of yours! Well! What a character that one is, to be sure!” With a sinking heart, I waited to hear the rest of the story. I was never accosted with tales of Shucky rescuing families from burning barns, hauling drowning children out of raging torrents or even rescuing prize flocks from marauding wolves. No, the good name of Taran was being systematically and relentlessly eroded by his exploits. These included purloined food, washing lines torn down and dragged playfully through puddles, and the licentious violation of champion bitches. “Comes down here of a night, he does—regular as my old taproom clock—and sits outside, just there.” He pointed to a spot halfway between the entrance to the inn and the front door of the neighbouring property. “Like a statue of a sentinel, he is. It’s as if he’s guarding us, watching over the place, so it is. He gets going when my missus opens the shutters. Just about getting light it is when he plods off back down the hill.”

  As he was talking, the door to an adjoining house opened and Matthew emerged. He looked surprised, and then delighted, to see me and hurried over. Mr. Bevan gave him a sly dig in the ribs. “Aye, it’s pleased as punch you look, young man, and no mistake. And no surprise, of course.” He jerked his head toward me. “Don’t worry, no one would blame you for looking out the window in case you catch a glimpse of this young lady, here. Ah, if only I was twenty years younger!” He grinned at me and disappeared back inside his hostelry. I got the feeling that his jocular comments had annoyed Matthew.

  “What on earth was that old reprobate wittering on about?” he asked.

  “Oh, merely to tell me that the bane of my existence—”

  “Your boss?” he interrupted, raising sympathetic brows.

  “No, Shucky!” I explained, laughing. “According to Mr. Bevan, the dog has taken to sitting outside the pub each night as if he is guarding the place. I suspect there might be a lady hound at the bottom of this unprecedented dedication to duty, although the object of his affection might just as easily be one of Mrs. Bevan’s chicken pies.”

  He walked with me part of the way down the hill, and we sat for a while on the roadside bank, enjoying the afternoon warmth. The air was sweetened by the waters of the cool stream, and a gentle breeze wafted breathy hints of aromatic flowers and earthy ferns. A delicate green lace of pastures adorned the mountain’s skirts, and sunlight scattered rays of hope across the valley floor. I marvelled anew at the different moods of these capricious dales.

  I didn’t anticipate Matthew’s next action. One minute he was describing a walk he had been on into Dolgellau, and the next thing he had grabbed hold of me by my upper arms and was pressing wild kisses onto my face, trying to reach my mouth. I strained furiously to break free and only succeeded in toppling backward and pulling Matthew down on top of me. He took this as a sign of encouragement and slid his hand inside my sweater, roughly massaging my breasts. It was with great difficulty that I managed to wriggle out from underneath him, just in time to see Gethin’s Bentley drive slowly past. There was absolutely no chance that he had not seen the whole thing.

  “What on earth are you playing at?” I gasped furiously, springing up from the bank and landing a punch on Matthew’s chin so hefty that it knocked him backward. I faced him with my hands on my hips in classic Mrs. Comber stance.

  He hung his head, muttering a shamefaced apology and holding a hand to his injured face. “I couldn’t help myself,” he said. “You just looked so beautiful—”

  “That’s absolute poppycock!” I told him sternly. “And, even if it was true, you can’t just go round kissing people simply because you like how they look.”

  But, in the end, he was so distraught and full of remorse that, somehow, I ended up consoling him. I reassured him that he was forgiven, it would not change anything and we could still be friends. But I also made sure he knew I would not put up with any similar advances in future. The darkening bruise on his chin served to emphasise my message.

  How annoying, I thought dejectedly as I walked back down to the house, that he should have chosen to launch himself upon me at the precise moment that Gethin came up the hill!

  * * *

  “Ah, Miss Divine, how nice of you to spare me a minute out of your busy schedule. Would you consider it an unreasonable request if I asked that, next time you decide to engage in a necking party with your latest conquest, you do it in a less public place?” Gethin asked when I answered his summons to see him in the study. “As your employer, I realise I have no control over your private life. I am merely considering my niece’s good name, you understand.”

  “There is something I think you should see,” I stated colourlessly, without responding to his outburst. He gave me a sharp look. Appearing to appreciate, from my stunned expression, that it was important, he laid his pen aside and rose from his desk. I led the way up the loft stairs in silence.

  Apart from the section that comprised the nursery, the vast attic spanned the entire area of the house. It comprised one enormous room with several smaller rooms leading off. These were oddly shaped to fit into the roof space, with beams and ceilings that sloped all the way to the floor. There was a smell pervading the whole area of fusty old clothes, mothballs and mildew. Some had windows or skylights, but this particular room didn’t. With the door open, however, there was enough gloomy light to see clearly. Motes of dust danced between Gethin and me as we stood in the doorway. The air in this section of attic had an unpleasant, metallic bite. A table covered with a black cloth ran almost the length of one wall. On it sat two candlesticks each housing a thick, partially burned candle. These were made of tar-black tallow. Between them, in a prominent, central position, a skull had been displayed. The pronounced jaw of the herbivore and large, curled horns suggested that it had belonged to a goat. On the wall behind the table, stark against the bare plaster, and crudely drawn in dripping red, was a five-pointed star. Black hangings covered the wall opposite this repellent, makeshift altar.

  “I dismissed it at first as a joke, or perhaps an attempt to scare me away from here,” I told Gethin quietly as, grim faced, he surveyed the scene. “But the
chance of anyone coming up here was so remote it couldn’t be guaranteed to work. I only came up to the attic at all to see if there were any spare candles stored in one of these rooms.” I looked back into the room. “These are occult symbols, aren’t they?”

  He nodded once. The action seemed to rouse him from his reverie, and he turned to look at me again. As he raised a hand toward me, I thought he might be about to touch my hair or perhaps even hug me in a gesture of comfort. I swayed toward him, but he paused in midmovement. His hand dropped back to his side, and he sighed.

  “I thought it was in the past,” he said softly. I waited and he continued, as though talking to himself. “Even as a child, Bryn had a fascination with the dark arts. He read occult books and acted out the rituals. It was one of the reasons my mother took us away from here. She felt that the hellish legends surrounding the valley were affecting his mind. He was always…” he paused, searching for the right word, “…volatile.”

  “You told me once that he was attracted to evil,” I recalled. I also remembered the photographs that told the story of Christina, the girl Gethin had loved, and Bryn’s determined—and ultimately successful—campaign to woo her away from his brother. I was heartily glad I would never have to encounter Bryn Taran.

  “Always. He was addicted to danger. Bryn had a brilliant mind, but it was drawn toward darkness. As a youth, he corresponded with Aleister Crowley, the famous Satanist, and when Bryn discovered that Nazism had powerful occult foundations, he insisted on travelling to Germany in an attempt to meet Hitler.” He waved a hand to indicate the satanic altar. “He must have done this many years ago—certainly long before he took up his post as a foreign attaché.” He rubbed a hand over his face in a weary gesture. “He discovered that Taran House is uniquely positioned to appeal to those who worship Satan. I don’t know the precise details, but it is something to do with the ley lines that cross the valley.” At my look of enquiry, he explained further. “Ley lines are lines of mystic energy, invisible tracks across the landscape, which are important to the occult. The prehistoric temple at Stonehenge, for example, is at the meeting point of many ley lines and is believed to have a remarkable spiritual presence. Taran House is of similar psychic importance. And, of course, the local stories of the Taran lights and the wild hunt only added to its attraction. Bryn was very excited about it all at one time. He said he could find a way to summon and control the spirits within the lights. My poor mother was dealing with that and fending off a series of approaches to buy the place from those who wanted to turn it into an occult temple.” Bringing himself back to the present with an obvious effort, he said briskly, “Go back downstairs, Lilly. I’ll clear this abhorrence away.”