Page 41 of Monstrous Travels as Wicked as Sin

Joe entered the green arbour and watched as Percy circled the thick trunk, then ripped away some old bark and leaves, before thrusting his fingers into a hollow.

Joe slapped his arm back from the tree. “Were you never told to not stick your hands into dark holes?”

Percy shrugged him off, held him at bay with one hand, and groped deeper in, up to his biceps. “It’s Shetland. There’s nothing venomous here.”

Joe watched on with a small tremble to his lips. “Black widow spiders are everywhere now. It’s a fact. London’s crawling with them.”

Percy winced with the effort of his grasping fingers. “Are you frightened of spiders?”

“I’m a rational human.” Joe took an involuntary step back from Percy and the seemingly bottomless hole. “So yes.”

“I hear a black widow bite is like holding a burning match to your skin for twenty straight minutes,” Percy replied, screwing up his face and stretching his arm further still.

With the delivery of Percy’s informative comment, a small panic overtook Joe at the thought of what must lie unseen in there, and he lunged for Percy. “Fuck! Could you—Spiders!—fucking—stop it?—”

While Joe blustered out random words, he yanked at Percy, Percy fought him off with his spare hand, and a small one-armed scuffle broke out between them, until, “Got it!” Percy withdrew, unfurled his clenched fingers, and revealed his rusty prize. A key. Long unused and about as forgotten as the dead out in the lawn. With a proud smile, he said, “I want to point out that I didn’t pretend to be bitten by a spider just then.”

Joe let go of him, shoving his frazzled locks back, assuming an air of dignified self-control. “You’re very mature. Thank you. I appreciate it.”

Percy, naturally, had only one response. “Kiss me.”

Putty-Joe placed a gentle kiss on Percy’s lips and felt himself calm at the soft press that met them.

Percy cast a glance over his shoulder towards the thicker side of the woods, where a great wall surrounding the estate blocked what little sunlight was available that cloudy day. “The easiest way in will be via these trees.”

“Over the wall?” Joe assessed the dense boundary ahead of them.

“Mmmm. There’s broken glass on top to keep intruders out. Be careful.”

Percy boosted Joe into the tree, where, lying on a thick branch, Joe pulled Percy up next to him. It was a relatively simple matter from there for the pair to traverse the jigsaw of abundant and untouched growth and make their way to the top of the wall. There they perched to examine a discordant scene. Behind them, lush woods, flowers, endless green. Inside the walls of the property, the ground was devoid of all life. No plants. No insects. Some grass had tried and failed, evidenced by a few yellowy-brown clumps here and there between wide cracks in the bare earth, but that was the sum of all nature in the place.

With two dizzying and ill-advised leaps, both landed on hard, compacted dirt.

Joe’s eyes swept across the cold, unfeeling expanse, and to the face of the house. Iron bars clung to every window, bolted on the outside, making the place utterly inescapable once trapped within. It was a dwelling, he knew, that a new guest, once arrived, would not have expected to leave any time soon. “Poor Althea.”

Percy commenced a slow walk to the entrance, offering only, “The bars are new.”

The castle, because that’s what it was to Joe’s eyes, loomed three stories high, stark and uneasy, as though the black stones might topple over and swallow them up at any time. If Percy had said the place was held together and fed with the congealed blood of a thousand victims of barbaric murder, Joe would have believed it. There was an atmosphere. Not like any other haunted Scottish residence on a dark and forbidding day. It was unique, and Joe had never felt anything quite like it.

Percy, his boot on the first step, evidently shared Joe’s foreboding. “I’ve got a very bad feeling.”

Joe’s fast pulse doubled its speed. Percy pulled his dagger free, and Joe readied the nice crowbar Percy had gifted him an hour prior. Both forced one foot in front of the other up the stairs and across the aching porch.

Percy pushed the old key into the keyhole, began to turn it, and Joe said, “Do you think it’s odd she’d leave a key to get in when the place is otherwise so impenetrable?”

Percy’s dark eyes cut across to Joe’s. “Yes. I do think it’s odd. Be on your guard.”

It took some work, but the key turned roughly, the lock clicked jarringly, and the door groaned open, echoing throughout the enormous hall, two stories high, and made of stone that stared blankly back at them with all the sympathy of an executioner.

A musty scent hit them in the face.

Musty, with an undercurrent of putrid rot.

“That’s dead,” said Percy.

Joe nodded.

“Old dead,” Percy clarified. “Not freshly dead.”

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