Read The Shorecliff Horror and Other Stories Page 3

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  For the first few months after I moved into Shorecliff House I did nothing but work. There was a lot to be done. That old house had been left uncared for over more generations than anyone could remember, unoccupied for so long that it had descended practically to the status of a ruin. The roof was unstable in places and leaking water, several of the windows were smashed or broken, there were floorboards rotten through, damp mould grew in furry, black streaks up many of the walls and a general air of neglect and decay filled every room in the place. All of this was much as I would have expected from a house left exposed to the elements in such an unforgiving location as Shorecliff could be at times. The strong wind, the corrosive salt air; in a place such as this any un-maintained building would quickly be reduced to its constituent pieces.

  In certain rooms, however, the damage seemed to go a little beyond that which would be expected from mundane, natural causes. In the drawing room, the dining room and the ground floor study, for instance, there were areas of broken wall and torn floorboard for which it was difficult to find a simple cause or explanation. In these places, corners of the room had been pulled to pieces, leaving great, gaping holes leading into the cellars below, each opening surrounded by deep scores and scratches and splinters of half-rotten wood. Marked deep into the floorboards and walls of each of these three places were large patches of a peculiar colour; deep stains, richer and more permanent than water but of some other liquid, it seemed, that had been spilled and thrown around the house at some point in its long period of isolation.

  To a more imaginative man than I, these scratches and stains may have seemed evocative, not to mention disturbing. I can see that now. They might have suggested a history to the house, a place scarred by accidents or arguments long since over but which the house still remembered well. Looking back I can see that these were signs a more sensitive man, a man more aware of his surroundings might have understood. It is to my discredit that I must confess I was not that sort of man back then. When I first came across Shorecliff House I was too taken by the location and my own need for the seclusion and hard work it offered to notice anything unusual about the place. All I saw was a wreck of a house that needed someone to work on it. I saw a job I could lose myself in and I got on with it.

  After six months the place was practically unrecognisable. The roof was fixed, the windows secured, the walls outside freshly whitewashed. Inside, the floors were re-laid and polished, new plasterwork set on the walls and ceilings, the kitchen and bathrooms all completely gutted and replaced until all the years of rot and decay that marked the house on my arrival had been cut out and tossed aside. For six months I worked hard on the place, cleaning and restoring wherever possible, tearing out and replacing wherever the damage was too severe. For six months I spoke to not a soul other than the suppliers and tradesmen I relied upon to help me with my work. For all that time I truly immersed myself in the task I had set, working late at night until the light or my own drooping eyes failed me, getting up early the next morning to start again. Every last minute that was available to me I worked on repairing that old house, my every thought focused on getting the job done, every drop of sweat devoted to doing it just exactly the right way. For six months I did not allow myself to think of anything not related to the job in hand. I forgot my old life completely. It meant nothing to me anymore; less than a dream even, my old friends and family no more substantial than ghosts. To even imagine a world outside Shorecliff, a life without the wood and nails and plaster and bricks with which the house was being rebuilt, seemed absurd to me then.

  I know how this must make me sound – like a madman, a crazed idiot losing his mind in the middle of nowhere. It’s a conclusion I find hard to argue with. I don’t claim to have been entirely sane or rational during those six months. All I say is that my mind had become imbalanced and needed some time to right itself again. Those months I worked at Shorecliff, with Lovecraft my only friend and companion, my only link back to the world, provided that and I’ll always be grateful to it, no matter how unsettling the days to follow would become.