The Twelve Chimes of Maligna Manor

Prologue

"Why don't we go up to the Manor?" asked Jamie.

It had been an offhand suggestion made in the lazy hours of an autumn evening. It was made when the sun had still not set, and its warm glow set the scattered red leaves ablaze with a dying ember. They had been lying in those leaves, the three of them. Jamie lying with his arm around his girlfriend Maggie and her younger brother Ricki lying annoyingly close on her other side.

None of them would have been able to suspect what such a suggestion might lead to. How the rest of their lives and the lives of those yet to come would hinge on this very question.

For Jamie, the Manor was just a local myth. A fun story that gave an air of exciting mystery to his boring little village. Maggie didn't even really know anything about the Manor save for it being the creepy old house on the hill.

The only one among them that had any misgivings was Ricki. For the children of Winters Green, the weeks leading into Halloween were prime time for telling the stories of Maligna Manor. The exact details were liable to change with the teller. One might tell you that it was home to a vampire count, the other a clan of werewolves or yet another might say a secret society of aliens. There was, however, one detail that no one disputed -

Children went missing near Maligna Manor.

It seemed that for every story told about the house, there was a different child to go with it. Far from being contradictory this made for the scariest part of the Manor's legend. Because every child that went missing in this village would at some point get linked back to that old Manor house. They were last seen playing on the grounds, and then they were never seen again.

When Maggie said yes to Jamie's suggestion, Ricki wanted more than anything to tell her all the stories. To convince her that it was too dangerous and that they should do something else. Anything else but go near that Manor.

But Ricki was only the baby brother. Maggie would just tell him to go back home if he was so scared, even if she knew their mum would freak out if she left him, and Jamie would just start making fun of the scared baby still afraid of ghosts and ghouls.

So, Ricki kept his mouth shut and followed along as he was taken to the Manor.

It was definitely a sight. Ricki had to admit that. Winters Green was old, and it had buildings dating as far back as the Middle Ages, but nothing in the entire village was anywhere near as iconic as Maligna Manor

The Malignas had built it with the express intention of dominating the entire village. From its perch atop Graves Hill, it glowered down over the rest of the village, forever visible in the skyline no matter where you were.

The walk to Graves Hill had not been long, but it had still given time for the sun to set and the cold of the Halloween night to set in. The deep black stone of the Manor began to fuse with the night sky and gave the impression that the manor was growing, stretching out, to cover the horizon.

Jamie chose the moment when they arrived at the old gates to mention that he had actually only brought two torches. If he had hoped that this would force Ricki to leave, he was mistaken. Ricki might have taken the excuse, but Maggie would have none of it. She didn't want Ricki around any more than Jamie did, but it was only on the pretence of taking him to the Halloween party that she had even been allowed out. If she didn't return with Ricki, then her mum would raise hell itself to look for her so there was nothing to be done.

Ricki at least had the perfect excuse to cling tight to his older sister's hand which was probably a good thing because the grounds of the manor were lethal. What had probably at one time been a beautifully designed statement garden had devolved into a twisted jungle of wild grass, weeds and brambles. Ricki was still quite small for his age, and whilst not small enough to be lost entirely in the grass he was certainly having more difficulty moving through it than either his sister or the lanky Jamie.