The Tomb of the Pale Lord E-Book

Leslie Garber

• Herausgeber: Alfredbooks
• Kategorie: Abenteuer, Thriller, Horror
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2018

Seitenzahl: 101

Beschreibung

The Tomb of the Pale Lord by Leslie Garber A young woman falls under the spell of occult powers as she assumes the position of steward of an estate - and the mysterious pale lord casts his dark shadow over her...

Leseprobe

The Tomb of the Pale Lord

by Leslie Garber

A young woman falls under the spell of occult powers as she assumes the position of steward of an estate - and the mysterious pale lord casts his dark shadow over her...

Copyright

LESLIE GARBER IS A PEN-NAME OF ALFRED BEKKER

A CassiopeiaPress Book: CASSIOPEIAPRESS, UKSAK E-Books and BEKKERpublishing are Imprints by Alfred Bekker

© by Author COVER TONY MASERO

© of this issue 2018 by AlfredBekker/CassiopeiaPress, Lengerich/Westphalia

www.AlfredBekker.de

[email protected]

1

The wind howled lamentingly around the ancient walls of Dellmore Manor. shutters clattered. It was well after midnight.

Edward Gaskell opened the heavy wooden door and stepped outside.

The wind was pulling on his clothes. He was shivering. He looked out into the storm-filled night.

His gaze glided looking around. Bizarre shadows danced on the grey walls of the outbuildings.

Gaskell hesitantly stepped down the five wide stone steps of the portal.

Like a blurred spot, the moon stood in the sky and shimmered through the fast moving clouds. Like dark shadows, the gnarled, grotesquely overgrown trees rose. Grey fog had risen from the nearby lake. He crawled across the floor in thick swaths.

New and new ghostly figures and faces seemed to form in the wafting mists. A raven's cry penetrated the sounds of the wind for a short moment.

Then Gaskell saw the figure...

It stood out as a dark shadow against the light grey fog. The passage was sluggish. An icy shiver came over Gaskell when he recognized the silhouette of a tricorn...

My God!, it sears through him. His pulse was racing.

"Gaskell!", a voice thundered through the night. "Gaskell, stop, you fool!"

Gaskell turned halfway around. Someone had stepped on the portal. Through the open door light fell on a tall, lean man whose hawk-like face gazed Gaskell in awe.

"I've seen HIM, Sir Wilfried!" Gaskell shouted. "I'm sure. Over there..."

"Come back, you lunatic!"

"No!" Gaskell replied in a firm voice. "I want to know what's going on!"

"Gaskell, no!" Sir Wilfried reached out his hand. He took a step forward, but only ventured to the first stage of the portal. Then he stopped as if frozen to a pillar of salt. His face had turned as pale as ashes.

Even Gaskell froze.

The figure with the tricorn approached. The moon lit up a pale face. The eyes were wide open and expressionless. They seemed to look glassy into nothingness. The curls of a powdered wig swelling out from under the tricorn. A dark mantle hung around his shoulders and almost reached the floor.

"The pale lord...", Sir Wilfried whispered.

His voice vibrated. The bony fingers held on to the stone handrail.

"Who are you?" Gaskell asked the dark figure. "What's all this about? I saw you through the window..."

The dark one didn't answer.

His empty gazeless eyes were on Gaskell.

He shivered to the very depths of his soul.

He took a step back. He felt a strange heaviness in his legs. Cold crawled up his back.

A cold he had never felt before...

"No," Gaskell whispered while the horror gripped him.

Something changed in the face of darkness. The thin-lipped mouth opened. With a hissing sound a bright white mist came out of his mouth and shot at Gaskell in a fountain.

Gaskell staggered a step back. An unspeakable cold captured in. His gruesome death scream screamed through the night as he sank to the ground. He remained motionless on the ground.

The pale lord lowered his head.

The moon bathed his lean dead face in a pale light.

Sir Wilfried stepped back to the door.

"No..." he whispered.

The pale lord raised his hand.

The neighing of a horse. The silhouette of the high-legged mount stood out in the fog in the dark. The horse galloped towards the pale lord and then stopped.

The pale lord swayed towards the mount, swung into the saddle. He turned his head. For a moment his empty eyes seemed to be looking at Sir Wilfried. This one was paralyzed. Fear crawled up his back like a cold, wet hand.

Then the rider tore around the reins of his horse and let it gallop directly into the fog. But even before the fog had really swallowed him, he seemed to become transparent. It dissipated. Only the clatter of hooves could still be heard for quite some time and made Sir Wilfried shiver to the core.

2

The windscreen wipers simply couldn't provide a clear view. Rebecca Jennings sat behind the wheel of her coupe and looked exertedly through the windshield.

It was getting pretty late.

The twilight had first settled over the country like grey cobwebs and now it was almost completely dark.

Lightning flashed brightly from the low, dark clouds.

The rain just pelted down.

Admit it at last, Rebecca thought. You're lost!

The road was very narrow. She was in bad shape. One pothole followed the other. It ran through a piece of forest, which made the view even worse.

Rebecca Jennings took a deep breath.

A delay was anything but a successful start in her new position!

But it could not be changed.

The roads had become narrower and narrower and the signs had become increasingly sparse.

She had been driving around this godforsaken area for an hour and a half since leaving the highway from London. And she wasn't sure if she had come a few miles closer to her destination by now.

Another flash of lightning.

Thunder followed shortly afterwards. The storm must have been nearby. The rain increased once more in intensity. The wind bent trees and bushes mercilessly in its direction. A crackling noise even drowned out the engine. A thick branch broke out of the crown of a gnarled tree. He crashed, way too fast for Rebecca to react. The branch swept over the hood of the coupe, slid a piece up the windshield and then slid sideways onto the road.

The horror was deep.

Rebecca felt her pulse beating up to her throat.

My God, that was close, it crossed her mind. She was happy when she left the woods behind her.

She would have given a lot in this moment if this hellish journey had been over!

A sign showed up.

Rebecca slowed down, slowed down and read the faded letters.

Kerryhill, 3 miles.

At least something!, Rebecca thought. She stopped, looked at her map. Kerryhill was apparently so small that it wasn't even listed. But maybe there was a gas station or an inn where she could ask for directions.

She went on.

A little later, the dark tower of a weathered church appeared. She stood there as a threatening silhouette. Overgrown trees rose above the adjacent cemetery. A handful of houses were grouped around the church.

That was Kerryhill.

A place, hardly a village to call.

There was no gas station, but an inn called KERRYHILL INN. Rebecca parked the coupe in front of the weather-beaten house. The rain had eased a bit, but at the top, in the clouds it was still grumbling.

Rebecca hadn't thought of an umbrella.

She opened the door of her car and ran as fast as she could to the entrance of the KERRYHILL INN. The young woman's shoulder-length brunette hair was already wet on her head when she reached the entrance. The door was protected by a moss-covered stone arch. The door was made of dark wood and seemed to be centuries old.

Rebecca tried to push down the handle and she flinched.

She stared at the grotesque wooden lion face that looked at her with hatred. The lion's face held a dark metal ring with its teeth, which was probably meant to be tapped.

Rebecca opened the door. She stepped into a semi-darkness room.

The rain pelted against the small, butzen-like panes.

Apart from the host, there were only two men in the taproom. One was sitting at the bar, the other at a table in the corner.

Rebecca went to the bar. The host was a tall, hollow-cheeked man. He stared at her like a living spirit.

"Good evening," Rebecca said.

"Good evening, ma'am," the host growled.

Rebecca immediately felt the eyes of all those present. As a stranger, you must have immediately attracted attention here.

That was not surprising.

"What do you want, ma'am?" asked the host. His face remained completely expressionless. A thunder crashed, however, deafeningly. The light in the room flickered for a moment. Rebecca flinched involuntarily.

"I'm afraid I'm a little lost," she said. She wiped a damp strand of hair off her face.

"Where are you going?"

"Dellmore Manor!"

"Oh!"

The three men changed meaningful looks.

Finally the landlord asked: "Then you are the new caretaker?"

"Yes," Rebecca replied in astonishment. The world here seemed to be very small and news apparently got around quickly.

"You look very young for the job!", the host then said. He seemed used to expressing his thoughts very unvarnished.

Rebecca took a deep breath.

"Well, I admit it's my first job. But I learned my profession. "I am convinced that I can manage a manor - and if Lord Dellmore had disagreed, he would hardly have hired me!"

The host shrugged his shoulders.

"None of my business," he growled.

"As I said, I'm a little lost... Perhaps if you would be so kind as to tell me the way..."

"You drive along the road to a fork in the road. There it goes on left, then past a lake. It's almost silted up, more of a swamp than a lake. Anyway, you won't be able to miss it anymore. Dellmore Manor is on a hill, the road goes right there."

"Thank you... Can I use your phone? Because I'm late and I want to..."

"The phone doesn't work right now! Must be the storm."

"Thanks anyway."

"Happy birthday, ma'am!"

Rebecca turned back towards the door.

She had barely reached her when the sound of a hoarse voice made her flinch.

"Don't go to Dellmore Manor," the voice muttered.

Thunder followed - like a tremendous drumbeat.

Rebecca stopped. She pulled back her hair and looked at the table in the corner. The man sitting there was older, his face wrinkled. In the watery blue eyes it flickered restlessly. He got up even though his beer glass was still half full. Then he grabbed the dark stick he had placed against the back of the chair. On the handle was a carved dog's head. The old man swayed towards Rebecca. Then he stopped and looked at her for a few moments.

"Do you know what happened to your predecessor?" The old man giggled.

Rebecca swallowed.

She suddenly felt a clear discomfort in the stomach area.

"I don't know what you're talking about, sir," she'd say a little stiff.

The old man grimaced.

"A man before you named Gaskell was a caretaker at Dellmore Manor... He's dead, ma'am!"

"What's all this talk about?" she asked a little harsher than she had originally intended. "And above all, what does all this have to do with me?"

"Dellmore Manor is a cursed place, ma'am," the old man said in a subdued tone. "A place of death and damnation... Evil stories entwine around this manor..."

"Don't scare the young lady with your horror stories!", the host interfered.

"It's the truth," the old man whispered. His gaze literally drilled into Rebecca's eyes. A shiver came over her involuntarily. That's just the gossip of a quaint old man! she tried to talk herself into it. But her feeling was different... The discomfort remained.

"Stop it, Kelly!" the host shouted. "Shut up!"

The old man shrugged his shoulders.

"No one wants to know the truth..." he muttered. "Nobody..." He turned around again and swayed to his table. The stick clattered on the parquet planks.

3

A little irritated Rebecca went out again into the darkness.

Lightning flashed in rapid succession across the sky. One roll of thunder followed the other. The rain pelted down with undiminished intensity. Rebecca jumped to her car, ripped open the door and sat down as quickly as she could. She started the car. Then she reset the coupe and drove off.

After some time it reached the fork in the road of which the host had spoken.

Rebecca went left.

The car barely reached more than walking speed. Left and right was the darkest night. The road became narrower and worse. The asphalting finally gave way to paving. Rebecca looked strained into the night.

According to the description of the landlord, she hadn't really expected that the route would take so long.