Free Kingsholt by Susan Holliday

said Sam, thinking he’d better return the book.
    Aidan gave him a searching look. ‘Now we’re on the subject, you might be interested to know that map I’ve lost is something to do with the stone mines. It may even have had something to do with the so-called treasure.’
    ‘Where did
you
find it?’
    ‘In one of the books but at that moment I didn’t have the time to study it.’
    ‘If you’re anything like my mother, you might have put it back and forgotten all about it.’
    Aidan shook his head. ‘I wish I had.’ He wandered round the room looking at pictures, staring into the mirror, touching books, as if the room itself held many secrets.
    ‘What’s all this got to do with Chloe?’ asked Sam.
    ‘Everything,’ said Aidan, sitting down again. He leaned over towards Sam, clasping his work-worn hands together. ‘I think Nimbus is trying to win over Chloe for his own purposes and if he does, I’m not sure we’ll ever get her back.’
    ‘You mean he’ll —’ The idea was too horrible to voice. ‘Honestly, Aidan, it’s all rubbish.’ Then he remembered Chloe crying and felt confused. ‘Anyway, it’s her own fault. She’s got a mind of her own, hasn’t she?’
    Listen to this,’ said Aidan, purposely opening an old, leather-bound book and leafing through it. ‘This is the Chronicle of Kingsholt, an early Victorian translation from Old English. It’s a local account of how the Vikings rode into this valley. This is the bit that matters.
    The monks who escaped crept back from the woods to bury the dead. They dug a pit and placed the bodies in the mass grave. Some were clothed in their bloodstained, rough woollen garments, others were naked. They said prayers and threw earth over the bodies. It was widespread knowledge that if ever the grave was disturbed a darkness would spread over the valley. A curse.’
    ‘The pit,’ said Sam quickly. ‘It’s open. It stinks.’
    Aidan nodded. ‘I believe the pit where the monks were buried is the very one Nimbus uses as a refuse dump. It was near the pit that I found Uncle George dead. It’s there I want to build a little chapel and bring back the light.’
    They sat for a moment in silence. The sun had come out again and was shining through the window on Aidan’s head, hallowing his iron grey hair so it looked white, making him insubstantial somehow, and ageless.
    ‘The light against the dark. We must use everything we can.’
    ‘But legends,’ said Sam, pulling a face, ‘Come off it, Aidan, legends are for fun but they’re not true.’
    Aidan looked thoughtful. ‘Not in our sense of the word. Butthey come out of big events and often give some sort of clue to what happened.’
    There was a noise outside and Aidan stood up as if someone was watching him over his shoulder. Sam looked round. Was it the sudden dip in sunlight, the cloud that went over the sun? Or the slight wind that started up from nowhere and somehow fluttered in the old velvet curtains. Sam looked away from Aidan and into the mirror. To his surprise he no longer saw a reflection of his own face. The glass was covered in a white mist and he had the strong feeling someone was trying to break through.
    ‘It’s this place,’ he said, ‘it gets you in the end.’
    Aidan spoke gently. ‘If you’re sensitive, as you are, Kingsholt, like many places of trauma, gives you a sort of passport to go into the past.’
    ‘That’s news to me,’ said Sam, jokingly. ‘When my Dad was around, he always kept my passport for me. At least I’m in charge now, or think I am.’
    Aidan laughed and took advantage of Sam’s apparent good humour. ‘Come on, let’s go and have some tea.’
    But Sam persisted. ‘It’s this place,’ he said again, ‘it’s creepy. I’ve never been on two levels at once at home.’
    Of course, that wasn’t quite true. There was the time he saw Dad standing in his green pyjamas at the bottom of his bed, but that was a different thing altogether.