Free Nyctophobia by Christopher Fowler

here.’
    ‘I’m not just going to be the lady of the house, Mateo,’ I warned. ‘I want to get back to work and make something of myself, even if it’s as an architectural writer. I have plans – I can’t just sit around.’
    ‘Of course you do, but let’s take it one step at a time. Get used to this place first. Exert your authority, make all the changes you want but respect the past. That’s how we do things here.’
    ‘You mean the paintings?’ Rosita had warned us about not moving them. ‘I’m starting to kind of like them. They belong in the house.’
    ‘It’s your call. I know Rosita won’t be happy when I send in my man to take the remaining bits of equipment out of the basement. I’ve told her we’re going to improve the electrical supply, and she’s fine with that. This isn’t France, where everything’s frozen in the past. We adapt, but I’m sure we’ll find our own way of doing it. Come on, let’s have some dinner. Rosita went to the fish market this morning and is preparing something special.’
    ‘How does she get there?’ I asked, knowing that the market took place every Tuesday in Gaucia.
    ‘There’s a farmer over the ridge who picks her up. She does his mending in return and cooks him the odd meal. Everyone helps each other here. You’ll soon see.’
    The great table in the dining room had been covered in old lace and laid out with thick white china plates filled with sea bass, squid and clams. Bowls of salad, inky black rice, fat long-stemmed onions called calçots , and stacks of tomato-bread sat between the piles of steaming fish. The sheer amount of food on display robbed me of hunger.
    ‘Rosita still cooks as if there was a big family here,’ said Mateo, reading my mind. ‘We can leave what we can’t eat for her and Jerardo. Anyway, we need to fatten you up, remember?’
    I wished my mother had never mentioned my eating problems. ‘I’ll do my best,’ I promised, and began to serve. ‘Jerardo doesn’t look like he’s had a hot meal in years – or a bath – but I’ll ask Rosita to share the food out.’
    ‘Maybe he has a family of his own stashed away somewhere,’ said Mateo. ‘A bunch of tiny gnome-like people in the potting shed. Did you get a chance to take a proper look around the rest of the house?’ He accepted a platter of soft white squid carapaces.
    ‘I thought I’d start with the grounds and work my way in,’ I told him. ‘There’s a small barn full of insects and rotting hay behind the well. Oh, and the statue on the sundial, I presume it’s meant to be Hyperion’s son, Helios. I looked him up. Hyperion was one of the Earth’s twelve Titans, ‘The High One’. Helios was the physical incarnation of the sun. He’s mentioned by Keats and Shakespeare, and he’s in Marvel Comics. I haven’t found any reference of him holding the black and white disc though, but it must represent something; yin and yang, perhaps, the world held in balance.’
    Mateo laughed. ‘It sounds like you’ve already made a start on the book.’
    ‘I’ve got the kind of mind facts stick to. I could bore you for hours with the history of windowsills. I want to get a real feel for the place first. It’s quite disconcerting to look at the house, get on with something and look back a few minutes later.’
    ‘Why?’
    ‘The shadows don’t move,’ I explained. ‘That’s when you notice the perpetual flat light. I really need to uncover the background history. I ran a few internet searches today but they didn’t lead anywhere. Usually you’d expect to find something.’
    ‘I guess the family really did manage to protect their privacy. There was nothing about the original architect?’
    ‘I only know what Julia told me. The property had been posted on her website for over a year. Despite its grandeur, it’s not a very prepossessing building when you photograph it in harsh light, and there’s the problem of the location and the price, so they had virtually no