Herbert O' Doyle was a very simple man. Simplistic in his ways, simplistic in his tastes, he believed all good things in life were earned, rather than gained. You would think a rich man of his stature in his early 60's could sit back, put his feet up and relax. But Herbert despised the idea, for he was one to never be seen doing nothing - as he often quotes, doing nothing 'made his teeth itch'.
No, Herb was always doing something; from building new furniture to tending to the gardens, he was up and about 24/7. So much so, people who visited his Manor grounds surmised he ran on clockwork, an unfeeling machine unable to do nothing but grind on methodically through the day. Sadly, what the people didn't realise is that he was, in fact, at the mercy of his obsessive compulsive disorder - his own snarling little demon he'd had to live with for his whole life. If the hedges were not trimmed perfectly, the demon would snarl. If one of the visitor rooms looked too empty, the demon would snarl. If, goodness, a spoon was laid out of line, the demon would snarl, make his head whirl, only in correcting the anomaly would stop it gnawing at his stomach.
There was one advantage to having OCD, however, and that was he knew every corner and cranny of both the O' Doyle Mansion and the gardens outside. Well, that was what he'd thought, anyway.
For upon the morning of Saturday the 2nd August 2016, Herbert discovered a secret his predecessors had hidden, even from himself. A secret that defied common knowledge and that had probably brought about his late family's considerate wealth.
A secret that he would later come to wish he'd never known.
- - -
It was by sheer accident he'd discovered the shed. Upon clearing out the weeds and grasses that had started clogging the miniature river that ran through the gardens, he had slipped, tumbled into the water, and been left facing the back end of the river. The fall wasn't severe enough to hurt him, but enough to dislodge a few rocks in the river bank's side.
At first he saw nothing but dead leaves, mud and moss covered sandstone, but upon further inspection his eyes came across a sharp glint that caught in the sun's glare. To him it looked like a metal plate, or maybe a blade, rusted up and stained near beyond recognition. But, it was unmistakably metal. And whatever it was, it was horrifically out of place.
To say that it had been purely compulsion, not curiosity, that had led Herb to clear off the mud and rock from the bank could possibly be a lie - but to say that curiosity had not proceeded him to open the metal door behind definitely is. For as soon as Herb saw the sand chewn handle his mind immediately wanted to know what was beyond. And before he even knew what he was doing, the door was open and he was climbing inside.
- - -
It turned out the door led directly to a series of catacombs beneath the Manor grounds - something Herb had been completely oblivious to. Ever since a child he had lived here, brought up with his parents, shown the many secrets that hid within the grounds by his late father.
All apart from this one.
His father had disappeared long ago, his mother explaining that he'd found another woman and had left. Herb hadn't believed that, from the almost desperate plea in his mother's eyes to the fact he knew his father had loved his family, he couldn't help but think of it as a lie. And up until now, he had dismissed that thought - for if his father hadn't run away, where was he? But finding this cavern of wandering tunnels, he realised maybe his gut instinct had been right all along; could his father have got lost in these tunnels, unable to escape and subsequently died?
Or maybe he was still here, alive but not quite living.
Herb had shivered at that point. Thinking such thoughts in a dimly lit place like this would only cause his minds to play tricks. If he lost his head, or his way, he would never get back.
There was a very real danger he would suffer the same fate others down here probably had.
He shook his head, cleared the thoughts, and walked on - tirelessy trundling along until he finally came to a dead end where the rocky walls collided together.
- - -
What he'd found was far beyond amazing. Where the walls had closed together someone had crudely chiseled out a door way, 6ft high with a curved arch reminiscent of victorian architecture. The method was clumsy, the jagged stone sharp and even dangerously dagger-like in places. Just like teeth guarding a gaping mouth.
When Herb had finally gone through that doorway he had entered a vast hall, supported by limestone pillars, half eroded, and a floor lined with smooth granite slabs. The air inside was musky, almost miasmic, and stale. The very atmosphere itself was of death, as if the very oxygen that it consisted of had deceased. Even the stone walls resembled long abandoned corpses.
But these things Herb quickly disregarded, for lined in two perfect rows down both sides of the hall were twelve golden statues, sun-kissed and glinting amber in the light of his torch.
There were six on either side, some missing arms, other devoid of heads, but what tied all these masterpieces together was the deliberate attention to detail. And that they were all female.
He could pick out the minute hairs upon their bare arms, the slight bumps under the skin where the arteries knotted around their wrists. For those with heads, their hair flew out around them, as if caught in a summer breeze, and, most fascinatingly, Herb could gaze into their eyes and see the brushed lines of the iris and the miniscule veins around the edge of their sockets. The attention was precocious, compulsively perfect, and the result was dazzlingly beautiful.
When he'd eventually torn his eyes away from the statues, Herb's gaze fell upon the dankly lit shed sat right at the back of the hall. It was ugly, falling apart in places and obviously riddled with wood rot. Surrounded by the statues of gold, it looked sorely out of place, like a stray dog that's wandered onto a Crufts show.
Not even realising, he started towards it, by-passing the statues and their grimacing faces, instinctively seeking to open the shed door and peer inside. Why would this be down here? The sculptures are unexplainable but having a garden shed locked deep in some catacombs is even stranger. Maybe it's owner forgot about it... or wanted no one to ever find it.
And that's when he realised something was stuck to the bottom of his shoe, stopping him merely a few yards from the shed. Reaching down, he ripped it off and opened it up, the sprawling hand writing instantly denoting it was a note of some kind.
Ignorant to the sudden wind behind him that wheezed through the archway, Herbert started to read the final words of his long lost father.
- - -
1st story of my 'Tales from the Otherside' book - it's not finished yet.