Three Mile Drove Chapter Three, part one (standard:horror, 1882 words) [3/29] show all parts
Author: Brian Cross	Added: Mar 13 2006	Views/Reads: 3134/2182	Part vote: 0.00 (0 votes)
First part of third chapter about a fading musician who inherits a run-down bungalow in the English fens and ends up with more than he bargained for.

CHAPTER THREE, part one 

Darren Goldwater had been feeling low, in fact about as low as he could
recall. Even allowing for his all night drink and drug sessions, the 
aftermath had seldom left him feeling as dejected and depressed as 
this. He'd finally slit open the official looking white envelope that 
lay on the mat, but with all the enthusiasm of a production line 
operative on a grim Monday morning. He frowned at the contents, then 
ran his jaded eyes over the letter again. 

It was from a solicitor, Henley and Son, of Ely, Cambridgeshire. From
his experience a solicitor's letter invariably spelt trouble, though 
not on this occasion it seemed. An elderly relative had passed away, 
leaving him his bungalow that also included a smallholding of 
approximately fifty acres. Apparently, with no other relatives to pass 
the place onto, it had been handed down to him. 

Sam Regan was the name of the deceased, a cousin of his parents, Bill
and Janet who had died in a train crash three years back. Not for the 
first time he lost the battle to stop his mind travelling back, like an 
unwilling prisoner to a grim jail, at the memory of the night he'd 
returned home to find a card on his mat. He'd been playing a gig, got 
back in the early hours and picked up the note from the constabulary, 
it asked him to contact them. 

Darren thought it must be some minor misdemeanour, he'd done himself,
perhaps reported for dangerous driving or something, so he'd left it 
until morning, only to find that there had been a fatal train crash 
somewhere in the west country. His parents had been travelling back 
from a holiday there, the train they had been on had collided head on 
with another, there had been many fatalities, and they had been amongst 
them. They had been identified by their belongings. 

He'd felt a pit opening in the core of his stomach; it had seemed big
enough to engulf him. It had been the last thing that he or anybody 
could have expected, but a cruel reminder of the gut wrenching shocks 
that life could lay on you. 

Darren turned around, clearing his head of the painful memories and laid
the letter on a kitchen worktop. 

There was a distant notion that he'd visited the old codger with his
parents, as a youngster. He could vaguely recall a dingy, brown place, 
set amidst a flat, equally uninteresting landscape and of encountering 
an untidy, middle aged man with abominable toiletry habits. 

The news of the inheritance had hardly driven Darren into a fit of
ecstasy, it was not as if he had inherited the national lottery when 
all said and done. For one thing, if the bungalow had seemed to be in a 
bad state to the mind of a child, what was it likely to be like now, as 
he, himself, approached middle age? And what of the countryside, from 
what he could recall it had been about as inviting to him as a lunar 
landscape. In short, what would he do with the place other than abandon 
it to rot? 

On the other hand his music career seemed at an end if he were to face
facts, with no prospect of resurrection. His relations with his former 
band members looked like erupting into bitter acrimony, and worse, his 
long time affair with the tempestuous Goldie had sunk to new depths. He 
had no prospect of maintaining his current extravagant lifestyle and 
little or no chance of meeting his current financial commitments. 

Time for a change perhaps, but what the hell did he know about
smallholding? He supposed it wouldn't do any harm to pay the place a 
visit. Darren glanced at the letter again; the address of the place was 
given as Old Bridge Farm, Three Mile Drove, Bramble Dyke. Where the 
hell was that? Somewhere near Ely he guessed. 

Darren dropped the letter onto a kitchen work surface and then climbed
the stairs to the small box room he used as a study. He grabbed an 
atlas from the bookcase, ignoring the loose top cover as it fell to the 
floor; he flipped through the worn pages of the index. No trace of 
Bramble Dyke, but what did he expect? From his hazy memories the place 
had hardly seemed the hub of civilisation. 



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