Craven Manor(47)

Daniel looked behind himself. Thick plant cover butted up against both sides of the path. Vines tangled between gnarled pines. There was no sign of the road.

It might have fallen out of use at the same time as the road to Craven Manor. In that case, it would be overgrown.

Daniel hung close to the path’s edge and skimmed the plants and the ground for any signs of a disused track. Two hundred years could do a lot to remove humanity’s meddling. It had done a remarkable job swallowing the flagstones leading to Craven Manor, and it seemed to have been just as thorough in erasing the path to Flinton.

Daniel moved at a crawl. The woods seemed impenetrable, and by the time Daniel had covered the same ground three times, he was starting to think the track was permanently gone. He stopped to lean against a trunk and wipe sweat off of his forehead. A small fallen tree caught his eye. It didn’t match its surroundings. Daniel tilted his head; the tree was narrow and strangely blocky, and when straight, it wouldn’t have been any taller than his head.

A signpost. Daniel grinned as he dug leaf litter away from the post’s base. As he’d hoped, a mostly crumbled sign protruded from the ground. The words were long gone, but he was certain it had once pointed to the mystery town.

There was no sign of stones among the tree roots, so Daniel guessed it had been a dirt path. He stuck out blind and hoped he was moving in approximately the right direction. Shoot for the moon. If you miss, you’ll die horribly in the void of space.

A frightened chuckle escaped him. He didn’t fancy freezing to death in the forest, but the sun was only just past its zenith. He had time to retreat back to the road if he couldn't find Flinton within a couple of hours.

Provided I can find my way back. He was beginning to wish he’d brought a ball of string or paint to mark his path.

But then his foot slipped into a hollow. As he straightened himself, he realised the ground wasn’t perfectly even. A long, snake-like bump rose above the forest floor, an arm’s length wide. He peered through the trees; the ridge continued as far as he could see. The road to Flinton had been raised to protect it from floods and snows. It wasn’t more than a foot, but as long as he kept to the high ground, he wouldn’t become lost.

That was easier said than done. The plants were thick to the point of being smothering. Several times, Daniel had to slide off the road to wend his way around a nasty snarl, and every step was a struggle.

He knew he had to be on the right path, but worry began to niggle at him as the sun fell lower and grim grey clouds replaced the clear skies. When do I call it quits? How dark does it have to get before I give up and try another day?

The answer wasn’t pretty. Daniel knew he would stay out as long as it took to either corroborate Kyle’s story or exonerate his friend.

He hadn’t expected the word friend to enter his mind when thinking about the Myrickses. The relationship had been full of doubt from its early days, but when he searched his soul, he realised he’d become so invested in the family that he had started to think of them as friends.

It wasn’t a close sit-for-hours-and-chat kind of friendship. But a loyalty existed, the kind that had made Daniel instinctively bristle against Kyle’s accusations.

That’s a dangerous path to go down. You trusted Kyle far longer than you should have. Has Bran really earned your loyalty?

Daniel hated the circular argument he’d become trapped in. He hadn’t had a close, honest friendship since his grandmother’s passing—and it wasn’t for lack of trying. It left him feeling like a man adrift in the ocean, clutching at seaweed and sea foam no matter how many times they collapsed under his fingers.

His foot slipped, and he clutched at a tree to keep his balance. He’d spent the previous moments fixated on the ground beneath his feet, and when he finally looked up, he saw dark shapes clustered among the trees to either side. They were large and blocky, and it took a moment to realise what he was looking at.

Houses.





Chapter Twenty-One





Daniel took a deep breath and left the trail to approach the nearest building to his left. The stone house was small—about the size of his groundskeeper’s cottage—and its walls were painted black by grime. Part of its roof had collapsed, and one wall bent inwards.

That, at least, proved part of Kyle’s claim: there was a town, and it had been abandoned. Daniel got as close to the building as the vegetation would allow him and tried to look through the window. Everything he could see was crumbled and rotted beyond recognition.

He clambered back to the road. More houses and fences flanked him as he moved closer to the town’s centre. They were all relics, barely recognisable amongst the living trees. The stone structures had mostly survived, but Daniel also passed bare foundations and piles of decay which must have been wooden buildings.

The plants became thinner as brown, dry, waist-high grass covered the road. Daniel suspected he’d entered the town proper. The ground was too firmly packed to allow much to grow, but thin, struggling trees had still managed to put down roots. Dilapidated houses, at least a hundred of them, spread across the plane. Larger buildings gathered in a cluster fifty yards ahead to mark what had once been the main street.

Spanish moss hung from rooftops, and their long tendrils shifted in the wind. Most of the stones were covered in lumpy moss, and all but a handful of windows were broken. One house had a dozen metal birdcages strung around its front door. They still clinked together, though rust had muffled and deepened the sound. Daniel rose up onto his toes to see inside the cages and found a cluster of tiny bones buried in the grime.