up against a bookcase. The walls were lined with books. Marc could not see an inch of wallpaper because there were so many ceiling-high bookshelves fitted along the walls, and volumes of differing sizes took up every inch of them. There were also books and dusty old box files lined up on the floor, along the skirting boards.
“Wow... this is quite a collection.” He walked around the room, examining the spines. There were books on religion and philosophy, aviation, birds and wildlife. Shakespeare rubbed shoulders with Orwell and Stephen King. Biographies were stacked next to fiction. There was no recognisable order – no apparent system – to any of it. The majority of the volumes seemed to focus on Fortean subjects – real life ghosts and hauntings, sightings of monsters in lakes, murders, abductions, disappearances, UFOs, cryptos and tulpas. “He was really into this stuff, wasn’t he?”
“So it seems.” Rose went to the roof-mounted Velux window and opened the tilted venetian blind, allowing a little natural light into the musty room. “He was always interested in strange stuff, and I remember he started collecting books on these subjects when he was a child. I didn’t realise he’d kept it up.”
Marc’s eyes roved over magazine collections: The Fortean Times, The Unexplained, I Want to Believe, National Geographic, The New Scientist... full sets, probably worth a small fortune on eBay.
One entire shelf differed from the rest in the fact that it was dedicated to a single subject. Marc had heard the name Roanoake before, but couldn’t quite remember where or when. He selected a book at random from that particular shelf – The Roanoake Colony: An American Mystery. He flicked through the pages, skimming a few lines here and there, not taking much of it in until something snagged in his memory.
“Ah, yes...” He remembered it now: an infamous case. He’d read an article about it, seen a documentary on TV. A bunch of 16th Century English settlers had vanished mysteriously from an island off the coast of North Carolina. Carved into the trunk of a nearby tree, not far from the deserted camp, was the word Croatoan. There were a lot of theories on why the one-hundred and eighteen people had apparently fallen off the edge of the world, leaving behind only this vague, slightly creepy message – local Indians, cannibalism, alien abduction – and the books on this shelf seemed to examine each and every one of them in great detail.
At the end of the row of books, tucked away slightly because it was so slender a volume, Marc spotted something potentially interesting. A school exercise book with a tattered blue cover, its edges dog-eared. He replaced the book he was looking at and selected this other one, sliding it out of its place on the shelf.
On the cover was handwritten the title Croatoan and Loculus: a Study in Vanishment.
“What is it?” Rose drew close, peering at the book in Marc’s hands.
“I’m not sure. But it looks like your brother was working on something here – writing a book of his own, maybe, or at least an essay. Maybe he wanted to be published in one of those magazines he seemed to like so much.”
He began to leaf through the exercise book. Written neatly on the pages was what appeared to be a series of rough notes, fractured jottings probably penned in great haste judging by the state of the handwriting. The text was unfinished; first draft material. This was clearly something Harry Rose had been planning to develop further but his demise had brought his plans to an abrupt end.
Marc read out a section at random:
“Carved into another tree nearby – an oak tree, which isn’t indigenous to that area – was the word ‘Loculus’. None of the books mention this. It has been expunged from history. Why?”
He turned the pages and read some more:
“The ruby-throated hummingbird is a native of North Carolina. Why have these birds been seen in the Grove throughout history, particularly around the area where the Needle was built? Did they come through from Roanoake?”
He looked up from the page. The room darkened incrementally and when he glanced up at the roof and out of the tiny window, he saw that dark clouds were massing, like harbingers of a storm.
He cleared his throat and read some more:
“The name Terryn Mowbray was recorded on the shipping manifest (but oddly not on the actual passenger list – was he classed as luggage? Stored in a coffin, perhaps,