headlights, glowing all around me with a sullen pearlescent light. The electric light couldn’t seem to penetrate far into the mists, but I was still damned if I’d slow down. That didn’t feel at all safe. It was hard to judge distances on the moor with no landmarks. No way to tell how much of it I’d crossed, or how much more there was to go. The whole setting had a dreamlike quality. The howling of the wolves was getting closer, now on this side, now on that. And above the wolves I could hear the wind howling, gathering its strength, building a storm. But although I could hear the wind, I couldn’t feel the smallest breath of it inside the car. The Bentley was still protecting me from everything in this world.
A massive old-fashioned house appeared abruptly in the car’s headlights, not far ahead of me. I swung the car around, and once again slowed down for a good look. If only because there was so little else to look at in the desolate open moorland. The house stood alone, in the dark. There was no road or drive leading to it. The house was huge, towering above me, with dozens of windows on several floors. It looked to be even bigger than Drood Hall. And the look of the place, the feel of it, was just . . . wrong. It didn’t feel like a house, or a home; it felt like a tomb. A place of the dead.
Light blazed fiercely from the dozens of windows. More light spilled from the open front door. A sick, yellow, feverish light. Unhealthy. I could see human forms standing silhouetted against the windows, outlined by the fierce light. Moving slowly, ominously. And someone, or perhaps something, stood in the open doorway to watch me pass. It was big, filling the whole doorway, and there was something really wrong about the way it stood and held itself. Not human. Or at least, not human enough. Again, I felt an almost overwhelming impulse to stop and get out of the car, to go inside the house and find out what the hell was going on in there. I forced the impulse down, sped up, and drove on. Getting out while the getting was good.
Only this time, the house came running after me.
It seemed to just sweep along beside the Bentley, shooting silently over the moorland, maintaining the same distance from the car. I slammed my foot down hard, and the Bentley surged forward. The house kept up with me, racing along, the figures still standing silhouetted in the blazing windows, the dark presence still filling the open front door. A whole house moving like a ship under sail. Pursuing me silently, menacingly, as though we had unfinished business. I was just starting to think about reaching for the car’s weapons systems when the house began to lose speed, and just like that it fell behind me as the Bentley roared on. When I looked for the house in my rearview mirror, it wasn’t there any more. No sign to show it had ever been.
It occurred to me then that someone was trying to scare me. That this moor, this whole world, had been set up just to terrorise me. As though I was driving through an old Hammer horror movie. The standing stones, and the cemetery, and the old dark house—they were all standard horror icons. I laughed out loud. I had seen far scarier things in my time as a Drood field agent. And besides, I used to love all those old Hammer movies. Used to really enjoy staying up late of an evening when I was a kid, watching a horror double bill on late-night television. Sitting on that battered old sofa, with Uncle Jack on one side and Uncle James on the other. Feeling scared and excited and utterly safe. We must have watched every film Hammer ever made, along with most of the Amicus and Tyburn films too. I can still remember my uncle Jack getting quite excited when he saw that Quatermass and the Pit was coming on; and saying to me You’re in for a real treat with this one, Eddie. And how right he was.
I used to love watching Peter Cushing and Christopher Lee, as Frankenstein and Dracula and the Mummy. And not forgetting that amazing classic The Abominable Snowman. Which I later discovered to be a lot closer to the truth than most people realise.