The Little Black Book

To the sole beneficiary,

I was more than a little insulted when I saw the back of you that day. I suppose you find it surprising to find yourself addressed on the first page of this little black book, but there you are. It’s been ten years by my count, but I know it will be many more before you read this. It comes to you as my price for the fortune you are to inherit from me. When you have read it, everything I had will be yours. The house. The fortune. The lands. The secrets.

This will be your one chance to renounce it all, and me. If you read any further, you will be committed.

Are you still reading? Good.

It’s of a piece with what you must have thought of me in life. You weren’t ever really given a choice about coming to me when your father died. But then, I didn’t get a say in that either, much though I might have liked to. My cousin wasn’t much of a man. I vaguely heard him whining here and there about his various misfortunes and bleating excuses about why he thought they justified his continual failure. It was rather pathetic and your short, perfunctory mourning of him was testament to that.

I admit, when you came to me I was very curious. A lack of character in the parents has one of two effects on the child. Either they’re even less interesting or they have nurtured a spark inside themselves, tempered by the resentment of the mediocrity from whence they came. You deceived me at first. Thirteen and mousy, I saw no hint of any fire in your grey eyes.

I have no art for kindness, to children or to strangers, and I think you resented this. But what I could see is that, unlike your father, you weren’t stupid. And so, slowly, you discovered the truth for yourself.

The house at the end of Leigh Avenue is an old one. It has stood in one form or another since the Romans were here, though its current form was built about two hundred years ago. It has bathed in the histories and the fires of many an empire and served many gods. And as its most recent steward it was my task to oversee it and keep its secrets. This left me no time for children, family or any kind of life at all really. I was too busy immersing myself in old mysteries and ancient arcane learning to be much use as your guardian.

You found friends, I know this. Mrs Barry is a kindly old soul who was once the friend to me that she was to you when first I came to the house. It was in the hands of my uncle when that happened and I‘m certain from there our stories become regrettably similar. In fact if you read further in you’ll find his letter to me. But I shall tell you more about that as we go.

I was older than you by a year when I came to the house. It was a magnificent thing, an edifice of grey stone and testament to the respect for posterity shown by the people who made it. Its grounds were modest for an estate of its esteem and there were almost no staff, apart from Mrs Barry the housekeeper. Merely a middle-aged old spinster who it seemed was given the impossible task of dusting the place and making tea.

My uncle’s description will no doubt be rather familiar to you. A tall man with grey hair, worn long. He was groomed like a vaudevillian demon with insane eyes behind half-rimmed spectacles. If he smiled it was accidental and if he spoke it was with mockery or impatience.

He hated children too, though I was young enough, energetic enough and resourceful enough to make my own fun and enjoy my own company. The place was large and welcoming to one of such resource. I particularly found myself drawn to the Library in the west wing, where I later found you to be spending the majority of your time. Though I daresay I was more drawn to the relics I found there than the books I would often catch you reading.

The house was welcoming more or less proportionate to its host’s inhospitality. But that, you realise, is simply its trick. You realised it the same as I did once, and more or less in the same way. There are no guests in that house. There are only occupants and those of us who get away.

Yes. I left too. I daresay you did not expect that.

I told you I was insulted before. I was. Not by you. God knows there are horrors enough beneath this house to make anyone wish to leave and flee to the comforts and distractions of modernity. I was insulted to see vindicated something I truly did not believe in until that very moment; The inevitability of fate. I was insulted, not because you left, but because I knew you would one day return. The forces that this house keeps from the world bind us to a merciless truth; There must always be steward here.

I left when I was eighteen. Disgusted by the thought that I should be enslaved to toil away in the name of keeping these things here. Forced to endure endless horrors night after night, to the point that the fantastical becomes tedium. What frightened me as a child were the things in the dark with teeth and glowing eyes and compelling voices.

What terrified me as a man was the thought of being their curator in this eldritch gallery.

And yet, it was my fate to return. As it is yours now.

You might thank whatever powers you like that I managed to continue this long and give you the time you’ve had, but the bill comes due eventually and the House will have its way.

I was twenty-four years old when I returned, summoned as though to court, by the death of my uncle. I have served faithfully for forty years. Now it is your turn.

Let me say here that the life itself is not so bad. There is plenty to this place, wonders as well as horrors. Your life as you knew it is over I am afraid, and you cannot bring anyone out there in here, though one day, one will come.

You will mark the time by the pages in this book. More will appear to replace these at the front. As they do you will know the time you have left. You will fill them with what you have learned and lived, as I have and then, when the time comes, perforce you must write a letter of your own.

In the meantime, Mrs Barry will be good company. She keeps a good house and is handy with the Greek fire in a pinch. She will answer the silver bell but there will days when she will not. Do not seek her then.

Finally let me apologise. I have no more say in this than you do, but if I had I would not have it so. You leave a far more blessed life behind than I did. A husband. A son. Yes, your letters reached me, even if I made no reply. They will not understand and perhaps you will not. But this is the duty for which we are made and trust me when I say we are not made to defy it.

Reading further you will find my collected wisdom and that of those who came before me. Perchance you might find better cause to understand me than I ever gave you in life.

It is a grim task Alexandra, and lonely. But it is ours.

Forever your friend and guide.

Lucien De Fray.

- Extract found on the (formerly) first page of the Little Black Book.