On the high moors, lonely, storm-swept and silent, stands the ruin of Saint Martin's Abbey. On a summer's afternoon, a feeling of deep peace surrounds the ruin, yet the the broken walls conceal a dark secret, a tragic mystery dating back many centuries. And in the region the abbey has earned quite a reputation. Mention St. Martins to the locals and they'll give you an odd look at once and say, "You know it's haunted."

When Rick Gray buys Rokeby cottage in the nearby village of Little Swinvale, all he's looking for is the peace and quiet to find himself again, after years of working -- succeeding -- in the difficult, demanding trade of the professional photographer. A storm is looming, close to sundown. The lighting conditions are perfect for the kind of spectacular images which have made him famous. Against all advice, he heads out to the abbey to work fast while the light holds...

And when it fades, a tiny fragment of the mystery of St. Martin's finds its way into his hands.

He calls himself John -- just John. For Rick, it's love a first sight. And the next twenty-four hours of his life will be beyond anything he ever imagined. If he had not seen and felt it all with his own senses, he would never have believed it.

But seeing ... feeling ... is believing.

UMBRIEL
Mel Keegan and Jayne DeMarco
Published by DreamCraft
ISBN: 978-0-9807092-5-4
44,000 words
Cover: Jade
Heat level: 3.5
Ebook: $5.50
Ebook formats: PDF for PC/MAC, Kindle (for Kindle & iPad)
Release date: August 1, 2010


See a selection of images chosen especially by Jayne - locations exactly like those you'll see in Umbriel, including the abbey ruin, the countryside and the village!

Read an excerpt

Chapter One

"You know it's haunted." Paul Morrison drained his glass and set it down on the dark, scarred wood of the bar. The pub was so old, it might have grown out of the landscape, with its thatched roof and thick, whitewashed walls, and the bartender who looked to be at least half as old.

At this hour of the afternoon they were the only patrons. An elderly sheepdog and a black cat drowsed by the hearth, but the pub might otherwise have been a crypt. Rick Gray liked it, and liked the bartender. Both appealed to the artist in him, the spirit that disliked the usual, the ordinary and mundane.

The same spirit had brought him out of the city in search of clean air, solitude, time and space to write, hours to spend roaming the local moorland and woods, and to invest in multitudes of projects � most of which would come to nothing. But a few of his projects always bore fruit, and these were his livelihood, his business. His camera, his skill, and his artist's eye were his greatest assets.

"Haunted?" Rick gave Paul a mocking look, over the rim of his own glass. The local ale was thick and strong, dark as the gathering shadows which seemed to congeal in the pub's corners. Afternoon was almost spent, and the sky was low. The air was heavy, sultry, alive with the disturbing sensation of an approaching change in the weather.

"There's a legend," Paul began, waving for the barman, and another beer.

He was elegant today, in black slacks, business shirt, black leather jacket, Italian loafers, all of which made a statement without Paul needing to say a word. Rick could never compete with him. Paul was taller by a hand's span, with the big shoulders, the muscular thighs, the thick, dark hair which he wore a little long because his features were broad, rich, and the long hair was stunning on him. By contrast, Rick was smaller, and his body utterly defied him. It was gym-proof. The more time he spent lifting weights, the thinner he became; his hair was mid-brown and grew in the wrong directions, so he wore it cropped short, and his eyes were plain dark brown, while Paul's were green with flecks of gold. It had been no contest since the day they met.

"There's always a legend," Rick retorted. "This part of the country's alive with them."

Paul had grown up in the area, and since boyhood he had entertained a fascination for the bizarre. He met Rick at high school, and like knew like at a glance. They were both fourteen, both gay, both hungry for experience. Twenty years later, they were simply friends, and when Rick wanted to invest in a place out of town where peace and quiet came as part of the package with the antiquated plumbing and the mended roof, it was Paul he called.

The old abbey ruins on Byland moor were haunted? Trust him to know about it. "A legend," he repeated. "If you don't believe me, ask Tony Costerson. He's the batty old fruitcake who runs the folk museum in the village �"

"If he's batty, why would I believe a word he says?"

"� he's got a boatload of goodies about the old ruin," Paul finished. "I don't remember much about it, but I do know it's Benedictine, it was a victim of King Henry himself, and it's haunted."

Rick finished his own beer and beckoned Paul toward the hearth. A small fire was set and as the afternoon aged, the flames became inviting. The red-gold light licked around the horse harness brasses and bronze plates, and the copper-handled fire irons. "I don't mind sharing the place with a ghost or two, so long as they stay the hell out of my pictures," Rick said with all due glibness. "All I want to do is photograph the ruins. They're haunted? Fine. They're also incredibly beautiful. Every time the light changes, they look different. Dawn, dusk, sunset � I could shoot five thousand frames in that place and never repeat myself."

"Uh huh." Paul draped an arm across his shoulders. "Well, you just watch out for spooks. If they bug you, tell 'em to come see me � they can walk through walls, right? Then they have to be a mine of stock tips. The ultimate in insider trading. You can't prosecute some bugger who's already dead." He drank again, and then set the glass on one end of the polished mahogany mantel, between the taxidermed grouse and salmon, and held his hands to the fire. "So, when are you going up there?"

"This afternoon," Rick mused.

"It's getting late already," Paul warned.

"But the gear's all in the car �"

"And the weather's turning."

"All the better." Rick sometimes wondered if Paul thought world-class images captured themselves, or if they were created inside a computer after some basic, boring shot was taken on a sunny morning. "You want great photographs, you have to put yourself where they are."

Paul shuddered. "Forgive me if I take off back to town � back to the comfort of a nice, warm office." He was a stockbroker, and a good one. He was the sole reason Rick could afford to buy the cottage known as Rokeby, a mid-eighteenth century haven of serenity and near silence, which stood at the end of the last lane to the south of Little Swinvale. The whole village was like something right out of a Peter Jackson movie, and Rick had fallen in love with it at first glance. Finding a �for sale' notice on a cottage there was beyond anything he could have dreamed. Actually being able to afford Rokeby was something else �and this was Paul's brilliance.

The stockbroker was already looking at his watch, and Rick knew what he was going to say. It was a long drive back to Leeds, and the offices of Althorp, Hopkins and Dean. "You ought to be moving," Rick said, forestalling the predictable remark, "if you're going to get home in daylight, and before the weather breaks."

"And since I'm in a ragtop," Paul agreed, "I keep one eye on the sky."

"Told you, you should have bought the SUV," Rick chided.

"Like you? Perish the thought, loverboy. Give some thought to the environment," Paul said dryly.

"I need the Toyota to carry so much gear and get into places that'd kill an ordinary car. The things I do? Your wheels wouldn't survive an afternoon." Rick looked out through the window, with its tiny panes of glass � genuine antique leaded lights � and gave the green Land Cruiser a frown. It stood in the last of the grudging afternoon sun, battered, patched and repaired, hard worked for most of a decade now. "You know the kind of trouble I like to get myself into."

He had made a name for himself for risking the kind of situations, in odd and distant places, that had twice won him the cover of National Geographic. Paul would never understand, but so long as he wrangled the investment capital, kept the money flowing through canny deals, Rick was happy.

"Gotta push off," Paul said with a last glance at his watch. He leaned over and kissed Rick's cheek, which might not have raised an eyebrow in Paris or Geneva or London, but here in Little Swinvale it earned them a glare from a barman who had yet to catch up with the twentieth century. "Ciao, honey." Paul was shrugging into his jacket. "For what it's worth, I think you'll be bored to death in a month, and the cottage will be right back on the market."

"Not a chance," Rick scoffed. "It's peace and quiet I want, and they sell that by the acre in this neck of the woods."

Paul looked him up and down critically. "What you want? You know what you need?"

"I know what you think I need," Rick said acidly.

"You need a solid, decent guy to make an honest man of you," Paul told him quietly. "You need to put down a few roots. You need somebody to love, somebody who'll make sure you keep both feet on the ground. You're 34, Ricky. You're still bouncing around like the proverbial loose cannon, and I'll bet you're using the tweezers to pluck out the first silver ones."

Rick ouched. "You're telling me, I'm running out of time?"

"I'm just saying," Paul argued, "burying yourself in the boonies is not the way you're going to meet somebody. Shit, Ricky, you'll be lucky to find somebody around here who'll roll you over and do you once in a while, much less put a ring on your finger and start picking out curtains!"

"Maybe I'm not ready for middle age just yet," Rick grumbled. "All I want is somewhere quiet, where I can think for a change. London was starting to drive me right �round the bend. Too many people, too much noise."

"Well, if you wanted a churchyard with lights, this would be it. You could eat brown rice and contemplate your navel to your heart's content out here." Paul gave him a poke in the chest with one long forefinger. "Mark my words. This soul-searching kick is going to last about six weeks, then you'll be out there in the garden hammering the �for sale' sign right back in! After you've got it set up, give me a bell, and I'll see if I can't make us both some nice money on the resale. The yuppie crowd are dying to get into this area."

He was wrong, but Rick was not about to get into the old argument again. Paul was a farm kid, bred and born in the sheep country north of the village, and when he made his escape from the wilds � headed to London, first high school and then business college � he swore a herd of wild horses would not drag him back here. Only the lure of a smart property investment would persuade him to return, and then only for a day.

The pub's heavy door swung shut behind him, and Rick watched through the tiny glass panes as his old friend headed out to the �catch me, arrest me red' BMW convertible which sat beside the battered old Toyota, looking like a diva beside a venerable, weather-beaten farmhand.

The furniture van had swung by in the morning; the cottage was an ocean of boxes, but Rick was content to throw a sleeping bag on the mattress tonight and worry about unpacking tomorrow. The camera gear was his sole priority, and as he had told Paul, it was all in the Toyota.

With a honk of the horn, the BWM pulled out. The high-revving engine was audible all the way to the junction, where the narrow side road teed with the motorway. As the sound faded to nothing Rick stretched his shoulders, listened to the snap, crackle and pop of his spine, and for the first time he thought he felt relaxation setting in.

It was the hustle and rush of the city he hated most. If one single element had brought him out of the streets of London, it was the urgent need to relax. The deep, desperate longing to unwind before his sinews snapped with the tension of living and striving in an industry that was getting tougher, more competitive, every day.

Fifteen years ago, fresh out of college and eager to be out and achieving, he backpacked Spain and Italy, biked his way across Greece, rode a bus beyond description through Nevada and Arizona, wore out his hiking boots in Mexico. Thousands of astonishing photographs established his professional name, won him the contracts to head out to even more improbable places, where the risks were greater, the images more striking � the pay checks more outrageous.

Even now he still thirsted for those scenes, the thrill of being on the edge, seeing and doing things that few Europeans ever had, ever would � and perhaps the piquancy of danger. But another side of Rick had begun to long for home � a place to plant a few roots, and to find the peace, the quiet, it took for a man to look inside himself, find his own soul and get to know it.

The city was not the place to do any of that. And Little Swinvale? Rick thought it might be. He had seen a large, black spider up in the corner of the parlor, as he signed off on the delivery of his goods and chattels, and he recalled the old superstition. A spider in the house was lucky.

Not that Rick was superstitious � though Paul was, with his rabbit's foot keyring and the Feng Sheui mirrors in his home, and the horseshoe over his office door. In fact, if Paul said the abbey ruins were haunted, he very likely believed they were.

Conscious of the relaxation seeping into his fibers, Rick finished his beer. He gathered both glasses, returned them to the bar, and was fishing out his wallet as he became aware of the old barman. His name was Ted, and he was watching Rick closely, sizing him up from behind impressively thick lenses in gold spectacle frames.

It was a safe bet the news would be all over the village in a few hours: the new resident, the weird photographer, was queer. Rick did not mind if the news got around; having the truth on everyone's lips would save awkward scenes later. He glanced down at himself, wondering if bluejeans and sneakers were taboo in this part of the country.

"Staying for dinner, Mr. Gray?" Ted offered in a nasal Lancashire accent which was no more local to the village than Rick's London voice.

"Not staying," Rick told him, "but I'll probably be back. I want to get some work done while the light's like this."

"Like what?" The barman stooped to peer through the ancient window glass. "It's getting stormy."

"That's exactly what I mean." Rick slid twenty from his wallet and left it on the counter with the glasses. "These skies make great pictures. I'm going up to the ruins, before I lose the light."

The man's eyes widened. "This late? You must be kidding me."

Rick favored him with a wry smile. "You mean, the old abbey's haunted � there's a legend." He nodded at the door, in the wake of the departed Paul. "He told me."

"And you don't believe a word of it." The old man swiped up the glasses. "You're likely to get yourself convinced."

"Yeah?" Rick slid the wallet into the inside pocket of his brown leather jacket, and flourished the keys to the Toyota. "Well, then, I'll be convinced, won't it?"

The bartender rolled his eyes and headed back to the kitchen with the glasses. "Dinner's on at seven. Lamb or chicken hotpot."

"Thanks. I'll probably show up about eight. There's only tinned food in the cottage, even if I felt in the mood to cook � which I don't tonight." He was on his way to the door. "I take the back road, do I? Up to the shoulder of the hill, then turn left?"

A disembodied voice floated out of the kitchen, where taps were running. "Take the road past Hopewood Farm, over the bridge, up the hill, and the ruins are right in front of you. It's not as far as it looks."

"Later," Rick called, and stepped out.

The air was heavy, humid, and the massive clouds which had hung in the northeast since morning loomed closer. The horizon was rain-slashed. Two hills over, northwards, rain was already falling, but the wind was so light, the weather front was coming south so slowly, Rick's best guess was that it would not reach the village much before midnight, by which time it would probably be rained out.

Little Swinvale was barely a dozen streets of gray- and white-walled cottages with properly trimmed hedges and obediently pruned roses. The real estate was expensive. The people who lived here had either inherited the cottages, or they were business people who could live with the high prices and long commute.

A few faces turned toward him as he left the pub; he smiled and waved dutifully, looking for anyone of his own age, perhaps his own temperament. And then he mocked himself. This was hardly the environment to hunt for a companion. And in that department Rick had never had much luck. His relationships were notoriously brief. They set out optimistically and soon ended in either yawns or tears, almost all of which were his own.

He swung up into the Toyota, twisted the key and listened to the rattle of an engine that had traveled a great many miles. The village wandered away along the curve of the main road. Paul had driven that way � back to the motorway, headed for the city. But Rick turned right out of the pub's small asphalt frontage, leaving the main road behind, and with it humans and their industries.



Chapter Two

A few of the trees were starting to turn, though autumn was still not quite ready to begin in earnest. The nights were growing longer, but afternoons were still hot. The turn of the seasons fascinated him now as much as ever. The slow slide of spring into summer and summer into autumn made him remember Aunt Grace, whose Craft was scorned twenty years ago � the same Craft which was becoming chic now. The back road was old and unserviced. Ruts and holes pitted it, deep as craters on the surface of the moon. Usually, only farm vehicles came up here. The ancient tarmac was imprinted with the tracks of immense tires; the ditches at the roadside were deeply dug by heavy vehicles.

Bouncing on its shocks, the Toyota skirted the holes and rucks, and he watched the hand-painted signboard of Hopewood Farm go by. Black faced sheep peered at him through post-and-wire fences; a bull, alone in his paddock on the shoulder of the hill, lifted his head for long enough to notice the car.

Then Rick was crossing a stone bridge so narrow, it would allow only one vehicle at a time, while a finger of late afternoon sun slanted from a gap in the clouds. The dusty windscreen sheeted out with dappled patterns cast by the neglected, abandoned orchard trees, challenging his vision.

Over the bridge, the road raked up sharply. He tramped on the accelerator, promised himself he would take the car in for an overdue service � next week at the latest � and came up out of the shadows of the old, forgotten orchard into the gold and purple light of late afternoon and the incoming storm.

These were the lighting conditions a photographer dreamed of, and prayed for. They could take the most mundane of scenes and render it into pure magic. Special effects executed in the computer could only imitate the reality, and being there to capture the magic itself was a large part of the thrill for Rick. He knew the digital artist's trickery, but he fell back on it only as a last resort.

According to tourist information and local gossip alike, the foundations of St. Martin's Abbey were a thousand years old, but it had stood in ruins since around the middle of the sixteenth century, when Henry VIII dissolved those monasteries that could not afford to pay bribes, and then made off with the lead from their roofs. St. Martin's was neither rich nor powerful. Its Benedictine monks were dispersed to other duties; the wilds swiftly encroached as the whole structure decayed.

Now, only the white bones remained of a building which must have been magnificent in its day. Foxes hunted there; hares boxed in March and a few fallow deer grazed the unkempt slopes on the east side, beyond the cloisters, where once the monastery garden would have flourished.

There was something arresting about the stark, exoskeletal remains, Rick thought. He had seen it for the first time six months before, when spring was breaking out of winter's bondage of mud and sleet; and at first glance it seemed to him that the great arches were the bones of some vast creature which had perished eons ago, and was just now weathering out of the turf as centuries of rain and snow wore down the landscape.

Fingers of red-orange light from the westering sun gleamed on the stonework while the masses of cloud in the north were angry, brooding, every shade of gray and purple and green. The artist awoke in Rick as he glimpsed the vivid interplay of color, and he rushed the Toyota onto a level patch of rocks where he could unload his gear fast.

Low light conditions demanded time exposure, and he was grateful for the stillness of the evening. A brisk wind would excite the trees, and they would blur through his shots while the shutter remained open for long seconds to capture every nuance of the fading light. The window of opportunity for such work was never very long, and he knew he must hurry.

The camera was a Nikon and not yet six months old; the tripod was of German manufacture, and older than Rick � one of his father's hand-me-downs which proved so efficient, he would never let it go. He set up fast, light metered the sky, the ground, the deep shadows and the highlights, and set the digital SLR for the first of many shots.

The magic of the place was almost eerie. He fancied that he could actually hear the sweet, mournful sound of plainsong, and catch a glimpse in the shadows of the gentle Benedictines who had lived and worked here before their abbey was ruined, its roofing confiscated by a monarch intent on debasing the nation's coinage.

Two of the walls were still firm enough, but the fine, fretted traceriers of the windows was broken. One wall lay in mounds of pale rubble; another was gone entirely � its stones were resurrected as building materials in many of the cottages in nearby villages, and in the walls of farms like Hopewood.

Of the whole abbey ruin, one feature drew his photographer's eye over and over. It was the last remaining gargoyle of what must once have been a regiment of the creatures, a life-sized carving in gray stone which was pitted and weathered by time.

It perched on a ledge, looking down on the turf and tumbled rocks, and it might have seemed forbidding, if not for the doves and red squirrels which nestled in against it, as if it were their refuge. The gargoyle seemed merely lonely, loveless, and the forlorn shape seduced him to frame it from every angle, at every zoom.

Little wonder this place was thought to be haunted. He could almost feel the electricity in the air, but he had felt the same thing at Giza, and Chichen Iza, and Stonehenge. He knew the sensation for what it was. It had long been called the spirit of place. The personality that tree and earth and rock actually took on, after oceans of time. The high valleys of the Himalayas had the same haunted feeling, and the parched, windy plateau of Tibet.

Here, the walls were silent, the wind was still; not a blade of grass moved while tiny birds flitted between thorn bushes and alder and sycamore, and the sky seemed to brood like a forsaken lover. He felt a great peace settle over him as he set up scores of shots, each with the potential to be the one chosen by a major company to spearhead next spring's ad campaign.

This was the line where the bread and butter labor of the jobbing photographer blurred into the sublime creativity of the visual artist, and Rick loved it. He had always loved it.

The beauty of the place and the work was that these ruins changed with every shift in the angle of the sun and the hue and texture of the daylight. He could come back at dawn, shoot a thousand more frames � shoot it by moonlight, or in the snow, or with a crackling frost outlining every twig, riming the ancient stone arches with ice that shimmered like glass in the winter sun.

If the place were haunted, it was a benevolent haunting. He felt nothing evil as the light faded, and he lingered a lot longer than he should. The rain was no closer, and with the absence of a breeze the air remained oddly warm long after sundown, though darkness gathered swiftly.

He stayed too long. He was daydreaming � thinking of lovers and places and events which summoned him irresistibly into yesterday � and he returned to the present to discover the ruined abbey pooled in blue-black shadow, and the ground uncertain with loose rocks, mud and gorse thickets.

The last gleam of a purple, stormy twilight brushed deep blues and mauves around the stone arches. His pupils were wide open, dilated in the dimness, and still he peered to see his camera equipment. He had wandered through the smashed cloisters, where the remnants of rooms, shoulder-high walls, odd little alcoves and buttresses made a maze, and he realized he had turned himself around.

Momentarily disoriented, he cast about for his bearings. He looked up at the highest walls, searching for the tallest point, which he had photographed so many times, he was sure he should remember it. And there, he checked with an odd sensation, a prickle at the base of his neck. It was gone. The gargoyle should have been on its place, perched up on that ledge, with the doves and squirrels. He was absolutely certain he was looking at the correct wall from the correct angle, and �

It was gone. The ledge was empty.

"Now, that's just � nonsense," he muttered as his hackles began to rise. "I'm just turned right around here. And dumb, very dumb."

As he became aware of the time he also felt the chill, and the hunger he had tuned out while he was working. Chicken hotpot, a shot of the Irish to ward off the chill � a game of darts, to give the locals the chance to make his acquaintance. The Swinvale Arms beckoned, if only he could remember the way out of the maze of St. Martin's.

Moonlight would have made it easy, but this was dark of the moon. The first sliver of the new moon would show itself tomorrow. Feeling his way, Rick groped back to the last place he had set up the tripod. Working by touch, he folded it up, balanced it over his left shoulder and followed his instincts, back toward the Toyota.

He was almost out of the ruins when he felt the shift of boulders under his sneakers. He knew he was going to fall in the instant before his left foot slithered away, and his only thought was for the camera. He pulled the tripod in against his chest, wrapped one arm around it while the other shot out in a futile effort to break his fall.

Rocks he could not even see skittered away; he felt the momentary numbness and then the burn of straining tendons, but before he had a chance to curse or cry out, the back of his head discovered a boulder the size of his fist. A second of nausea, and then dimness swirled over him, like going down into murky water.

How long he was out, he did not know, but when he began to feel and think again, he was aware of two things. The first was the nagging aches in both head and right ankle. The second was the weight of something warm lying over him, something that was pleasantly warm and smelt � odd. Before he cracked open one eye he registered a faint light, and when he did open his eyes he saw a face.