Precious Vile Things

By George Elmer

Enter the town of Crow's Hollow, where everything seems perfect and nothing is what it seems.

Waking up on the side of the road, Evander Bone has no memories of who he is and what he's done in his life. The road leads to a small town, and Evander knows there's something wrong here. In this town, there are secrets, lies, and a beautiful woman who knows all about Evander Bone. She says he's part of a plan the two of them made a while back. This plan could cost him his life.

• Language: English
• Publisher: George Elmer
• Release date: Dec 27, 2020
• ISBN: 9781715692926

George Elmer

GEORGE ELMER is an author of dark gothic fantasy, writing for morally ambiguous people searching for worlds with a little magic and bloodshed. Children’s fairy-tale happy endings didn’t quench her insatiable desire for horror, so she set out to write stories without happily ever afters. She combines her various morbid interests to create intricate and plausible worlds. George’s ambition is to buy a château with the profits of her books and run writer’s retreats out of the grounds to help other writers to write their next best novels. Find her online home at GeorgeElmer.co.uk, or on Instagram (@georgethecreative).

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THESE KIND OF KNAVES

CRIMSON PRINCE

OUT OF THE GRAVE

VALERIAN BONE

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Precious Vile Things

Copyright © 2021 George Elmer

All Rights Reserved.

No part of this publication may be reproduced in any form, stored in any retrieval system, or transmitted in any form by any means without prior written permission of the author, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Visit the author’s website at www.GeorgeElmer.co.uk

Cover and design by George Elmer

Book Formatting by Derek Murphy @Creativindie

First published in 2020 by George Elmer

This edition published in 2021

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New York City. A world of witches and blood.

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To my father. Oops, my finger slipped. I wrote you a horror story, so now you have to read it

"When beggars die, there are no comets seen,

The heavens themselves blaze forth the death of princes."

William Shakespeare, Julius Caesar, Act 2, scene ii

CHAPTER 1

The moon hung bright and low in the starless sky as my eyes blinked open against it.

The ground under me was unforgiving, unrelenting, as stones and other assembled rocks and twigs dug into my back in a way which was as familiar as it was not. The air chilled me but clung to my clothes and sunk seep into my bones.

This land brought forth empty space where there should have been something.

I couldn’t remember.

A grassy ditch surrounded me on three sides, but everything before the sight of the moon remained as elusive as the reason that I faintly remembered hating this region.

That tree, the one hanging right above my head, I remembered something.

But I couldn’t recall why, or who I was with. Or even my name.

I twitched a finger, at first. Then I jolted a leg, rolled my neck and shoulders hard enough I heard them crack.

I had all my parts, so that was okay. I just didn’t know if they were assembled in the correct order.

Wallowing, I thought, would do me no good if I didn’t know why I was even wallowing.

So, I sat up one vertebra at a time and assessed that, yes, that was a steep incline for a ditch. But if I grabbed that jutting rock there, and placed my foot on that bit of sod, I could haul myself up like so.

I saw tarmac, and twin lights in the distance.

I’d gotten myself on both feet and mostly stable ground at that point, the road was littered with potholes, you see, when the twin lights were right there and then I flew.

Back in the ditch, with an ache in my chest and the sensation that fuck, that hurt, and was my ribcage knitting itself back together?

By the time I’d pulled my aching body back upright, the car had gone. Skid marks where there’d been acceleration, but nothing to indicate they’d tried to slow down.

Fucking drivers.

This time, when I’d made it to the side of the road, nothing hit me. My ribs thanked me for that, but not for patting myself down in a rather sorry attempt to discover who I was and why I was in a ditch.

I was, I discovered, wearing one of those fancy watches that told you everything about the day. I also had a mobile telephone on my person, which relayed to me the same information.

It was just gone eleven at night, on Thursday. It was the seventh of May. And my driver’s licence was in my phone pocket.

My name was Evander Bone. The name fit me like an itch, it was as familiar to me as it wasn’t. It didn’t quite fit, but nothing about it indicated what about the fit was wrong.

I’d keep the name for now.

But I had to find the address, 13 Hawthorne Hall Road. A house the road was named after.

Or was the road named after the house?

In any case, Google Maps told me I was standing on that road. Convenient, suspiciously so.

Only a five-minute walk, I was edging the town’s perimeter.

Something told me I’d travelled longer in less time.

But the town was called Crow’s Hollow, and Google also told me it did, in fact, qualify as a small town. One of many in Eastern England, it turned out.

I set off in the direction my phone told me. Hawthorne trees dotted the roadside amongst overgrown bushes and uneven fields, becoming something like a forest the further out it went in both directions.

Maybe something at the house would tell me who I was. Maybe I’d even discover why I’d woken up outside.

No other cars met me on the road, so I had to question where that driver had been heading. Because that’s what people did, wasn’t it? Question motives and invade other’s lives in a quest to know everything about everyone.

The moon disappeared behind a grey cloud, and a chill descended with it.

My jacket was more suited for mid-afternoon rambles than night-time strolls, but I was almost there.

The light of my phone gave enough light to ensure I didn’t step in dog shit.

A gate loomed ahead on the left, black wrought iron and framed by a towering brick wall topped with stone acorns matching the colour of the mortar. Something resembling a gatehouse sat just behind the wall.

I touched the lock, because of course, you would lock the gate at night, but it fell open as soon as I wrapped my hand around it.

And the gate swung open with a loud and rusty squeak.

Nothing to do but follow the winding hawthorn lined path.

A few paces up the dirt track and the gate clanged shut behind me. I turned and saw the lock was back on the gate. Nothing remained to suggest I’d ever touched it.

The house itself became clear with a few paces more, emerging from behind a tree and a large but dormant fountain of a crow about to take flight.

It was a county house, of Elizabethan brickwork but with the spooky Gothic revival arches and stained-glass windows.

I only pressed a hand to the door before it swung open and permitted me to enter the vestibule.

There was a fucking stair tower to my right and a little front office to my left. A long gallery spanned the length of the building, everything was decorated in dark wood but lit with flickering candles. Runners and tapestries in faded rich colours muffled the sound of piano music straining from the far end of the left-wing, so I followed the sound.

There was a front office, and the large parlour-type receiving hall right in front of the front door which fed into an honest to gods library, and a sunroom was the last door on that side of the house. A massive music room, where a grand piano played itself, had a balcony up above. The front of the house also boasted a solarium.

Besides looking pretty, this one appeared to have the accurate movements of all the planets. As well as comfy chairs and reading areas.

On the other side of the receiving hall, with no gallery door, had a dining room large enough for six down each side and still had chairs at the head of the table.

Next to the stair tower, three doors lined the wall, one door led to a cleaning cupboard, but the next had a sort of tiny antechamber leading into a long study with an attached toilet room. And the last was a breakfast room for six.

Every room had a fireplace, every room had wooden panelling, and every room culminated with accents spanning centuries.

It was as I left the breakfast room, contemplating the rather strange but complementary combination of Gothic, Georgian and possibly Viking furnishings and other, miscellaneous interior decorating, that the piano music stopped.

And I ran right into a fucking skeleton.

The skeleton wore a business suit, carried a tea tray, and did not look surprised to see me.

Ah, said the skeleton, the Master has arrived. Welcome, sir, to Hawthorne Hall.

I want to say I did the manly thing and played it off with some witty comment and banter. But I didn’t do anything of the sort.

Instead, I screamed.

It was gone eleven at night, I was tired and dirty, the mirrors of the hall showed my hair to be more mud brown strings than the usual coppery red mop. I would deal with my manliness in the morning after I’d slept for ten hours, somewhere on a large and comfortable bed.

After I’d slept somewhere.

The skeleton, however, knew how to deal with me.

Would Sir like to be shown his suite, so he might freshen up for bed? I have just prepared the room and changed the sheets, so if Sir would be so kind as to shower first, it would not go unappreciated.

I squeaked. The skeleton cocked his head.

We shall take the main stair tower since it is closer. He gestured for me to go first. The first door on the right, once you leave the tower, he said, his movements stiff as he ambled after me, is the servants’ quarters. I am the only one at present, you need not concern yourself with that. These four doors, he indicated one opposite the stairs and three running adjacent to the half-wall overlooking the receiving hall, are guest rooms complete with en-suites. Your rooms are here. He swung open the last door at the end of the hall. The second staircase leads into this corridor; you have your own morning room should you wish to have breakfast up here. This room sat above the solarium, because the balcony beyond the glass doors matched the wall below. An arch led to the balcony above the music room. Here is your dressing room, a large room full of clothes, which led to, your bathroom, a room with a walk-in bath, your toilet is through that door there, and here, the skeleton swung open yet another door with a flourish, is your bedchamber.

It had another fucking fireplace. At least I couldn’t stand up in it like the one in the receiving hall. Every room had ornate fireplaces and intricate wood panelling.

My bedroom resembled those of old country estates; a four-poster bed large enough for three with an ottoman at the foot of it. Two chairs in front of the fire, a chaise lounge in the bay window covered with flowing curtains trailing to the floor. All the fabrics matched, and the wallpaper complimented it.

I kicked off my shoes and fell face-first onto the rose-scented bed.

The piano music didn’t resume after that.

But the fucking crows started up soon after.

It was a fitful night.

I just hoped everything would be better in the morning.

Wednesday, 18th March in the year 873 AD

It was half-past nine in the evening when a man named Ívarr approached Gipeswic’s northern hills from the south in a flat-out run.

Clouds hid but did not diminish the light of the full moon. The hills made for impressive fortifications, but the town itself was more a port than any real defensible village. These Saxons and Britons had grown lazy and complacent in their lives, but it did not stop a group of guards from giving chase to such a formidable raider and former prisoner as him.

Ívarr did not regret the pillaging, he only regretted getting caught.

And that the lead brute leading the charge grabbed him from behind and launched a rather impressive flying tackle. They both hit the ground hard enough to snap the bone in Ívarr’s arm.

Another local guardsman grabbed that broken arm and hauled Ívarr up hard enough to swing him into his compatriots.

What ensued was a tangle of limbs and many elbows landing upon just as many noses.

Ívarr took this fortunate opportunity to steal a sharpened and rather ornate seax from one guard, it was a rather sharp blade attached to a gold-wrapped handle with a garnet pommel, swung to punch another guard in the family jewels, and stabbed a third in the eye. By the time any of the guards noticed Ívarr was not amongst the scuffle, he was halfway up the hill and still gaining momentum.

It was only after he’d crested the hill that Ívarr realised how easy his escape from prison had been.

The rest of the guardsmen lined the hill, and at the fore stood the King of East Anglia and a rather large battle-axe.

Two guardsmen grabbed Ívarr’s shoulders and pushed him down to his knees.

Ívarr gathered himself into a crouch and grabbed the men by their armour. He pulled them down to stomp on their faces.

Didn’t they know who he was?

As if this was a signal, the rest of the horde stumbled forwards. Some even yelled out to their God that they’d send him a pagan barbarian.

The only god Ívarr sent prayers to was Óðinn, and that was to lend him the strength to fight in his honour.

These men had battered him, starved him, and told him in halting Norse that for not converting to their faith he’d burn in the pits of