House of Stone

House of Stone

## Blurb

**THE PAST LIES BURIED...**

Alastair Stone isn't proud of the dark deeds of his family's past, but he thought they were just that—past.

But when a routine renovation of his ancestral home releases a horde of angry spirits bent on vengeance against anyone of his blood, he soon learns that his family's horrific acts were even worse than he ever could have imagined.

Driven from his home, Stone must rally his most trusted friends and allies to discover the truth and find a way to exorcise the relentless spirits.

But the spirits aren't the only threats unearthed. A powerful enemy from the past—one with forbidden and unspeakable powers—also has a vendetta against the Stone family.

And that doesn't even count the mysterious fiend in the sealed room...

Stone has bested many monstrous enemies in his magical career—but is he strong enough to fight his own past?

## Plot

Alastair Stone’s first love is getting married, and he’s to attend the wedding. Unfortunately, Verity, his plus-one, has been called away to help Jason locate a missing child. Stone heads to Surrey and, since there will be time before the wedding, calls Ian to come visit and meet Aubrey. Stone’s trying to be patient with Ian, letting him experience the world as he didn’t get to, growing up. But he’s concerned his son is putting off his magical training indefinitely or, worse, getting piecemeal instruction from his friends.

Ian is suitably impressed with the Surrey house – beautiful and grim at the same time. As they tour the house, Stone admits to Ian that their ancestors were terrible people, the blackest of black mages. They visit the west wing of the house, leaving the east; Stone has authorized Aubrey to have some work done to repair the old place, and the east wing is the current focus.

## Quotes and One-liners

Stone on the power of indoctrination: "Do you think many people who kept slaves thought they were doing wrong? We like to think we’d be better, but I’m not convinced many of us would be. Hell, look at what happened in Nazi Germany, and that was less than a hundred years ago. Look at our own century, where children are still indoctrinated from the time they’re born to believe they’re doing a noble thing by blowing themselves to bits.”

At lunch, Aubrey tells Stone that there is a problem with the work on the cracked floor in the east wing’s basement – when workers broke through, they found a void rather than the expected foundation. They’ve stopped work temporarily to bring in some special equipment. Stone and Ian go to investigate. Using flashlights and light spells, they discover a room beneath the basement. They widen the hole and go down.

The room is hewn rock, empty, but with a corridor leading outward, beyond the house’s foundation. Behind a locked door at the end, they find a large ritual space, complete with a circle. In the center is a stone plinth fitted with manacles, and stained with what appears to be blood. Both Stone and Ian are shocked and disturbed by the find.

More doorways lead outward, one narrower than the others. The wider corridors have bricked-up alcoves on either side, and Stone has a very strong suspicion that his black ancestors interred their sacrificial victims here, though he doesn’t say it. The narrow passage leads to a heavy, carved stone door covered with arcane symbols and depictions of people and animals. Time is running out, though, so Stone calls a halt to exploration so he can get to the wedding, making Ian promise not to explore on his own, or tell Aubrey what they’ve found.

Stone attends the wedding, feeling bittersweet emotions. He’d thought to marry Imogen once, but he’s happy for her. Mostly, he’s sad that Desmond isn’t here to walk her down the aisle. He’s dancing with Imogen, when his phone rings.

Ian, meanwhile, tours the grounds, chats and has pizza with Aubrey, then looks for a book to occupy his time once Aubrey leaves. While reading, he hears a noise…then another. It sounds like things falling and breaking. He feels dread, and as if he’s being watched. The sounds are coming from the east wing. Ian’s worried that parts of it may be crumbling, so he goes to investigate. Nothing is amiss until he gets to the carved stone door – it’s been cracked open diagonally, pieces lying on the floor.

Inside, he sees nothing but a shattered stone box or coffin, and that the walls of the tiny room are covered in writing – sigils. Suddenly, all hell breaks loose and Ian is bombarded by shrieking, screaming, banging… Spiders and blood run down the walls of the ritual room as he dashes back there, in places forming words like ‘die’ and ‘murderers’. Ian flees. He’s sure he’s seeing illusions, but even they can hurt.

In the main part of the house, doors bang, furniture flies at him, voices scream ‘get out, murderer’, and more. Ian flees the house, running full-tilt for the mausoleum and the portal. Once safely in the London house, he calls Stone and tells him he has to get back immediately.

Making hurried excuses, Stone leaves for Surrey, but not before calling Aubrey; he’s angry that Ian fled and left the old man there. Aside from being awakened by the phone, Aubrey is fine. Stone fills Eddie and Ward in briefly, then breaks speed records getting back to London. When he and Ian arrive at the house, it’s covered in an eerie green glow that morphs to red as they approach closer. No sooner do they cross the threshold than the screaming starts, and they have to dodge and shield from flying objects. Unable to enter, they go back to London to rest until Eddie and Ward are up in the morning. One thing sticks in Stone’s mind: the echoes were shrieking ‘a curse on your line’.

Next morning, Stone is floored when Aubrey tells him he entered the house and found nothing amiss, though he only went into the kitchen from the back. He fills Aubrey in, and the caretaker posits that the haunting is directed at the Stones, which is why he was safe. Verity calls – she and Jason have finished their case – and when Stone tells her what’s going on, she agrees to portal over, with Jason if he agrees.

Verity, Jason and Aubrey go back into the house, which is calm and quiet. The damage from the previous night is there, but nothing happens to them. In fact, only areas where Ian or Stone had been show damage; the rest of the house is fine. Though Verity does see the eerie green glow. Stone tries to enter again, and is immediately assaulted by illusions, screaming, and flying objects, pretty much proving that the phenomena are directed at him and his family.

The group reconvenes at the townhouse with Eddie and Ward, and debate cause and effect. The floor crack was first, but did the broken door release the echoes, or did the release of whatever was in there trigger the echoes to react? Eddie and Ward, as researchers and experienced mages, Verity as magical muscle, and Jason as videographer and physical muscle make up a party to go into the house and explore the basement. Stone and Ian will have to stay outside and monitor, since they can’t enter the house without triggering chaos.

Due to all the rock, both the cells and walkies stop working fairly quickly, leaving Stone and the others to wait for word. Below, the first chamber is just as described, manacles and all. The group explores the halls radiating off, with the bricked-up alcoves. They find one that’s crumbled and, inside, the chained body of a person – they’d been walled in alive. Farther on, Ward’s approach causes a chamber to crumble open, revealing a large, heavy metal box bearing sigils, and magically locked. They set this aside to take back to Stone.

In the final chamber with the carved door, Ward announces that the sigils inside were meant to keep something in. All are starting to feel they are watched, so they hurry to get photos and sketches, gather parts of the broken door, and leave. Back at the garage, Verity relates the story of their exploration, including the manacled skeleton and the inscriptions inside the warded room. None of Jason’s cameras recorded anything, but Eddie took notes. The language is extremely old, but was meant to imprison someone or something. Ian proposes that the bricks crumbling as Ward approached the chamber with the box wasn’t an accident, that the echoes wanted it found.

The box itself is sealed with a blood lock only a Stone can open. Alastair does, and inside are a small fortune in jewelry, and records. Plans for the house’s foundations cross-reference to names and descriptions in a journal – each person interred under the house. Eddie concludes the immurement was a foundation sacrifice meant to empower and protect the place with the death energy of the 41 victims. Notably missing from the plans is the warded room. As another surprise, Ward relates that another house had stood on the site prior to the current one. It had been razed violently before rebuilding began, meaning Stone’s line possibly went back even farther than he was aware. Eddie says the need to have a séance, ASAP, to find out what the echoes want.

Eddie’s friend, Poppy, agrees to do the séance that night. First, they start without Ian and Stone. Poppy negotiates a truce with the echoes, saying the Stone’s mean no harm, and gets permission for them to enter the house and remain safely until sunrise. During the séance the echoes speak through Poppy, many of them viciously angry at Stone. Poppy manages to calm them, and they ask to be properly laid to rest, and remembered. That, or a Stone must die to placate them.

Suddenly, something else enters the séance and tries to take Poppy over, and she begins to seize. It’s powerful and enraged, enough to make the other echoes flee. It wants Stone and all his line dead. Alastair has to shield Poppy with Calanarian power, and blast the entity to make it leave her – unconscious.

They get Poppy to Aubrey’s apartment and Verity heals her and leaves her to sleep. The group speculates whether the powerful echo was what had been in the warded room, but Stone doesn’t think so; that room wasn’t in the house plans, constructed later. He’s sure it was a mage, though, with that much power. Poppy wakes and Eddie and Ward take her home – after Stone pays her much more than she’d asked. The rest, aside from Aubrey, go back to the house to get some sleep, since the echoes gave them safe passage until morning.

An hour or so before dawn, Stone hears noises. He gets up to investigate, while more crashing, scrabbling noises happen. By the time he gets to the stairs, everyone is up and with him to witness a horde of animated skeletons – wearing manacles - coming up the stairs for them. Stone tries blasting them with magic, but it has no effect. Jason knocks the head off one with a baseball bat, and it falls apart. From there it’s a battle of brute force and indirect magic to clear a way out of the house, to a roof. Unfortunately, the skeletons follow. Stone calls Aubrey and tells him to grab his gun. The entire group takes refuge in the garage, but the skeletons quickly begin to break through.

After another attempt to take on the horde fails, the group is trapped on the garage roof, using everything from lumber to chainsaws to defend it. Suddenly, Ian falls, and Stone drops down to defend him, blasting skeletons away with magic. Shielding himself and Ian, Stone feels the skeletons getting through the shield – something that should absolutely not be possible, though neither should resurrected skeletons. Sunrise saves them, rendering the skeletons into dust, leaving only their manacles scattered everywhere. Alastair is left to wonder if another ‘truth’ of magic is in error: necromancy is supposedly not possible, but something raised the dead. Worse, they no longer have bodies to inter to lay the echoes to rest.

Reconvening with Eddie and Ward the next day, the group fills the researchers in on the skeleton attack. They, in turn, share that whatever was in the warded room was extremely powerful, judging by the spells and wards used to seal it away. Whatever it is, it’s loose. Poppy calls to say she had a dream about being a man shut up in a small space, and incredibly angry over a betrayal. Then, she felt herself in a round room before she woke. Stone decides they need to go back to the house – something must be in that ritual room.

Once again, Stone and Ian stay behind (Aubrey’s been sent away for safety) while the others explore. Nothing appears changed, except every bricked-up alcove has been burst open and is now empty. Jason takes a sledgehammer to the altar, opening a small hole. They enlarge it, and find a man’s body in early 19th century dress. Ward spots a journal in his rotted suit pocket and retrieves it. On a quick examination, it appears the dead man is James Brathwaite, an associate of Stone’s ancestor who disappeared without a trace.

Eddie deciphers the antiquated writing and relates that this was a new journal, just started. Brathwaite was angry that the others (Stones) had grown consciences and weren’t prepared what to do whatever was necessary to deal with the ‘fiend’ referred to only as ‘A’. They debate Brathwaite’s inference about using necromancy to deal with ‘A’, but again, necromancy has never been proven and, clearly, ‘A’ has escaped. Stone hopes whoever or whatever that is stays away - he has enough to deal with. The 41 echoes and Brathwaite are his immediate problems.

Eddie does more research and locates Brathwaite’s former estate, now a boarding school in the Cotswolds. Brathwaite may have swindled the estate away from its previous Catholic owners, during a time when Catholicism was outlawed. That means, he says, that the place probably has a priest’s hole – a hidden chamber – and that would be a prime spot to hide anything Brathwaite wanted to remain hidden. There are, Eddie adds, tales of the school being haunted, particularly a closet in the oldest house on the property. Stone is skeptical but decides to check it out. Verity and Jason have to retirn to the US, so Alastair and Ian take the ride to the Cotswolds alone.

At the school, the pair easily break in and find the closet. The priest hole is hidden behind an illusion, the vile magic of which makes them both physically ill. Despite having to dodge a security guard, Stone is able to grab some scrolls, books, and jars, along with another locked box. The box makes them ill all the way home until Stone can lock it behind wards at Caventhorne.

Eddie and Ward review the papers and books, as well as sketches of the sigils inscribed inside the priest hole that Stone made. Inside the box, which is still giving off sickening vibes, are journals, and the skeleton of a small…something. No one recognizes what it might be. Eddie is rendered speechless by his quick perusal of the journals, but Ward tells stone that James Brathwaite was a necromancer. The information the man left behind is enough for someone to learn and use the reviled art. They all agree, it must be destroyed to keep anyone from using it. Stone agrees as, well, but he’s overwhelmed and doesn’t want to make spur-of-the-moment decisions, so he locks the stuff away behind wards, then tells them he needs to be alone and sort out his thoughts.

Hours later, Verity and Ian track Stone down in a seedy pub, where they find him extremely drunk and surly. He demands they leave him alone, he’s got too many problems and just wants to be left to himself. When he says he should just kill himself to make the ghosts, at least, happy, Ian mocks his martyr-like impulse. He says, as the last Stone, why shouldn’t he be the one to die. Stone, of course, says absolutely not. Then Ian wishes out loud that they could fool the ghosts somehow, into thinking Stone is dead. Alastair is still functional enough to say that wouldn’t work, that the ghosts can feel life, but it triggers an idea for Verity that she says she needs to think about, it’ll wait until Stone is sober and unlikely to forget it.

The next evening, Stone apologizes for his behavior, but he’s still worried that Brathwaite is out there. He imagines the necromancer raising Stone’s own father to attack him. Eddie and Ward arrive, though, with a plan to take Brathwaite, at least, out of the equation. They can ritually destroy his body, since it’s still in the altar beneath the Surrey house. Stone asks Verity what her idea was, to be rid of the echoes. She asks him to wait, she’s not ready yet, but will tell him when she’s sure.

The ritual to set Brathwaite to rest goes easily, with no hiccups or dangers. Ian goes off to let off some steam and the others all go back to normal for a time. Verity does tell Stone she remembered a potion that makes the drinker essentially dead, in suspended animation. It should be enough to fool the echoes. She’d need to see Hezzie’s teacher, though, since neither she nor Hezzie can make it. Then, she says, Stone can take a breather and decide how to memorialize the ghosts once the pressure is off.

Once Verity has the potion, Stone calls everyone back together to plan their ruse for the echoes. Poppy returns to ask the echoes to let Stone and Ian in the house – Stone can’t very well sacrifice himself if they won’t let him in to do it. She warns Alastair about the potion, which she is familiar with. She says it will send him to the astral realm and, if he gets lost, he could remain there forever while his body dies. Having serious misgivings but not seeing an alternative, Stone decides to go on with their plan anyway.

Eddie conducts the ritual below the house, with Verity, Ward and Ian. Stone lies on the altar after pledging to atone for his ancestors’ sins. Verity treats a trick knife from Tolliver’s with the potion and, at the appropriate time, stabs Stone with it.

Alastair leaves his body and finds himself drifting toward the astral realm when, suddenly, something wrenches him from his body. He hears dark, evil laughter. Then, he’s surrounded by the echoes of the 41 sacrificial victims, all accusing him, hurting his astral form with their hatred. He first pleads with them to listen, but it isn’t working. Instead, he asks them to tell him their stories, to show him. They do, right down to the last to die, alone, shackled in the dark and knowing the silence means the others are all dead.

In the ritual chamber, the others begin to be concerned; Stone’s been out of his body too long. But then he moves and begins to wake. He’s disoriented, barely speaking. Verity is helping him put his shirt on when she thinks to check his aura: it’s a deep purple, and not Alastair’s. Ian spots it, too, and says something, and Brathwaite attacks, knocking them all across the room.

The spirits, meanwhile tell Stone that the one who killed them isn’t gone. He looks for his astral cord and follows it back to his body, but he can’t get in; his vacant body is possessed. He returns to the spirits, who make him promise to punish Brathwaite for his evil, and to see that they are remembered. He agrees and, as they fade, sets about getting his body back.

A battle ensues in the ritual room, with Brathwaite pulling no punches while the others are hampered by trying not to harm Stone’s body. In the process, Brathwaite relates that he was imprisoned by Stone’s ancestor, Cyrus, who didn’t have the guts to agree to Brathwaite’s necromantic solution to dealing with the ‘fiend’, ‘A’. Who, incidentally, is now again free to plague the world. Brathwaite says he’ll deal with that later, taking Stone’s body and identity and fortune for his own. He lets loose a killing attack, but Verity sees it coming and warns them in the nick of time.

Ian fights to keep the door closed so Brathwaite can’t escape while the others recover. Eddie and Ward start blasting Brathwaite’s shield while Verity retrieves the knife and, out of sight, puts more of the potion on it. She nearly manages to stab him but he flings her away before she can score.

Stone uses the distraction and his rage at Brathwaite to fight the usurper to get him out of his body. Overpowered and forced to flee, Brathwaite flings one last blast of power to destabilize the ritual complex. Stone wakes to rumbling and the ceiling beginning to come down. He grabs the unconscious Verity and shields, Ian adding his once he sees instinctively that his father is back. They all escape the house and watch as the ritual area caves in, and part of the east wing collapses.

A week later, the gang – including Jason and Poppy - meets at the Dancing Dragon to celebrate and touch base. Eddie and Ward are trying to track the 41 victims, but Caventhorne’s grand opening is soon, so they can’t devote a lot of time. Stone, meanwhile, says he thinks he tore Brathwaite apart, destroyed him or sent him on to the afterlife. He admits privately to Verity that he has no way of knowing. He hopes that, at the least, Brathwaite will know to stay away.

A few weeks later, Stone gives a speech opening Caventhorne to the magical world during a fairly gala event in the great hall. Then he wanders to a room not yet open to the public, where the memorial to the 41 victims is partially complete, pending more names. A man joins him there and introduces himself as Edmund Dunstan. He says he’s heard a lot of Alastair and come to meet him for himself; he’s been sequestered away for some time, out of touch. The man is vague and deflecting when answering Stone’s questions about how he got into the gala, etc., but Alastair can’t shake a nagging feeling that he’s familiar. Dunstan says he wants to speak to Alastair again soon, that they have things in common.

Stone leaves the room first and runs into Stefan Kolinsky. Suddenly the tension ramps up as Kolinsky and Dunstan lock eyes. Dunstan relaxes first, bows mockingly to Kolinsky, and leaves. Stone asks how Kolinsky knows Dunstan, and Kolinsky says that’s not his real name. He knew the man long ago and had thought he’d died. He warns Stone to think twice about associating with him, and of any agreements he might want to make. He also says to consider how he named himself, before Kolinsky, too leaves.

Stone asks Eddie if he’s seen either Dunstan or Kolinsky, describing them, but they’ve both disappeared. Stone mentions Kolinsky’s comment about Dunstan’s name, and Eddie says it is odd – it means ‘dark stone’. That night, a wakeful Stone has a sudden brainwave and leaves Verity asleep while he goes to the garage for a crowbar. Aubrey hears and insists on joining Stone in whatever is so urgent. They take tools and head to the mausoleum. Alastair goes to the crypt of Aldwyn Aristide Edmund Stone, dead some 170 years. He and Aubrey pry open the crypt and pull out the coffin to find that it’s not only empty, but had never been occupied. Alastair tells Aubrey that not only did he meet the man that night, as Dunstan, but he’s pretty sure he’s the ‘fiend’ Brathwaite and others immured in the sealed, warded chamber beneath the house.

In Basingstoke, Miriam Padgett – one of the last of Brathwaite’s line – is leading a dull, unfulfilling life when she begins to hear a voice telling her it doesn’t have to be that way. She can have more, be more. She follows the voice’s instructions and gathers ingredients to brew a potion the voice says will be her answer. It’s the same that Stone took weeks prior. Miriam drinks it, and Brathwaite shoves her out of her body and takes over. He’s not happy being a frumpy, middle-aged woman, but needs must.