We're delighted to include the full text of ”The Haunting of Waterbelle End” by J. M. Raymes, reproduced by kind permission of his estate.

The text below is as first published in 'A Winter's Chill – A Compendium for Christmas from the pen of J. M. Raymes' (Dinkley & Jones).


The Haunting of Waterbelle End
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As something of a personal indulgence, I have chosen to end this compendium on a tale for which I feel I must openly apologise, as in my many years I have been unable to draw it to any satisfactory conclusion. Though I intended to present it as a tale of caution, I realise I somewhat selfishly feel the need to dispel myself of the burden it has become on my mind of late.

I first heard tell of this mysterious place when I was working as a journalist in the often tiring but endlessly fascinating city of London. Many lunchtimes I spent with colleagues in some disreputable ale-house in Blackfriars but of an evening I preferred to take my time over a good book and a pint of a peculiarly dark ale in the Bag O' Nails, a small public house adjacent to the Palace Mews.

On one such evening a travelogue of Lear's I had hoped to collect had not yet arrived, and I found myself with little to read that I had not done so many times already. I was skimming through a small collection of poems when a young man approached me. He said he had a tale to tell, and someone had directed him my way as a writer who might like to hear it. With nothing else to occupy my evening I bade him join me for a drink and tell me what he had to say.

Now he was a wiry fellow, jumpy and nervous at first, though he relaxed a little as we drank and talked. I took him to be in his early twenties, and he was reasonably well-dressed in the style of a young working man of the city. I noted that his hands showed no signs of hard labour and he had not the bearing of a military man, yet his face was drawn and eyes sunken and dark as though he had seen more hardships than most his age. I made subtle attempts to ask after his background, though he was far more eager to recount to me more recent events. I gave up in that pursuit, but not before my mind began to conjure some dark past for this fellow as a miscreant.

He told me of a place he had come across mentioned in a newspaper, a small hamlet by the name of Waterbelle End that sits along a tributary to the Great Ouse. I had taken him to mean somewhere in Bedfordshire, though I do not recall if those were his words or my own conjecture. When I pressed him for more details, he became agitated and fearful. He insisted, under no circumstances should I try to find it myself. Only after I assured him I would not attempt to do so, did he continue his tale.

He described a collection of cottages around a church, and a lane that led to a grand old house whose grounds sloped down to the river. The cottages had been built for land-workers, though over time the cottages and land surrounding the house had been sold off to pay for the upkeep of the remaining estate. Eventually, the family who owned the house had dwindled in number and it too was sold.

It was bought by another who had, reportedly, made his fortune – or at least, his ancestors had - through acts of nothing less than outright piracy in the new world. The house became a place of raucous evenings and wild indulgences, until a new religious fervour had taken hold in the hamlet and the residents marched on the house with the intent of putting an end to such immoral behaviour. What happened next, nobody knew, or would not say. No bill of sale, nor church record, nor even gravestones in the churchyard gave any clue as to what became of the owner, and the house had seemingly sat abandoned this last 40 years. Inevitably, tales were told of a great treasure still to be found in the mansion, and that was what had attracted this young man to the mystery.

He told me he had entered the grounds one afternoon, and by means he would not confess gained entry to one of the front rooms. He described a dusty and dim old house, though still fully furnished, with numerous books still on the shelves and cabinets full of ancient maps and drawings and the strangest of curios. Yet the rooms were laid out not seemingly in any ordered design, but in an almost maze-like randomness, with peculiarly marked locks on the doors. He said he found old chests in several rooms, but clearly none containing any rich pirate hoard. Now I assume he simply lost track of time, but he insisted it was far too soon before it grew dark outside, and he realised he could not find the way he had come in.

The further he explored, the more lost he became, and the darker it grew. Until he found a key in a chest that fitted a lock, and turned it. The room and ones beyond were all well-lit, though he could not say whether by gas-light or electric. As he proceeded futher he began to hear sounds, first of whispering, then growing in intensity as of people conversing or arguing in an adjacent room. Yet every time he checked, he found the neighbouring rooms empty. The noises grew louder still, until at one point he could hear banging on the walls in a room he had just left. He opened the door, but instead of that room he said the doorway opened onto a sheer blackness, as if he had opened a portal to a great void empty of all light and life. Yet as he stood perplexed, something far more horrifying began to take form as the light from behind him fell into the dark. Some dead thing in a ragged shroud, limned by the faint light, advanced from the blackness, and even now a terror gripped his features as he tried to describe what he had seen.

I attempted to calm him, bid him sip from his glass as his mouth had seemingly turned dry. But then the clock struck the half-hour past ten, and his face paled again. He apologised as he leapt to his feet and shrugged an arm into his jacket. I pleaded with him to stay and finish his tale, told him I was fascinated and had to know more, but he would not stop. He made some hesitant excuse of a train to catch – which I did not believe; scattered a small handful of coins on the table (though I had agreed to pay for his drinks) and took off. As he scampered past the window, jacket still flailing, I saw him twice glance over his shoulder in fear as if all manner of terrors persued him.

I tipped the barman the change and enquired after the fellow, though no-one had seen him before or since, nor could anyone say who had directed him my way that evening. Soon after I attempted to locate the hamlet of Waterbelle End, but I could not find it on any map or record. Over the years I had hoped to find it and learn the truth of the place, but lately I find myself recalling the terror in the man's eyes as he bade me promise never to seek the place out, and perhaps should take solace that I have been fair warned, and leave the mystery be.