At the end of last year, Harington students pushed their creative minds to the limit in our annual Gothic Writing Competition. Students were challenged to write a short story or opening to a novel that chilled the judges to the bone! Entries were of a very high standard this year. Some were inspired by wild and remote landscapes, dark and foreboding castles, fearsome or haunted characters, and some imagined a terrifying futuristic world. The four winning entries that you can read excerpts from here were original, imaginative, beautifully written and utterly compelling.

After the fire, neighbours made snide comments about Edward and his mother. Myths of fraudulent insurance-seeking was the talk of the town. No one spoke of the man burned to death next door. No one dared. They gossiped though, gossiped of the boy who lost his eyes in the fire. The boy whose sight was superseded by two empty sockets.

A cold winter was doused by a feeling of wounded despair. Edward and his mother, Eleanor, orphaned by their home, became frantic in search of sanctuary. Eleanor was so suffocated by the trauma that it became Edward’s duty to find work. Only no one could bear to employ a boy with no eyes. Despite restless anxiety, Eleanor took to the local library to supress her nerves. She had heard of a supposedly unorthodox ‘Healing Clinic’ not far from their street, but had done her best to avoid it until now. She was only too familiar with the horror stories of backstreet hospitals, but with no more than a handful of coins and a grief-stricken son, she dialled the number and awaited the voice at the end of the line.

Edward had been here before. Nothing could soak away the awful stench that licked the corners of his memory. Until now, he had tried to forget about the sinister alley, but then again, until now, he had thought it was safe.

It was a sickeningly sterile theatre. Branded by engravements on the door reading: The Research Clinic, and under it a list. Cosmetic Practices, Skin-Grafting Facility, The Eye Bank. Beyond the impenetrable exterior, a tongue-coloured hallway gave access to various tentacles of barren passage. A row of ivory doors sealed the approaching rooms like gum shields, disallowing trespassers and ensnaring inpatients from departure. Not a speck of dust disturbed the corridors nor any trace of life. Natural daylight was banished, conquered by the harsh spotlights that clung to the ceiling like parasites. Each door was labelled: Pupils, Corneas, Retinas, Spares. Motionless, and rapt by the malodourous air, pupils: glued to their allocated units as headstones to a yard, lay in their graves. Unmoving, pained and disturbed corneas scorned the atmosphere as though drenched in unfinished agony.

Standing in the great hall of the mansion, silence hummed through Eugenia’s ears like the murmurings of spirits in a sepulchre. Spattered around the room, furniture lay buried under layers of dust sheets. From the corner of her eye, Eugenia mistook them for ghosts, glaring at her as she passed through the room.

The paintings were left uncovered. One portrait, hung on a wall, grasped her attention with unrelenting claws. An ethereal woman peered back at her with golden eyes as though freshly polished coins, the ones on the eyes of corpses, had replaced her irises. Hair as white as skin leeched of blood cascaded over her shoulders and the woman was dressed in a fashion long dead.

Eugenia could not look away from the face not dissimilar to her own.

After hours of perusing the artefacts, a thick layer of dust marred her gloves and the sun’s light had long since been snuffed out.

A dull tremor reverberated through the walls as a clock, concealed in the darkest depths of the mansion, struck midnight. Eugenia waited for a moment, stock still and ears ringing with effort. She did not have to wait long before a scream cleaved the silence. Laced with agony and terror, the sharp edges of the shriek trailed down her spine and deep into the marrow of her bones as ice oozed into her veins. It was a man’s scream. The old floorboards howled in protest of movement on the floor above. Somewhere upstairs, someone paced the halls.

Eugenia had nothing to fear, she told herself firmly, but her feigned confidence could not disguise the nausea boiling in the pit of her stomach.

The case of Bathory Mansion was a long one, murky enough for the rest of the detectives at the agency to shy away from. Those stories had been forgotten for centuries by the public, the agency neutralising any scandal that arose, although the recent outbreak of events brought the attention back on the house and its occupants. Camilla would argue that the men of her family were far more despicable than her, but Camilla was deranged half the time and asleep the rest. And now she was awake.

Eugenia rushed upstairs before drawing a breath, clinging onto the banister as if it were the only solid thing in a world full of shadows, but the mansion had fallen silent once more. Through her gloved hand, she did not feel the banister slick with a deep red substance. She reached the door to the West Wing and at the sight of it, she halted.

Splattered across the ornately carved wooden door was blood.