Book 1 - The Man With the Golden Torc by Simon R. Green

centuries of accumulated duty and responsibility,
trying to suck me in like a black hole, but I balked at the front door. I was
supposed to walk straight in and present myself to the Matriarch, as custom and
tradition demanded…but I’ve never been big on doing what I’m supposed to do. And
since I was still more than a bit resentful at being summoned back so abruptly,
I decided that the Matriarch could wait while I went for a little walk.
    I turned my back on the front door, humming aloud in an
unconcerned sort of way, and strolled past the many arched and stained-glass
windows at the front of the house. I could feel their presence, like the
pressure of so many watching eyes, so I kept my own gaze resolutely straight
ahead. The gravel crunched loudly under my feet as I headed past the east wing,
rounded the corner, and smiled for the first time as I beheld the old family
chapel. Tucked away out of sight and set firmly apart, the chapel was a squat
stone structure with crucifix windows. It looked Saxon but was actually an
eighteenth-century folly. The family had its own chapel inside the Hall now,
pleasant and peaceful and graciously multidenominational, and the old building
had been left to rot. It is currently occupied by the family ghost, Jacob Drood,
cantankerous old goat that he is. He’s my great-great-great-grandfather, I
think. Genealogy never was my strong point.
    On the whole, my family discourages ghosts, otherwise we’d be
hip deep in the things. If any do come bleating back to the Hall after being
killed in the field, they get dispatched on to the Hereafter pretty damned
sharply. The family looks strictly forward, never back, and there just isn’t
room in the Hall for anyone to be sentimental. Jacob is allowed to linger on in
the chapel through some technicality I’ve never really understood, mostly
because the few people who do know are just too embarrassed to talk about it.
All families have the odd skeleton in the closet, and ours is Jacob. The family
ostentatiously hasn’t been on speaking terms with him for years, and he couldn’t
care less. Mostly he just sits around in his ghostly underwear, watching the
memories of old television shows on a set with no insides in it. Now and again
he keeps a spectral eye on what the family’s up to, just because he knows he’s
not supposed to.
    Jacob and I have always got along fine.
     
    I first found out about him when I was eight. Cousin Georgie
dared me to go peek in the window of the forbidden chapel, and I never could
resist a dare. I was caught (of course) and punished (of course) and told that
the chapel and its occupant were strictly off-limits. After that, I couldn’t
wait to meet him. I just knew we’d be kindred spirits. So I sneaked out that
night and basically ambushed the old ghost in his den. He made a few halfhearted
attempts to scare me off, but his heart wasn’t in it. He’d waited a long time
for the family to throw up another black sheep like him. We quickly warmed to
each other, and after that no one could keep us apart. The family did try, but
Jacob came striding out of the chapel and right into the Matriarch’s private
chambers, and whatever was said there, after that the two of us were left
strictly to ourselves.
    Jacob was perhaps the only real friend I had, then. Certainly
the only one I could trust. He encouraged all my early rebellions and was the
only one who was always on my side. He was the one who told me to get out, first
chance I got. He approved of me; said I reminded him of himself as a teenager.
Which was rather worrying, actually.
     
    The chapel looked as squat and ugly as ever; rough stone buried
under thick mats of ivy that stirred and twisted threateningly as I approached
the open front door. Part of Jacob’s early warning system. I patted the ivy and
spoke to it in a friendly fashion, and it relaxed again as it remembered and
recognised my voice. The door was stuck