October 9th – Margaret Oliphant – ‘The Secret Chamber’ (1876) – Read it here or, for a more accessible version, here.

Catch up on the whole challenge here: romancingthegothic.com/2025/09/21/the-scare-a-day-challenge-october-2025. If you missed the previous ones and would like to catch up on all the spooky reads (or try to do four challenges at once!), here are the 2022, 2023 and 2024 challenges.

I really enjoyed this. The family legend of the wicked Earl, the legend of the secret chamber, the set up of the Gothic castle, all of that was a lot of fun, and when we get to the reveal, I was very invested. I particularly loved the build-up:

By this time Lindores began to feel himself again, and to wake to the consciousness of all his own superiorities and enlightenments. The simple sense that he was one of the members of a family with a mystery, and that the moment of his personal encounter with this special power of darkness had come, had been the first thrilling, overwhelming thought. But now as he followed his father, Lindores began to remember that he himself was not altogether like other men; that there was that in him which would make it natural that he should throw some light, hitherto unthought of, upon this carefully-preserved darkness.

What secret even there might be in it–secret of hereditary tendency, of psychic force, of mental conformation, or of some curious combination of circumstances at once more and less potent than these–it was for him to find out. He gathered all his forces about him, reminded himself of modern enlightenment, and bade his nerves be steel to all vulgar horrors.

He, too, felt his own pulse as he followed his father.

To spend the night perhaps amongst the skeletons of that old-world massacre, and to repent the sins of his ancestors–to be brought within the range of some optical illusion believed in hitherto by all the generations, and which, no doubt, was of a startling kind, or his father would not look so serious,–any of these he felt himself quite strong to encounter. 

The fact that our protagonist, John Randolph, Lord Lindores, really believes himself to be a modern man of science and above superstition and the horrors of the murky Celtic past, sets up the supernatural reveal. I was wondering if it would go down the Supernatural Explained route and be anticlimactic, but no – I wasn’t disappointed.

This story reminded me of the original idea I had for after I finished The Crows, which was to write the same story deliberately over and over in different ways and settings, with the house in each, and have different outcomes and so on each time, like a multiverse.

[There are actually 2 versions now, one being The Crows and the other being a contemporary queer romcom version where the house is a person (a nonbinary trans femme who uses she/they pronouns), called Birds of a Feather.]

This story almost feels like it belongs to that idea; an undying magician in a secret room of a family castle, living for centuries in secret and casting a pall over his descendants. The mad magician in the attic could well be a reveal that fits Pagham-on-Sea, and maybe if I wrote that novel again, that would be how it turned out.

I think stories like this might be ripe for retellings and reimaginings anyway, and to be honest, now I have the germ of a dark Gothic romantasy idea.

---

I think for this I’ll share an extract of what I’m writing in the Yelen & Yelena universe, which is currently in progress.

This is an unedited draft chapter from As Below, So Above, my alchemist Phantom of the Opera X m/m Rapunzel.

---

Calcination

The stone tower dominated the landscape on its bare-sloped hill, the road towards it nothing more than a track overgrown with grass. Corentin regretted that his first glimpse of it was by night, when all he could see through the carriage window was a dismal silhouette against the sky, knowing he would not see the outside of it again for some time.

“That’s the place,” Master Armel said, unnecessarily. “You’ll be supplied every Monday, and I’ll be checking in with you when I can. You can see now what I mean by ‘lonely work’.”

Corentin gently traced the ridges of scar tissue on his own forearms, from his delicate wrists to rolled-up sleeves. “I’m used to lonely work.”

His patron gave a soft grunt in the back of his throat. “All I ask for are regular reports. If you find anything, even if you think it’s not of interest, I want to know what it is. I hope you don’t put too much stock in the superstitions about this place, young man.”

In fact, although a man of science, the idea of living in a reputedly haunted tower did not appeal to Corentin, but he couldn’t protest. Master Armel was paying far too much for that, and it was his only chance to learn the secrets of an alchemist so reclusive he had shut himself up in the tower ahead of them, determined to perfect the transmutation of base metal to gold.

“We don’t know the whole truth of phantoms, sir,” Corentin said, as the carriage turned a corner on the approach, and the twinkling lights of a hamlet replaced the looming dark shape that now lay dead ahead. “We know the voices of the restless dead travel on the wind. The idea of phantoms, spirits, if you will, remaining in one place and being seen rather than simply heard… is not as far-fetched as it sounds.”

Master Armel gave him a shrewd look, heavy-eyed with the late hour, and shrugged. “For what it’s worth, I myself have stayed several weeks in that tower, working on the locks, and never heard nor saw anything that couldn’t be explained in an ordinary way.”

“That reminds me.” Corentin clutched the strap dangling from the roof as the carriage wheel bounced over a stone. “Shouldn’t I have the keys?”

Master Armel laughed. He was not a jovial man, and the laugh was more of a grim chuckle, ground out of his chest like a chore.

Corentin’s stomach turned. He gripped the strap tighter, although the track was much smoother now, albeit sloping upwards, and Corentin did not want to slip forward into Master Armel’s uninviting lap.

“There are no keys,” his patron informed him, a nasty smile on his thin, wide lips. “I didn’t mean to mislead you on the particulars, I thought you would have asked around by now.”

Asked whom? Corentin was a loner by choice, who barely communicated with his academy fellows. He had been a singular, sheltered child, now grown into a singular, sheltered adult, barely out of his teens.

A prodigy, his tutors said.

A precocious prick, claimed his peers, which numbered among the nicest epithets they bestowed on him in his hearing.

Armel saw his expression and tutted. “Don’t look so wounded, my learned young friend. I see you have had other things on your mind than base details. Well. There are no keys, because Master Elouan did not merely lock himself away, he walled himself up. And each floor of the tower, at least the ones I could access in my weeks of trying, has a chemical lock that only releases if you understand the exact combinations of chemicals needed to create a reaction.” He tilted his grizzled head. “And that will be your problem, of course, as it is likely his greatest discoveries and writings are sealed at the base of the tower, or possibly even below it.”

Corentin swallowed. “But – the door…?”

“There is no door. There is only the window, at the very top, and the way up and down is via a winch lift that takes two men to operate. So if you want to come down, you must wait for the supply cart, or climb the rope.” Armel’s eyes twinkled in the carriage lantern light as Corentin’s knuckles grew white. “Now do you see why I call it ‘lonely work’?”

---

“Mister Corentin is not in a position to refuse such an offer,” said the Dean, perched raptor-like behind his desk in voluminous black robes, as if the matter was already settled.

This suited Master Armel; as a master merchant in the Venturer’s Guild, he preferred deals that came signed and sealed, with guarantees and guarantors. The sea was treacherous, and his ventures took on elements of extreme risk each time, but this was not a venture in the usual way of his business.

The learned youth, Mr Corentin, was a skinny, pale lad, crowned with lank blond hair that fell unnaturally straight to his shoulders. His arms were a map of chemical burns, and a starburst of glass shrapnel was stamped on his right cheek. He looked up morosely and Armel wondered if his eyes had ever had a stronger colour than this washed-out blue, almost pale grey, or if he had been thoroughly bleached by years of fumes.

“All the same, I’d like to hear why you want me,” he said, and even his voice was mellifluous and gentle, scrubbed of assertion, character, and volume.

Here in the Dean’s study, set against the heavy browns and dark reds of a much more forceful personality, the young man bore no sign of the genius that had perfected spark cables, through which harnessed magic could be tamed and channelled harmlessly into homes and workplaces, reducing leakage to zero.

Everything about Mr Corentin was soft and muted, from his hunched, apologetic posture, to his fawn trousers and matching waistcoat.

Master Armel was secretly impressed. Everything about the boy – although in his early twenties, ‘boy’ was the epithet that leant itself most readily to Mr Corentin – was calculated to render him unthreatening, unassuming, and utterly forgettable. At a time where rival alchemists and their patrons were known to assassinate one another on an alarmingly regular basis, if the sensationalist newsmongers were to be believed, this showed a remarkable sense of self-preservation.

Armel cleared his throat. “You may be aware of the work of a certain alchemist, a Magister of Alchemical Philosophy from this very institution, in fact, Magister Elouan Mazhe.”

Mr Corentin nodded.

“Magister Elouen was reputed to have discovered something of immense importance before he died, although only his letters remain to hint at any such success. He claimed to have achieved his goal, his primary goal, and then, of course, his body was found at the base of his tower. He could have fallen, or jumped. Or been pushed.” Armel watched Mr Corentin for any reaction to this, but the young man remained in his hunched, slightly apologetic position, with only the slightest flinch at the suggestion of foul play. He betrayed no emotion except that bland, flat affect, which was hard to tell if it was natural or practised.

The Dean, on his part, seemed almost bored.

Armel moved the story along. “I bought Magister Elouan’s tower at auction. It’s been difficult to access his rooms, and so… I have need of a gifted alchemist, who understands alchemical codes, to work through what remains, and translate the discoveries into lay-speak. I’m afraid for all my interest in the arts, I am still only at the rudimentary stage of understanding.”

Mr Corentin stirred. “Can you not… simply… pick the locks, or take off the doors?”

The Dean and Master Armel exchanged glances.

“I did tell you Mr Corentin has been somewhat sheltered here,” the Dean said, and Armel allowed himself a flicker of amusement at this masterful understatement.

For almost all his life, the Dean had explained, the gifted young man had enjoyed the protection of the academy walls, the company of his tutors, and peace and quiet, freedom to work without interruptions. As such, Mr Corentin was also unfamiliar with the survivalism and jealous paranoia of his unprotected peers. 

Alchemists beyond institutions like the academy were notoriously elusive, and each guarded their secrets with a paranoid jealousy that made learning anything from them very difficult. Moreover, their tendency to secure their secrets in a – volatile – manner meant that any fortune hunter would think twice before tampering with seals and doors.

Master Armel had studied the Beryl Incident, when a sealed door in Magister Beryl’s cellar was expertly and carefully unsealed, only for the entire wooden structure to explode with enough force to take out the streets in front and behind, levelling rows of houses and shops, and starting a fire that quickly spread city-wide. The casualties climbed into the hundreds, although fatalities miraculously stayed in the tens.

“We didn’t think it prudent,” Armel said, after a long pause.

---

The winch-lift shook under Corentin’s trembling knees, shins rendered weak as custard. He had not realised it was possible for one’s feet to sweat, but his hose was miserably damp and he was clammy all over.

“I don’t like heights,” he managed, after the first two ells. He could easily hop onto the grass at this distance with no injury, but his head was swimming with fear and the ground seemed impossibly far below him.

“Face the stone,” Master Armel called up unkindly.

Corentin twisted very slowly, terrified his knees would buckle, knuckles white as he gripped the ropes. The boards below him swung from side to side, and he whimpered. Now he was stuck at a diagonal, twisted awkwardly so that he could see the tower behind him if he kept his head turned over his shoulder like an owl.

“I can’t, I’m sorry.”

The winch-lift jerked him upwards another couple of ells, and marking his ascent with the stone slabs was somehow worse. Corentin tried looking upwards instead, but the window was so far above that his approach only made him nauseous.

“I can’t,” Corentin repeated, pleading. “Please, I can’t.”

It did not help that he now knew how Magister Elouen had been found; his broken body at the foot of his sealed tower. He could only imagine himself that way, and nearly swooned as the intrusive thought slammed into his mind.

“Well you’re not coming back down,” Armel snapped, and the winch raised the shaking alchemist higher. “The wheel only turns one way.”

“Then how do I get back down?” Corentin was so light-headed now he was sure he would faint. He clung to the ropes either side of the boards with feverish intensity, unable to take more than quick, shallow breaths.

Master Armel didn’t reply, and the winch-lift creaked and swung him higher.

Of course it goes both ways, Corentin’s rational mind assured him. He just doesn’t want to reverse it.

His legs shook.

“Sit!” Armel barked the command up at him as if he were an untrained pup, and the ropes took some of the skin from Corentin’s palms as he folded himself up with a sob catching in the back of his throat.

His knees hit his chin, bony backside thudding onto the board with plenty of width to spare, and hands stinging as the cold sweat mixed with rope-burn.

It only helped a little; his head still swam sickly with panic. He remained in this position, eyes scrunched shut, until Master Armel gave another shout from below and the winch-lift swung to a halt.

“Climb through!”

This was a nightmare, surely.

Corentin opened his eyes, and the sight of the village in the distance with its flickering lights brought frightened tears to his eyes. He was sure he would lose control of his bowels and bladder at any moment, and that his legs would not, could not, take his meagre weight.

His hands hurt.

He chanced a glance behind him at the tower, and saw the window was not level with his feet. He couldn’t guess as to how far away it was, but he was sure the answer was an impossibly long way away.

“Get up!” Armel shouted from the ground.

The boards shivered in response to Corentin’s shaking limbs. He unfolded himself with a burning pain in his cramped muscles. The world fell away into nothing. Corentin sobbed.

He kept his knees bent in a crouch, clinging to the ropes either side in a vain attempt to keep the contraption steady, and tried to twist himself around. Seconds crawled like hours, stretched out as a drop of perspiration rolled down the nape of his neck and soaked into the linen on his back.

The window was the level of his chest.

When he forced himself to stand properly, he could lift his leg onto the sill and crawl through without any difficulty; it was forcing his knees to bend again that was the main problem.

“I’m sorry,” he called down, ashamed of himself. “Sorry.”

“Climb in!”

“Sorry.” Corentin dared to release the rope and grab the stone. It was solid and firm. He pressed his whole skinny chest against it and saw bare floorboards below, a homely interior, and a workbench.

There were two doors. One, Armel had explained, was to Elouan’s waste disposal, dealt with by chemicals and flushed out with rainwater when enough collected in the chamber above. The other accessed the rest of the tower, and it was locked with a chemical lock that Armel had supposedly already opened.

Corentin pulled himself through, landing on the floor in a heap of damp cloth and quivering bones.

The creak of the lift outside informed him that the wheel did, in fact, turn the other way. By the time he got to his feet, legs still trembling, and hauled himself up to peek over the edge of the sill, the lift was already halfway down.

“I’ll send up supplies,” Armel yelled up from below.

Corentin had never cursed anyone before, but the choice words of his peers bubbled to the surface and pressed against his lips.

He couldn’t bring himself to say them.

Instead, he dropped to his knees on the floor and hid from the great drop below him, telling himself he was gathering his nerves; they crawled even now, tracing sickly shivers under his skin.

Here he was, in Master Elouan’s tower. His work would soon begin, and the secrets of the alchemist revealed. Corentin breathed more easily, chest beginning to loosen. Soon, he could begin to unlock the secrets of the tower, and learn something new. For that, he could brave retrieving supplies from below the window.

He waited for Master Armel to winch up his first week of rations, the ghost of an excited smile playing on his tight lips.

---

Corentin’s new home was as comfortable as his rooms in the academy, with everything he needed and no fellow students to interrupt him.

The circular room was divided into four segments with invisible lines, rotating around the pillar in the middle where the narrow spiral staircase was enclosed. There was the washstand beside the door to the private purging station, and a tin bath hanging on the door. This section of floor was empty and bare.

The next section was a library of sorts, marked by bookcases and a comfortable, well-stuffed chair with a footstool of matching brown fabric. Here was the fireplace, the flue jutting out of the tower as the purging station did.

Then there was the workbench, the equipment, shelves of vials and powders, and instruments to observe the moon and stars. Corentin’s interest lay here, primarily, but it held no secrets. It was not even as well stocked as his own workbench at the academy – Armel didn’t have the knowledge on his own, and it showed. Corentin found some ink and paper, and scratched out a list for the next delivery. Armel was sending someone to him to retrieve whatever items he needed.

The last segment was the bed, a humble, straw-stuffed affair, and a trunk for clothes, and hooks and shelves for personal items.

In the centre of this room was the staircase, enclosed in a stone column and with one heavy metal door blocking the way. Its lock was made of a metal unfamiliar to Corentin, and therefore, he supposed with some degree of academic snobbery, unfamiliar to Master Armel. He was beginning to doubt his patron had spent as much time up here as he claimed.

It was not only locked, but showed no sign of previous tampering. Perhaps it had locked itself again behind Master Armel, or perhaps Corentin was right to doubt, and Master Armel had not been entirely truthful about his own sojourn in the tower. Either way, Armel had left no instructions, and it was his first obstacle to entering the tower proper.

Corentin pondered on this problem for a while, bringing all the candles and lanterns to the door so that he could see better at night, and barely touched his first day of rations. He tied back his hair, a habit when he worked, and sat in contemplative silence.

Magister Elouan’s books marked him as a philosopher, unconcerned with wealth and immortality. His library focused on the spiritual and esoteric, which made Corentin’s work feel clumsy and pedestrian. All that Corentin did, he did to solid matter. Magister Elouan appeared to think of alchemy in terms of personal and universal transformation.

Of course, the lock had a keyhole, but no key.

The keyhole had a lip, and a well, as if he were meant to pour liquid into it. The well itself was dry. Above it, Corentin discovered the bulbous glass curve of a container, hidden from him by the metal casing of the lock, and he could not prise it out to investigate it. Prodding and poking produced no results except to release tubes and thin rods, which felt less like progress, and more like a taunt.

The solution would be elegant, or perhaps metaphysical. First, Corentin must grasp the idea of the lock, and then he would discover how to open it.

The first day gave way to the second.

The second to the third.

Corentin rationed his food, but the height of the tower had severely dampened his appetite. He began to experiment with the chemicals Master Armel had provided, but the fumes made him weak.

He was too afraid to move closer to the open window.

The third day rolled into the fourth, then the fifth, and still he was no closer to the idea. He forced his tired mind to think of theorems and equations, but the mystery of the fluid in the glass vial he could not access was the piece of the puzzle that evaded him.

He needed more books on Magister Elouan himself to understand his mind; he needed the Magister’s diagrams and theories, the imprint of the man’s intellect inked into the page, primed for reabsorption. He had nothing.

On the sixth day, frustration rendered his experiments useless and void. He had come up with a most advanced solution, poured it into the lip – and the lock remained stubborn. It did nothing while left overnight, except react with the metal, and Corentin watched with horror as it melted through the base of the lock and caused a metal plate at the bottom of the door to stain.

His heart thrumming painfully in his throat, Corentin saw the stain turn into a shape; a miserable rune, the exoteric alchemical shorthand for ‘this experiment yielded no results’.

Magister Elouan mocked him.

The seventh day was tinged with panic.

Corentin made some notes, ate a hunk of granary bread with oil and salt, and a few slices of cheese. It was the most he had managed to eat in a single sitting since he arrived. The bread was getting stale.

He could not explain his state of mind, except that it felt like someone was whispering in his ear at night, each night since the first, to tell him he should not be there, that his achievements beyond the Tower were worthless, and that this was his true testing ground. Each morning he woke with the same resolve, hardening little by little each day, only to be dashed by each successive failure.

He wondered where his ideas came from, if the equations he scribbled and pored over were even his, or if they came from his dreams.

Days eight, nine, and ten were the same, and what had merely been a tinge of panic was spreading into an overwhelming pool that threatened to drown his reason completely.

His doubts were amplified by the claustrophobia; pacing around and around the circular walls, unable to escape his cell, Corentin forced himself to close his eyes and push his head out of the shutters simply to breathe in the fresh air. He may have passed out on the window ledge, unaware of the time.

He jerked back into consciousness as his arm dangled in space, and opened his eyes to the dizzying depths of the ground below, and the stone of the Tower against his cheek.

He threw himself back into the safety of the high room, the wooden floor spinning, afraid he would fall through the boards and keep falling forever.

He couldn’t take more of this.

If Master Armel didn’t return, he was sure he would go mad.

Then, on the twelfth night, the phantom appeared.

There was a chill on the night air, but he did not close the shutters of the tower window. He couldn’t bear to be enclosed in this stone tomb so high above the ground, with no means of escape. Besides, even the thought of leaning out again to close the shutters made him dizzy.

Perhaps that was how the phantom came in.

Corentin didn’t know when he fell asleep on the footstool, slumped loosely over his knees, but he dreamed he was not alone in the room.

A shape appeared to him, reflected in the metal door as if the door were a mirror.

“Our gold is not common gold,” it said, and Corentin was struck by the rasping quality of the voice, so dark and harsh, like a raven calling.

“Nor our locks common locks,” Corentin answered, although this was his first experience with such things.

The phantom in the metal rippled as it moved.

Corentin saw a glimpse of a grizzled, gaunt cheek beneath a hood of dark red. The figure was as tall as he was, and as thin, but he could not see more than the fleeting slivers of detail.

“You must be talented,” the phantom said. “Or a fool.”

Corentin blushed. “I’m here to learn.”

“And what have you learned so far, before coming here?”

 He had an urgent desire to impress this mirage, although he couldn’t say why. He launched into a list of all the foundational theories, the application of which had led him to discoveries he would never share with his grasping tutors until he had perfected the outcomes.

Corentin talked himself into a fugue state, no movement in his body but the movement of his mouth, not even blinking.

He explained his discovery that allowed tamed magic, pulled from the atmosphere, to run through spark lines without leaking, and how these aqueducts for magic were constructed.

As he talked, a fire burned through the stillness of his limbs, from his joints and through his bones, finding release on his tongue. He talked about alchemy until his tongue dried up, and he couldn’t think of anything else to say.

He only knew he had fallen silent when the room sounded different, and there was a ringing in his ears – the absence, he realised, of his own voice.

The figure was blurred, indistinct. Corentin wasn’t even sure there was anyone still there.

“Calcination,” the figure said finally, breaking the silence. “That is the first stage.”

But Corentin tasted those words, dry as ashes, in his own mouth, and couldn’t be sure who had spoken them.

---

Corentin awoke with the sunrise, but he was too afraid to look out of the window. He had fallen asleep on the stool, staring at the lock.

His back ached, and unfolding made him feel sick.

He realised, cricking his neck by looking upwards, that the beams were the base of the tower roof.

Vertigo swung him into a quivering bundle of nerves.

He was much too high up. The tower felt hollow and empty below him, the floorboards the only thing stopping him from plunging into nothing, the only thing that kept him from falling forever.

In the academy, he was safe. There was solidity and order; everything in its place, meals served in the refectory at appointed times or brought to his room, and supervisors to check on him.

Here, he was alone.

His patron was miles away, and the only way out was a winch-lift that he couldn’t operate alone. He didn’t know if he could even climb out of the window into it. In fact, he was sure he could not. He would rather solve every lock and make his way to the base of the tower, from there to dig his way out with his bare hands, than face that lift again.

Calcination; that is the first stage.

Of course.

Corentin found a candle and box of phosphorus matches, lit the wick, and thrust the burning candle into the keyhole.