Chapter 1
High up on the North Yorkshire Moors, some twenty miles from the nearest town, and a good seven or eight from the nearest village, stands a lonely old farmhouse. Uninhabited these fifty-odd years, its roof collapsed and its walls falling down, the lime mortar that once held them study and strong, eaten away by the wet, cold and windy weather that is unique to the bleak, dark moors in the winter.
My name is John Harker, and I had taken some time off from my office job in London and longed for the tranquillity of the countryside.
A friend and I had decided upon a few days grouse shooting in Yorkshire and had booked rooms at an Inn in a small village on the edge of the moors. Unfortunately, my friend was taken ill two days before we were due to set off, with a very bad strain of influenza, and his doctor had ordered him to stay bed-ridden for at least a week.
