The Name on the Lintel

A house on the fell. A name over the door. A fire that will not go out.

David Norton is twenty-four, broke and out of chances. His dissertation on the supernatural North is overdue, so he books the cheapest place he can find: High Fell House, a stone farmhouse standing alone on the moor above Edenfield.

Over the kitchen door, a name is cut into the lintel. IOAN FELL 1643. Then the fire in the hearth starts saying his name.

Nearly four hundred years ago, Joan Fell loved a young clerk who went down the lane to Lancaster to save her and never came back. Her neighbours called her a witch. The rope failed her twice, and she died believing that the man she loved had betrayed her.

​She has been waiting by the fire ever since. And the young man who went down that lane was called David Norton.