The Plague Stones

by James Brogden

  ‘I know.’ She felt herself on the edge of bursting into tears or hysterical laughter. The door was solid oak with a steel core and its panes were of toughened and laminated glass, but she wasn’t sure if that made any difference to something like Hester. The dead girl came right up to it, Her nose almost touching the glass, shading it with Her hands against the glare coming from behind Her and peering in. Trish towed her husband and son deeper into the shadows, in the doorway to the kitchen.

  ‘Mum,’ whispered Toby. ‘When will the police get here?’

  ‘Soon, darling, soon.’

  ‘Did you use that priority contact Mr Nash gave us?’

  Her hand flew to her mouth. She hadn’t. She’d done just what Richard had said when Toby’s hand was being treated: panicked and dialled 999 out of habit. And he’d been right – she didn’t care if any other people’s emergencies might have been more important right at that very moment. But she didn’t have her phone and she couldn’t remember where she’d left or dropped it – in the bedroom? Outside?

  There was a polite knock at the door.

  ‘Go away!’ she screamed. ‘Just why can’t you leave us alone?’

  When Hester spoke, Her voice was as clear as if She were in the room with them. It was that of an ordinary girl, but there was a deeper note to it, a coarse undertone as if two people of vastly differing sizes were fighting for the same vocal cords. Trish thought that must be what seven hundred years of undying rage must sound like.

  ‘Come out, Custodian,’ Hester said. ‘I promise to make it quick. I may even spare your family.’

  ‘Why are you doing this?’ Trish sobbed. ‘I don’t understand! I’ve never done anything to you!’

  ‘You think your deeds matter in the slightest? You think your ignorance excuses you? It does not matter what you have or have not done. The moment you joined the Trust you took share in the guilt of their forebears, the ones who murdered my people.’

  ‘But I didn’t know! How could I know? It’s not fair!’

  ‘It’s not fair,’ Hester whined in mockery. ‘Do you know how much the gwrach clefyd cares for your notions of what is fair?’ She drew the silhouette of Her head back and spat on the back door’s window. Black phlegm slid down the glass. ‘That much. Now let me in. It is the only chance you have to save those you love.’

  From the kitchen came a sudden thud at the window above the sink, followed quickly by a second, and on the third accompanied by a deep cracking sound as the laminated safety glass began to give. At the same time the front door was rammed hard enough to make the safety chain and the brass letter flap rattle. Rationally she knew that there was little to no chance that even a gang of intruders could break through its steel core, but that took a back seat to the sudden terrified realisation that her home was surrounded. ‘Peter, what do we do?’

  ‘Upstairs to my room!’ said Toby. ‘It’s at the top of the house, and it’s got the narrowest doorway right at the top of the stairs. We chuck all the furniture down the stairs and make a barricade.’

  ‘Did you think of that before?’ she asked.

  ‘It’s why I chose that room,’ he said.

  ‘Don’t tell me you knew this was going to happen.’

  ‘Of course not!’

  ‘No,’ said Peter, looking across the kitchen at the connecting door to the garage. ‘I’m not having us trapped. We don’t know how long the police will take, or what they’ll even be able to do if they get here. We go for my van and we get the fuck out.’

  There was a tremendous crunch and the window blind above the kitchen sink tented inwards as whatever implement was being wielded forced its way through. Sounds of thudding and hammering echoed from all parts of the house; it sounded like Hester’s people weren’t just focussing on obvious things like windows and doors but were trying to smash through the very walls themselves in some places.

  ‘NOW!’ Peter yelled, grabbed Trish and Toby each by a wrist and ran for the garage door.

  * * *

  The kitchen blind was ripped from its fittings and fell onto the sink unit, carrying the drainer to the ceramic-tiled floor, where cutlery bounced away in a cacophony of spinning steel and drinking glasses exploded into glittering shrapnel. The crazed window glass looked like a huge spiderweb with human silhouettes crowding close on the other side. Something like a rusted boat hook withdrew from the black hole at its centre and dead hands replaced it, curling around the broken edge and ripping at the laminated glass, peeling it back as if it were a pane of toffee.

  Peter yanked at the garage doorknob. It didn’t move. He stared at it stupidly. ‘It’s locked!’

  ‘Of course it’s locked!’ Trish yelled.

  ‘Keys…’ Peter ran for the hall. Next to the main burglar alarm console in the cupboard under the stairs he’d installed a board with hooks for all the household keys – doors, windows, even the ones for bleeding the radiator and opening the electricity meter cupboard. He hauled the cupboard open. A small amber light on the alarm console was flashing helpfully to let him know that someone had tripped the motion sensor in the back garden. The keys – all labelled, neat and sane – jittered, dancing away from his panicky fingers, enjoying the fun. A battery of fists and weapons thundered against the front door, and he heard something in the study off to his left fall with a crash.

  Behind him, Toby moaned, ‘They’re inside…’ and Trish screamed.

  He grabbed the tag for the garage key and ran back to the kitchen, scooping up his van keys from the bowl on the hall table and slamming the door shut behind him.

  A head and shoulders were pushing through the hole in the window. Beyond the fact that he had a beard, and his mouth was open in a wordless snarl, the man’s ruined face made it impossible to tell what he might have looked like in life. He had one arm through ahead of him and was gripping the sink tap with gangrenous fingers, pulling himself deeper into the house.

  ‘Trish!’ Peter tossed the key to her. ‘Open it!’ He threw his back against the kitchen door just as footsteps thumped down the hall and whoever had got in through the study window barrelled into it from the other side. Toby ran over to help, bracing himself next to his father. The door shoved open an inch, but they slammed it back again. For the moment the pair of them had the advantage of numbers, but that wasn’t going to last long.

  Trish fumbled with the key, inserting it into the lock, turning it, and opening the door to the garage. It was dark inside, no telling if anything had already broken in, and Peter wondered for a moment whether or not Toby’s idea of barricading themselves in upstairs might have been the better idea. Still, they had no option now; the dead intruder was up to his waist in the window, both arms through, grunting as he flailed for anything to get a purchase on.

  ‘Come on!’ she yelled.

  Peter glanced at Toby. ‘Ready?’

  Toby’s terrified eyes were stark in his pale face, but he nodded. ‘Ready.’ Peter felt a rush of mingled love for his son and murderous rage for the bastards who were terrorising him like this.

  ‘Go!’

  They leapt from the kitchen door, which sprang open under the assault, and ran for the garage door as the man in the window fell through completely, going headfirst into the floor with a crunch. Trish slammed the door and locked it behind them. A moment later it shuddered as something which sounded like it was very heavy and sharp tore a chunk out.

  The garage was dark and smelled thickly of motor oil. The wide bulk of Peter’s van was a deeper shadow in the gloom, with just a red LED on his dashboard glowing through the windscreen. He thumbed the unlock button on the key fob, and Trish and Toby climbed into the cab. He tossed the keys in after her. ‘Get it going. I have to open the garage door.’ The pull-up mechanism wasn’t motorised; he was going to have to do it manually and hope that if there was anything outside waiting for him he could leap back into the van before it got him.

  ‘Be careful!’ she whispered.

  He got his hands on the twist-handle
in the middle of the wide metal garage door and listened, trying to hear above the thudding of his own heartbeat whether anything was waiting on the outside. Certainly nobody was hammering to get in. Come to that, the chopping at the internal door from the kitchen had stopped, as had the noises of intrusion from deeper in the house. He didn’t dare hope that Hester had just given up and left. More likely Her people were simply waiting.

  Then Trish got the engine going and he was enveloped in a cloud of exhaust fumes and couldn’t hear anything over its roar.

  Peter drew a deep breath, and in one swift movement twisted the handle open and heaved as hard as he could. The metal door rolled upwards and backwards in a smooth arc on oiled rollers, but with a lot more force than normal so that it crashed into its fully open position with a noise like a scrap-metal gong.

  The interior of the garage was bathed in the flashing blue of police lights, and a voice called, ‘Is everything all right in there?’

  * * *

  They abandoned the van and fled to the sanctuary of the police car, Toby’s parents both yelling at once.

  ‘Now hold up, hold up, one at a time!’ shouted the first uniformed officer. He had a craggy shaven head and his bulky stab vest made him look even larger than he already was, and his arms were outstretched as if trying to herd the chaos, patting the air with his palms, calming them down. His partner, the driver of the patrol car, was still in his seat, on the radio to dispatch. Behind and above everything was the snarling burr of a police helicopter hovering close overhead, unseen in the dark. ‘You,’ the cop said, singling out his dad. ‘Sir, you have blood on you. Is anybody hurt?’

  Peter wiped his face and looked at his hand in surprise, as if he’d forgotten his tussle with Rajko. ‘No, thank God, but you have to call for backup or something because there’s a load of them and I think they’re still here and they’ve got fucking scythes… oh, Christ…’ He retched, hawked and spat. ‘Have you got any water?’

  ‘Yes sir, we can sort you out with that just as soon as you’re all safe. I’m PC Owen, that’s PC Karim in the car just letting the station know that we’re here. I’m going to ask you all to get in the back of the car while we have a quick look around.’

  ‘I really wouldn’t recommend that, officer,’ said Toby.

  ‘Why’s that?’

  ‘Like my dad says, two of you aren’t going to be enough.’

  ‘Just get in the car, son, and don’t worry about us; this is what we do.’ PC Owen turned back to Peter. ‘When you say a load, how many do you mean?’

  His mum jerked as if stung and slapped her hand to her cheek, eyes wide with sudden realisation. ‘Oh shit!’

  ‘What?’ Peter took her shoulders, alarmed. ‘Honey, what is it?’

  ‘The others! The other Trustees! We have to warn them! She’ll be after them too and there’s nothing to stop Her! She’s going to kill all of them!’

  ‘Who is going to kill who?’ asked PC Owen.

  ‘Toby,’ she said. ‘Have you got your phone?’

  He shook his head. ‘Sorry. It all happened so quickly.’

  ‘Who is going to kill who?’ the cop demanded.

  ‘A girl… look, it’s not going to make any sense. I have to get my phone and warn them…’ She started back towards the house, but PC Owen headed her off.

  ‘Mrs Feenan, I’m sorry but no. Intruders might still be inside. There’s absolutely no way I’m letting you back in there until I’m sure it’s safe, and if your husband is telling me that there’s a group of them and that they’re armed, we’re all going to have to wait for more units.’

  ‘But…’

  ‘The helicopter,’ he said, overriding her, ‘is keeping an eye on things, and right now they’re telling me that they can’t see anybody outside or in the immediate area, so as far as I’m concerned right here is the safest place you can be. You’re not the only one having a bit of a busy night – we’re dealing with several other reports of vandalism and assault and one major fire. If you think there is someone you know who might also be in danger, give us their names and addresses, and we’ll send someone to check on them as soon as we can, okay?’

  His mum muttered, ‘Okay,’ and slumped suddenly, shivering as the adrenalin crash began to take hold. His dad helped her into the back seat and between them they started to give the cop in the driver’s seat the contact details of the other Trustees. Toby, who at least had something warm to wear, remained standing next to the patrol car. Its lights strobe-painted the front of the house in blue and black shadows, picking out the rips and gouges in the front door, and the sparkling of broken glass on the lawn. The helicopter clattered overhead in widening circles, presumably using its thermal imaging camera to look for anyone fleeing the scene. They wouldn’t see anything. The danger, at least for the moment, seemed to have passed.

  Inside the car, he heard his dad start to cough.

  34

  THE NIGHT BEFORE

  THE SOFT WHISPER OF TRICKLING WATER FILLED THE silence of St Sebastian’s church. The holy spring bubbled up into its granite basin and flowed away through the culvert in the west wall as it had done for centuries, its echoes rippling back upon themselves from ancient walls and dark oak, magnifying them into the music of a woodland stream, but in the dim hours of the early morning its sound gave Reverend Joyce Dobson no solace. The stream was ice-cold from its birthplace underground, and the columns that it ran between were petrified trunks of dead stone.

  She sat in the rearmost pew, listening, hearing nothing. Ever since she had been a girl she had loved the sound of water. Throughout her childhood in the Lakes it had been part of the background heartbeat to her life, whether she and her sister had been crossing it on arched bridges on the way to school or chasing it in tumbling white streamers down the sloping sides of the fells. Whenever she’d been troubled she had always sought out quiet places where the sound of water could get into her head and rinse it clean, allowing her to think clearly and find her answers. In time she had come to recognise in it the voice of the Lord, and when she learned that the church in Haleswell had a holy spring inside its walls it had seemed nothing less than a sign. Unlike Nash, who had been born to the role of Trustee, or Patricia, who had been manipulated into it, Joyce had embraced the position voluntarily, eager for the opportunity to shepherd a flock so spiritually threatened, in the full knowledge of what she was letting herself in for.

  Full knowledge. She uttered a short, hard laugh, and its echoes ricocheted. What arrogance. She could still taste the palm of Hester’s hand – the dead cold salt of it, like drowned leather. Hester might have been wearing Donna’s flesh and blood, but in that intimate physical contact couldn’t disguise what She truly was.

  Joyce’s mistake had been to assume that in attempting to bless the house she was confronting something malicious but essentially human – the unquiet spirit of a girl, far removed from her own experience in time, perhaps, but knowable for all that. She acknowledged now that whatever had once been human in Hester Attlowe had long since soured into something wholly evil, and she blamed herself for not following her instincts in the first place to contact the Deliverance Ministry, rather than letting herself be swayed by Nash’s arguments. Unable to sleep, and at a loss for how to respond in the face of all this, she had returned to St Sebastian’s Well for guidance, but the sound of water was just mindless babbling, as heedless of her as it had been of the countless other vicars of this church who had served and died over the centuries.

  There came a tentative knocking on the church’s heavy wooden door, and a male voice: ‘Is there anybody in there? Please, can you help me?’

  Joyce looked at her watch: it was after three in the morning. Too late for conmen to come calling, and thieves looking for lead off the roof would simply climb up there and have at it. She approached the door, and laid her hand on its dark timbers as if she could feel her way through them to whoever was on the other side. ‘Who is it?’ she called.

  ‘My name i
s Rajko Gorić,’ he said, and coughed heavily. ‘Please, I’ve been beaten up.’

  The poor boy who had lost his family in that dreadful business on Pestle Road. Despite Nash’s protestations to the contrary she couldn’t help feeling that the Trust could have done more to prevent it, and she wished she could have provided more than just a memorial service, but they were Eastern Orthodox and in any case he’d moved away after the funerals. What was he doing back in Haleswell? Joyce heard his hand on the other side of the door, mirroring her own, and a soft thump which must have been his forehead leaning to rest on the wood. ‘Please,’ he implored, and coughed again. ‘Can’t you do anything to help me? I don’t know where else to go.’

  She should have left the door shut and called an ambulance for him. She should have helped him sooner after his loss. She should have gotten to know his family way before any of it. Too many opportunities lost.

  She slid back the heavy cast-iron bolts top and bottom and opened the door, gasping when she saw the state of him. His hair was matted with blood, which also caked one side of his face, seeping from a nasty-looking gash above his right eyebrow. His other eye was bruised purple and his lower lip was split and swollen. He was rail thin and hugging himself, dressed only in a t-shirt and jeans against the night’s chill.

  ‘Oh you poor boy!’ she said, reaching out to draw him inside. ‘Come in and let’s have a look at you.’

  ‘Thanks,’ he grinned, and looked back over his shoulder. ‘I hope you don’t mind, but I’ve brought a few friends.’

  From the darkness behind him, something growled – something obviously much larger and heavier than a person – the sound rising and unknotting itself into a single intelligible syllable: ‘Priest.’ A girl appeared, framed in the doorway with a crowd of people massing behind Her, and for a moment She looked terrifyingly familiar.

  ‘Dear Lord,’ Joyce breathed. ‘Claire?’

  Hester laughed.

  Joyce backed away and down the aisle towards the altar, shaking her head in meaningless denial. No. This wasn’t possible. No. The blessing of the plague stones still held. No. If the boundary had been broken she would have been warned. Surely she would have been told.