by L. J. Hutton
Chapter 15
IF THE MULLIGREW’S farm had been dismal in the daytime, by night it became downright sinister. It was very dark and very quiet up here, and Bill was glad that he’d brought two powerful torches with him, and had also come out muffled up far more than he had been during the daytime. At this end of the year, with the nights getting longer, even after a warm day the temperature soon dropped, and Bill was prepared for having to sit and wait for some time.
Taking it very steadily, he made his way back up the valley, but glad of the exercise to warm him up for a while. Despite there being no moon, it was an absolutely cloudless night, and so up above, Bill was treated to a wonderful view of the stars with a clarity he never saw at home. Too many streetlights interfered with stargazing in a small city, and so to see the Milky Way in all of its glory was enough to make him stop in his tracks more than once and just stare at it. Unlike Vijay, Bill was comfortable enough in his own skin that he wasn’t bothered by being dwarfed by the universe. Instead he could delight in its beauty and take consolation that humanity hadn’t managed to spoil everything yet.
Yet it also made him very aware of the great dark bulk of the hill rising off to his right, and of the silhouette of the ancient ramparts of Caer Caradoc at the top. The deeper he got into the sharp little valley, the more the Iron Age fort seemed to loom over him, and he was strangely glad to get into the cover of the sparse woodland. Tonight there was an odd air of watchfulness about the place which he couldn’t dismiss as simply overactive imagination. You couldn’t be in the police for as long as Bill had and not have a strong sense of when you were being watched, and all of his senses were telling him that even if he couldn’t see them, somebody could see him.
When he finally got to the little shrine, he carefully lit the stubs of candles, glad that the girls had kept the jam jar lids on so that the candles hadn’t got a dousing every time it rained. It meant that both wicks caught immediately, and when Bill set the jars back in their places on the altar, he gasped as more light flickered at him. There, wedged back against the tree where he’d not seen them for the ivy wreaths, were several shards of an old mirror. Exactly when the mirror had been broken was harder to tell, and the foxing on the back of the pieces could either have been due to age or more recent exposure to the weather, so Bill had no idea of how long the shrine had been there from that. But the girls had had the wit to place them so that they bounced the candles’ light back out, and in the profound darkness under the trees’ canopies, the light they reflected amplified the candles’ flames several fold.
Bill immediately turned his torch off and then went and sat on the rough bench. It was just a case of waiting now. Either someone would come or they wouldn’t, but hopefully, seeing the candles lit once more would at least arouse some curiosity. He sat and waited ...and waited. At one point a fox slunk into the little clearing, sniffed the air and looked at Bill, then left without getting close to him.
Slowly, even the faint noise of heavy vehicles occasionally passing along the main road ceased, and when Bill looked at his watch, he saw that it was already past one o’clock in the morning. He eased his position so that he could lean back against a tree, and with the exertions of the day beginning to catch up with him, he found his eyelids starting to droop. Not to actually fall asleep, he’d done enough stakeouts in his time to not do that, but on the other hand, those had usually been done in a town. Somewhere where there were street lights, and even in the early hours the odd car would go by – usually a taxi dropping some late-night revellers off, since the kind of folk Bill ended up investigating weren’t usually the type to live in quiet residential streets, where everyone got to bed at a decent time to be able to get up for work in the morning. It was usually much more mixed neighbourhoods that he found himself in during the small hours, with their livelier lifestyles, and so it was the pleasant silence which more than anything was lulling him into drowsiness.
The words, “Who is he?” jolted him back into alertness.
“Do you know him?” he heard next. Or rather he thought he did, and yet he couldn’t have sworn on oath that he heard actual words. It was more as if they sort of seeped into his mind rather than his ears.
“Why is he here? Do you know?”
Whoever the voice was ‘talking’ to, if they answered, Bill really didn’t hear them this time.
“Hello?” he said cautiously. “It’s okay. I’m not here to hurt anyone. Is that Grace or Hannah? Only if it is, you should know that I’m a policeman and that we’re trying to find you because your father has died and you now own the farm.”
There was no reply.
He tried again. “My name is Bill Scathlock. I’m a detective with the police.” Best keep it simple. If the girls had been kept as isolated as he feared, then saying West Mercia Police wouldn’t mean a thing to them, being oblivious to modern day boundaries. “It’s okay. You aren’t in trouble. It’s just that people are worried about you. When nobody could find any trace of you, they became worried that your father had harmed you. We just want to know that you’re alright.”
For a moment there was silence, then from around a tree on the other side of the tiny clearing, someone stepped out. What jolted Bill was the way the man seemed to have his own illumination. It was almost as if he glowed from within. And no modern day man dressed like that outside of a film set. Whether they were knee-high boots, or some kind of wrapping around the legs, they were snugly fitting, and they gave way to close fitting breeches. Over the top was a thigh-length jerkin which was made of nothing Bill could identify, but looked substantial enough to act as some form of body armour. And even in the darkness they were all definitely shades of green, almost like army camouflage but nothing that modern, and rather more as though they’d picked up the shapes and shading of a leafy tree. In the man’s hand was a sword which also gave off its own glow, and he was holding it in a way that said he was very sure of being able to use it.
And yet Bill instantly knew that this wasn’t some re-enactor living the dream. For a start, all his internal sensors, which had been so finely tuned after his encounter with Tapio, were now screaming at him that this was another person from that very different reality, where myth and legend sometimes collided with the physical. And Bill was clued up enough after what he’d been through to know that if this warrior decided to attack him, then he could be in serious trouble. Just because that sword looked otherworldly didn’t mean it couldn’t cut and stab with lethal effectiveness.
He carefully raised his hands to show that they were empty, but remained seated, even if he did shift his position very carefully so that his feet were under him, ready to jump up if need be.
“It’s okay,” he repeated calmly, “I’m not looking for trouble, not looking for a fight.”
“Why are you here?” the warrior asked sternly, and Bill could see how he was poised to strike, taking up a fencer-like pose which would allow him to move in at speed.
“I meant what I said,” Bill insisted, “I came here because I’ve been looking for clues as to where Grace and Hannah Mulligrew are. I’m with the police.” Then realised that he might have to explain what that meant, if this person was as out of his own time and place as he suspected. “Do you understand what that means?”
“Police?” The way the warrior repeated it back to Bill was enough to show that it was an unfamiliar word.
“We’re supposed to keep law and order. I know you might think that we didn’t do a very good job of that, given that we don’t know where Grace and Hannah are, and in fairness you’d be right.” Best not to try and confuse the matter by bringing in how different services, like the police and Social Services, didn’t always communicate as well with one another as they ought. “The thing is, we spend a lot of our time doing the best we can to keep people safe in places where there are large numbers of people. Out here, there aren’t many policemen or –women to cover a very big area, and although it’s no excuse for not having picked up on how Ha
nnah and Grace were being treated, you need to know that they weren’t totally forgotten.
“When their father was found dead down in the orchard, people with special skills looked at him and decided that he’d died a natural death. At that point, the first question was to wonder whether Grace and Hannah had left home before then. It’s not unknown for young women to run away from a bad home like that, and when they do, there are normally certain cities where they end up. Not many of those are good, sadly, but others like me did spend a lot of time looking for them there.
“But recently we’ve found the bodies of some other men – men who were very clever at covering up how badly they had treated women and children. That made us – well me, actually – look a lot closer at Thomas Mulligrew, Grace and Hannah’s father, and to wonder whether they were even still alive. It was that worry that he might have killed them, and buried them somewhere up here on the farm, that brought me up here the first time. That’s when I found this shrine. But I also noticed that these other men all died at the time of the new moon, and that’s what brought me here tonight.”
The warrior relaxed fractionally. “I feel that you speak the truth. Or at least the truth as you believe it to be.”
That was a very astute assessment, Bill thought, and as he knew from experience, there could be a vast difference between the two.
“Do you know where Hannah and Grace are?” he dared to ask.
The warrior didn’t reply to that, asking instead, “Do you know of us, then? Do you know about the moon and its cycles?”
That was a tricky question. “If you mean, do I know exactly who you are, then no, I’m sorry I don’t. But I have come across someone else who was not of our time and place. That means that I could at least see a pattern where others like me couldn’t.” Bill had phrased that answer very carefully. He didn’t want to mention Tapio and his other incarnation specifically by name, not least because he had no idea of the territorial nature of what he was speaking to at the moment. Would this warrior – of whatever variety he turned out to be – take exception to another mythical being wandering into what might have been thought of as his lands? In which case, bringing Tapio up might have quite the reverse effect to what Bill wanted.
He saw the warrior give what came across as an exasperated sigh. Clearly not knowing about him, or them, was a source of irritation.
“Just because I don’t know, it doesn’t mean I’m not willing to learn,” Bill added encouragingly. Even knowing what he was dealing with here would be a huge help.
However, he obviously hadn’t earned enough trust yet, because the warrior wasn’t forthcoming. That made Bill suspect that it wouldn’t be wise to ask for a name. In so many cultures – especially ones with a deep belief in the mystical – knowing a true name was believed to give the knower power over someone, and Bill was wary of making this man think that he was attempting to get a hold over him. Instead he tried a difference tack.
“So the moon is important to you, is it? Is it just the new moon? Or do you ...respond ...to the full moon?”
The warrior threw his head back to look up at the stars, and as he did, his long hair seemed to flicker with moving shots of starlight. That was enough to confirm to Bill that this was indeed someone from outside of his own time and place, and probably from that in-between or Otherworld where creatures like nature spirits, ancient god-like entities, and other creatures of folklore existed. Invisible to humankind and the ‘real’ world for the most part, they nonetheless had an influence over it, even if it was only with regard to the degree of people believing in them, and then acting accordingly. But Bill had had a very real encounter which had shown him just how tangible and lethal their power could be if they chose, or found the means, to manifest themselves in this reality. And so he sat patiently waiting for the warrior to deign to reply to him. This was not someone he could cross-examine in the normal way.
Returning his strange gaze back to Bill, the warrior answered, “We can observe you at all times, though we have long since given up watching those places you have ruined. You can live with your own foul destruction!” At this point Bill realised that it was humanity he meant, not Bill personally. “All we care about now are preserving those places you haven’t blindly desecrated or obliterated. But to prevent your kind misguidedly entering our sanctuaries, we long ago sealed most of the ways. That protects us against you, but means that we can only act against you at certain times when and where the gateways are still active.”
“Did you deliberately choose the dark moons – what we would call the new moons? Or were they naturally times when your power was felt by us most strongly? Are the full moons just as significant or not?” Again Bill was most cautious in his words. He didn’t want this warrior thinking he was fishing to find out when he would be weakest.
“Something of both,” was the surprising answer. “We have a natural affinity for the moon cycles, and so when we closed the ways, it made sense to leave open the ones when we were at our strongest.” He paused and seemed to consider something before adding, “Of course this does vary from clan to clan. Of those left of us, we are one of the ones closer in distance to your sort, so we choose to limit our time with you severely, and the darker the night the better. Others who live where it is still as it should be and wild, are not so cautious, but even they are beginning to think that they might have to follow our example.”
“I see.” Not that Bill did fully, but he sensed he’d got as much of an answer as he was going to get for now on that matter. “I’m not trying to trick you or anything, but can you tell me if it was your ‘clan’ who had contact with men just a bit further south from here? It’s an old stone quarry, and it seems as though the men used it for a very dark purpose.”
The warrior stiffened. “Them! ...Hmph! ...Yes, we saw them.”
“You saw them? But did you do anything to them?”
That brought the sword point up towards him quite threateningly.
“Why do you ask?”
Bill raised his hands placatingly. “Steady on! I’m just asking because if that was you, then I don’t need to go looking for human men who did the deed. But if it wasn’t you, then someone very dangerous, and who needs to be stopped, is out there on the prowl. And that’s someone I must deal with to save other lives.”
The sword point lowered again as the warrior considered this. “Do you believe all of those men were of the same clan?”
Now that was a tricky question. “There’s a place south of here where young women were brought and killed,” Bill began with. “We have good reason to believe that all of the men who came there are what you would consider to be of the same clan.”
“Even the one who tried to save the women?”
Bill sat up a bit straighter. “One of them tried to save them?”
“The one who arrived in the red box on wheels.”
That had to be Tufty Harbottle. Well, well, that was a turn up for the books! So Tufty had found a conscience after all. That could make the forensics interesting, because it sounded as though he wasn’t killed by the same hand as did for Vijay.
“So who killed him?” Bill asked and got an unexpected answer,
“The mad one who came in the black box.”
Vijay! And interesting how this warrior saw Vijay as not just bad but mad as well.
“I agree that the one who came in the ‘black box’ was an evil man,” Bill said, “but why do you call him mad? Do you see all wickedness as madness? Or was there something particular about him that makes you call him that?”
There was another flick of the starlight hair, this time very much a gesture of disgust. “When we showed him what he had done, he felt nothing. He could not comprehend the suffering he had caused. All that was in his mind was of himself. Others have been unable to withstand even a morsel of what they inflicted on innocent victims before they pass beyond. But what made this one’s body fail with the shock was seeing the fullness of what we are.” The warrior gave
a lesser shake of his head, bemused. “All we got a glimpse of was his terror at seeing the breadth and depth of the world, and how small a part he played in it. What creature does not know that the world is vast and complex in its wonders?”
“That’s interesting,” Bill answered carefully, because in that reply there was as good as a confession that this warrior – if nobody else – had been involved in the deaths of Justin Pickersleigh and possibly Thomas Mulligrew. And if he was any judge of that sword, definitely of killing Damien Farrah! “Yes, I can imagine that Vijay Bose – the man you are talking about – could well have had such a sense of his own importance, that it would destroy him to discover that he was just a speck of dust on the landscape.”
For the first time the warrior smiled. “That is an interesting way of putting it, and not one which bothers you, I presume?”
Bill smiled back. “No, I know my place. But then from choice, I come out to these wild places as often as I can, and enjoy looking at the stars and at the wild places. I’ve never been bothered by being dwarfed by nature.”
The warrior now stared harder at Bill. “I sense in you something else. You say you do not know who we are, but you have had contact with others, have you not?”
“Oh yes! ...Actually more than one. Only a few moons ago, I was on the other side of the main valley and had an interesting evening with some people who were trying to help some nature spirits.”
“Oh! That is where I have sensed you before!” The change in attitude was quite abrupt, making Bill wonder whether that feeling of having seen him before had up until now had the warrior thinking that it must have been with one or other of the men who had been abusing victims out here. It was something Bill could sympathise with. That feeling that you know someone from somewhere, but can’t quite put your finger on where, but with it making you feel disconcerted until you can place it.