House of Whispers: Supernatural Suspense with Scary & Horrifying Monsters (Mortlake Series Book 2)

by David Longhorn

  Comrades, save the Eagle!

  ***

  Mortlake felt fire running over his skin and tried to tear off his shirt then suppressed the pointless instinct. Tara was lying on the edge of the pit, her blood streaming black in the gloom. The intense heat receded for a moment, then Tara stirred, and the fire found him again. He suddenly knew how an insect must feel when a cruel little boy focuses the sun’s rays on it with a magnifying glass.

  He managed to grab the taser and lunged at Tara, pressing it to her leg and pulling the trigger. It stuttered out a series of clicks then stopped. Tara jerked briefly and moaned. Then the taser failed. He threw it aside. He had gambled on Tara needing to be fully conscious for her power to manifest itself. She had been sure the poltergeist activity in her teens only happened when she was awake.

  “Don’t wake up, for God’s, sake,” he muttered as he scrabbled in the dirt, trying to free Ellie’s golden bird. The demon had possibly been just distracted enough not to kill him outright. He grasped the eagle and dragged it out of the earth. Its bronze claws were still attached to something. It was not the original standard of the Ninth Legion. That pole had long since rotted.

  It was a human skull. Small, not that of a man, too small for a woman even. It was the skull of a child. Beneath it lay other skulls, of various sizes. Mortlake felt fury grip him, an emotion more intense than any shame or guilt. The being he fought could not be killed and that only added to his rage. If he could not destroy it, he would die trying to hurt it, drive it into some kind of exile.

  Mortlake pulled the eagle from the earth and lifted it above his head. He repeated the rallying cry, tried to get to his feet, stumbled, and fell. The bronze bird slipped from his grasp, bounced on the cellar floor. He felt a wave of heat start to play around his chest, neck, face. He could not see Tara’s face clearly, but he thought her eyes might be open.

  Fight, he thought. Fight for them all, for all the nameless victims. Better to go down fighting for them than live on to age and get sick and die anyway.

  He was trying to trick himself or perhaps it was method acting. Mortlake didn’t care now. He had faced supernatural threats before and fought back by sheer effort of will. He relied on a bloody-minded refusal to submit, coupled with the knowledge that what he faced was far from superior in any true sense. As in the psychomanteum, he strove to dismiss time and space and instead battled on the spiritual plane.

  He had done this many times before. Sheer mental discipline could disrupt psychic energies and drive the darkness back. He had allies, some truly courageous. Unsung heroes with a common cause. Souls striving to be liberated from a purgatory of fire. Rage and hatred of the dark god, those were his allies too.

  And still, Mortlake felt himself losing.

  The rallying of the Roman dead, Carl’s courage, even pitiable Helen York’s desire to be free of her suffering—they were all ranged on his side. And there were others, lost to the demon millennia before Rome was built. All of the souls held captive by the nameless evil sensed conflict and struggled to break free. But it still wasn’t enough to defeat a being that was ancient before mankind even existed. It did not have to be particularly cunning or bold—it was inhumanly powerful.

  The light finally went out. Now only a faint radiance from the open cellar door held total darkness at bay. The pit in which Mortlake knelt seemed to grow immensely in the gloom. It was an illusion, and he battled against it but in vain. He felt himself sinking in a black morass, losing sight of Tara and the cellar. Far below was a point of light, growing swiftly brighter. He knew what it was. Whether he burned literally or only in his mind, it didn’t matter. He was falling into the fire of sacrifice.

  “No.”

  The word was spoken almost casually, without any sense of rancor or rebuke. Just a voice in his head and that one familiar syllable. Yet the simple No seemed to conjure up a new vision, nightmarish but very different from the pit. And it was very familiar. A vast checkerboard of squares receding far into the distance. The squares were dark and light, but none seemed utterly black or totally white. They varied widely in shade. Above the board was blackness dotted with a few points of dim, yellow light.

  But the gigantic board was not as interesting, or disturbing, as the pieces. On some squares were figures. Some looked essentially human. Others were strange ominous shapes that resembled no living thing Mortlake had ever seen. The nearest ones were all clearly alive. Some pranced on many limbs, some sat and twitched, still others paced impatiently within their squares like caged predators.

  All of this flashed into his mind in a split second. He no longer felt himself falling. Instead, he was lying sprawled on one of the game board squares. He felt an odd texture under his hands. It was something like stone but warm and oddly yielding. Pulsing. As if the surface was somehow alive.

  Between heartbeats, he saw pieces moving. In fact, now that he looked more closely, they were all in motion, all the time. This was no chess game, but a dynamic process. As he watched, a thing like a contorted, immensely fat humanoid creature was caught by the tendrils of a giant orchidlike entity. The bloated biped was punctured in a dozen places and deflated like a punctured football. Then another piece moved in front of the unpleasant tableau, blocking Mortlake’s view.

  “Not yet, old friend.”

  That voice, again. And so familiar. Mortlake knew it, the name was on the tip of his tongue, but he could not call it to mind. He scrambled to his feet, fell. It seemed he was still exhausted in this bizarre plane of existence. Now, he had drawn the attention of some of the entities around him. Bizarre living game pieces turned to him. Dozens of eyes, most of them in faces, gazed at the beaten man. Purposeful movement began, focused on Mortlake’s square. There was a clatter of what sounded like hooves behind him while off to one side, something shrouded in mist glided forward with a glutinous, squelching sound.

  “Oh God!” he groaned.

  This time, he succeeded in standing, but there was nowhere to run. And now the dark square he stood upon grew truly black, and flames began to lick up around his feet. He tried to jump aside but the fire followed him, and when he landed, his feet sank into the tarry surface. It was alive, he was sure of that now. Alive and hungry. Even as he sank and the agony of flame ran up his legs, Mortlake’s intellect kept working. He grasped an essential truth. This vast game board was, in a sense, a higher reality, or one that existed parallel to the mundane world. It was every bit as real as the everyday world and far more dangerous.

  He sank to his waist in the burning morass and screamed.

  “Oh God, help me!”

  “Gods are so unreliable, Marcus.”

  Above him, from the blackness, a hand reached down. It was immense, but as it got closer, it shrank somehow. Instinct made him reach up to it just as the hell of fire reached his throat. The pain was so intense now that he could not even scream. He felt himself start to black out as fingers clutched his own. And at that moment, he remembered the name.

  The game board disappeared, and with it, the burning agony. He felt, as much as heard, voices rushing by him. He saw nothing and only understood a few of the words. All except for one familiar voice, a man Mortlake felt that he had failed.

  “Good job, Professor!”

  Carl, it seemed, was too big a man to hold any grudges.

  ***

  “Marcus! I felt it. I felt it go, sinking down somewhere! And I thought you’d gone with it.”

  He gazed up at Tara. She knew her chin was still caked with drying blood, as there was a great smear of it down the front of her shirt. She gave a heave and helped him out of the pit. The professor looked down at her hand then back at her face. It was hard to make out her expression in the gloom.

  Then the cellar light came back on.

  “Bloody hell,” he murmured. “It has gone? But…”

  Tara hugged him out of sheer relief.

  “Who cares where it went? We won! You did it!”

  Mortlake looked at her a
s she let go and stepped back, smiling up at him. She was a mess, she knew, but that didn’t explain his expression. She felt a sudden pang of fear. Perhaps he had been permanently harmed in some way? The man was physically unharmed, so far as she could see. But she knew he had tried to battle the demon on the psychic plane. Not so long ago, she would have found such an idea laughable. Now, she knew better and she was afraid.

  “Hey, Prof?” she said, gently. “Are you with me, here? Can you hear me?”

  Mortlake nodded emphatically.

  “I’m okay, I think, I just… I’m not sure what just happened. But I don’t think I won, not in any meaningful sense.”

  His eyes were still wide and staring, and something about his voice bothered her. He sounded hollow, like a man who’d been beaten in a tough fight. But the evil presence had been banished, hadn’t it?

  “Come on,” she said, “the big bad thing ran away from us—from you! That’s a win for our side, right?”

  He nodded, but she didn’t get the sense that he was convinced. She was about to ask more questions when she saw movement at the top of the stairs.

  “You all right down there, guys?” asked an unfamiliar voice.

  Two uniformed cops were coming down the stairs. They were followed by Tim Garland.

  “I told them there’d been an accident,” Tim explained. “Carl—they’re taking him away.”

  At that moment, Tara grasped what needed to be said. And more importantly, what they must not say. The officers looked around and spent some time staring at the pit, the skulls, and the gilded eagle. The latter was so impressive that it seemed to defuse the situation, throwing the cops off-balance. While Mortlake was talking to the police, Tara touched the Eagle of the Ninth, just once, brushing the sculpted head with her fingertips, then pulling away. She was almost sure that it reacted with a kind of shudder.

  Impossible, of course.

  But she had learned to believe a lot of impossible things of late.

  Epilogue

  Tara gathered wildflowers along the hedgerows as they walked to the churchyard from the pub’s parking lot. When they got to the church, there was nobody around. They walked around the building without trying the closed door. They went clockwise—Mortlake explained to her that it was unlucky to go the other way.

  “Widdershins, they call it, walking anticlockwise ’round a church. It’s supposed to bring bad luck, or even summon up Old Nick himself. And we don’t need him on top of everything else.”

  Tara didn’t smile at that. She was still raw, conflicted, unsure of what she was or what she should do. But she felt a sad resolve building, a determination to seek a new path for herself. A more fortunate one.

  “How do you know she’s buried on the north side?” she asked, focusing on the past to take her mind off her future.

  Mortlake grimaced, indicated the church with a jerk of his head.

  “It was where they traditionally buried suicides, murderers, witches. All people deemed to have offended God.”

  He wondered if she would be shocked and angered by that. But there was no reaction other than a quiet comment.

  “Yeah, offending gods is never good.”

  It took them a while to find Helen York’s grave. Like most of the headstones on the shady side of the church, it was obscured by weeds. Eventually, they deciphered the badly eroded inscription. Tara laid her little bouquet of modest blossoms under the medium’s name and dates. There was no other information. The wildflowers blended with the weeds so that when she stepped back a few paces, it was hard to make out her small tribute.

  “Someone once told me,” Mortlake said, “that a weed is just a wildflower in the wrong place. Like someone with a wild talent who doesn’t really understand it.”

  “I guess we did save her,” she said. “And the others.”

  “I truly believe we did,” he said. “We did the best we could.”

  She looked up at him and saw him blink away a tear. She took a breath and words spilled out.

  “You said something to me once, I can’t remember exactly, but it was just after we first met. You said some people are drawn to paranormal events. And it looks like I’m one of those. And now two good, kind guys are dead because of that. First Josh, now Carl.”

  He started to protest, but she waved a hand at the gravestones around them.

  “Everybody has to die, I know that. And you can’t save everyone, I know that. But what if I’m putting people in harm’s way? Anita, Carl—even you. I shouldn’t keep messing with things I can’t control or understand.”

  “Tara,” he said urgently. “When I nearly died in that cellar, I had a vision, call it an epiphany if you like. It showed me that I am the focus of some serious attention by someone—or something. I didn’t understand, but now I’ve had time to think, it’s a little clearer. It’s linked to someone I used to know—well, two people, actually. Two people I thought were both long dead.”

  He paused, unsure how to tell her about Cassandra Tallantyre, Nathaniel Crowe, and the horrific end of the cult. While he hesitated, Tara shook her head.

  “Don’t you see, Prof?” she said impatiently. “That’s just another reason for me to stop this. At least for now. To go back to being a scientist, get my degree, and maybe go and work for someone sensible. I’m going to start applying for research foundations back in the States. Live the life I had planned out. And not hurt anybody else. Until I can truly understand myself—or at least control what I am.”

  Again, he began to tell her that she bore no blame because she had borne no malice. But she cut him off once more.

  “No, Prof—Marcus,” she corrected herself. “Marcus, don’t take it personally, but I’m through for now, and maybe forever. I can’t face myself, let alone other people. Right now, today, I have to go tell Anita what I did to her, and what I did to… I have to tell her everything. And I guess, in the meantime, you’ll have to find yourself a new sidekick—assuming you want one. If you advertise, make sure you tell ’em it’s a tough gig. I like you, Marcus, you’re a good man. But I don’t like your world.”

  ***

  In a stone-walled chamber, candles flickered in niches, casting an uncertain light over two figures. One sat at a large table, his features obscured by the hood of his monkish robe. The other person, a woman, strode back and forth, moving between a rough-hewn wall and the brink of an underground river. Rats scuttled back and forth. In frustration, she kicked one unwary rodent into the dark water. It swam away, and its comrades retreated as the woman walked up to the seated man.

  “I can’t believe you cheated!”

  Cassandra put her hands on her hips, staring down at the board. Weird pieces moved at various speeds and angles, some propelled by the player’s mind, others of their own volition. She could not always be sure which were which. The Mortlake piece and a smaller one representing the American were now gliding away from a dark smoky patch near the edge of the board.

  “No way was that a legitimate move!”

  The man seated at the table showed no sign that he had heard her.

  She had to look away from the board after a few seconds, however, as the weird distortions of geometry in the game threatened to give her a migraine. She gazed at Crowe instead. He was clasping his hands together. The gesture might have been mistaken for prayer. Sometimes, she wondered if it were but that led to questions about who Crowe would pray to. And there were some questions she didn’t want answered.

  “Seriously, Nathaniel, he could have been killed in that cellar, and then we could have…”

  Cassandra stopped talking, afraid she had crossed a line. Strategy was not her concern. That had been made clear from the start. The hooded head moved, turning slowly, until she could see the lower half of the face. It was pale and emaciated, the lips almost too thin to be visible in the poor light of the chamber.

  “And then we could have what?”

  The voice itself was not strong, but there was no mistaking the steely will
power behind it. Cassandra had to choose her words carefully. She had been punished for insolence before. It had not been pleasant.

  “I was merely pointing out,” she said mildly, “that you very cleverly lured him to that place using his little ginger friend, and then he basically set out to destroy himself because he couldn’t simply back off and admit defeat, the arrogant bastard. So why not let him die? Who benefits if he’s still running about doing his bloody Scooby-Doo act?”

  “I benefit,” rasped Crowe. “It amuses me to see him suffer. Do not call me a cheat again. The One True Game evolves. It is a living thing. One moment, a move is forbidden, the next it may be compulsory. Much is still not known. But eventually, Mortlake will be broken. Then the next phase can begin.”

  Cassandra had half suspected this but it still dismayed her to hear it stated so plainly.

  “Are you saying that death’s too good for him?”

  Crowe smiled.

  “It was too good for us, wasn’t it?”

  Cassandra shuddered, trying to banish memories of the route that had brought her to this stone-walled chamber. She had, in theory, all the time in the world to relish Mortlake’s destruction. But she wanted it to happen sooner rather than later. She wanted him dead, so she could possess him completely and play with him for as long as she liked.

  “All right.” She sighed, glancing at the board again. “What happens now? Am I allowed to know your next move, Master? Or is that classified?”

  Crowe chuckled. It was a feeble eerie sound, reminding Cassandra of dry leaves troubled by a winter wind. She sometimes wondered how much of the man she had known had survived in the withered being that sat, day after day, in this lair.