by Simon Clark
Pel glanced round. Kerry and Nat had reached the little gathering by the trench. Elderly Mr Murrain had joined them, too.
‘Idiots,’ growled the man who resembled Jack so much. ‘What do you think you’re playing at?’
Still uppity, Scott grunted, ‘You’re going to pay for what you did to our mother. For starters, we’re going to smash up the place, seeing as you love it so much.’
‘Love it!’ The old man choked back his astonishment. ‘I despise it. But it’s my curse to maintain the mosaic … and make sure idiots like you don’t vandalize it. That’s my grandson’s curse, too. When I’m gone, he’s got to guard the mosaic with his life!’
Ross had recovered enough to chip in, ‘The cops couldn’t get charges to stick against you, Jacob. But we’ll make sure you pay for what you did to our mother.’
‘That was thirty years ago,’ Jack protested. ‘Besides, my grandfather didn’t do anything wrong.’
‘She got half her face burned away.’
‘The woman stole the lamp,’ Jacob said. ‘I tried to stop her.’
Pel watched this with growing fascination. For all the world, it seemed an old vendetta had flared up right under her nose. Something connected with the mausoleum, and the mother of these two men. Old Mr Murrain protested his innocence. He also insisted there’d been an accident, yet had she noticed a shift in his gaze that hinted at guilt? Previously, this venerable senior had been so rock-sure. He’d been on a quest to stop the team from digging. He’d positively radiated conviction that the archeologists must desist. Now that the brothers spoke about their mother Mr Murrain had become edgy, uncomfortable.
He’s hiding something. Pel’s insight made her heart beat faster. This is a man with a secret.
‘Get those vehicles out of here,’ Kerry ordered. ‘Otherwise, I’ll call the police.’ Then she turned to the old man. ‘Mr Murrain, you must leave, too. That goes for your grandson.’
‘Jack saved my life,’ Pel blurted the words. ‘He hasn’t done anything wrong.’
‘Everything will be much calmer if these four gentlemen leave the site. Then we can start repairing the damage and getting back to work.’
Nat returned from checking on the mausoleum. ‘The iron screen’s a bit busted but the building’s OK.’
‘What about the mosaic?’ Jacob Murrain showed the same anxiety as a father enquiring about his sick child.
‘Not so much as a scratch.’
‘Thank heaven for that. But I’d like to see for myself.’
‘No way.’ Kerry spoke with feeling. ‘That’s enough excitement for today. Now, everyone who isn’t authorized to be here please leave the site. And take those filthy machines with you.’
Scott felt compelled to fire a parting shot. And to Pel’s ears it was a fantastically mystifying, and electrifying, parting shot. ‘Kids call that picture the Ghost Monster. You only have to see it to know why. And another thing …’ – his lip curled – ‘everyone here. Yes, every damn one of you. Take a look at the picture of the Ghost Monster. After that, study these two here – Jacob Murrain and Jack Murrain – then tell us that all three aren’t one and the same. Like peas in a pod they are! They’re the devil!’ With that strange accusation the men went to retrieve their trucks.
‘See they don’t misbehave again, Nat.’ With a splash of dark humour Kerry added, ‘If you have to, knock their heads off with a shovel.’
As her words died on the breeze a thudding reached them. The sound of giant footsteps stomping this way – or so it seemed. Then someone pointed at the church. All of them turned to see the wall nearest the cliff shed its building blocks, as if they were stone tears, into the ocean below.
3
THEY STOOD ON the cliff-top to watch the steady fall of the church into the surf.
Nat smiled at her. ‘So how was your first day on site?’
Pel took a deep breath. ‘Well, we got hassled by a madman raving about the mosaic. The cemetery got trashed by psychos in trucks, then I nearly got killed when one tried to ram the mausoleum …’ She found herself grinning, despite the mayhem. ‘Is every day like this here?’
‘No, absolutely not.’ He feigned shock. ‘This has been one of the quiet days. Usually far more exciting things happen.’
One of the archeology students clapped his hands. ‘Whoa. Watch out, there goes the arch!’ A stone arch that had supported a section of roof began to sag as if it had become soft as rubber. ‘Victorian Gothic, wouldn’t you say?’
A low sun turned the stonework blood red. Dark lines suddenly ran through the masonry. The ornately carved arch bled dust into the evening air. A moment later it collapsed, taking roof timbers with it. Debris splashed into waves fifty feet below them. Archeologists and humble diggers, the so-called dirt-monkeys, fell silent. All saddened by the death of the old church that had seen thousands of baptisms, weddings, funerals and services galore down through the years.
Pel shook her head. ‘This is insane. Couldn’t anyone have saved it?’
‘Budgets are too tight to move entire buildings. All we can do is snatch artefacts out of the ground before the sea eats up the coast.’
‘It seems like desecration to me. Such a lovely old building.’
‘They managed to remove some of the historically valuable features, such as the font, the bells and the stained-glass windows.’ Nat pointed out ships to the south. ‘That’s what’s causing the problem. Those are dredging a channel out of the seabed for the new port. This area’s suffered coastal erosion for centuries but they’ve just gone and made it a whole lot worse. Five years ago, the North Sea out there advanced a yard every year. Now it’s more like a yard per day. If you look out to sea to that dark area – the one about two hundred yards off-shore – that’s a mass of rubble underwater. Twenty years ago it was dry land, complete with the remains of a big house. The sea claimed that, too.’ He smiled. ‘Murrain Hall. No prizes for guessing whose ancestral home that was.’
‘You mean the guy who saved my life?’
‘Ah … I was referring to old Mr Murrain, but it’s obvious that his grandson made a big impression on you.’
‘If he hadn’t pushed me into the trench I’d be sleeping in the morgue tonight.’
‘Nicely put. But as it is, you’ll be sharing a house in Crowdale with the rest of us. Have you got your things in there yet?’
‘No, they rushed me here from the watermill excavation. My bag’s in the back of the van.’
‘You’ll love it. They even have a shower that works this time.’ He gave her a shrewd look. ‘And it’s right next to the Raven’s Nest Tavern.’
‘Why should that interest me?’
Nat winked. ‘Because that, Pel, my dear, is where young Jack Murrain spends his evenings.’
‘Idiot. I don’t find him attractive.’ The words came out right, but the tone was wrong enough to make her blush. Oh my God, I do find him attractive. In her mind’s eye she saw his face framed by that wild blaze of dark hair. Then there were those large grey eyes. Windows to a melancholy soul. She bit her lip. Stop it. I do not fancy him. Period.
4
BROTHERS SCOTT AND Ross returned from the failed wrecking spree at the cemetery to find their mother at the door.
I wish she’d cover that mess up, Scott thought, then immediately cringed inwardly with sheer guilt. That mess was his mother’s face. While the right-hand side of her face was flawless, even beautiful for her sixty-five years of age, the left side resembled the face of a doll that had been held over a flame. Mottled with reds, browns, yellows, it had, all those years ago, melted. Her left eye had become a drooping slit. The eyebrow had never grown back. The flesh on the ruined side simply hung down as if in the process of sliding from her skull, dragging one corner of her mouth down with it.
They were big men, yet they flinched like little boys when she unleashed her tongue. ‘Jacob Murrain telephoned me. The first time he’s spoken in thirty years. He says that you drove trucks through the gr
aveyard. You tried to smash up that old mosaic of his ancestors.’ The good eye blazed. ‘Why didn’t the pair of you flatten it into the ground? Why has it taken you all these years to get back at him for what he did to me? Go on, look at this.’ She pointed at her scarred face. ‘His doing, that.’
‘Ma, don’t! We tried—’
‘And failed. Do I have to tell you what he did to me?’
Ross trembled. ‘You’ve told us hundreds of times.’
‘Another telling won’t do any harm, then, will it? I was at the mausoleum when he was cleaning that damned picture. He chased me down into the ruin that used to stand on the cliff. Went wild with me he did, then smashed a burning lamp on my head. It burnt me up like I was in a furnace. The police said it was an accident, but you know better, don’t you, boys?’
They nodded in that submissive way of theirs when faced with mother’s wrath.
She nodded. ‘Jacob Murrain thinks he can scorn me for thirty years, then talk to me like nothing happened. “Rebecca”, he whines, “Rebecca, curb your boys”. Hearing that monster say my name sickened me. Now then, the pair of you know the hospital can’t do anything more for me. They say my heart’s only good for a few more months.’
The big men had tears in their eyes as they listened.
‘I’ve demanded nothing from you either as boys or men, other than you do your best to live a good honest life. But Jacob Murrain is as good as my murderer. My heart’s damaged because of the misery of looking like this.’ She touched her ruined cheek. ‘If you can make that devil of a man suffer just a tenth of what I’ve gone through, then I’ll leave this world a contented woman.’ Her good eye fixed each one of them. To Scott it felt like a splinter of glass going through his chest. ‘Promise me you’ll do that for me, lads. Make Jacob Murrain suffer.’
‘We’ll break his neck, Ma.’
‘No, that’s what you won’t do. Listen to me …’ She beckoned them to her, so she could put her arms round both at the same time. The scent of lavender filled their nostrils. Without liberal use of it, Ma exuded an odour of death. Softly, lovingly, she breathed, ‘I don’t want you to lay a finger on Jacob Murrain. Instead, you’re going to break his heart. This is how you’ll do it. Destroy the things he cares about.’ She licked her lips. ‘Hurt the people he loves. And the people they love. Make his life hell on earth. Do you promise, lads?’
Ross and Scott sincerely promised they would. Scott’s heart beat harder. We’ve crossed the point of no return. What happens next? Who will we hurt? And how?
Anger had left her now. Tired, she turned her left cheek to them. ‘Kiss Ma’s poorly better.’
She’d asked that of them since they were boys. Kiss Ma’s poorly better. Then they’d kissed her scarred flesh. Scott still went to the bathroom to scrub his lips afterwards. Kiss Ma’s poorly better. His mouth brushed the corrugations in her cheek. She put her hand behind his head so she could push his face firmly against that cold, dead scar-tissue.
5
PEL HAD TO stifle her ooh-eee! of sheer ecstasy in the shower, lest the other dirt-monkeys suspected she was erotically tangling with a man. But after a long day of sieving graveyard dirt it was bliss to be able to blast herself free of that grit coating her body. When Jack Murrain had thrown her into the trench the dirt had worked itself into every secret corner of her anatomy. Add to that, she now sported bruises on her buttocks, thighs and shoulders after the narrow escape from the lunatic trucker. The bruises, while not hurting, left her skin unusually tender. When she gently soaped those ‘war’ wounds of the day there was a bitter-sweet sensation. The beautiful magic of the hot shower at least managed to transform hurt into a sensual tingle.
Only a bad thing happened – a very bad thing. She smiled. When she soaped her body the mental image of Jack Murrain returned to her so vividly her skin goose-fleshed. Damn it, she even recalled the pressure of his body on hers. That muscular weight as the truck surged on over the trench above them. What a way to meet a guy. Inches from death. And in a hole littered with skeletal remains. Just imagine the best man’s speech at the wedding banquet.
‘There you go again,’ she told herself. ‘Letting your imagination run away with you.’
After turning off the shower she stepped out of the stall on to the mat. The bathroom of the house she shared with the other diggers wasn’t all that bad. Though the fixtures were dated they were clean. A previous owner in a fit of narcissistic delight had covered one wall with mirror tiles, so she had a full length and steamily naked companion in the form of her reflection. Her body had become tighter and slimmer after all these months of digging England’s soil to expose the past. Her efforts to uncover mysterious Roman temples, medieval pot kilns, Elizabethan armories, and a host of other sites, had rewarded her with the fit, athletic body she’d always aspired to. If only the girls from her old school could see her now. Her Providence friends wouldn’t recognize the new Pel. However, sadly, regrettably, annoyingly, she was also single. This state of affairs had bugged her for the last three months. After the relationship with a guitarist had petered out she’d become cursed with … what’s the phrase that best described being single? A singleton? Singlehood? A lone maiden? A bird without its song? Bread bereft of butter? A slipper without a foot? No, too Freudian. A Pel Minton without a Jack Murrain?
‘Quit it.’ She towelled herself vigorously. ‘No more crazy romances. Find a regular guy.’ Her mouth still managed to retain that tang from the dig site. Proximity to the sea made the soil taste salty. ‘Ugh, toothbrush where are you?’
A moment of rooting through her bag delivered a distasteful truth. She’d forgotten to bring her toothbrush, along with a bunch of toiletries, from the other house that she’d been occupying with her colleagues. Well, it couldn’t be rescued now. It was an hour’s drive back to her old quarters.
‘OK, there’s a simple fix. Buy new.’ The downside: it was ten o’clock. She didn’t know the town at all, let alone if there’d be any stores open. Nevertheless, she dressed in a sweater and jeans, pulled on her shoes, then collected her jacket on the way out. At this time of night an English coastal town in the autumn would be chilly, or ‘bloody parky’ as the Brits were inclined to say.
This house was a big old thing on four floors with lopsided staircases doors that shut themselves, or opened themselves, apparently on their own mischievous whim. Most of the furniture looked fit for the museum. A smell of fried food permeated it from cellar to attic. Of course, fried sausages, bacon, eggs and hash-browns became the breakfast of choice for archeologists facing a day’s labour in a blustery field.
Pel’s plan had been to ask one of her housemates where she’d find the nearest chemist and maybe beg for a merciful peppermint to take this salty taste off of her tongue; only she discovered that everyone had slipped out in search of beery delights in local taverns. At least that’s what the note said on the kitchen table.
Pel, you’ll find us in the Raven’s Nest – wink, wink. Nat. She knew full well he’d play matchmaker with her and Jack Murrain.
‘Not on your nelly, buster.’ Wrapping a white scarf around her neck, she opened the door then stepped out into the nighttime street. The cold drove her back on her heels it was so intense. For the good the clothes had done her she might as well have left the house naked. A regular hubble-bubble of voices came from the Raven’s Nest Tavern next door. With its windows steamed up she could at least safely pass without Nat seeing her. Because Nat would relish persuading her to go into the bar where she could ‘accidentally’ find herself reunited with her heroic rescuer.
She’d used the phrase ‘heroic rescuer’ flippantly, but wasn’t Jack the genuine hero of the day? He’d risked his own neck to save hers. ‘Maybe I should go in and offer to buy him a drink.’
No! She was slipping into the mind-set of flirting with the stranger. ‘Saving your life doesn’t confirm nuptial rights, you know.’ Setting her expression to stern self-denial, she hurried down the pavement in the vague hope
it headed toward the town’s shopping centre. She saw no one in the lonely thoroughfare. The silent, narrow streets engulfed Pel as completely as if she’d been swallowed into the dark belly of some primeval beast.
6
PEL MINTON MOVED through the deserted streets. They were lined with three-storey houses in a brick the colour of raw beef. These houses had no front gardens – front doors opened directly on to the pavement; each house was connected to the next so there was no break in the terrace. At that lonesome time of night it seemed to Pel that she walked in a deep canyon. Streetlamps bled orange that was reflected by the windows; they could have been watchful amber eyes as she passed by.
Doesn’t anyone live in these houses? The question made her shiver. The town looks deserted. Or perhaps everyone goes to bed at ten? In the distance, she could hear the dull roar of surf. Ocean scents reached her on the cold air that seemed intent on invading her clothes. On telegraph poles were homemade signs: WE NEED SEAWALLS, NOT TANKERS! STOP COASTAL EROSION! SAVE OUR HOMES! When she did pass a house with a light burning in the front room, she heard a TV carrying a debate on the state of the coast. The sound ghosted after her. ‘A spokesman for the construction company responsible for the new port insisted that coastal erosion had always been present in the region. While he agreed that seabed dredging had resulted in a rapid increase in the rate of the loss of once dry land, he stated that the cliffs would stabilize again soon. Campaigners against the new oil terminal claim that without adequate sea defences hundreds of homes will fall into the ocean. While vast tracts of agricultural land are …’ When the voice of the newsreader faded away it became uncomfortably silent.
Pel shivered. What on earth am I doing? I’m wandering round in a strange town at night. I haven’t a clue where the stores are. How do I know there aren’t muggers waiting for me round the next corner? Come to that, do I know my way back to the house? Unsettling thoughts. A sense of vulnerability infiltrated her sense of security. All the roads looked alike – canyons of houses; lots of shadowy areas that might harbour killers for all she knew. You’re risking being attacked for a new toothbrush, she scolded. At last, a break in one of the rows of houses that formed such forbidding ramparts of brick.