by Simon Clark
Pel tried again. ‘Listen to me, don’t go to sleep. Come on, there might be a way out of here.’
Kerry muttered drowsily, ‘Leave me here. I’ll be fine.’
On the word fine a series of sharp clicks filled the room. The clicks became a cracking sound. A cracking that rose in volume. A staccato, nightmare cacophony. Pel froze in horror. In front of her the smooth white wall began to transform. First a spider pattern of delicate black lines appeared. Those black lines soon became ragged cracks. Plaster dropped from the walls. Windows shattered. Then the entire wall sagged outwards.
‘Kerry!’
At last, Kerry snapped to her senses. She scrambled away on all fours. At the same time, the classroom wall that faced the sea fell outwards. A ton or so of brickwork plunged on to the beach below. Cold air gusted through the new opening. Even as the roar of falling masonry receded, the wooden floor began to slope downwards. Kerry still crawled on her hands and knees. However, the incline became so steep that she’d begun to slip backwards. Aghast, Kerry tried to hook her fingernails into the smooth floor. Nothing doing. Relentlessly, she slid back toward a clear blue sky where the wall had once stood.
Pel raced forward. She grabbed her boss by the wrists then dragged her back to the comparative safety of the wall at the far side of the classroom – the landward side.
‘Thank you … thank you …’ Kerry panted, as Pel put her arms round the woman to comfort her.
By now, they caught a far from pleasant glimpse of rocks at the base of the cliff. That disconcerting view told them that they were a good hundred feet above the beach, a height that would ensure that they would break pretty well every bone in their body if they fell. Add to that the school falling on top of us if we do, Pel thought grimly. This situation is about as lethal as you can get.
From behind her, Pel heard a loud guffaw. Ross and Scott Lowe stood there in the doorway to the room. They grinned hugely.
Pel shouted, ‘You’ve got to let us out.’
The grins, if anything, got even more huge.
‘Please,’ she begged, ‘at any minute the cliff will give way under us. The entire school’s going to fall into the sea.’
Ross enjoyed the women’s terror. ‘Do you want to say anything else about your predicament?’
Kerry yelled, ‘What the hell are you talking about? You can see for yourselves. Get us out. Or we’ll be killed!’
‘That’s it. Movie gold.’
Then Pel understood. Ross held a cell-phone in his hand. He’d filmed what happened when the walls collapsed; now he recorded their reaction to the danger.
Scott asked, ‘Did you catch it all on camera, Ross?’
‘That I did, Scott. That I did.’ The burly man nodded with satisfaction. ‘Ma’s going to love seeing this.’ He laughed. ‘Then I’ll send it to Jack Murrain.’
Scott remarked, ‘I wish I could see Murrain’s face when he watches his girlfriend and the other bitch, screaming their heads off. The picture of fear they are. The very picture!’
‘Bastards!’
Pel would have attacked the men if Kerry hadn’t held on to her.
Still filming the pair, together with a vast aperture in the wall, revealing views of the ocean, Ross retreated through the doorway into the second classroom. His brother performed a kind of burlesque dance with the shotgun, so whoever viewed the film would realize that gravity wasn’t the only danger the women faced. A pair of armed thugs featured, too. Pel Minton knew full well that this, the incarceration, and filming their terror, was another act in the brothers’ vendetta against the Murrains.
Whether Pel and Kerry would survive to hear how Jack did react to the footage remained to be seen.
With calls of ‘hang on tight’; ‘lovely view, isn’t it?’ and, ‘don’t leave the place in a mess.’ The brothers exited through the only functioning door to the outside world. By the time Pel had raced to it she found it securely locked once more.
For now, they were staying put in the school, as it stood precariously on the cliff-edge. More bricks fell from the wall. A crack appeared in the ceiling.
Kerry murmured, ‘One way or another, our stay here will only be a short one.’
14
JACOB MURRAIN WARMED his bones by the fire he’d made. An early morning sun poured a fierce light upon the gravestones. They cast long, ultra-black shadows, which pointed like scores of accusing fingers at the mausoleum he’d failed to protect. Many a time that night, he’d threaded his way between tombs and the archeologists’ trenches. With dread making every step echo a condemned man’s walk to the gallows, he’d revisit the mausoleum. Sight of the raw, dark hole in its floor made him wince. Ever since the son of Justice Murrain had installed the mosaic in the 1700s, a Murrain had ensured that no harm befell the image: for his ancestors believed that the mosaic had the power to contain the monstrous spirit of Justice Murrain. Now he, Jacob Murrain, had botched his family’s duty. On his watch he’d allowed the mosaic to be stolen. Justice Murrain and his henchmen were free again to take possession of innocent men and women. Jacob knew that they’d wreak carnage.
Jacob’s eyes filled with tears. ‘I’m sorry. I’ve failed you.’ The man directed the words at his ancestors, who’d successfully discharged their duty. ‘I’ve let you down.’ Did the ghost of his father, and grandfather, and all the other Murrains, hear his apology? He prayed that they did, yet it did not ease his shame. Suddenly, he had a clear mental image of his Stone Age ancestor who was the shaman of this place in prehistoric times, long before the Christian graveyard existed. Jacob pictured a tall, straight figure clad in animal skins. That trademark mane of black hair would adorn his head. Those grey eyes that graced the Murrain men were gazing at Jacob. The man stood in the midst of the pagan temple, surrounded by a complex arrangement of ring mounds and ditches. Spirit roads, surfaced with crushed limestone to make them a shining white, would radiate outwards into the surrounding forests. These were the magic highways along which the ghosts of yet even more ancient ancestors would travel to the heart of this sacred place. At that instant, he was both his ancestor from an age long past of flint blades and forest gods, and he was Jacob Murrain, a modern man of this age of steel blades and computer technology.
When he murmured these words they issued from his lips, and from the lips of the figure dressed in wolf pelts: ‘Blood … Murrain blood will heal all.’
Jacob blinked. He stood before the open gate of the mausoleum. Gales that had been born in the Arctic tugged his hair. It seemed as if he’d woken from a trance. For a while, he wasn’t sure if he’d been standing by the fire he’d made earlier to stop the cold killing him, or if he’d been wandering in a daze through the cemetery, calling out to his ancient bloodline to help him.
An engine thundered on the cold air. Shielding his eyes against the sun’s glare, he saw a huge, flat-backed truck barrelling along the lane to the cemetery. There, it screeched to a stop by the gates. From it leapt a familiar figure.
‘Jack? Jack, my boy! You’re safe!’ His heart could have burst with joy at that moment. However, the expression on Jack’s face soon killed the relief he felt. ‘What’s wrong?’ he asked as Jack reached him.
‘It’s Pel and Kerry … the Lowe brothers have got them!’
‘Those thugs are as insane as their mother. Do you know where the women are?’
Jack shook his head. ‘Kerry recovered consciousness at the hospital. She told us that it was Ross who’d attacked her last night. She’d caught him hacking at the mosaic. Then about three hours ago I drove to the brothers’ place to confront them. Damn it, the pair had it all planned out. They knew I’d come looking for the mosaic. So they lay in wait to kidnap Pel and Kerry. The bastards drove off with them in my pick-up.’ Anger as much as exertion made him breathless. ‘It took me almost two hours to break into their office, so I could get the keys to one of their trucks.’
‘We must find them. They’ll torture the women.’ Jacob spoke with such stark clarity
that Jack grimaced. ‘To the brothers’ warped minds it will be vengeance. Their mother believes I was responsible for the accident that destroyed her face.’
‘Where do we even begin looking?’
‘Scott and Ross could have taken them almost anywhere by now. In the meantime, Justice Murrain and his Battle Men will be doing whatever the hell they want.’
‘So far, that’s amounting to arson, looting, physical abuse, murder.’ Jack recapped the events of last night. How they’d struggled to find a route through the mayhem to reach the hospital. Jacob sighed with relief on hearing that Kerry’s wounds weren’t serious. Yet he appeared physically nauseous on hearing accounts of wholesale bloodshed in Crowdale.
‘So,’ he began when Jack had finished, ‘we’re fighting a battle on two fronts. There’s Scott and Ross Lowe to tackle. Then we must deal with Justice Murrain.’ Deep in thought, he gazed at the ocean. ‘The trouble is, it will be fruitless killing the possessed. The spirits of the Battle Men will readily leave a dead husk behind to find a new body to occupy. That will become worse when police reinforcements arrive from other towns. Soon they’ll be possessed, too. We won’t know who is friend and who is foe.’ He blew into his cold hands. ‘How we can combat them I don’t know. But there’s got to be a way. There has to be. Or we’ll —’ He stopped talking the moment that Jack’s phone trilled. ‘Quickly, Jack, that might be Pel or Kerry.’ The man was almost pathetically grateful for the merest sign of hope.
On checking the phone’s screen Jack grimaced. ‘It’s Ross Lowe.’
‘He’s got your number?’
‘That’s no mystery. It’s painted on the side of my pick-up they stole.’ He thumbed a key, then frowned, puzzled. ‘I don’t like the look of this. They’re sending me video footage.’
‘Brace yourself for a shock, son. It probably makes for grim viewing.’
Stone-faced, Jack held the phone so both men could see the screen. First: shots of a building. Clearly, a former village school; its windows were covered with mesh to prevent any low-life breaking in. A stout timber door hove into view. A hand appeared in shot to unlock the door. The rest of the unhappy film unfolded in one long shot that picked up sound with fearsome clarity.
Jacob’s blood ran cold as he watched events unfold. The little screen showed him the interior of a disused classroom. Windows set high in a wall. Tumbled desks. Discarded picture books. Kerry sat on the floor, her back to the wall. Pel stood in the centre of the shot. She appeared to be imploring Kerry. At that instant the entire wall collapsed outwards to reveal blue sky and ocean. On all fours, a panicked Kerry rushed away from the demolition. Pel grabbed hold of her, dragged her to safety, where the women sat on the floor, their arms round each other.
One of the Lowe brothers must have been operating the camera phone. Both their voices, however, rumbled from the speaker as they approached their victims. Pel noticed her captors; she called out to them.
Then one of the men asked, ‘Do you want to say anything else about your predicament?’
Kerry replied, and this time the phone caught her voice, ‘What the hell are you talking about? You can see for yourselves. Get us out. Or we’ll be killed!’
Ross: ‘That’s it. Movie gold.’
Scott: ‘Did you catch it all on camera, Ross?’
‘That I did, Scott. That I did. Ma’s going to love seeing this. Then I’ll send it to Jack Murrain.’
Even on such a tiny screen Pel Minton’s face expressed utter fury. Her eyes blazed. She’d have beat the men with her fists if she could. Off camera, one of the brother’s commented that he wished he could have seen Jack’s reaction when he watched their vile, little kidnap movie.
Jacob began to move as fast as his legs could carry him in the direction of the parked truck. ‘Jack! Fire her up!’
‘Where are we going?’
‘I know where that school is. It’s Thorpe-Upton – just ten minutes north of here!’
Jack easily kept pace with the man; even so, Jacob managed an impressive jog, despite his limp.
‘If they gave away the place where they’re keeping them so easily,’ Jack said, ‘then might it be a trap?’
‘Of course, it’s a trap. The women are bait. They want to lure me there.’
‘Then we’re going to walk right into it.’
‘Got a better idea, son?’
Once they were in the cab Jack started the motor. Flooring it, he swung the heavy truck round across the meadowland, crushing a fence, then he pushed the vehicle hard.
‘Turn right at the crossroads,’ Jacob told him. ‘You can’t miss Thorpe-Upton. It’s the end of the road. Literally.’
15
IN THE LEAD car of the Battle Men convoy Anna sat beside a brooding Justice Murrain. The man appeared troubled. More than once he muttered to himself, ‘Time’s running out … I need to make the transfer to Jack Murrain soon….’
One of the Battle Men had found a pair of binoculars. He stood on the passenger seat with his upper-half through the sun-roof. The man eagerly scanned the way ahead. Every so often he’d call out such comments as, ‘I see the cemetery.’ A moment later: ‘By God’s breath! The ocean is closer now than in our day. Murrain Hall is entirely gone!’ Then more crucially, ‘Master, a large vehicle is leaving the cemetery.’ He checked out the machine with his binoculars. ‘Sire, I can see two men through the glass.’ His voice pealed out with excitement. ‘Both are Murrain! One is old, the other quite young!’
‘We’re closing in on Jack Murrain.’ Justice Murrain nodded with satisfaction. ‘Good. Follow them.’ He smiled. ‘They’ll soon be in our hands.’
16
OVER AT THE school the women’s situation became increasingly perilous. They’d retreated into the second classroom, which was the furthest from the cliff-edge. This wouldn’t grant them much more time. Erosion steadily nibbled the cliff away. Sometimes it took formidable bites. Already half of the floor in the next classroom had slipped away down to the beach a hundred feet below. Even in the classroom they occupied huge cracks appeared in the walls. If Pel had been crazy enough to risk losing a finger or two she could easily have slipped a digit inside the masonry.
She told Kerry, ‘We can’t just sit here, waiting for the school to topple off the edge of the cliff.’
The woman in her bloodstained bandages shrugged helplessly. ‘What do you suggest? The only way is through the main door. That timber’s hard as iron.’
‘If we can inch our way toward the side of the classroom that’s fallen away, maybe there’ll be enough of the cliff-top remaining. We might be able to escape along that.’
‘You’re out of your mind.’
‘Worth a try, wouldn’t you say?’
They passed through a short linking corridor. Enormous stresses from warping walls had split the white Belfast sink in two in the kitchen. The stairs up to the office had buckled, too. Plaster dust fell as steadily as snow. Every so often, glass would shatter as frames twisted under the stress.
As they moved slowly into the classroom, or rather what remained of it, the building began to groan. It groaned from the depths of its failing foundations to the top of its cock-eyed roof timbers. The edifice could have been some sick old beast that was close to death. With every deep, weary groan the floor shivered. More cracks burst the wall plaster. Children’s pictures stuck there split in two. From the vast opening created by the fallen wall the sea winds gusted in.
‘Move with your back to this wall.’ Pel motioned Kerry. ‘The floor’s sagging in the centre.’
So they slid toward the raw, open wound of this mortally wounded building. Gravity and coastal erosion conspired to be its assassins. Another groan. The incline of the floor increased. A desk tumbled over the edge. Soon after that they heard a thud as it struck the rocks below.
Pel inched her way to where the wall ended. Beyond that, nothing but ice-cold air. The sea sparkled in hard sunlight. Ships plied their lazy routes through the ocean a dozen miles away
from this precarious life and death battle. Another groan. Tremors shivered through the building. This time, roof slates skidded off the timbers to fall in a black rain just inches from Pel’s head.
‘Can you see if there’s any way out?’ shouted Kerry.
‘Take my hand … hold on tight. I’m going to lean out past the end of the wall.’
‘I’ve got you.’
Pel stretched out as far as she dared. Moments ago, there had been a hundred-year-old wall here. Now she could see it on the rocks far below. All of it reduced to individual bricks by the shattering force of its fall. Mixed amongst those, a hell of a lot of debris from the school. Gales blew her hair. The cold had such intensity it made her teeth ache. When she leaned out a little further she could tell that the cliff had eroded back under the building. This side of the structure overhung the rock face with nothing to support it but a salty breeze. That meant this section of floor had nothing beneath it either, other than a long drop. To her left, just behind the wall she leaned against, there was no cliff. From this angle she couldn’t even see it. To her right, the remains of the pupils’ toilet block. One elevation had fallen away. The line of white, ceramic toilet bowls that had been revealed reminded her, bizarrely, of white teeth set in a human gum. The building convulsed again. Pel watched the toilet block come adrift. It tumbled down the sheer cliff in a mess of brickwork, dust and shining ceramic bowls.
‘No way out this way, Kerry! Pull me back!’
Quickly, the pair shuffled back the way they’d come, spines pressed hard to the wall. Soon they were back in the only intact classroom, albeit one showing signs of distress. Dust hung thick in the air to tickle their throats. Kerry fired off a volley of sneezes.
‘I’ll give the building thirty minutes – at most.’ Pel shivered as structural timbers groaned. ‘Then, whether we want to or not today, we’ll be visiting the beach.’
17
JACOB HUNG ON to the grab handle on his side of the truck cabin. His grandson drove the huge vehicle as if it were a sports car. Just ahead, lay the abandoned houses of Thorpe-Upton. The school on the cliff’s brink possessed a strangely ragged appearance now that part of it had collapsed. Roof beams poked upward, the displaced bones of that sad edifice.