by Simon Clark
Justice Murrain recovered his composure. ‘Do as I order. End that man’s life!’
However, the Battle Men called to him: ‘What’s wrong, Master?’
‘Have they done witchcraft on you?’
‘Is it really you, master. Are we being deceived?’
Through this exchange of words Pel and Jack had emerged from the mausoleum. The mood of the Battle Men had changed from naked aggression to confusion.
‘Tell them what you see,’ Jacob boomed with such authority that the Battle Men were silenced. It made the rabble uneasy. Here was a man who was clearly a blood Murrain; he possessed an undeniably forceful charisma, while the giant, who claimed he was Justice Murrain, had begun to appear weak; his eyes had become shifty. Jacob continued, ‘Justice Murrain. Or am I speaking to Horace Neville? Tell everyone what you can see there on the ocean.’
‘Pirate ships. Jolly Roger. Big sails all flip-flapping in the breeze …’ The voice changed as if the possessor vied for control. ‘I am … am Justice Murrain. Bring Jack to me. I will transfer now.’ His gaze wandered in confusion. Then the Neville voice returned: ‘I’ve seen foxes in the supermarket. Nobody else knows they shop there. I’ve seen ’em … seen ’em plenty. Clever foxes. Buying their chickens and chocolate, and – no, I am Murrain! I lived at Murrain Hall. I will build an empire!’
Pel noticed a battle of sorts in Anna’s expression. Jacob had revealed that Anna had been brought to Murrain Hall from an asylum. Now, it appeared the old psychosis had returned. Madness flared in the woman’s eyes. And when she glared at Pel they blazed with pure jealousy … a soul-devouring jealousy … one that craved the destruction of her love rival.
Pel recognized a ploy that might push the psychosis into all out insanity. ‘Listen to me! I, Pel Minton, accept Justice Murrain’s offer. I will become his bride.’
Jack stared at her. ‘Are you crazy?’
‘No,’ she murmured, so only he would hear, ‘but I know a very angry girl who is just about to be.’ Then to Justice Murrain she held out her arms. ‘Prove to everyone here that you are serious in your intentions. Kiss me!’
Tears flashed in Anna’s eyes. Her fists trembled as she gripped the machine-gun.
‘At last!’ Justice Murrain recaptured control of his host’s body. ‘Bear witness to my power. Watch me take my bride by the hand!’
The Battle Men appeared convinced. They cheered. Then cheered even more loudly for their master. Victory was theirs.
Convulsions of sheer misery jolted Anna’s body. ‘No! Stop that! Don’t applaud her – I’m telling you not to!’
The Battle Men were ecstatic. They cheered, applauded, waved their knives and hammers in the air. An explosively psychotic Anna de Suisse bit down on her own lip so forcefully that blood spurted. When she screamed that blood atomized into a spray of crimson. Then she snapped.
Pel realized that the scorned woman’s anger might be directed at her. However, the approbation of the Battle Men enraged her the most at that instant. She raised the machine-gun then discharged the weapon into those yelling faces. Every single one of the ammo clip’s thirty high-velocity rounds flew at the mob. At least a dozen of the possessed were felled. Some fell silently. Many collapsed, shrieking, as they spurted blood.
‘Anna!’ roared Justice Murrain. ‘I order you to stop.’
Anna’s mind had exploded into lethal psychotic shrapnel. Hurling aside the machine-gun, she raced toward Pel Minton. As she ran, she drew a long-bladed knife from her belt. With blood-lust uppermost in her broken mind, she raised the weapon. Jack stepped in front of Pel.
Anna, in her confusion, couldn’t differentiate between the man she’d loved two centuries ago, or the bloodline descendent. Both looked so much alike. Her eyes locked on to his large grey ones. She absorbed his demeanour; his mane of black hair. Then she saw he shielded the woman who would steal Justice Murrain from her. Anna flung herself forward, aiming a desperate blow at Pel as she did so.
Jack blocked the attack. However, the knife sliced into his chest. Sight of Murrain blood pouring from the wound finally crushed Anna’s own heart. Sobbing, she dropped to her knees.
Pressing his hand to his ribs, Jack stepped backwards. That bright, luscious red – the stuff of life – ran free through his fingers.
Justice Murrain raged, ‘He wasn’t supposed to be hurt. His body is mine!’
The surviving Battle Men showed no desire to attack. What they saw before them was a Murrain with his life haemorrhaging from him. They, too, had been gathered up from asylums across the county. Their logic, faulty at best, failed them, when they saw someone, who so closely resembled their master, staggering toward the mausoleum, an open wound in his breast.
Jacob Murrain shouted, ‘I know why the mosaic hasn’t healed itself.’ His next words were chilling as they were inexplicable. ‘Blood … Murrain blood will heal all.’ Then he went to his grandson. ‘Jack? Will you do something for me?’
Although weakening, Jack nodded.
‘Jack. Go into the mausoleum. Allow your blood to fall on to the mosaic. It’s important … vitally important.’
‘Grandfather.’ He grimaced. ‘I said harsh things. About how the mosaic had ruined my life. But I wouldn’t have it any other way. You, and my entire family, even the old devil himself’ – he nodded toward Justice Murrain – ‘you all made me what I am.’
Pel tore away her fleece jacket. ‘Here. I can stop the blood with this. Let me hold it to you.’
Jack shook his head. ‘There’s a need for this stuff.’ He managed to smile. ‘Can’t waste this vintage Murrain.’ He dropped to his knees on the mosaic. Now the blood fell – a scarlet offering on the portrait of his ancestor. Not a sacrificial gift to Justice Murrain, but to more ancient spirits: ones that an even more ancient ritual had woven into the layers of soil beneath the cemetery.
Pel felt her own life drain away as she watched that selfless act of giving. His blood cascaded in luscious, red drops on to the portrait’s eyes, mouth, nose and jaw. The blood trickled into the gaps between the image and where the mosaic had been brutally hacked from the ground. Soon, the red fluid had filled the fissures. Then it darkened. As it did so, that congealing blood became fresh mortar that cemented the mosaic into the floor. In turn, that living adhesive joined the mosaic with the earth once more.
‘It’s working,’ Pel whispered.
‘We’re not there yet.’ Jacob nodded in the direction of Kerry and Nat.
The pair pressed their fingers to their temples as if their heads hurt. Already their expressions had become unfamiliar. The spirits, which had been evicted from the bullet-riddled corpses of the possessed, had found new hosts.
‘Anna de Suisse,’ Kerry grunted. ‘I’ll have her hide for firing on us.’
Pel willed the magic to work once more. For the self-healing to be complete. Because at that moment the Battle Men began to close in on the mausoleum. Justice Murrain led them, his face set to kill.
‘You’re going to die, Jacob Murrain,’ snarled a possessed Kerry Herne. ‘We’ll make your people pay for this.’
Jack gave a groan. He toppled sideways, so weakened by blood-loss he couldn’t stay in that crouching position any longer. Pel doused her hand in his blood, then swept her palm over the mosaic until a scarlet emulsion covered every inch.
All of a sudden the sky went dark. A profound blackness. A void between worlds. And the air was still. Kerry and Nat sighed. Their expressions of fury morphed into one of utter vacancy. Outside, the view of their surroundings changed. The archeologists’ trenches vanished. The once eroded gravestones became more regular. Newer. On the cliff a mansion stood tall.
She heard Jacob breathe, ‘Murrain Hall. It’s back. But like the olden days, when it was new.’
She turned her attention back to the mosaic. It had vanished. As simply as that. Instead, she peered down a deep well … at least that’s what it resembled. A well going down and down and down and … vertigo tugged hard. For a momen
t, she feared it would pull her in head first.
Suddenly, out on the cliff-top, the hall had vanished. Now there were no gravestones. Instead, a ring mound enclosed the ancient holy site. A figure clad in animal skins and vines stood motionless at a point where a host of radiating white paths all came together. Temple Central as it was 4000 years ago. The figure made priestly gestures with his hands – slow, dignified, with such precision. His dark hair fell on his shoulders. Briefly, his grey eyes fixed on hers. Then the Battle Men yelled as one.
From their direction flew small dark shapes. Their speed, and the fact they were only glimpsed fleetingly, reminded Pel of bats flying at dusk. They streamed through the darkness toward the mausoleum. One by one, they sped toward the pool of night once occupied by the mosaic. Then each flitting shape plunged down into it. Flying down and down, as if to the centre of the earth.
Kerry and Nat groaned even louder. They clutched their heads. Something fast, dark, and almost too fleeting to see, shot from them, then those two shadows vanished into the pit, too. Pel knew those dark knots of shadow were the souls of the Battle Men. Now, at last, they returned to their prison in some dark heart-soil of the earth.
Slowly, the day began to brighten again. Pel pressed the fleece to the wound in Jack’s chest. He seemed stronger. What’s more, he insisted on standing.
Silent, they stepped out into the growing light. On the ground, still bound in orange tape, Chelsea complained, ‘Dianne? Why are you sitting on me?’
Kerry and Nat were Kerry and Nat again. They hugged one another. The air smelt of ocean; a zing of ionized breeze that brought their senses back to life with renewed freshness.
The 200 men and women were no longer possessed. They either sat on the ground, or wandered away in confusion, or asked one another what they were doing here in their nightclothes, or without clothes at all.
Pel supported Jack as they approached Justice Murrain and Anna.
Anna said, ‘It’s better like this. I’d rather lie with Justice Murrain in the ground forever than be in this flesh and lose him.’ Her features appeared to flicker as the spirit lost its grip on the stolen body. ‘I love him. Now we’ll be together.’
Jacob shook his head. ‘I’m sorry, my dear. Justice Murrain has a new prison. He can’t escape the brain he occupied.’
‘No! He’s got to come back with me.’ She clutched his arm. ‘Please, master, say you will!’
‘At last,’ Justice Murrain whispered, ‘I understand. Isn’t it always the way? That you never appreciate what treasure you possess until it is lost? I am sorry, Anna. Truthfully, you were special to me.’ He kissed her tenderly.
‘Woah!’ The woman pushed him back. ‘You do not kiss a police officer. That is actionable as an assault. Touch me again and I will arrest you!’ She blinked, suddenly aware of her surroundings.
‘Anna,’ Justice Murrain’s voice wavered. ‘My Anna….’
‘Don’t you Anna me.’ The policewoman frowned. ‘How did I get here? I … I thought I was just finishing work when …’ Puzzled, she regarded the prone bodies, and all those puzzled men and women, who wandered through the cemetery asking each other questions that none knew the answer to.
‘My Anna’s gone.’ Grief clouded Justice Murrain’s eyes.
‘And back where she should be,’ Pel told him. ‘Back under the mosaic.’
‘As for you,’ Jack told him, ‘you’ll live out your days in a secure unit.’
Jacob added, ‘I for one, find that satisfying. Very satisfying. You recruited your thugs from asylums for the criminally insane. Now you’re going to find yourself living in one until the day you die.’
‘I’m trapped in this thing?’ With an expression of absolute horror Justice Murrain touched the head that imprisoned him. ‘There’s no escape?’
Jacob shook his head.
Shocked to the core, Justice Murrain walked away from the group. They watched him peer at tombstones, then into the trenches, then at the sun shining brightly in the sky. Beneath one of the archeologists’ awnings, he found a pair of plastic chairs, the kind that grace summer patios. Slowly, he picked them up, one in each hand, then he found a level area that had a fine view of the ocean. There he set the chairs side by side. He sat down in one; the other he put his arm around.
In a child-like voice he said, ‘I’m Horace Neville. This is my friend.’ He patted the vacant chair beside him. ‘Bobby’s been poorly. But he’s all right now.’
AFTER
POLICE CARS TOOK survivors of the mass possession home. Fleets of ambulances carried the injured away. Black vans collected the dead.
Jack patiently waited his turn for a ride to the hospital. When he noticed that Pel’s expression of concern hadn’t diminished, he reassured her. ‘It was only a glancing blow. Soon I’ll be good as new.’
She managed a tired smile. ‘Glad to hear it. And you’ll have a hero scar to show your buddies, when it’s too hot to wear a shirt.’
‘My thoughts exactly.’ He glanced at his grandfather, who in turn kept a watchful eye over Horace Neville, as he placidly sat beside a best friend nobody ever saw, but who was perhaps, in the end, his most powerful ally.
Pel shivered. ‘Will they ever come back?’
‘They might,’ Jack allowed. ‘If the mosaic is taken again. Or if this sacred site is compromised.’
‘Then someone will have to take care of it forever.’
‘Ah, that’s where we Murrains come in. When my grandfather retires I’ll be the one to guard it.’
‘A lifetime commitment?’
‘Of course.’ There was a pause, then he added, ‘Things got hectic round here over the last few days.’
She smiled. ‘That I did notice, Jack.’
‘I did plan to ask if you’d stick around for a while.’
‘In Crowdale?’
He nodded.
She gave a noncommittal shrug. ‘Give me time to think about it, won’t you?
‘Naturally.’
Pel considered for a moment. ‘Do you like kidney pie? I could never spend time with a man who ate kidney pie.’
‘Will that help you reach a decision?’
‘Hmm. Absolutely.’
‘Kidney Pie? Me? No, I never touch the stuff.’
‘Yup, that helps.’
They stood together in the October sunlight. Pel was thinking hard. If she didn’t quit this ancient corner of England, would something of its spirit ultimately take possession of her, one way or another? And if there ever came a time she needed to leave the country, and Jack Murrain, could she? Would she?
Or one day, years and years from now, might her bones rest beside those of Jack in this very cemetery?
So? Leave or stay? Eventually, she’d come to the right decision. For now, however, she took pleasure in the calm and the peace that had been restored to her world … she closed her eyes, and listened to the steady beat of her heart. And if she listened intently enough, and faithfully enough, would she find the answer to her question?
By the Same Author
DARKNESS DEMANDS
STRANGER
IN THIS SKIN
HOTEL MIDNIGHT
THE TOWER
DEATH’S DOMINION
MIDNIGHT BAZAAR
THIS RAGE OF ECHOES
Copyright
© Simon Clark 2009
First published in Great Britain 2009
This edition 2012
ISBN 978 0 7198 0639 1 (epub)
ISBN 978 0 7198 0640 7 (mobi)
ISBN 978 0 7198 0641 4 (pdf)
ISBN 978 0 7090 8897 4 (print)
Robert Hale Limited
Clerkenwell House
Clerkenwell Green
London EC1R 0HT
www.halebooks.com
The right of Simon Clark to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988
rk, Ghost Monster