by Mike Wild
"Aye, but it never has. An' with good reason I reckon. There's no monster 'ereabouts. There're no such things as monsters at all."
Verse coughed discreetly. "I can see you are a sceptic."
"A pragmatic man, Lawrence, nothing more. Tell me, how can one monster be all o' these things - it's either one or it's none at all. You ask me, it's got more to do with the bloody listlessness o' this place - that or another bleedin' pathetic attempt to bring in the tourists. People around 'ere, they've got nothing better to do than make things up."
"So you've come across nothing strange at all over the years?"
Hemlock hesitated, then said reluctantly, "Only one thing. Dug it from a sinkhole about ten year ago - but I were buggered if I knew what it was." He looked at his watch. "Tell you what - buy me a pint an' you can take a look for yourself."
"In the pub?"
"Sure. Gave 'em the thing to hang in the vault as a conversation piece."
Okaaay, Verse thought, and with Hemlock trudged back along the small beach to the pub that faced it. The Breaking Point. It seemed like a doubly appropriate name.
He stepped inside to be met by a no-frills bar and a sudden silence so acute, so deafening, that it sounded like a rush in his ears. The eyes of half a dozen customers locked onto him and the stillness was so still that he half expected to see a dart suspended in mid air. For a second he felt like he had stepped through the doors of The Slaughtered Lamb.
"Dinnae worry, lads," an all-too familiar voice said. "Shaft's wi' me."
Verse glowered down at a window table. "You're supposed to be asking around town."
"Do ya see anybody out there, Father Jack?" the Scot said sarcastically. And when Verse remained silent and glowering, added, "'Cause you won't in this town when the pubs are open." He up-ended a bottle of whiskey into a glass. "'Sides, anybody in intelligence'll tell yer, the place to gather what yer need to know is in - the - boozer. This is 'specially true if yer apply the truth serum." He waved at the barmaid then all around the room. "Another round, pet."
"Kostabi's going to adore your expenses," Verse chastised. "Value for money?"
"Game o' pool, ploughman's, wee chat wi' a pair o' lasses who looked like they were eating their last meal, but otherwise a waste o' time. Bu' ah tell yer what, this whisky's nae all that bad a' all." Ness raised his glass.
Verse shook his head in disgust, bought himself and Hemlock a pint, and then said, "So, where's this thing you found?"
Hemlock pointed to the wall, and what Verse had mistaken for some piece of modern art. He should have realised it wasn't modern art - because what would that be doing here? Clumsily mounted in a homemade wooden frame, he was staring at a black object, thin but undulant, irregularly shaped and about the size of a mediaeval shield.
"Interested in the dragon's scale, are ya?" the barmaid said.
"Dragon's scale, now, is it?" Hemlock muttered into his beer. "Might 'ave bloody known..."
Verse ignored him, studying the object. It did indeed look like some kind of scale - organic rather than not, certainly - but it was so badly charred, almost carbonised, it was impossible to tell for sure. It would need a lab analysis, but that wasn't really on the cards right now. Verse found his eye drawn instead to a sepia photograph that had been mounted next to the "scale". This appeared to have been taken in the thirties and showed a smiling group of men in caving gear who, according to the picture's small plaque, belonged to - well, well - the Whitby Cavers Club.
"That's the Great Dragon Hunt of '37," the barmaid explained. "A concerted attempt to locate Verminthrax - that's what we call him, ya know - down in the caves."
"This true?" Verse asked Hemlock, and the caver shrugged.
"It's just a picture. Coulda bin anythin'."
"None of them came back, Mr 'emlock!"
"None of them?" Verse asked the barmaid.
"Not one," she said. "Me auntie told me. Nine o' them there were and never seen again."
Verse rubbed at his chin. It was difficult to know what to believe round here with the strange mix of old rumours and new and possibly suspect tourist hype. It wasn't the people's fault - all they themselves knew were the half-truths of this place's rudely interrupted past.
Ness loomed suddenly over his shoulder, and sighed whisky fumes in his face.
"Ya gittin' anywhere?"
"Marginally further than you."
Ness smiled. "Well, then. Ah guess we'd best go see the old geezer."
"What are you talking about?"
"The farmer. Apparently he has a collection o' weird shite we might find interestin'. Keeps it in a place he calls - get this - Acre 51."
"I thought you said-"
Ness tutted and wagged a finger, and Verse just knew that he'd been had.
"Did ah forget ta tell yer? Wha' happened back in '44? There was a wee SURVIVOR."
NINE
"An entrance under the monastery?" Hannah Chapter said quietly into her mobile, voice echoing slightly in the stone corridor.
"Yup," Verse replied. He sounded out of breath for some reason.
"I'll get on it," Hannah said. "Listen, gotta go..."
"Okay. Havin' fun?"
Hannah sighed. "It's a religious sect. Whadda you think?"
"What happened to the gratuitous girlie se-?"
Hannah snapped the mobile shut. Don't ask, she thought. Just don't ask.
It had become apparent even on the walk up here that her investigative jaunt to the monastery was not going to be at all as expected. The fortress-like appearance of the structure as seen from the air had been further reinforced as she approached its unyielding walls. To some extent she could understand the need for such defences in the Twelfth century, but this was the Twenty-first and there were not many rampaging crusaders, bloodthirsty outlaws or mobs of disgruntled villagers hammering loudly at its doors. Accepted, the place had been rebuilt to its original design but then why did a Centre for Celestial Truth need to add further layers of security in the form of motion sensors and CCTV. That made it damn near impossible to avoid detection within a two thousand feet perimeter. Why - now and then - was the place so obsessed with keeping things out, or, as Hannah had already started to suspect, with keeping things in.
Whichever it was, she'd toyed with the idea of giving the sensors and cameras the slip, just to see how her old agency infiltration training held up. But she'd decided against it. For one thing this place obviously wasn't designed for fun, and she didn't want to tip her hand. For another, it wasn't a stealth op, it was undercover - and all she had to do was walk up to the door.
Correction. All Anna Mae Douglas had to do was walk up to the door.
Poor Anna Mae... Passport control had put such a dampener on her first trip abroad, invoking the Terrorism Act at Heathrow. How was Anna to guess she resembled the daughter of a barber who'd done the hair of a bloke who'd fed the cat of somebody who'd looked at a policeman funny during that CND march in 1973? How was she to know that customs would find the "I Love Osama" badge in her handbag? And all this because of an actual resemblance to Hannah. She felt sorry for her - she really did - stuck in some manky little cell somewhere. But hey, at least she hadn't been shot.
The Trojan ID wouldn't even have been necessary had it not been so bloody difficult to gain entry to the monastery in the first place.
The Centre for Celestial Truth. Now here was a sect that played its cards close to its chest. A quasi-religious set up like so many she had known but differing in two interesting respects. There were the usual signatures - HQ in remote location such as this, spurious theocracy promising divine enlightenment or peace, and a charismatic figurehead who, in this case, revelled magnificently in the name Helen Earth. There were simply too many sad or desperate people out there for such setups to fail and all they needed to do was open their embracing arms and watch the cash - sorry, the donations - come rolling in.
Where the Centre for Celestial Truth broke from the equation in the first respect was
that it was rather selective in those it chose as acolyths - without family, single, and curiously lacking in significant financial assets. Where it broke in the second, was that they seemed interested only in fifty per cent of the population - those of the female persuasion. The without family and single element had caused brief concern in the Nineties that acolyths might be disappearing, but surveillance had counted them all in and counted them all out, and everything had seemed fine. That they seemed to prefer only females was explained more easily - Hannah had studied Helen's profile on her site and someone less into the opposite gender sexual relationship thing she had never seen. This was, of course, why she had been wearing a grin on her face - after all, if she had to spend a night in Boswell, then there were worse jobs than sneaking about a monastery full of flouncing, diaphanously gowned female acolyths in thrall to an Arch-Dyke.
Well, a girl could dream, couldn't she? It was those bloody Tyburn movies. She'd have to give them a rest.
But seriously, something was fundamentally wrong with this place, she could feel it. Maybe it was just her, but women who styled themselves Helen Earth were not generally intent on bringing about peace and goodwill. A spot of snooping around was definitely on the cards. But first she'd have to extricate herself from Big Butch Momma herself.
Slipping back into Anna Mae Douglas mode Hannah returned to the main hall, where with two other new arrivals she had been in the process of being inducted by Helen Earth. Her heart sank when she saw the sect leader continuing to drone on about the truth the centre offered.
"Sorry," she said. Her Flappy Bat ringtone had really pissed the woman off. "Miss anything?"
"No matter, Miss Douglas," Helen Earth replied. "We all, after all, know why we are here."
"Truth," Hannah nodded, confidently.
"Truth."
Helen continued with her induction speech - the usual meaningless rhetoric that ironically seemed to avoid the truth of what this place was about - and took the opportunity to study the assembly in the room. Has to be The Omega Man fan club, she thought, because with the exception of Helen, the new girls and herself, all of the acolyths there wore slightly glittery monkish robes, the hoods raised to obscure their faces. She wanted a look under one of those glittery hoods - and soon.
Of more concern for the moment, though, were the expressions on the faces of her co-inductees, Perry and Colleen. She had talked briefly with the two of them earlier, and had immediately been struck by something desperately sad about them. Both of their faces remained haggard and drawn, and there was something lost about their eyes that troubled her deeply. These were not the looks of women in search of celestial truth, that much was certain, and it was time to find out what was really going on around here. She feigned a yawn.
"Miss Douglas?"
"Oh, sorry again," Hannah said, waving her hand over her mouth. "Must be jetlag. Long haul from Primghar-"
"Iowa, yes," Helen Earth finished. She seemed amused, and studied Hannah. "Perhaps you should get some rest. We can... finish this later."
Hannah nodded, immediately aware of the sudden but subtle change of tone. There was an implicit challenge there, no doubt about it. But best not to pick up on it. Occult Field Ops 101 clearly stated that when surrounded by large mobs of suspicious hooded acolyths, it was always best to simply play their game. "Later," she said.
Helen Earth gestured to a hood. "Please, show Miss Douglas to her quarters."
"No bother," Hannah said casually. "I can find them."
"You're quite sure?"
"Oh quite sure," Hannah replied, smiling as she left. But the smile faded in the corridor. Damn it, she thought angrily. Had she been rumbled? If so, how? Her legend had been watertight!
Assuming she had, how to make the best of a bad job? There was no saying how much Helen knew, so she might yet have some leeway. She'd just have to find out what was going on with more alacrity, was all.
So, objective one: Verse's cave entrance. And objective two: Helen Earth's office.
Hannah moved from room to room and corridor to corridor surprisingly unchallenged, but without a result. At last, though, she came to a door that was more promising. A double-door, actually, at the end of a corridor leading to the heart of the monastery, and what presumably was its courtyard. Now that made some sense. She hadn't been happy with the idea of the monastery being built over a hole, but what if the place was built around it? Maybe that dome she'd seen had been added to hide something. There wouldn't have been many chopper flybys back in the Twelfth Century, would there?
But the door was locked solidly. Impossible to pick. And even if it weren't, a swipecard-reader controlled an independent deadbolt.
Had to be the place. All she had to do was find the card and the key.
Objective two: Helen Earth's office.
Surprisingly - or suspiciously? - it was unlocked. Hannah decided to ignore the trap/not trap niggle at the back of her mind and walked right in. The priest would have her "Hardy Drew and the Nancy Boys" badge if she didn't find out something while she was here. Ah, that looked good...
Helen's PC stood on a desk in the centre of the room, its twenty-inch flat panel monitor on, with a tightly-leotarded Madonna screensaver silently strutting its stuff. Oh please, Hannah thought - but forgave Helen a little when she was able to tap Madonna off. The screen hadn't been password protected, and neither, it seemed, had the files. Disappointingly, though, they were useless - just grocery and supply accounts, the same superficial blurb for the centre that she'd been able to pull at Exham Priory, potential acolyth correspondence and the like. But then Hannah noticed a separate user log-on: Earth 2. The files here, however, were so heavily and professionally protected that she'd need the Lone Gunmen to hack into them.
Luckily, she had their software equivalent in her pocket. A decrypter disk called Hacman. Currently in development for the NSA, she had been assured by Adrienne Celeste, Kostabi's PA, that it would give any security system the runaround.
It did. Acolyths' personal files - along with Helen's annotations for each - filled the screen, and Hannah got her first taste of what the Centre for Celestial Truth was really all about. And it made her sick.
Here was what went on beneath the veneer. Here were details of how they trawled the web for weak and emotionally insecure souls. Here was the way they peddled their true service. And the tragic thing was, those upon who they preyed were happy to embrace what they offered.
Because the Centre for Celestial Truth offered death pacts. Helen Earth and her hooded bitches had set themselves up as a focal point for those who felt so utterly excluded from today's society that they wanted to commit suicide but did not wish to do so alone. Get together, party and die - a phenomenon that had spread over the web since its first manifestation in Japan. Helen Earth's nom de guerre wasn't intended as a war cry against life, it was intended as a rallying cry for those who were sick of it.
But why? Helen hardly stuck her as the humane deliverance type, and it was already obvious that she wasn't doing this for financial rewards. The set-up was just another layer of an onion, Hannah felt sure, and the location of this place was no coincidence. Whatever it was truly going on here had to have something to do with the thing in the caves below.
She had to find the key and swipecard, get into the courtyard.
Hannah searched the desk and its drawers but it proved fruitless. Two things, however, did catch her eye. The first was a framed black and white photograph that she snatched up and studied, eyes narrowing. The second was the computer itself.
Something flickered at the base of the monitor, and she noticed suddenly that Hacman was still in the process of decrypting a folder. Now that was very interesting. If the folder's protection was proving a challenge even for Hacman then whatever was inside it promised to be revealing indeed.
Red wallpaper appeared. Then a black swastika. It was difficult to recognise as such because a stylised pentagram was superimposed upon it - the complementary half of an em
blem Hannah recognised immediately.
What the hell-?
"Sonderkommando Thule - Nazi Occult Ops," Helen Earth said in the doorway. "But, of course, you know that, don't you... Ms Chapter?"
Hannah turned. "There's one just like it in my Big Book of Bastards."
Helen laughed. "I suppose you're wondering how I knew who you were?"
"It had crossed my mind. I'm usually very good undercover."
"Oh, I'm sure of that." Helen smiled. "But you mustn't worry, you gave nothing away." The sect leader wafted her hands. "Let's just say it was magic... Abracadabra!"
"Magic like this?" Hannah replied. She held up the framed photo from the desk. "I imagine most of your flock tend to mistake it for your average schoolclass snap."
Helen Earth actually purred. "You know better, I suppose... Hannah?"
"You get around, you get to know things. These stylised black skirts and ties, for example - the white shirts. Not just any school uniform. Das Bund Deutscher Madel, if I'm not mistaken. The BDM. In other words, Hitler Youth for girls."
"Very perceptive, young lady. And I suppose it has not escaped your attention that I can be seen in this photograph?"
"Which must have been taken in the early Forties. But there you are, third from left, the back row. It's the piggy eyes, they're a dead giveaway. So care to enlighten me as to how I'm talking to an eighty year-old woman who could be my sister?"
Helen Earth shrugged. "Nothing more than basic perpetuation rituals. You know the kind of thing: tantric osmosis, pineal fluid forcibly leeched from the glands of writhing virgins."
"Sounds fun, if a little unconvincing. So let me guess. Your career didn't end with the BDM."
"Sonderkommando Thule recruited me in '44 with a very generous package. But then the task they had in mind for me was really quite singular - as it turned out, a lifetime's calling."
"Let me guess again. Something to do with the thing under this rock."
"Everything to do with it," Helen said, but she didn't elaborate. She simply smiled.
Uh-oh, Hannah thought. She hated those kind of smiles, these silences, because usually they led to something nasty happening.