by Giles Ekins
How long had he been unconscious? Then the hideous reality of the situation shrieked into his head.
Lucy!
By now, the fiend could have taken her. Be nailing her to a foul cross.
God, my God, I pray you; save her. I pray you Lord, as I have never prayed for anything in my life, protect your servant Lucy, bring her under your wing, for she is an innocent. Lord, I beseech thee, protect Lucy.
As the thoughts raged through his tortured mind, he took a tentative step forward, arms outstretched before him, for some reason he could not have explained, Collingwood kept his eyes tightly screwed shut. He had to find out where he was, to orientate himself and work his way back to the staircase, to try to find a way out.
Light, he needed some light. He patted his pockets, searching for the box of Bryant and May matches that he used to light his pipe, but all his pockets were empty. His pipe, tobacco pouch, notebook, wallet and warrant card, and pen – even his pocket watch – a present from his grandfather and greatly cherished – all were missing.
One hesitant shuffle forward. Then another, feeling before him with circling hands. His left knee collided with something hard and solid. He gasped and winced at the shock of sudden pain, reaching down to rub at his bruised knee. He reached forward, finding the hard edge of whatever he had bumped into. Hard and cold with a sharp edge. Table length. Waist high.
The altar! The site for foul sacrament.
Thick congealed blood beneath his hands. Blood from the crucified girl? Carefully Collingwood felt along the length of the Black Mass altar. Candles, something revolting and sticky which he soon realised were the headless corpses of a cock and hen, a heavy metal chalice containing a congealed liquid he had no wish to conceive as to origin. Slowly he worked his way around the altar, knocking something hard and metallic to the ground as he did so. He felt about on his hands and knees, wondering if it might be the sacrificial knife, which he could use to prise open the cellar door once he had made his way there, but the object turned out to be a shallow metal dish containing some congealed fat or wax. He tossed it aside, hearing the clatter echo around the enveloping blackness.
Collingwood established the long and short sides of the altar, intending to use this as a point of reference to work his way back, one direction led back to the stairs, the other into the bloody apse. With his back to one of the long edges, he slowly shuffled forwards, arms outstretched before him. His probing fingers touched something, cold yet pliable to the touch. Puzzled, he shuffled forward an inch or two before jerking back in horror, realising that he had been handling the cold dead flesh of the crucified girl. He lurched backwards, mumbling an incoherent apology to the girl as he did so, his feet skidded in a pool of blood and he stumbled back, arms whirling to try to keep his balance and crashed heavily into the sharp corner of the altar. He hissed in sudden pain, jerking sideways and stumbled over his own feet and fell heavily to his knees.
Sobbing in despair he stayed there, hunched onto his knees, face buried into his hands, trapped in a nightmare from which there was no awakening. Then slowly came the realisation that if were to do anything to save Lucy, sobbing in self-pity and recrimination would do nothing towards that end.
Groping forward in a crouch, Collingwood cast about to try to find the altar again to re-orientate himself. But he could not find it. Surely, it cannot be more than two or three feet or so away from where he fell?
Nevertheless, casting a wider circle failed to locate the altar – or the apse with its nightmare fruit. The fall must have taken him further away from the altar than he realised.
The cold stone slabs echoed long and hollowly, the echoes seeming to mock his efforts. An uneven stone snagged his toe and he fell forward again onto his knees once more, jarring his hands and fingers, already sore from when he had pounded the stairs in frustration and anger after Gimlet’s death. And to his shame Collingwood realised he had not given the poor impaled Gimlet – more than just his sergeant, a trusted friend and colleague – a single thought since finding himself trapped in the crypt.
Thirst now nagged at his throat – a ragged edge of thirst – a beast that now awake would never leave him.
Impenetrable darkness, blackness so complete it was solid, as if he were trapped in deepest bowels of the earth.
He felt stronger now, however – despite the nagging thirst – and he had found new resolve from somewhere. He made another brief prayer for the safety of Lucy and then stepped out again. If I walk as straight as I can, I must come to a wall somewhere – and then all I have to do is walk around the wall until I come to the staircase door. Simplicity itself – why did I not think of before.
Thirty shuffled paces later, he came up to a wall. Relief flooded through and he pressed himself tight against the cool masonry, spreading his arms out, as if to hug the stonework to him. Slowly Collingwood worked his way round to his right, guided by no other reason than that he was left-handed – having read somewhere that when lost, left handed people tend to walk in left hand circles – right handed people the opposite. Walking to the right, should in theory, counteract any leftwards deviation. As good as reason for going this way as any other.
The walls seemed endless, he knew the basement was large, much larger than the size of the house above would indicate, but even so, it seemed to have grown, a fanciful notion he knew, but groping around in the dark as he was, shocked and in pain, the mind begins to play tricks.
Once he thought he heard Gimlet cry out, started and turned to run towards the sound before realising that it was more likely to a rat squealing. He came abruptly to a corner and turning to his right carried on, trying to build a mental picture as to where he might be. Starting from the altar at the far end of the basement meant that he could be at the bottom left hand corner and was now working around towards the apse – or he was at the right hand corner and should now be heading towards the cellar door. He prayed that this was so – the horrors within the apse were too much too bear again.
The cold began to eat into him – as did the thirst. He licked his hands, hoping to relieve the thirst with moisture from his fingers, swallowing hard to generate saliva, but nothing abated the craving. He even tried licking the cold dank stonework.
Slowly he crept along the wall, then the wall turned sharply to the right and, immediately he came to a door. Directly beyond the door the wall turned an inner corner again, confirming to him that he was at the cellar door. It had to be the door to the cellar, there was only the one access. Wasn’t there?
He felt around the architrave for the door handle. It had been removed! He could feel the square hole where the spindle passed through, but no handle. He hammered on the door , pulling ineffectively at rusted hinges, breaking his fingernails as he tried to grasp the edge of the door by the jamb, kicking and hammering until he had exhausted himself.
He truly was entombed.
Utterly forlorn, Collingwood sat hunched down upon his haunches, leaning back against the blocked door, his head hanging heavily across his crossed, his face pressed deep into the cloth of his coat sleeves as tears of despair and self-pity trickled from his eyes. ‘Lucy is lost, he sobbed, ‘lost to the fiend, killed as surely as if I had taken the knife to her myself. And poor Gimlet is dead, poor loyal Gimlet, faithful to the end. I’ve also brought Percy Gutteridge to his death and the wretched child hanging in torment in this foul dungeon is dead because of me. And all for what – for my own ego and self-aggrandisement – to prove that I could master Sinistrari? Pitiful fool, he called me. You have failed utterly and miserably, he said. How right he was. How very right.
Eventually Collingwood sat upright and squeezed the last tears from his eyes, tasting the salt on his tongue where they had trickled into his mouth. He then rubbed his face in hands, stretched stood up, and suddenly resolved that if he were to die in this foul deep, then he was not going to make it easy for Sinistrari. He would check every inch of the walls, perhaps this was not even the doorway. Perhaps the real ce
llar door was only a few feet further away. How pitiful would that have been?
Talking a deep breath of determination, he straightened himself to full military bearing, resolved not to give way to self-pity and tears again. That is precisely what Sinistrari would want, and I’m damned if I’ll give him the satisfaction.
Suddenly he felt disorientated again, unable to remember from which direction he had been coming, from the right or left? He closed his eyes in concentration, and mentally retraced his steps since first locating the outer wall of the crypt. Then he nodded to himself and confidently faced towards the door, placed both hands against it and then set off to his right around the inner corner. With each step, Collingwood rubbed his hands across the stonework work as far as he could in all directions, resolute to remain methodical and controlled. For as long as could that is, before the deliriums of thirst set in. Even now, histongue had swelled up like a toad, filling his mouth, making it hard and painful to swallow.
He reached another corner with a suddenness that took him by surprise, convinced now that he had somehow turned back upon himself or that his orientation had been at fault from the start. But there is little to be gained in going back on myself, perhaps I was 180 degrees out with my initial assessment of where I was in relation to the altar, groping about in the dark like this it would not be at all surprising.
Collingwood carried on, always walking towards his right. His footsteps echoed hollowly, rebounding about the dank walls as if to mock his futile efforts at escape.
YOU’RE TRAPPED … RAPPED … APPED … APPED … APPED APPED …
YOU’RE TRAPPED … RAPPED … APPED … APPED … APPED … APPED …
But in those times when he stopped to rest he was aware how acute his hearing had become, the rustling and scurrying of the rats, he could now locate the direction from whence they came, squeaks and yips, and then, he strained his ears – a distant rumble, as though a heavy wagon – or railway train – had gone by. Heartened immensely by this Collingwood moved on, the world outside was not too far away – if only he could find a way out. There might yet be a way to save Lucy. He consoled himself that Sinistrari’s murders had always been about three months apart. Perhaps he had no need of her for his profane purpose for some time yet. Especially since he had just murdered the poor unfortunate child hanging from the cross? Hope swelled within him.
Moving with greater purpose, he came to yet another corner. Something squeaked and scuttled away between his feet, causing him to start, his heart hammering with sudden shock.
He shivered – not entirely from cold – and carried on. As he worked his way along the wall, he came across a series of arched niches set into the wall, some two feet wide and three tall – ossuary niches for the storage of skeletons. He remembered them from that first tentative descent into the basement. These niches had first given rise to his suspicions that Blackwater House had been built on the grounds of an ancient church – perhaps one destroyed by Henry VIII during the Dissolution – that in fact the basement had been the crypt of that church. Once hallowed ground it was now the perfect setting for Sinistrari and his foul satanic mass. Collingwood vowed to himself that he would investigate the history of the building further.
A protuberance from the wall! Collingwood stopped and carefully felt around the raised stonework that his hands had found. About two inches in diameter – carved, he could feel the chisel marks carved by the mason into the stone. He traced its outline, squatting down to determine from where the carving had sprung. It rose from the floor and continued vertically for some five feet before curving into an arch. The arch continued over Collingwood’s head –a full semi-circular arch – before descending in a straight line back to the floor. A doorway! An arched stone opening with a carved stone architrave. Some five feet in width and seven feet or more to the apex of the arch. A doorway or passage that at some time had been bricked up, he could feel the regular outline of the cut stonework and the mortar, able to trace where the stones had been shaped to fit into the opening.
A sudden surge of optimism trickled through his veins – if there was to be a weak point within the thrice-cursed crypt – then he knew instinctively that this would be the place.
He ran his fingers over the stonework, hearing the mortar crumbling slightly beneath the pads of his probing fingertips. Certainly the mortar was softer here, he could tell that, but even so, there was no way he could demolish a stonewall with his fingernails.
He stopped and breathed in deeply, having caught the sudden tinge of a foul odour. He squatted down onto his hands and knees, sniffing like a pointer dog on the hunt for downed grouse as he did so. There, he caught it again. Sewage – the unmistakable stench of raw sewage. Permeating through this blocked off doorway. Close by to the jamb on the right-hand side, at floor level, his probing fingers found a small hole, a thin crevice in the mortar, no more than two inches in diameter – undoubtedly a rat hole. The stench emanated from here. Was there a passage beyond a sewer perhaps? Sewers led to the river, was there a way out there?
Mortar broke up into thin sandy powder as he worked his fingers at the gap, but he only managed to scour away a thin coating of the surface of the mortar joint. He could work at it with his fingers for the next fifty years and achieve no more that he had already had. He needed some form of tool. But the crypt was empty. Or was it?
There was the candlestick on the altar – would that help? The shallow metal dish? If he could find it again, that is, he had tossed it away in frustration. He doubted it but anything was better than trying to work at the mortar with his fingers. He needed something sharp, pointed, if he could prise out the mortar from a large section of the wall, even if he could not get through the entire thickness of the wall, he might weaken it sufficiently for him to force a way through by sheer brute force.
Something sharp and pointed! It suddenly came to Collingwood that he knew exactly where there was such an implement – several in fact. The nails used to crucify the girl to the cross in the apse! His heart pounded at the dread thought of having to pry loose the nails from the girls dead corrupting flesh. But if he were to have any chance of escaping, however remote that chance might be, he had to do it.
He swallowed hard to try to relieve the dry clogging thirst that raged his throat like sandpaper, but he could no longer even raise saliva, his tongue so swollen it seem almost to choke him. How long before it actually did so?
He shook his head, determined not to succumb to such pessimistic thoughts. With a renewed vigour, he worked his way on around the perimeter wall of the crypt. Another corner. And another; the wall now curving away into the apse. The crucified girl must be close. If Collingwood could locate the centre of the curvature of the apse, he should be able to walk away from the wall at right angles and into the suspended cross with its awful burden. He paced carefully around the curved wall, counting his steps until he reached the far corner of the apse. He re-traced his steps exactly half way – and placing his back square against the wall, slowly shuffled forwards, arms outstretched before him. He touched painted wood.
The crucifix!. It swayed slightly back and forth as he touched it. Collingwood slowly made his way around to the front of the cross, his guiding fingers touching glacial flesh. There was the sickly sweet stench of rotting meat, the girl had been dead for some days now and the stink of body fluids leaking from her mouth, nose, ears, eyes rectum and vagina was overpowering so close to her corpse.
The cross-piece of the crucifix hung at about four feet from the ground and he slowly, almost reverently traced the contours of the dead girl’s left arm, past the wrist – tied with rope to the beam – to the outstretched palm of her hand and the driven nail. The nail was long, some five inches protruded from the palm where it had been hammered through her palm between the middle and third fingers. The spike was square in section, half an inch thick at the head, tapering down towards the point driven into the timber of the cross. Tentatively he told hold of the nail and tugged at it see how
securely it had been driven home. The purpose of the nail was to inflict pain, not to secure her to the cross – the rope around her wrist did that. However, the nail did not feel in any way loose. He hammered at it with the base of his own palm, but other than causing himself pain, achieved nothing.
He moved across to the other side and tested the integrity of the other spike, but to no avail. In a fury of frustration he took grasped hold of the nail in both hands and frenziedly twisted and jerked at the nail, trying to work it from side to side in order to loosen it. The crucifix swung wildly away from him, restricting the pressure he could exert. Grunting with effort, he worked at the nail, feeling the head of the nail, edge sharpened where it had been hammered, cutting into the flesh of his hand, but he bore it no mind, unless he could release the grip of the timber from the nail he was doomed to die. To die agonisingly of thirst – a local pain was nothing compared to the torments of that.
Movement! Movement so slight he barely felt it. He grasped the nail fully in his left hand and restraining the swinging of the cross with the other, wriggled the nail back and forth with all his strength. Gradually the nail moved more and more, until finally, with a suddenness that sent him stumbling backwards, it came free. He crashed once more into the altar, the sudden sharp stabbing of the corner into his kidneys making him drop his prize. It hit the toe of his shoe and bounced away.
‘Noooooo,’ Collingwood shouted, his bellow echoing around the crypt in ringing reverberations. He calmed himself, breathing deeply, knowing that to search in fevered haste would only disorientate him further and make it likely he miss the spike. He did not move. His foot was exactly where it was when the dropped nail hit it. He closed his eyes and strained in concentration, trying to remember from where the clang of metal on stone had come.
His hearing had become so acute that a few seconds of recollection placed the sound to his front and right, about three feet before him. Wait, there had been two sounds! The nail had bounced; the second strike of metal to stone had been further over, further over to his right. His memory built up a map of sounds – the first clang as the nail hit the ground – there! He pointed with his finger, even though he could not see. The second clang, less strident, had been … there! – followed rapidly by three or four almost inaudible rattles as the nail had skittered further away … there! It must be between five and six feet away, at two o’clock to the right. He got to his knees and slowly crawled forward. Almost precisely where he had predicted his probing fingers found the nail. There.