by Giles Ekins
Steadfastly she walked on, head held high, looking neither left nor right regal in demeanour, a princess among her subjects; quelling her terror with a mantra of pride. I am my Father’s daughter and I will show no fear, I am my Father’s daughter and I will show no fear, I am my Father’s daughter and I will show no fear.’
They passed through a semi-circle of high backed chairs, thirteen in number, black lacquered, upholstered in crimson velvet, the central chair raised on a dais, grander than the others with carved arms in the shape of snarling fanged demons; the diabolic throne of a high priest of Satanachia.
Before her now stood an altar lit by an array of black guttering candles on tall iron candelabras whose many branches writhed in serpentine spirals, interlocking in a frenzy; each candleholder the head of a snake with bared fangs. The altar was some seven or eight feet long, shrouded in black silk which was embroidered in gold thread with cabalistic and satanic symbols; the five pointed pentagram, serpents, skeletal crescent moons and arcane lettering, unlike any Lucy had ever seen. Heavy black enamelled candlesticks stood on top of the altar, thick candles the size of a man’s arm flickering yellow radiance as black wax slithered down the waxy stem to puddle at the candle base, oozing across the silk shroud like congealing blood. Between the candlesticks were set an inverted black ebony crucifix, two feet tall, standing in a shallow black enamel try with the head of the dying Christ embedded in a pile of stinking excrement.
Two gold chalices stood before the candlesticks. A black cockerel and a white, feet and wings tied, lay in silent supplication at each end of the altar, like Lucy, awaiting sacrifice to evil. A small bladed surgical knife, made by Weiss, was to one side, whilst another knife, with bejewelled handle and long carved blade, lay horizontally across the front of the altar, the candlelight shimmering like polished gold along the gleaming death-blade.
COLLINGWOOD, FLANAGAN, MIGGS and the Richmond police crept around the side of the north wing of Carfax House and quickly located the servant’s entrance; down a flight of stairs to a narrow basement court, rank with weeds and stenched with cat urine. A thin gleam of pale light shone from a pair of grime-smeared windows further down the courtyard,
‘The kitchen,’ Leatherbeck whispered, pointing. As the coach house and stables had shown no light, Collingwood guessed that the coachmen were waiting there and would need to be restrained from interfering in any action taken against their masters. He tried the door handle. As expected, the door was locked. He beckoned to Sergeant Eccles who slid the Brummagem made jemmy into the gap between the door and jamb by the lock, leaned back to gain leverage and snapped the jemmy sharply to the left. A loud splintering crack, which echoed deafeningly around the court, a collective holding breath waiting for alarum and the door slowly eased open, the hinges creaking rustily.
Collingwood took a hooded bulls- eye lantern from Leatherbeck and swiftly flashed it along the corridor leading to the kitchen; all clear apart from an old orange box carton propped up against the wall. Careful to keep the torch beam low so as not to alarm the occupants of the kitchen, whoever they might be, he slowly led the squad of police towards the door, making sure that all carefully skirted around the propped up box. A burst of muffled laughter oozed out from the kitchen, a clatter of crockery on a table. Collingwood took hold of the door, silently counted out three and flung open the door, which crashed back against the sidewall with a reverberating boom.
‘What the fuck?’ shouted a belligerent voice from within.
‘Police, remain as you are. Remain as you are.’
Nine men sat around a large dust caked kitchen table, a battered enamel kettle and several cups were scattered amongst a strew of newspapers, a saucer used as an ashtray and four or five brown glass beer bottles. Candles in bottles and saucers gave the room a murky jaundiced light highlighting dust motes floating in myriad profusion.
One of the men, tall and belligerent, his maroon coachman’s livery open down an ample belly leapt to his feet, fists clenched, ready to fight before realising that he was outnumbered and that the sudden visitors were in fact police and he slowly subsided back into his chair, to repeat his earlier exclamation. ‘What the fuck?’
‘Police,’ Collingwood said again, somewhat unnecessarily since a dozen or more uniformed coppers surrounded the seated coachmen, truncheons in hand. ‘I have no business with you men; it is your masters I am after. You,’ pointing at the nearest, ‘Where is Sinistrari, where is my daughter.’
‘Oo? Dunno, Guv. All I do is drive the carriage. Go there ’e says, and I go there. Drive ’ere ’e says and I drive ’ere. Wait ’ere ’e says and I waits. Don’t know nothing ’bout no Sinnisasti or whatever, nor your daughter neither.’
‘Who drives for Sinistrari?’ Collingwood demanded, his anxiety fuelling bright anger.
The coachmen looked at each other blankly, shrugging their shoulders, no idea what the angry looking scuffer was talking about. Collingwood thought furiously, he could not allow these men warn their masters.
‘Flanagan, is there a key in the lock? The kitchen door?’
‘Yessir’
‘Any other doors? Rooms?’
Flanagan quickly looked through all the doors leading off the kitchen.
‘There is a scullery, sir, two big stores, pantry, pot store. No other doors out of the kitchen apart from the main door.’
‘The stores, do they lock?’
‘Yes, good strong doors.’
‘Gentlemen, I am afraid we shall have to lock you in until our business here is completed and then you will be released.’
‘No fucking way, mate. I ain’t stayin’ locked in here like a bleedin’ priz’ner and you can’t make me. Fuckin’ liberty! What if Doctor Asmodeous needs me, eh, what then?’ snarled the same belligerent voice.
Sergeant Eccles stepped to the front. ‘Septimus Tonks, sir,’ he said pointing his truncheon at the truculent coachman. ‘Known to all and sundry as Septic Tank on account as how he and soap and water aren’t too well acquainted. Done a stretch in Pentonville for robbery, assault and battery; well known to us is Septic.’
‘Fucker,’ Tonks muttered under his breath.
‘Looking for another stretch in Pentonville? Obstructing the Police in the course of their duties is a criminal offence, with your record you’ll go down again for sure.’ Flanagan said ominously.
‘Fuckin’ Irish peasant fucker,’ Tonks muttered under his breath again, but making sure his back was turned away. ‘You can’t lock us in ’ere and you can’t make us, ain’t that right lads?’
‘Yeah, s’not right, it ain’t.’
‘Put him in the store and lock it. Give him a candle if he’s afraid of the dark,’ Collingwood ordered, pointing at Tonks who started to get to his feet again, ready to resist but finally coming to his senses, petulantly kicking his chair over. He shrugged off Eccles’ hand, picked up a candle and a bottle of beer and walked, as slowly as he dare, to the store and allowed himself to be locked in. ‘Anybody else care to join him, just say the word.’ Collingwood glared around the table, receiving only muttered no’s and s’not rights but no real resistance now their spokesman had gone.
One last quick glance around the kitchen and Collingwood waved the squad out, locking the door behind him and pocketing the key. The hunt for Sinistrari and Lucy had entered the final phase.
SINSTRAR I LED LUCY UP TO THE ALTAR SACILEGIOUS, halting her before it; the vile stench from the obscene crucifix assailing her nostrils in foul waves. She shook with terror, stifling a scream as, beyond the altar, she could see a black painted cross, eight feet tall and five feet wide, a hammer, ropes and bright speared nails. She knew what horror now awaited her, what agonies, and she felt as though her pounding heart must burst inside her chest.
‘Lucy, kneel in the presence of The Great Lord Satanachia.’
‘I will kneel to my own God, not to this foul obscenity.’
‘Lucy you must kneel, you will kneel.’
‘I will not kn
eel before this … abomination.’ And she began to pray again, her voice, proud and clear echoing around the chamber.
‘Our Father which art in Heaven,
Hallowed be thy name,
Thy Kingdom come.’
‘Cease that and kneel,’ Sinistrari shouted over her prayer, frustrated by her intransigence and defiance, snapping his fingers at two masked acolytes who came running over. ‘Get her to kneel.’
‘Thy will be done on earth,
As it is in Heaven.’
Roughly, they seized her arms, twisting them up behind her back and forcing her downwards. Pain seared through her shoulders, her arms stretched behind her like wings, forcing her downwards. The thin robe came apart, dragged away from her shoulders, riding up over her thighs as the pressure drive her onto her knees. ‘
‘Give us this day our daily bread,
And forgive us our trespasses
As we forgive those who trespass against us.’
Sinistrari, standing before the altar began to chant also, his deep voice echoing in strident disharmony to that of Lucy.
‘Allagrat, Magrak ab tocar, Baël, Astorath, zu Lucifrage, nak Beelzebub, Yazek, Maal, Ingrag nach Mazag
Barbato huk Aamagkax taq Ayporast
Agalarept oc Sargtanas naj
Satanachia, ag Satanachia, ag Satanachia.
Satanachia, ag Satanachia, ag Satanachia.
Satanachia, ag Satanachia, ag Satanachia,’ his voice rising to a crescendo as Lucy, her shoulders and arms on fire, prayed on resolutely.
A hooded Satanist, masked in a blood red goats mask, came up behind Lucy to rip the rest of the robe away.
‘And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil,
For thine is the Kingdom and the power, and the Glory for ever and ever.
Amen.’
The Goats-head acolyte behind Lucy picked up a slightly curving carved black object, some two feet long, swelling to a bulbous pointed head and with swollen globular base-a grotesque phallus. The men holding her arms pushed her head down to the floor, her buttocks gleaming white against the black silk altar cloth as the goats head prepared to penetrate her with the vile object. Goats-head looked in revulsion at Lucy’s exposed flesh, female genitalia disgusted him, he wanted to cut and slash the cunt of every woman he saw. He wanted to rip-out their wombs, hack off their breasts; women revolted him, the most repulsive, vile creatures on the face of the earth, his hatred pathological and rooted deep to the very core of his being.
Sinistrari saw the movement and knocked the phallus aside. ‘Master?’ Goats-head queried peevishly, ‘It is time for the sacrament, it is the rite of the Great Prince Lucifer,’ and he pressed forward again with the phallus, ready to thrust it deep inside the helpless Lucy, to tear her asunder, destroy her womb, his own erection evident from the swelling of his robes. Sinistrari savagely kicked the loathsome phallus out of the Goats-head’s hands, sending it spinning across the stone flag floor and into the edge of darkness out of sight, as Goats-head rubbed his fingers together to ease the pain of the kick.
‘No, not this one.’ Sinistrari rasped.
‘Master, it is of the ordered ritual, the symbolic defloration of the Virgin Mary, always it is this way.’ He paused before adding, ‘Makes ’em scream.’
‘Do not gainsay me. It shall not be so,’ Sinistrari responded his voice full of latent menace, turning his baleful eyes to Goats-head who shrank away in sudden fear.
Sinistrari had given his word to Lucy Collingwood and he would keep it!
However, there were certain elements of the profane ritual to his Infernal Masters that could not be ignore and Sinistrari picked up the Weiss surgical knife from the altar and bent over Lucy, the razor sharp blade poised over her naked back and buttocks.
‘ERE IT IS, SIR, BARCLAY THE BASTARD BUTLER’S little den, his lair, you see ’e could see all along the corridors and see what’s going on, like a vulture ’e was. Many’s the time …’
‘The cellar door, Leatherbeck, the cellar door.’ ‘Yessir, course, it’s just here, to the left.’
The door was unlocked and opened easily apart from the slight screech of hinges last oiled long since. A short flight of steps led down. Collingwood hesitated at the head of the stairs, a sudden spasm of fear lurching through his stomach as he recalled the stairs in Blackwater House and the obscene oubliette, Gimlet’s screams, the cruel spikes that impaled his twitching agonised body and the smell of burning flesh.
For long dread seconds he stood there, heart pounding, his blood seeming to boil, his fear swelling into his pores to paralyse him. He took a deep breath and started on down, not wanting another to go before him and spring any trap, he must be the one who ran that risk.
Slowly he walked down, testing each step, holding tight onto the handrail, not that he was sure it would hold his weight if the steps gave way suddenly beneath him. He made sure he kept his weight and balance on the back foot, it was only when he reached the bottom of the stairs did he realise he had been holding his breath, he exhaled noisily and leaned against the wall for a second or two whilst his legs stopped shaking.
Another door before them, also unlocked. A passageway before ran to the left and right and Collingwood hesitated unsure which way to go.
‘To the right, sir, the right.’ Leatherbeck said and Collingwood led the squad of tensed, wary police onwards, their footsteps echoing in eerie cadence. The passage to the left had Collingwood but known, contained storerooms, in one of which Lucy had been imprisoned, her clothes still lying crumpled on the stone bench.
A thin shaving of light bled out from the undercut of the door before them, casting a thin yellow puddle that flickered and shimmered as if alive. Their footsteps echoed, echoed, and re-echoed hollowly along the vaulted passage and every one of them could feel the knots of tension roiling in their stomachs.
‘The cellar’s just through the door, sir, miles and miles and bloody miles of it,’ Leatherbeck whispered. They crept forward, senses straining, glancing to left and right, fearful of what this dank tomb might bring, recalling Collingwood’s counsel that the night was All Hallows Even, Hallowe’en, the night when devils and demons and the foul creatures of the Pit were abroad; not of course any of them believed in that superstitious nonsense.
With a suddenness that made all start back in fear, hearts pounding, an agonised scream, high pitched in absolute torment seared through the door, followed by another. And another.
‘Lucy,’ Collingwood bellowed, charging forward to crash through the door, fearful he was too late, that she had already been sacrificed. Another scream did not reassure him.
Sinistrari completed the fifth stroke of the blade which completed the pentagram, carved into the living flesh of Lucy’s back, the blood streaming in gory torrents across her buttocks and down her flanks, pooling on the floor, smearing over her legs and chest as she thrashed in agony, her arms still held in unrelenting grip, the agony from her twisted arms fading into nothing compared to the searing slicing torture of her mutilated back.
‘I will be as quick as I can Miss Lucy, but this must go through to fruition, the Great Lord Satanachia demands it thus.’ Sinistrari said, but whether she could hear above the torment of her own screams he could not say and made the first cut of the second symbol, an occult triangle, circled at each point with a gouge of flesh the size of a fingernail. Goats-head danced and capered, chortling with glee as the knife sliced again, ‘Cut her, cut her, cut, cut her vile flesh, sir, cut her vile flesh, master,’ he chanted in a monotonic cadence. ‘Cut her vile white flesh,’
Collingwood hurried on through the inner cellar door, the shrieks of torment driving him on. At first, he could see nothing, panicked he looked wildly about him, unseeing, his sense of vision blinded by the echoing screams.
‘Sir,’ Flanagan pointed to the far end of the cellar where figures, shadows grotesquely enlarged by the flickering candles, danced and cavorted, unmindful yet of the advancing police.
; Another scream and Collingwood could bear it now longer. ‘LUCYYYYYY’, he yelled as he charged forward, ‘LUCYYYY, LUCYYYY, his flare pistol in hand, the bottles of oil and paraffin, one in each pocket of his overcoat, banging against his hips as he ran, heedless of anything but the agony of his child. A figure loomed up before him, a bulls head, fully horned, trying to stop him but Collingwood swiped him aside almost without thinking.
Inspector Rayburn, more in control than the distraught Collingwood, stationed one of his men to stand guard at the door, ‘Nobody must leave,’ he ordered, ‘there is foul work afoot here, the work of the foulest and no-one must evade arrest,’ and he turned and followed after Collingwood. Flanagan was hard on Collingwood’s heels, flare pistol in hand also.
Sinistrari, bloody knife in hand, looked up as Collingwood shout to Lucy echoed around the walls of the vault, mingling in strident resonance with shrieks of his sacrifice, staring in stark disbelieve as his nemesis came running towards him.
‘Collingwood ‘he hissed, ‘It cannot be, it cannot be but by Lucifer it will be the last,’ and dropping the knife he strode in awful purpose, his hand raised, first and little fingers thrust tightly forward, the other two curled into his palm, hooked beneath his thumb.
At that same moment, Collingwood saw his quarry and let out an enraged bellow, the bellow of a bull elephant in full charge to protect his young, at first not seeing Lucy in the shadow of the altar. Then he saw her, a sprawl before the sacrilegious altar, naked, covered in blood. The well of fury burst within him, scarlet mists, the colour of her blood swirled before his eyes, peripheral vision disappeared in a haze of smeared confusion, and he saw only Sinistrari, the murderer of countless victims and the torturer and killer of his beloved daughter for he was convinced that she must be dead, seeing him as if through a telescope, completely filling his vision, hated and vile, to be destroyed and driven back to Hell and his demoniacal masters.