There was no sign of anyone else as I climbed out of the car. I was alone in the middle of the woods that blanketed the estate in their autumnal cloak.
I doubted that anyone involved in Catrin’s abduction would be expecting me to show my face again. I had no idea why she had been taken, although I could guess, and it didn’t necessarily have anything to do with my presence on the estate these last few weeks. I didn’t even know what it was Lord Lambton had wanted to talk to me about, and it might not have had anything to do with what I had witnessed. Perhaps he had just wanted to know when I would be leaving.
Somehow I doubted this was the case.
With the bag of supplies over my shoulder, the kitchen knife ready in my hand, my heart hammering against the inside of my ribs, I set off through the woods. I followed the same path I had taken the night before when I had stumbled upon the cult.
Retracing my steps, all too aware how loud my footsteps sounded with leaves and beech mast crunching beneath my feet, I pressed on. After all, I had little choice.
The oncoming night was clear and the orange tinge of day still lingered on the western horizon, so I saw the grotto quite clearly. And as I approached, I heard the chanting once more.
I entered the sculpted cave-mouth, fully expecting to find the gamekeeper waiting for me. But there was no one on guard, and so, with my heart in my mouth, the handle of the knife gripped tight in my sweaty palm, I began to descend the oesophagus of the earth-serpent for the last time.
XXXII
Writing about it now, I have no idea if I’m telling the truth or simply describing some drug-fuelled hallucination brought on by the musky incense that filled the cavern; whether I was hypnotised into believing I had truly seen what I thought I saw down in the dark under the Lambton Estate by the incessant, hideous chanting; or if this is all just some madman’s deranged fantasy.
What I do know is that I need to tell this story like I have never needed to tell a story before – to trap the impossible upon the page, using concepts my mind can understand. It does not matter if no one ever reads it again, not even me, for so much that happened after I descended into the dark seems impossible now, what I believe I witnessed twisting the physical laws of the universe in order to conform to the hideous will of some unknowable god-like entity.
I do not know if any of the others present that night died. Perhaps none did, although I sincerely doubt it, and I find it hard to believe Lord Lambton survived what happened to him in particular. I haven’t dared check the broadsheets for an obituary since that fateful day, in case I might actually find what I’m looking for. I can’t think about that. I can’t believe that I am a murderer. But then a confession like that is as nothing compared to the ultimate, terrible dark truth about the nature of the universe I learnt that night.
The story of what happened is all I have now, and I must bring it to an end, once and for all. If I do this, then maybe I will at last be free of the dreams that plague me.
I descended into the ruddy gloom of the cavern-temple, that eerie grotto-shrine, knowing full well what I would see when I reached the bottom of the steps, half-expecting those in attendance to be waiting for me.
And then I saw, through the coral clouds of billowing, spark-shot smoke, the villagers and estate workers – for I knew who they were now: that woman I’d seen once collecting her paper from the shop; men I’d seen drinking at The White Worm on my date with Catrin; Sergeant Kemp; the maid who cleaned my room. But rather than cavorting in their depraved way as before, they were gathered in a ring around the edge of the cavern, all facing the carved plinth at its centre.
Seeing who was laid upon the altar stone – on her back, naked, gagged and bound hand and foot, tears streaming from the corners of her eyes – I stopped, and had to swallow hard to keep my gorge from rising. Fear knotted my stomach and sent an icy chill trickling down my spine.
“Let her go!”
The chanting stopped and, almost as one, the cultists turned to face me. They stared at me with blank faces, their glassy-eyed, slack-mouthed expressions lending them an almost fish-like appearance. The strange rippling light given off by the braziers created an optical illusion, making it appear as if their pallid, sagging flesh was covered with scales.
Taking one of my own-recipe Molotov cocktails from the bag slung over my shoulder, I descended the last few steps to the floor of the cave. The cultists immediately before me parted to let me into the circle, watching me all the time with those wide, dead-fish eyes.
Knife held tight in my right hand, I held out the brandy bottle in my left towards one of the smouldering braziers. Judging by the expression on Lord Lambton’s face, I had made my intentions plain.
“Let the girl go,” I hissed.
“But it is too late,” Lambton replied. I had never heard his voice sound so silky smooth nor so suave. “Our god comes and he hungers.”
The instant the words left his mouth, a tremor rumbled through the ground.
XXXIII
“Let her go!”
“You would deny our god, the god of this world, this our sacrifice?”
“Of course I would, you sick fuck!” I screamed, taking a step towards him, brandishing the knife for all to see. “Shagging the hired help when you’re off your tits on cocaine, or whatever your class A of choice is, is one thing, but this…”
Words failed me for a moment.
“Cut her free or I’ll do it myself.”
Lambton said nothing but stared at the blade. The flickering light of the braziers caught it, their fiery glow imparting a sheen like molten gold.
“Are you sure this is what you want?” he asked, fixing me with a dark-eyed stare.
“Of course it is,” I replied, although the fire was leaving me now.
Was it what I wanted? Was it really? Treacherous thoughts probed like worming tentacles from the edge of my consciousness. Thoughts that weren’t mine. Alien thoughts.
“But are you sure?”
No, I wasn’t sure, not anymore. The hand holding the knife began to drop, suddenly feeling as heavy as lead.
Though I was sure these arguments were not coming from me, I couldn’t fight their persuasive power.
I looked at Catrin, stretched out upon the altar-stone – the stone of sacrifice, part of me realised – I registered the pleading stare in her eyes, heard the muffled groans that passed for screams, but still I could not bring myself to do anything to save her. My arms hung limp at my sides.
Lambton took a step forward, his diaphanous gown rippling behind him in the strange thermals generated by the braziers.
Their ruddy light picked out the stony ammonites embedded in the walls and gave the cultists’ leering, lascivious expressions an otherworldly, demonic cast.
“Give up this foolish notion,” he said, and I heard a snake-like sibilance in the echo of his words. “Join us. Become one with us.”
What is the point in fighting? I thought, while a part of my distracted mind noted the way the sand particles on the cavern floor jittered and moved together, to form rippling patterns on the stony surface.
“Join us.”
I looked up into Lambton’s eyes again and in the flickering, inconstant light, for a fleeting moment his pupils seemed to narrow to ophidian slits.
“Become one with us.”
And the knife and the bottle slipped from my hands.
XXXIV
The gunshot was like the boom of a cannon in the confines of the cave and jerked me out of my trance-like state. A number of the cultists gave cries of shock but then were quiet again.
Following Catrin’s desperate stare, I turned to see the gamekeeper slowly descend the steps behind me, the shotgun no longer broken over his arm, but locked and loaded and tight in his hands.
“Enough’s enough, m’lord,” the gamekeeper said in a voice as calm as a millpond and as sharp as a splinter of glass.
“Carswell?” his master hissed, standing there, his gown open, unashamed o
f his nakedness.
“You’ve had your fun and games,” Carswell went on, ‘but you don’t want to make yourself a murderer now, do you?’
“Fun and games?” Lambton’s face twisted into a feral snarl. “You have no idea of what you speak. The lord of this world comes, and there is nothing anyone – least of all you – can do to stop his awakening.”
“What are you waiting for?” It took me a moment to realise the gamekeeper was talking to me. “Do what you have to do. Free the girl.”
I didn’t need telling twice. Picking up the knife, unimpeded by the cultists, I approached the altar-stone – appalled at myself, barely able to believe how poorly I had judged the gamekeeper Carswell – and through a combination of sawing at the ropes with the kitchen implement and tugging at the knots, managed to free Catrin from her bonds.
“Shudde M’ell will not be denied!” Tristam Lambton shrieked in impotent rage, his body twitching, clearly finding it intolerable that I was setting his blood sacrifice free, and yet clearly not doubting for one minute the gamekeeper’s willingness to use his gun again, if required.
“You shall be punished and you shall perish! You shall feel the wrath of the burrower beneath, the mighty Shudde M’ell, lord of the underworld, and pay for your hubris with your own blood! You will–”
Lambton’s impassioned shrieking was suddenly cut off by a horrible gargling noise. It sounded like he was choking on his own tongue. An eerie, uncomfortable silence settled over the cave. All eyes were on Lord Lambton now.
Rather than rushing to his aid, Lambton’s fellow cultists watched in something like excited awe through the pinkish mist circling their heads. The atmosphere was alive with crackling potential.
I helped Catrin from the plinth, taking off my jacket and offering it to her, while the gamekeeper kept his gun trained on Lord Lambton and a weather eye fixed on the agitated cultists. She accepted it gratefully, although it did little to cover her full naked figure.
Lambton suddenly doubled up, his hands on his knees, and I fully expected him to be violently sick there and then. But all that issued from his throat was another ghastly rasping retch.
A couple of the cultists took up the incomprehensible, esoteric chant again, and it didn’t take long for the rest to join in.
The horrible sound filled my ears, made me want to scream, as painful and as irritating as tinnitus. Only now it sounded like the chanting echoed from deep beneath the ground.
Lord Lambton straightened again, standing stiffly, and for a moment he seemed free of the terrible choking. In that moment’s respite, tears streaming from the corners of eyes, bloodshot with the force of retching, he uttered the last pronouncement I ever heard from him. Possibly it was the last thing he ever said.
“Our god comes! Our dark messiah. Shudde M’ell is here!”
XXXV
Lambton doubled up, hands on knees again, as another violent, retching spasm seized his scrawny body. It seemed even more like he was attempting to regurgitate something, but still no vomit came.
The cultists kept up their chanting, advancing towards us, steadily closing the circle, with Lambton, myself and Catrin trapped in the middle.
I could see the veins standing out on Lambton’s neck, and in the dim, flickering light rippling across the cavern’s stone-fleshy walls, I saw what looked like an earthworm, pink and slippery with saliva, wriggling from the corner of Lambton’s mouth. Then I saw another, the annelid’s eyeless head twisting back over his top lip. Suddenly there was a mass of worms pushing their way out of Lambton’s mouth.
I was dimly aware of Catrin screaming at me to run, to get out of there, while the gamekeeper’s steely demeanour gave way to appalled, disbelieving curses.
But I couldn’t move. I couldn’t take my eyes from Lambton, or what was happening to him. The wormy mass oozed free, the man’s mouth open wide and red-raw at the corners where the stretched flesh started to tear. His diaphragm heaved as something impossibly large and wholly abhorrent began to vacate its host.
The conjoined mass of worms twisted and turned in my direction, and I realised that they had somehow become fused into one horrendous living organism. I was sure their blind heads were focusing their writhing attention on me as they hung there, squirming in the smoky air, like the tentacles of a jellyfish wafting in the currents of some distant tropical sea.
The annelid forms shifted again and parted, and now I could see they were in fact the feeder tentacles of the monstrous creature, surrounding horribly fanged mouthparts like those of some leech-mouthed lamprey.
Lambton straightened once more – the pulpy grey body of the thing hanging from his mouth, the same colour and consistency as a swollen length of disgorged intestine – and began to stagger towards me.
“Nathan!” Catrin screamed and pulled at my arm.
I turned slowly to look at her, in a near trance-like state again, hypnotised by the swaying, peristaltic motion of the horror half-disgorged from Lord Lambton’s shuddering body. I dimly took in the scene before me, my incense-addled mind slowly making sense of what my eyes were telling it.
Catrin, my jacket barely saving her modesty, was reaching up to one of the braziers, holding the brandy Molotov I had dropped. The dishcloth stuffed into its neck crackled and blackened and then caught light.
The feverish chanting rose in pitch as certain members of this debauched congregation began to stimulate their genitals, bring themselves to climax with their own hands as they witnessed the manifestation of their god with dilated-pupils.
I felt trapped in my weird trance-like state, my movements, and those of everyone around me, as slow as swimming through slime.
I saw the look of panic in Carswell’s eyes. Whatever he had expected to find down here in the dark it certainly wasn’t anything like this. I saw him switch his aim from one cultist to another as they advanced upon him. I was as horribly aware of how few shots he could fire as he undoubtedly was.
Glimpsing a sudden movement out of the corner of my eye, my attention was back on Catrin in an instant.
I saw her hurl the bottle towards the aroused and advancing cultists. I heard the crash of breaking glass and the whump of its flammable contents igniting.
Flames rose at the foot of the steps, hungry and orange, provoking screams from the barmaid of The White Worm as the combustible cocktail splashed over her naked flesh and set fire to her diaphanous robe.
And in that moment I thought I saw the fossilised shells of the curled ammonites, cemented within the walls of the cave, splinter and crack.
“Run! Get out of here!” It was the gamekeeper, screaming instructions at me.
Arms outstretched, Lambton was almost on top of me. Staring at the disgorged worm, I imagined the sensation of the slime-slicked tips of its tentacles caressing my skin. The wretch gagged again, and another foot of rippling grey flesh pushed its way out from his dislocating jaw, seeming to fill with fluid and swell to an even more impossible size before my eyes.
In that moment, and just for a moment, I think I lost my mind. For all I can remember – or think I remember – now, is the dark maw of the monster yawning before me, tentacles probing at my hair and face, and then I was running.
Catrin’s hand was in mine and we were running; running like we had never run before.
Running for our lives.
XXXVI
I ran, not knowing where I was going, frantically looking for a way out. The stone steps leading back up through the grotto were blocked by rising flames and milling, screaming, burning cultists.
“That way!” Carswell shouted as our desperate eyes met for a moment, pointing with his gun as he did so.
I hadn’t been aware of the tunnel before. Cut into the earth and rock that lay beneath the Lambton estate, the opening off the cavern-shrine was dressed with ancient, crumbling stone that could have dated from Roman times.
“It leads back to the house!” the gamekeeper shouted. But by then, Catrin and I were already running to
wards the tunnel. It was lit by flickering tapers and clay lamps set into wall sconces that made me think of the rush lights I had seen once during a visit to the Roman Baths of Aquae Sulis.
Our feet pounding on the compacted earth floor, the breath coming from our heaving lungs in ragged gasps, we fled the pagan temple. Still our ears bore witness to whatever appalling nightmare had seized the cavern-shrine behind us.
I heard a shrill shriek, a sound that surely no human could make. There was the boom of the shotgun discharging and then a horrible, high-pitched mewling cry that, even more disturbingly, I knew could only have come from the noble gamekeeper.
The screams of the cultists chased us along the dimly-lit tunnel, accompanied by the crackling of the flames, and yet still some of the insane cultists were chanting their foul worm god’s blasphemous name, even as the flames consumed them.
We ran on, quickening our pace, muscles screaming with lactic acid pain, chests heaving, the adrenalin flooding our bodies and spurring us on no matter what. Catrin ran as fast as I did, even though she ran barefoot over the compacted earth with its occasional protruding stone.
The roof above dripped with moisture.
Although Carswell had told us the tunnel led back to the house, my unerring sense of direction told me that we were heading in the opposite direction, possibly even under the river. It was quite possible the tunnel took a circuitous route for a host of reasons; maybe to save those who originally dug it from having to cut through bedrock, or to confuse potential invaders, or to add an even greater air of mystery to the cult, confusing those who followed its tortuous bends. Perhaps it was one of several such tunnels and we had missed the necessary turning we should have taken in the gloom and our state of near-panic.
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