Friends of the Dusk

by Phil Rickman

  ‘As exorcist, she replaced a man of over seventy!’

  ‘Yes. But a man who was so forbidding and slightly sinister that people – even priests – were often disinclined to consult him.’

  ‘You’re saying it was a bad thing, to discourage people from allowing their imaginations to run riot?’

  ‘What I think I’m saying is that Merrily Watkins, with her sometimes hesitant and even rather nervous approach, makes people—’

  ‘And you think that’s a good thing?’

  ‘She’s been more accessible,’ Siân said lamely. ‘That’s all I’m…’

  Silence.

  ‘Like a convenience store,’ Innes said.

  A longer silence before Siân tried again.

  ‘It might be argued that she brings people to us who… the kind of people who never expected to have anything to do with the Church. And they come to us for help because they’re at the very least puzzled and at the worst terrified. And there’s nowhere else to go.’

  ‘At best imaginative. At worst, mentally ill. And also—’

  ‘Craig, look, I’m… I’m not sure I’m really the best person for you to be discussing this with.’

  ‘You’re the Archdeacon, for heaven’s sake! My chief of staff.’

  ‘However, the deliverance minister, by tradition, reports exclusively and directly to the Bishop.’

  ‘Does she? Does she really? My understanding is that she blatantly takes advice from someone outside the diocese. Now. Am I at fault in not wanting the business of this diocese discussed with an outsider who appears to exercise influence over a woman occupying a position I already distrust?’

  ‘Huw Owen.’

  ‘Who lives alone on the top of a mountain with his head in the clouds. I grew up in Brecon, I have many friends there who’ve had dealings with this man.’

  ‘Craig, surely it’s been normal practice for several years in dioceses either side of the border to have priests sent for deliverance training to Huw Owen.’

  Pause.

  ‘Who is mad. Who is known to be increasingly and terminally mad.’

  It was after midnight by the time she’d listened to the end, replaying some of it and scrawling notes on her sermon pad.

  She sat for another twenty minutes drinking industrial black tea before pulling the phone over and letting her fingers find the number on the old metal dial. Waiting until the answering machine kicked in.

  Aware that her voice was going to sound robotic. Only way she could get the words out.

  ‘What worries me most,’ she said to the machine, ‘is that I don’t think it’s purely personal. Because if it was, I think I’d get a sense of a reason for him to hate me.’

  She broke off, clapping a hand over the mouthpiece to take an e-cig hit.

  ‘And yet I surely can’t be insane enough to see a wider picture. Can I? You listen to some bits again, you get a sense almost of something, I don’t know, almost apocalyptic?’ She laughed. ‘Oh shit, wish I could erase this and start again.’

  ‘Aye, all right, lass,’ Huw said. ‘Start again in the morning.’

  ‘Can that machine even work without you?’

  ‘Don’t sleep well these nights. Happen it’s me age.’

  ‘Where are you this morning?’

  ‘On your doorstep,’ Huw said. ‘Wouldn’t want to miss owt apocalyptic.’

  ‘You know what? That’s not a word I’d erase.’

  ‘Quite right,’ Huw said. ‘Get to bed and don’t oversleep. I’ll be early.’

  Part Four

  In some cases, with regard to superstitious beliefs, there is a deep reserve to be overcome; the more real the belief, the greater the difficulty.

  Ella Mary Leather

  The Folklore of Herefordshire

  38

  FOTD

  JANE AWOKE FOR maybe the eighteenth time into the same impenetrable, hurting, darkness.

  A lousy, lousy night. Bruises on her thighs, arms, ankles, bruises she hadn’t known about until she got into bed, and each one started opening up aching memories of where it had come from. A dusty, dry shower of shredding leaves kept making her cough as she squirmed in and out of dreams. Dry leaves and damp, rotting leaves and slimy long grass which became, on waking, just her own sweat on the ruched and wrinkled undersheet.

  She trailed a hand down the side of the bed, groping for her phone on the wooden floor. The phone told her it was coming up to five minutes past four. Wasn’t that the hour of the wolf? Or maybe the hour of the grainy white body that she kept trying to turn, oh God, into a naked man.

  Jane rolled painfully on to her back, looking for the attic window. Any window. Any way out.

  What had she done? Her instinct was to call Lol, call him now, wake him up, hiss into his ear: You just forget it, you understand? You didn’t see me last night, I didn’t come round, I didn’t tell you anything and we’re never going to discuss it again. You just delete this from your memory.

  As if.

  She would, of course, have to go back to Lucy’s cottage, sit down with him again. She’d have to find answers to his quite reasonable questions: Did anything happen? Do you even remember? And then, with hope in his voice, Could this amount to sexual assault? Questions she’d evaded, saying she had to go. Needed to get home before Mum came back from church.

  What it must have done to him asking her those things. Recalling – as if he needed to, as if every day wasn’t tarnished by those memories – the time when, as a teenage rock musician given too much to drink by an older bandmate, he’d wound up in bed with a girl who’d looked at least as old as he was and was probably a lot less innocent. The smashing of his future, his sense of who he was.

  But at least it had been a girl.

  Oh, come on. Times had changed… dramatically. Gus Staines and Amanda Rubens were a respectable married couple, and quite right too, and she and Sam were, like…

  … consenting adults. Unattached, consenting adults.

  Had she consented? She didn’t know, any more than she knew what she’d seen on the gorsey plateau. If anything.

  Jane reached up for the cord and put on the light. Colour bled gradually into what was left of the Mondrian walls, faded red and blue squares between the timber framing. On the floor beside the bed, where the phone had lain, was a book, The Summoner.

  She wouldn’t get back to sleep now. If she’d ever really slept.

  In the hours before dawn, she opened the book and entered the Nightlands. Like she’d ever left.

  Bliss was at Gaol Street before seven, parts of the pavements slick with the first frost, Dowell intercepting him on the stairs, bulked out in a Scandi-looking sweater.

  ‘How long you been in, Karen?’

  ‘I dunno, two hours, three. Listen, I’ve found something, Frannie. Well, it might be not be that much, but it’s one of the few non-obvious things that pops up on both hard disks.’

  ‘Soffley’s and Greenaway’s?’

  He followed her through the CID room into his own office, where she already had the two laptops opened up.

  ‘Not quite the same, one’s only initials – that’s Greenaway’s – but the context suggests we’re looking at the same thing. FOTD. Mean anything to you?’

  ‘What is the context?’

  ‘It’s in a deleted email Greenaway sent to someone called Gordon Barclay-Hughes, who seems to be the editor of one of those Internet magazines read by nutters. Greenaway says he’s lost touch with the people from FOTD, especially someone he just calls JT, and can Barclay-Hughes help him out?’

  ‘When was this?’

  ‘Well, that’s the point. Night before he died. I only went looking for it because Barclay-Hughes replied today, evidently not having heard about Greenaway’s murder. He just says – hang on, I’ll— OK, here it is, he says, “Sorry mate, not heard from any of them in years. I assumed that all fell apart way back. I imagine Mr T’s far too big for all that now. Cheers, Gordon.”’

  ‘Yo
u tracked Gordon down?’

  ‘He’s in Devon. Totnes.’

  ‘New Age hotbed, Karen,’ Bliss said. ‘They have public buildings with parking spaces for UFOs. Let’s ask Devon and Cornwall if they know him. What’s the other reference?’

  ‘That’s in Soffley’s Neogoth contacts file. Nothing new, and nothing to explain what it is. Just a reference to the Friends of the Dusk. FOTD?’

  ‘Friends of the…?’

  ‘Dusk.’

  ‘That’s gorra hint of Dark Web about it, hasn’t it?

  Bliss looked at Karen She had her plump lips pursed, nodding.

  ‘I do like the sound of Mr T, Karen. I love it when fellers are described as “too big”. If there’s any childish pleasures left in police work, taking down someone who’s too big has to be one of them. And did Soffley let them see the piccy of Steve?’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘The skull, Karen. Go on, make my day.’

  ‘Consider it made, boss,’ Karen said.

  ‘I thought it was going to be worse than it turned out to be,’ Jane said. ‘It’s not the usual kidlit fantasy drivel. Where the vampires aren’t all bad because there are different kinds of vampires?’

  ‘But they’re always sexy.’ Mum sounding tired. ‘That seems to be a given.’

  Maybe she’d slept badly. She was doing her best to look attentive, but she really wasn’t all here. She’d made scrambled eggs for them, with wholemeal toast, but was only picking at hers. She was wearing her old grey dressing gown, frayed at the hem and the cuffs, and the slippers with one flapping sole. She looked… God… middle-aged.

  Jane wasn’t hungry either.

  It was seven-thirty a.m.

  ‘The romantic vampire stuff,’ Jane said, ‘that’s been around for most of my life. If I hadn’t read Dracula and Salem’s Lot I’d still be looking for a vampire to fall in love with. Although the ones in this book… I don’t even know if they are vampires in the strictest sense.’

  ‘That’s what it says on the back.’

  ‘Yeah, but that’s what publishers do, isn’t it? Vampires sell books.’

  ‘But you actually finished it?’ Mum reached for a piece of toast but didn’t do anything with it. ‘The whole thing.’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘And enjoyed it?’

  ‘I wouldn’t quite say that.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘I don’t know. It’s just… dark.’

  ‘You like dark.’

  ‘It’s… I don’t know.’

  ‘OK.’ Mum put down the toast. ‘This is very good of you, flower. You want to go from the beginning?’

  Hereford was never going to be a city that never slept.

  Bliss took Vaynor with him across the zebra, through the sluggish early traffic to Commercial Road, where most of the lights were for security, and into the alleyways leading to Organ Yard, where there were no lights at all.

  Above the dark brick courtyard the early sky was ridged like galvanized roofing. Vaynor directed the little light in his phone at the window blinds in The Darkest Corner. The blinds were old and rubbery-looking.

  There was nobody around to disturb. Bliss rapped on the glass, raised his voice to the sky.

  ‘Good morning, Jerry. Time to come out of your coffin.’

  ‘I think the premise is,’ Vaynor murmured, ‘that they go back to their coffins at daybreak, boss.’

  ‘Don’t be pedantic, Darth. Come on, Jerry!’

  He shook the door handle and the door opened.

  Bliss looked up at Vaynor, stood and thought for a few seconds. Pulled a tissue from a pocket of his suit and wrapped it around his hand before pushing the door all the way.

  The light was on inside.

  ‘After you, Darth,’ Bliss said eventually, then changed his mind. ‘No, all right, he knows me.’

  The dirty glass hanging lamp was the brightest light he’d met since the traffic on Commercial Road. Bliss stepped inside, Vaynor just behind him. He blinked, and the smell came for him, aggressively, made only more sickening by the resident cannabis scent.

  ‘Oh, for fuck’s sake,’ Bliss said quietly.

  He didn’t move, looked all around the shop. Plastic skull. Rack of dark clothing, hats, album covers, posters. Jerry Soffley’s last slanting smile, wide-open eyes like little poached eggs.

  Hello again, Sarge. Frank.

  Soffley was sitting up against the wall left of the counter, near the doorway to the vinyl room, the state of his exposed teeth indicating that with his very last breaths he’d been sucking in blood and snot from his smashed nose. No need to go too close, you could guess from the state of the wall what the back of the head would be like.

  Bliss said, ‘Jerry, I never thought. Never entered me head for a minute.’

  Thought he’d known exactly where he was going with this case, all his questions for Soffley lined up neat as bullets in a clip: Friends of the Dusk, Jerry – who? Names. Locations. What are they about? How was Tristram Greenaway involved? Is it a gay thing?

  The shop was no less tidy than it had been yesterday. This wasn’t about robbery, any more than Greenaway’s murder had been. Bliss was seriously pissed off about this. Why hadn’t he entertained the slightest possibility that somebody might think Jerry Soffley knew too much to be left alive?

  He came gratefully out of the darkness to find Vaynor leaning back against the exterior wall, the back of his head tilted into greasy old brick, looking up into the clean sky.

  ‘Not your first one, surely, Darth?’

  ‘First one like this, boss.’ Vaynor fetched out a bent cigarette and lit up. ‘Fast-tracked into CID, if you recall. Due to my record of…’ He stared into the smoke. ‘… academic excellence. Missed out on a lot of dead drunks in back-alleys, motorway carnage.’

  He was looking at the end of his cigarette in disgust.

  ‘I didn’t know you indulged,’ Bliss said.

  ‘Don’t. Not much anyway. It’s to get rid of the smell. And the taste.’ Vaynor risked a glance at the bottom of his trousers and the bits of butchery on his shoes. ‘Hadn’t we better call this in?’

  39

  The Summoner

  THE NIGHTLANDS. THE countryside in negative. It looks lush and verdant by day but at night, even in high summer, the colours drain away and the trees become skeletal around the village and on the hill where the castle stands.

  The village doesn’t have a name, nor does the castle.

  It’s not like Castle Dracula. It’s the reverse of all that. The castle is held by a good family with a tradition of protecting the people who live in the village below. You gradually meet the villagers, the baker and the blacksmith. And the Cunning Man who’s not as cunning as he used to be.

  ‘The village is surrounded by this thickening forestry,’ Jane said. ‘Or rather forestry that thickens at night. Even though, at night, its leaves disappear. Night is like winter. That’s quite nicely described – only the bad parts, the spiky bits and the thorns remain, and the deeper you go, the harder and tighter it gets and the more all your exposed skin gets cut and slashed.’

  At night, the forest becomes limitless, as if it’s part of some other sphere of existence or it leads to one.

  ‘You don’t have to explain these things to kids,’ Jane said.

  Thinking how easy it had been for her, with her bruises and abrasions, to realize it all.

  ‘Entering the wood is like crawling through coils of barbed wire. Although Foxy Rowlestone doesn’t put it that way because barbed wire hadn’t been invented then.’

  The book’s inside cover had a photo of Foxy Rowlestone sitting on a small knoll by a stream, her face half turned away, her hair in coils, feet hidden in the folds of her long, velvet-looking dress. If Dante Gabrielle Rosetti had been a fashion photographer…

  ‘When’s this set, exactly?’ Mum said.

  ‘Twelfth century. That’s made clear. All the history seems to be accurate. Over twelve hundred years since the bi
rth of your Saviour.’

  Jane buttered a half-slice of toast. It still looked too sickly to eat. She was wearing a sweatshirt and jeans, but Mum must’ve spotted a wince.

  ‘Bruises?’

  ‘One or two. I didn’t realize. It’s OK, I’ve applied arnica.’

  ‘You’re sure it’s OK?’

  ‘Yeah, yeah. Anyway, the Summoner’s back. After nearly a century.’

  ‘The Summoner.’

  ‘He comes out of the woods, the Nightlands. He looks human, vaguely. He’s stick-thin, skin and bones. And he’s part of the Nightlands. Almost like part of the wood when he’s in there, so it doesn’t harm him. Because he’s basically a corpse, anyway.’

  ‘A zombie?’

  ‘That word isn’t used, thank God. It’s post-medieval, it isn’t British and it’s naff. But kids can work these things out for themselves.’

  ‘You always could.’

  ‘The Summoner… the villagers thought he was history. Hasn’t been seen in anybody’s lifetime. But they know that when he comes it means certain death, and he gives no warning of his visits. He’s suddenly there, in the village, and everybody rushes inside and cowers and waits for his declaration. “I am come,” he says, “to call a name.” And the villagers are frozen into a state of like breathless terror? On the basis that whoever’s name is called will not have long to live. They’ll fall ill and die within a few days. Once your name’s been called, you don’t ever get spared. That’s it. Curtains.’

  ‘Bingo from hell.’ Mum shook her head. ‘Sorry. I’m tired. No, you’re right, that’s darker than sucking blood because it happens in everyday life, even kids’ lives. People you know fall ill and die – relatives, neighbours, and that’s genuinely frightening.’

  ‘Anyway,’ Jane said, ‘the village is resigned to it. The local peasants say that any man with the courage to try and approach the Summoner finds, when he reaches the spot where the fiend was last seen, that he’s no longer there. And they’ll hear the parting laughter from somewhere deep in the wood, sometimes followed – gleefully – by the name of the man who tried to catch him.’