Lucifer's Abbey

by Smith, Michael James

  He stood and lit a cigarette examining the ground and she could see what he could see, ten yards away the clear mark of her slither down the bank was revealed by the moonlight. He began to walk down until he stood above the sheer cliffs. He was not short of courage, the drop below him was perhaps three hundred feet but he balanced there and peered down over the edge. Was he looking for her? Perhaps they would think she had gone over! Please God let them think she was already dead!

  Involuntarily she had etched herself further into the crevice. She was afraid of this man. She didn't want to be at his mercy. There was something about him that said other people had been at his mercy and it had not gone well for them. He was stood now with his back to a three hundred foot drop and seemed oblivious of it.

  Moving slightly she began silently to press herself back as far as she could go but instead of coming up against solid rock she realised that the crevice bent in to the right behind her. A crevice within a crevice. The answer to a prayer perhaps. Quickly she forced herself inside. Now to see him she had to peep around the corner of the limestone.

  The narrow space sloped downwards under her feet quite steeply running back maybe fifteen feet to where it met in the middle. At the bottom was a small hole through the rock and at the top at about shoulder height the rock parted again. It looked like the door of a Western style saloon but much narrower. If she could get behind it they would have a hell of a job to find her and an even worse job to get her out! The Moon disappeared again and she was stood in total darkness.

  The man on the cliff edge was using a mobile phone. She didn't need to guess who he was contacting, it would be the man with the commanding voice. Was he going to tell him she had fallen over the cliff? She prayed it would be so.

  She heard them coming. First two men and then the dreadful woman from the journey. The men went down and peered over but she noticed that they did not approach the edge in the way the first man had done. Nervously they leaned, looked and then swiftly recoiled. They were talking but their voices were too quiet for her to hear. The woman stayed half way down the slippery slope just opposite to Cherie's hiding place.

  Then he came. He was different even in the gloom. He was huge. A very tall man with a shock of extremely white hair that almost touched his shoulders at the back of an extremely short neck. His body was misshapen. Some deformity of the spine that bent him slightly to the right and made him look off balance but it took time to notice that because his head held her gaze in fascination. She had never seen even in pictures a skull so deformed. The left side of his skull was fully three inches higher than the right as though his head had been formed by placing two different sizes of half a head together to form one unbalanced whole.

  Half way down the slope he stopped and turned and surveyed the whole clearing slowly. She could see his face now. He was frightening to behold. The Left side of his face was as deformed as the cranium above it. The left corner of his mouth was an open gash that met somehow with an almost feminine half somewhere in the middle. Below it his jaw was made of two distinguishably different halves and above it his left eye socket was completely thrust forward. Again he looked as though his head had been formed of two differing halves.

  He stood still and everyone about him waited in silence. That he commanded them was not in doubt, his huge frame looked full of physical power. The shoulders of a weightlifting champion, a statement of great strength in the way his powerful arms hung by his sides. Despite his terrible deformities he somehow had the air of a person who could be swift and well balanced. Nothing about him was normal. He made Cherie Leclerc feel a terrible fear. This man would not see the world the way normal people do, his whole life would have been shaped by the accident of his birth. A hunchback of Notre Dame. A man destined by fate to be forever alone.

  He turned again and made his way down to the edge of the cliff and stood there looking down. Then he raised his arms and held them out as though he was going to dive off! Cherie watched as he stood there unmoving and then she heard a low chant. He was singing or chanting something.

  They were all watching, Cherie too as he stood stock still and chanted, arms straight out, hands turned up to the sky and the Moon above. After about two minutes he turned and once again surveyed the clearing and slope. His eyes passed over the rock and brambles and then came back to rest upon them.

  It felt to Cherie as though his eyes came right through the brambles, pieced the gloom of the crevice and met her own. She drew back, recoiling from her fear of him but she was more afraid not to be able to see him. Something made her look back, a primal fear - the mouse and the snake.

  With a quick sentence of command he drew his followers into a half circle around himself and spoke to them quietly. They left his side and spread out in a line they began to walk towards her. She knew he knew where she was at once. He came towards her in the middle of them and as he got closer she realised he was something she had heard or read about but had never seen. He was an albino. His skin in the moonlight was like putty, devoid of any colour and his eyes were clearly red. Eyes that never left the crevice but continued to hold her gaze as they all came at her.

  There was no chance to run and jump through the brambles and once again take to her swift feet. The brambles would probably catch her clothes and anyway she would land amongst them. The only way to go was backwards.

  She slipped down the sloping rock, glad of the moonlight and fell to her knees. The small hole at the bottom of the rock just large enough to allow her to slither underneath and behind the joined section. Now she was trapped but she was also protected. They could not take her over the top, there wasn't room and they would have to fight her to drag her out from below. She prepared to defend herself as best she could. Standing up she could just see over and she heard someone climbing through the brambles.

  The rock section in front of her was about a foot thick, it wouldn't be broken easily. It was a good shield, preventing them from grabbing her. It was her feet they would have to try to grab from below. There wasn't enough space behind her to allow her to get them back beyond arm’s length but she could certainly stamp and kick any hands that tried to grasp her ankles or feet.

  There was a commotion outside and she realised that they were pulling the bushes away. She heard them stamping them down. The light increased and she could see the limestone full of mica and minute crystals shining in the moonlight. It reflected the light, glinting wetly.

  Now again she heard him. Coming through the outer crevice. It would only just allow his passage and she realised suddenly that the second crevice wouldn't allow him through at all! He was far too large!

  Her elation was short lived when she remembered the wiry man with the pimp's face. He would certainly be able to come for her. He would enjoy it.

  She looked at her watch. It was just a few minutes after two am. Was it possible to keep them at bay until dawn? She felt her heart give at the thought. It was perhaps five hours until it would be daylight and even then who would be in the woods at that hour?

  Then he was there. He had made the last few feet in utter silence and as he turned the angle and looked at her she knew she would lose. Someone was shining a powerful torch into the outer crevice and the light reflecting off the limestone lit his albino red eyed pupils and made him look utterly evil.

  If it was possible for such a mishap-en face to smile then he smiled. He wasn't being friendly he was reacting to the knowledge that she could retreat no further. He knew she was trapped and at his mercy.

  His huge frame filled her eyes and she knew her situation was hopeless. Such power in a man she had never seen before. He almost looked as if he could tear her from the stone with his bare hands.

  He did nothing. They watched each other as he thought. He was in no hurry. “You cannot go anywhere now child.” His French was perfect. He might even have been French, the accent was university French, someone from a privileged background.

  He turned and made his way back out and was
soon replaced as she had thought by the thin wiry villain and one of the other men from the cliff top who was holding the flash-light. They looked into her hiding place and smiled. The wiry man came forward until he was just the other side of the stone buttress that protected her from her ankles to her chin. He put his face as close to hers as he could get and smiled.

  She pressed back away from him. His breath was awful, making her recoil and then there was a knife right in front of her eyes. She ducked down and he laughed. “I'm not allowed to cut your pretty neck my love,” he said. “But if you don't come out I am allowed to stick you a few times to encourage you. You'd better think about it fast.” He commenced to tap the knife on the stone above her head.

  At the other end of the crevice the other man repeated his words in bad French, exhorting her to come out before she was harmed. Cherie didn't move. She was watching by her feet. Some light came through from the torch and she knew he would try to grab her. When the knife stopped tapping she was ready for him, hands gripped against the wall to assist her to stamp with all her force.

  Two hands came thrusting through and she stamped downwards, all her fear in a single aggressive movement. She missed one hand completely but was lucky enough to trap the other against a lip of bare rock. She heard the fingers break. She stamped again but they were gone too fast as he screamed in agony.

  He began to swear in English and she heard him backing away. Falling and cursing before he made it back to the man with the torch. She risked looking out again and he was obviously in great pain. She was elated! They would have to think again now.

  He held his knife out with his good hand, “I'll stick you for that you she-bitch!” He bent over holding his fingers and the man with the flash-light stood to one side to let him go out into the outer crevice.

  She heard someone else coming. She knew it would be him. He stood and looked at her. “I will give you one chance to come out of your own accord.” he said. The voice stable and almost soft. “I admire your courage and your intelligence but you do not know what you are up against here. It would be better for you not to know yet.” The French, so perfect. The calm assurance. The complete indifference to the injured man or anything she might yet do to protect herself. He was so sure of himself.

  Cherie did not answer him. Somehow, he was too distant, too unapproachable. There was something about him that was not to do with his strange appearance. He had an aura of something else. An edge to him that was totally mesmerising.

  “You are not going to come are you?” He smiled, that awful face creasing but the result just more frightening than the face at rest.

  He held his arms out towards her just as he had done on the cliff top and began to chant softly with his eyes closed. Cherie watched, unable to comprehend. Then in just a few seconds a black mist began to protrude from his mouth. It was like heavy oily smoke and it began to pour out and move down towards his outstretched hands. It writhed along his arms and gathered in his hands.

  Cherie Leclerc was so petrified she could not look away. The whole atmosphere of the crevice had changed. Suddenly the cold was gripping, the temperature falling rapidly. Horrified, she saw the smoke begin to drift towards the floor and form there a small shape. He was chanting, the forming of the words disturbing the increasing flow of smoke, the red pupils of his eyes dilated and staring straight at her and she was unable now to break that gaze.

  The shape on the floor became a small figure. Black and awful, an Imp from hell itself. It raised its fearsome face to her and the eyes opened, red and baleful and full of pure evil.

  Cherie began to shake in fear. Her heart felt like it was going to burst and then it sprang! It came at her eyes like a flash of lightning and she dropped to the floor with a scream. She looked up, it was crouched above her. The terrible eyes were like shafts of brilliant red light. It spread its hands and legs, revealing a gruesomely oversized male sex organ and the long claws took hold of the limestone as it began to descend towards her. Such malevolence she had never imagined. It had a terrible will, one it could project like a cold physical force. She felt as though strong arms were forcing her down upon the rock.

  The terrible thing came slowly down, it could have just let go and dropped upon her but it was grimacing, mouth half open to reveal a brilliant red interior. A smile from hell itself and it clearly wanted to drive her fear beyond her control. The creature’s awful will was tangible, she could feel it beneath her clothes like frozen fingers touching knowingly at her flesh.

  Terrified beyond endurance Cherie did the only thing she could do to get away from it. She slid through the aperture back out into the crevice and started to crawl away knowing it was following her. A huge powerful hand was thrust into her hair and began to pull her along the stone.

  Brutally she was raised to her feet and forced against the rock. He looked at her his red eyes just inches from her own. “If you don't want to spend the night as a plaything for it you will do as I say. Do you understand me?”

  Beaten and seemingly with her will broken, Cherie nodded. But it wasn't long before her agile young mind was already thinking again. Whatever else happened now she could not ever again bear to see that terrible creature! Feel that strange repugnant power on her body. The touch of something totally alien. Her fear of it was beyond worldly considerations. It was her very soul these demons had kidnapped her for.

  She knew as they forced her back along the crevice that one last run for the cliff top was a better fate by far than the one they had planned for her. If this man was not Lucifer himself he was something very close to that.

  CHAPTER THREE

  A COLD BLOODED CHRISTMAS

  Easterly force six and cold enough to freeze your feet through modern hiking boots and two pairs of Channel Island fisherman's socks Only a madman would be descending Hope's Nose on such a morning.

  Looking South West as I reached the midway point of the steep descent from Marine Drive I could see Thatcher Rock taking a pounding from the heavy seas and my eyes sought and found the cormorants that nest there on the bird sanctuary. They didn't appear too put out by the storm, they at least I knew, would find fish that day - which was more than could be said of the local fishing boats. It was decidedly not a day for the shrinking fleet of local trawlers. The publicans on Brixham quay would have a busy day on their hands. The bars full of noisy, ill-tempered comments about E.C. Fisheries policy and loud objections to the latest hike in Community Tax charges.

  It wasn't much of a day for local Coppers either. I don't normally allow the job to intrude into my private life very much, I've never had any difficulty drawing the line between work and free time but I recall my mood of that particular morning - a grey and bitter morning - with great clarity. I was full of a heavy apprehension, aware that somewhere out there in one of the houses overlooking the magnificent bay was a man capable of violent, premeditated murder.

  With cold certainty as I stumbled down the broken path I knew he was planning to murder again soon. Perhaps very soon, and it was my bloody job to stop him. Merry Christmas Detective Inspector Mike Milton!

  The previous night had been a grind of endless reviews of paperwork and computer files. I had been through the whole history of the case, over and over until my eyes were gritty and my mind was too dull to make sense of anything even if I had found something.

  I wouldn't be popular but in the end I had broken the whole lot down into several stacks and left them piled haphazardly upon the desks of other officers who already knew every full stop and comma anyway.

  In an uncharacteristic fit of depression I guess I had reverted to my boyhood Torquinian self and sought the wind and the sea and the fresh air. The cobwebs wouldn't last long in what promised to be a full easterly gale before midday. One thing was certain I wasn't about to allow any mentally deficient predator to prey upon the women within what I have always thought of as my home town. I needed to feel Torbay around me. I wanted the reassurance that comes from having lived one's whole life
around the shores of a small but spectacular bay.

  The case had started here beside the cold green water at this local anglers favoured fishing spot. Hopes Nose is a small stony promontory. A Nature Reserve just a half mile's walk from the tourists on Meadfoot beach. Once quarried for local stone and gold it more or less marks the Eastern boundary of Torquay.

  The descent from the road above is full in summer of the sound of songbirds that include Nightingales, Bull Finches and Yellowhammers competing with the Blackbirds to raise a song amongst the gorse and brambles. The views around them amongst the finest coastal scenery in Britain, but it's not a place for the unwary walker. In wet weather it's slippery and at the lower end of the pathway there is a short climb down over the rocks and onto the rock promontory itself. In really bad weather conditions it can be a daunting place, forbidding and dangerous.

  Boxing Day had seen the 'Nose' itself covered in Police Officers and Coast Guards. The Police and Air Sea rescue helicopters struggling to maintain low altitude positions, their rotors driving freezing cold air down upon backs already turned to a full Easterly gale. Men and women soaked to the skin despite their heavy duty clothing by wind driven spray and freezing rain.