Church of Sin (The Ether Book 1)

by James Costall

  T H E E T H E R I

  Church of Sin

  James Costall

  For Jo

  Always.

  Four weeks prior

  He sits in the darkness of the room, watching the gentle rise and fall of their breathing, waiting for sleep to claim them. He sits with his back against the door to the bedroom, with hands hung limp over knees and head bowed. He sits perfectly still, like the grotesque guarding the turrets.

  After a while he gets to his feet and drifts silently round to where she sleeps. She faces away from her husband, as close to the side of the bed as she can safely squeeze. He dislikes the way she looks: angular features, a chin that juts out arrogantly; black, silky hair and dark skin. She is a mixture of races, neither one prevailing, her identity lost generations ago.

  From inside his coat pocket he produces a glass jar containing something small and black. He places it on the table beside her bed. He examines her closer, leaning in so he can feel her breath on his face. He traces her neckline with his finger upwards and carefully brushes her hair away from her ear. Her breath smells of alcohol. She will give him no trouble.

  He takes the jar and removes the lid, reaches in and retrieves one of the black objects which wriggles and squirms between his forefinger and thumb. It is less than half an inch in length, six little legs fight frantically to escape and tiny pincers dig into him but they are too weak to break the skin. Its smooth exoskeleton glints in the moonlight seeping through the gaps in the curtains.

  He places the beetle on her neck and for a moment it remains still, wary of the sudden emancipation from its glass prison, but soon it begins to crawl upwards, across her cheek and to her ear where it stops again, little feelers probing and testing, making sure it knows where it is. After a short while, it circles her ear a couple of times before tentatively entering the aperture. She stirs and her hand moves to her ear, an automatic reaction, but the beetle is already gone, making steady progress to lodge itself inside her head.

  He takes the jar and moves to the other side where her husband sleeps and repeats the process. The other beetle is more certain of its task and wastes no time burrowing down into him and, pleasingly, he hardly flinches.

  He takes the jar and replaces the lid, glances around to make sure nothing was disturbed. Satisfied, he withdraws into the shadows.

  Part I

  The fifth Law of the Ether

  Should any place bear witness to a Forbidden Act, then that place shall have a particular connection with the Inter-World and shall be called a Portal

  Four weeks later...

  Chapter 1

  The snow around Alix’s feet glistened in the dawn light. Behind her, the morning mist had formed a seemingly impenetrable wall; a white, shimmering void against which it was impossible to tell where the horizon ended and the sky began. She stood for a while, letting the cold wrap itself around her face until it stung. The last twelve hours were a blur. She hadn’t slept. Her mind hadn’t let her.

  In front of her loomed a dark building encircled by a wall that towered above the nearby trees. It had a castle-like quality to it. The architecture was bold, baroque: extravagant fortifications, thin windows with bars on, weathered and scarred sandstone. A cobbled courtyard covered in snow, then up a small flight of steps leading to a set of wooden, double doors over which presided an eagle cut into the stone, its scaly talons clutching a dead rat. The snow covered every visible surface, as if a giant, white sheet had descended upon the earth. Shrouded in the mist, the asylum looked like a figment of gothic fantasy.

  There was something unreal about it. It was the exaggeration of everything. The walls that surrounded it were impossibly tall. The two central towers that appeared to form part of the main building were so lean it looked as though the slightest breeze would bring them toppling down. The crazed look in the stone eagle’s eye made it more human than bird. And then there was the stillness; a macabre silence permeating the freezing air. Beyond the sound of her own breathing, Alix could hear little else. Their leaves having absented for winter, even the trees in the courtyard were hushed.

  Alix had to wait in the courtyard for someone to take her inside, but she had already begun to doubt what she had been told. She glanced at her watch, which she knew to be fifteen minutes slow, and calculated that she was twenty minutes late. She had left her Audi on the roadside - its rear wheel drive handled poorly on the untreated, icy roads. She had ended up walking a mile or so up a winding path flanked by hibernating trees. The trek from the main road through the snow covered grounds and to this elaborate complex had been like a journey back in time. Now, as the snow began gently falling again and she pulled her coat tightly around her to keep warm, she began to realise how ridiculous this was. She had spent the entire night in front of her laptop absorbing every blog, every entry, every morsel of information she could assimilate about this place. And nothing she had found had given the slightest hint that Innsmouth was anything other than a ruin. And now she was here, in the opaque light and unforgiving cold, she could see why.

  Alix stood for another five minutes – it felt like thirty – and was on the verge of reaching for her phone to call Baron when a figure emerged through the mist as if from nowhere. He was exceptionally tall: six six, six seven maybe. His long arms seemed to droop by his sides as if he wasn’t quite sure what he was supposed to do with them. They seemed to serve little purpose while he meandered towards her except to unbalance him. His face was gaunt and pale, black pin prick eyes set in dark circles. As he drew nearer Alix saw he was wearing blue scrubs, the sort of cheap tunics that dentists wear.

  The figure stopped close by, hovering gawkily in front of her. Alix wondered whether he was an extra from The Addams Family. Eventually, he extended a shaky hand and she took it as politely as she could.

  “I am Ned,” he said in a thick Eastern European accent. Russian, Bulgarian, maybe, she wasn’t sure. “Come.”

  “Where’s the gift shop?” she asked, although the quip was apparently lost on her host who turned his back on her and was swallowed by the mist as quickly as he had emerged from it. “Hi, I’m Doctor Alix Franchot,” she said to no one. She left it a second before scampering through the snow toward the main entrance where he held the door open.

  She stepped into a reception hall. There was a security check point – airport style – complete with metal detector and baggage scanner. Everything was suffused in a gloomy, grey light that filtered through a set of magnificent oval windows at the back of the room. A few temporary lights fixed to the walls provided the only other form of illumination. Two giant staircases wrapped round the sides of the room and met in the middle below the windows leading to another set of double doors. The walls were original. White paint washed over Victorian brick.

  She jumped as the giant man who had introduced himself as Ned passed closely behind her. He walked round to the other side of the check point, brushing past her – the contact was unnecessary. There didn’t seem to be any one else around. No security personnel to speak of, other than Ned, but whether he was security or part of the medical staff was unclear. Whatever his position, he seemed to have taken an interest in her bag. She fished out an identification card and handed it to him.

  Dr Alix Franchot

  Special Advisor, Bristol Major Crime Unit

  He pushed it back into her hand without looking at it. “No, you Doctor Franchot. I know. Have seen picture. Please give bag.”

  Wow, she thought, a castle complete with its own Igor.

  She handed over her bag. Alix had always felt it was expected of a woman to carry a bag, even if the only items of any interest in it were fags (which she had given up but kept just fo
r emergencies), old receipts and tampons. Still, despite its limited contents, Ned took some time rummaging through it and inspecting each item carefully before passing it back to her.

  “Good,” he said, presumably because it didn’t contain a bomb or a piece of paper marked “escape plan” or something.

  “Thanks.”

  “Here,” he gave her a key with a number four tagged to it. “Please leave bag and phone in locker.” He motioned towards a set of lockers with clear Perspex fronts on the right side of the room. Reluctantly she went over and stored her things. She contemplated sneakily trying to keep her phone but the signal out here was non-existent anyway. Nonetheless, when she had locked the door and decanted the key in her coat pocket, she felt just that little bit more naked.

  Apparently satisfied with her compliance so far, Ned took Alix through the metal detector – which bleeped and which he ignored – and led her through to the back of the room where he opened a door with a key card. She shuffled through to a tiny room, not much bigger than the average bathroom, her feeling of unease growing.

  “So, this place is –what? – run by an NHS Trust?” She knew very well that it wasn’t but she wanted to try and understand why her patient was being held in a Victorian lunatic asylum that had been decommissioned decades ago rather than a psychiatric hospital.

  “No talk,” explained Ned. “English not good.”

  “Okay. I get it.”

  Ned brushed past her, again in way that could have been avoided, and opened up another door with a set of keys. He guided her through to another large room, where she stood facing a glass wall that seemed to run almost the entire length. She could see seating on the other side of it and tables but before she had time to take it all in Ned had opened up a door in the glass wall and ushered her through, shutting it behind her.

  She turned to look at him, alarmed, but he just shrugged his shoulders and wandered back to the first door. Through the glass she could just about make out his muffled voice.

  “I leave you here. Doctor will come find you in time.”

  He was gone before she could protest.

  Chapter 2

  The Church of Saint Mary Our Virgin has stood on the hillside overlooking the West Country village of White Helmsley since the early fourteenth century. It is a foreboding place, stained by a bloody and violent history that is ancient but not forgotten. The people who live in White Helmsley rarely visit the Church. The last service there was held over seventy years ago and there is no regular clergyman to attend to any further preaching from the rotting altar. The building itself is in a ruinous state; the roof has collapsed at the northern end and the vestry regularly floods as a consequence. An officious visitor to the Church might question why it has apparently been abandoned by its people, who are not without religion, and left to rot. Those who reside in the Church’s shadow would simply shrug and change the subject. That’s how it is, they would say.

  The design of the Church of Saint Mary Our Virgin is nothing extraordinary: one central square tower, uncluttered, save for a littering of lancet windows. Ravens nestled in the crudely installed guttering and ivy climbed the walls, suffocating the stone. The master masons who had returned from the crusades after erecting their own places of worship in the Holy Land had learnt much of Muslim building techniques and the church at White Helmsley was a fine example of their newly acquired skill.

  Behind the Church, a tree almost as old as the idea of God Himself had grown to an enormous height and towered above the spire, its roots cutting dangerously in to the foundations. It was rarely green and most assumed it was dead. On a moonlit night, its silhouette looms high above the village, twisting branches curling outward towards the Church, as if offering to embrace it. It was thought of by those below as both grotesque and beautiful.

  As he climbed the hill towards the Church in the uncertain dawn light, Jacob looked up and remembered the fable from years ago: place a penny at the foot of the trunk of the dead tree of White Helmsley, dance round it seven times and spirits would drag you under the knobbly roots to Hell. But that memory was someone else’s, not his, wasn’t it?

  There were others with him, slowly ascending the hill towards the Church, trudging through the soft snow, eyes not faltering from the spire. As if they were drawn to it by some dark magic that had consumed them. Like the angels were drawn to the morning sun, he thought.

  He knew their faces. So familiar. But he couldn’t place them, or remember their names. Some of them were important to him, weren’t they? He might even tell which ones if he could see their faces properly but they were all ahead of him. Could he remember his own name, he thought, if he saw his reflection in a pool or mirror? Did it even matter? There was ice on the ground - he had slipped a few times already - but not enough to make a reflection. Besides, something compelled him to keep going. Some primitive instinct forced him to climb with the others, as if it were the most important thing to him in the world.

  He knew that the others were all older than him. He was fourteen, but he didn’t know whether that was actually old or not. He used to know. He felt he used to know a lot of things but someone had robbed him of those thoughts. In any event, they were unimportant. All that mattered now was to get to the Church.

  As he reached the brow of the hill, he saw the old Church door was already opened for him.

  Chapter 3

  Two things became very apparent to Alix a short while after Ned had disappeared back through the door he had taken her through: first, the glass wall didn’t, as she suspected, expand the entire breadth of the room but stopped a few feet short either end at which point it turned sharply to run parallel with the wall and then again at the back. This meant she was standing in a room inside another room. Second, she was not the only occupant of the room within the room.

  The man who shared her space was short (they were roughly the same height) and plump. He was blessed with a blotchy red face with features all scrunched up in the middle like his head had, at one point, imploded in on itself. He wore a pinstripe suit and carried an expensive looking pilot’s bag. His shoes were especially shiny. The product, Alix suspected, of very many hours of labour.

  Her heart sank as he waddled over to her with a look that suggested he might be heavily constipated. She hoped this wasn’t the house doctor she was supposed to be meeting.

  “Are you with the CPS?” he demanded.

  Shit, she thought. Far worse. He was a lawyer.

  “No,” she replied. “Alix Franchot. I’m a psychologist here to see Professor Anwick.”

  “So you’re with the CPS then.”

  “No. As I say, I’m a psychologist. Freelance, actually. Or at least I was until recently. Sorry, not making much sense. I just can’t get over this...”

  “What? Oh, yes. The fact that we are standing in a glass prison inside a government sponsored, top secret loony bin for nutters so dangerous that they have to be hidden from the world at large. Yes. Odd, isn’t it.”

  Alix sensed the conversation wasn’t going to be the start of a long term friendship. Better hold off giving him your Twitter username for a while, kid. See how things pan out first. There was a musty smell in the air and she wasn’t sure whether it was the old stone walls or the lawyer.

  “Well,” he said, “I’m Anwick’s brief. I’ll be present while you do your thing. Which is what exactly?”

  “A simple preliminary evaluation. I’m surprised your client even needs representation,” she said, knowing full well that a legal aid defence lawyer wouldn’t pass up on the opportunity of a visit to this place.

  “Just making sure my client isn’t distressed by being unlawfully detained here in this God-forsaken place. There are Human Rights issues here, you know. Human Rights.” Perhaps saying the words again gave them more legitimacy. “Anyway, I was expecting someone-” He broke off, obviously feigning not finding the right words and wanting her to fill in the gaps. Asshole.

  “What? Older? More senior? A man, p
erhaps? Receding hairline and homoerotic moustache?”

  “Now look here,” his face seemed to get redder, which was quite an achievement. “There’s no need for that. I was expecting someone from the CPS. That’s all. But since you’re not, I’ll just wait until they arrive.”

  He took his pilot bag and sat down on a bench on the other side of the room. Evidently, their conversation was at an end. Alix stood blinking a few times before a door on the far side of the room opened. A man with a white lab coat flung over a suit walked in and unlocked a door to the glass room opposite to the way they had come in. Professor Anwick’s lawyer was on his feet immediately, making up as best he could for his lack of height by dancing around in front of the visitor like a child queuing for an ice cream.

  “Ah,” he said. “At last. Sir, I wish to register my utter disgust with the conditions my client is being kept under. This is barbaric.”

  The man in the white coat barely looked at Anwick’s lawyer but instead made his way over to Alix. He was from the Ivory Coast, bald head and glasses, a pleasant smile, and talked in soft African tones.

  “Doctor Franchot?” He extended his hand, which Alix took.

  “Yes,” she said. “You must be Doctor Omotoso.”

  “Call me Edwin.”

  “And, yes,” piped in the lawyer getting in front of Alix and squaring up to the doctor as best he could. “I want to see the duty manager. There is a duty manager, I assume?”

  “This ain’t no hotel, buddy. You’re here to see Anwick, follow me. You’re here to complain about the view from your room, there’s a suggestion box out d’back.”

  Alix allowed herself a polite chuckle. This was her kind of guy. And the look on the lawyer’s face was worth putting up with his crap earlier. Realising he wasn’t going to get very far, the lawyer rummaged around in his bag and pulled out a blue notepad on which he started scribbling notes, presumably to make a point of it all. Edwin raised an eyebrow at her and winked.