The House of the Wicked (a psychological thriller combining mystery, murder, crime and suspense)

by D. M. Mitchell

  Chapters

  Prologue

  1: Arrival

  2: Jowan Connoch

  3: The Cottage

  4: Baccan’s Hound

  5: The Return

  6: The House of the Wicked

  7: Baccan’s Maw

  8: The Man in the Derby

  9: The Jacobite Bolt

  10: The Land of the Dead

  11: Hevva

  12: Your Humble Servant

  13: The Graves of Time

  14: Nightmares of Old

  15: Soulful Chimes

  16: Generations Long Dead

  17: After All These Years

  18: Begging Forgiveness

  19: Dead Man’s Meat

  20: The Dead Cannot Lie

  21: A Full Confession

  22: A Price to Pay

  23: Final Preparations

  Prologue

  1867: 13 Years ago

  They were all deeply afraid of what they had to do. But they were more afraid of the consequences should they not carry it out. If they shied away now, lost strength, they feared they must bow to inevitable destruction. They could feel it in the very air, and like a dark, malevolent cloud they sensed it creeping across the sea to engulf them.

  They heard Baccan laughing at them in the night, for that was when he was strongest, taunting them, and men said they felt his voice pierce their brains with his cries as he sent high waves smashing into their boats and tore them to driftwood; felt his cold, clammy hand as it pushed them beneath the frothing surface. This was true. There were those present now who had experienced it, testified on the Bible to it. And in time they all heard it, every man, woman and child in the cove, in the anguish that gushed from the hearts and spewed from the mouths of the newly-made widows and grieving mothers.

  Yes, they were each of them afraid. Four men allotted to carry out the task, taking but a little courage from the beer they forced on their unaccustomed palates, begging for some relief; but their minds resisted the alcohol and remained sharp and clear.

  One man rose, sensing their resolve crumbling, and the others got to their feet, unfurling from their beer-puddled table like dark fern fronds. They followed him out into the still night, lit only by a razor-thin crescent moon and the icy pinpricks of stars, marching single file from the shack in the woods and picking up their spades that leant against its ramshackle sides. The trees about them absorbed their noise and gave them the appearance of soundless spectres.

  They looked to him now like never before. He understood these things. He knew what other men would never know, and many things they were fearful of knowing. He had a foot in both worlds and they trusted and believed all he said.

  He took a large canvas bag, made of stout sailcloth, sewn for this night, for this very purpose, and silently he led the way deep into the wood, tracing the thin, threading scars of ancient ways. Their hearts beat furiously, their mouths becoming dry, and one man, under the cover of the night, shed a hot tear that burnt his cheek, for he feared for his soul.

  They climbed higher, the way now steeper, so that at times they had to clamber breathlessly over rocks and haul themselves upwards till they reached the crest of the headland, and instead of rest for their pulsing hearts and scorched lungs, they felt only the wild coursing of fear in their veins till they thought they would explode with the turmoil it caused.

  They emerged from the wood into a clearing, high on the bluff. Now they could hear the sea, soft and distant, like the calling of a woman. There was no breeze. All was still. The very stillness of the air caused them to worry the more, for it had rarely been so up here, not recently. They each took it as a sign. But each did not know what that sign meant and each kept the thought to themselves.

  The ruined monastery stood out against the night, darker than the sky, without features, like a shadowy, ragged rent between heaven and earth, a black unfathomable void. The four men walked to the ruins, passing under the high, crumbling arches, treading through empty rooms that were no longer rooms, where people from long ago had lived and died and were but spirits that could be sensed by those that had the Gift. The men’s wraithlike forms flitted silently through the fallen stone and towards the disordered ranks of headstones, for this is where for hundreds of years the people had buried their dead. Those with the Gift said you could still hear their voices in the keening wind. But tonight they were silent, as if the dead held their collective breath.

  Now the sound of the sea was louder. They were close to the cliff edge, where land, sea and sky merged into one, and they gathered into a tight circle around a grave, standing as rigid as the gravestones all around them.

  Their resolve was being tested to the limits. One of them muttered a prayer, the words but an unintelligible hissing through gritted teeth. It seemed, for a moment, that it would not happen, they would dissolve away, back into the trees, into the night.

  But he handed his canvas bag to one of the men, reached out for a shovel. Had to take it forcibly from a hand that was frozen around its haft. And he sank the blade deep into the earth of the grave, tore out a sod. The spell had been broken. Two men now set about digging as if they had the devil on their backs and two kept silent vigil some yards away.

  The ground was still soft and yielding, for this was not an old grave, had not yet sunk flat and been absorbed by the earth. The act of digging gave them strength and for a while their exertion caused them to forget what it was they did in a way the beer could not.

  Till a spade struck wood with a dull thud and everyone stopped and silence fell again. It had not taken long, or had not seemed to, for the earth up here on the headland was shallow. But still it took them by surprise and their gasps melded with the sounds of the soughing sea. He took charge again, knowing they had no choice but to continue, for they were each now tainted by the act and could never turn back. He began to clear the earth from the coffin.

  Finally it was revealed, the rough-hewn lid bathed in faint, cold starlight. He stepped into the grave, the sound of his boots scraping on the coffin lid. He held out a hand and was immediately passed a crowbar. They all crowded round, even the two men who stood guard, drawn by the sounds, and they held their breaths. They heard the sounds of splintering wood, the squeal of metal as nails were torn away. The man held the canvas sack at the ready, but drew it to his chest so that it acted as a shield to hide behind. The murmuring of prayers became more sibilant.

  His legs were astride the coffin. Shaking fingers gripped the lid and wrenched it free. The smell of putrefaction rose in an invisible cloud and one of the men moaned. In that instant the wind came rushing in from the sea and tore across the headland towards them, roaring through the arches of the monastery, rippling the grass at their feet and tugging at the canvas sack.

  “Baccan!” cried the man, and dropped the sack, bending over and vomiting on the fresh earth.

  The air grew alive, stirred madly around them, and the trees began to lament in the growing wind. He was here. They felt the chill of Him in their bones and they quaked as He sent the wind to buffet them and tear them away from their task.

  But he took up the sack and dragged it into the grave. Fought against the smell of death and squeezed his eyes tight against the dirt thrown up by the wind. Baccan could scream and shout all He wanted, but he would not flinch now.

  He put up a defiant fist, as if he could punch the very air, and there were those present who saw this as only enraging Him further and silently begged him to stop. Y
ou will not take us, he thought. You will not destroy Porthgarrow. He pulled at the sharp-boned upper arms of the corpse. The shroud fell from its rotting, pained skull. Strength began to ebb from him, as if sucked into the gaping, empty mouth, and everything became a terrifying, dizzying whorl of sight, sound and smell.

  Give me the strength, he thought.

  Give me the strength…

  * * * *

  1

  1880

  Arrival

  A storm was building.

  Tumbling, brooding clouds foamed ever upwards, massing into towers so dark and threatening that they appeared solid and unyielding. Sea birds, gulls perhaps, were bundled swiftly along by the wind, rendered mere white flecks of light against the bruised firmament. He felt a cold spot of rain on his upturned cheek.

  He watched intently as the old man stood before the ancient Celtic stone cross, the monolith’s edges and carved decoration ground smooth over countless years by the extremes of the high moor weather, the dark stone studded with plates of bright yellow lichen that stood out faintly luminescent in the growing gloom.

  He’d given no warning. He’d drawn the horse to a halt as they approached the crossroads, clambered off the cart and strode purposefully over to the cross. It towered over him by four feet or more. That had been almost five minutes ago.

  “The weather is taking a turn for the worse!” he called. But the man paid him no heed. He glanced around impatiently, folding his arms against the chilly air, studying the featureless vista; the stunted, low-lying grass, the clumps of dark gorse. Lonely trees, pain-wracked and twisted, were scattered thinly across the desolate landscape.

  He shuffled uncomfortably on the hard seat, the wind coming at him in angry bursts.

  At length the man put his hat back on, returned to the cart, their eyes meeting briefly as he patted the neck of the horse. He whispered something encouraging to it at which the horse’s ears flickered. Scratching his cloudy white beard he took up his position on the cart, wrapping the reins lightly around his fingers. At the click of his tongue the horse lurched into motion again.

  “Is everything alright?”

  The old man didn’t turn to face his passenger. “Everything is well, sir,” he said.

  They took the road straight ahead, the dull shadow of the cross falling across them as they skirted around it. It looked as natural a part of the landscape as the trees, as if it had grown out of the earth to stand guard at the crossroads for untold millennia. A living presence, he thought.

  Which was absurd, of course.

  Dense vegetation and high banks gradually replaced the bleak moor. Though they can’t have been on the moor but an hour it had seemed interminable and he mused on the morose feelings it left him with. The sense of being miniscule in the vast, almost featureless landscape. At the mercy of any change in weather. Insignificant. He realised how little he knew of life outside the city. Surely storm clouds had never looked so threatening over London. He was glad they had left the moor behind; glad of the change on the eye. And back there, before the cross? What was the old man doing? He could not get the shape of it out of his mind, a rigid stone sentinel against the sky.

  He chided himself for such uncharacteristic sombre thoughts. It had been a long and tiresome journey into the far reaches of Cornwall and he was feeling quite exhausted with it. He’d taken the train from London, give or take a number of changes to Penleith, the last station on the line. It had been arranged that he would be picked up at Penleith and taken to his final destination of Porthgarrow. He had not expected such a tired old cart, or equally old horse to draw it. Wilkinson was having a jest, surely?

  “The name’s Tunny, Sir,” said the driver. “Mr Wilkinson sent me to collect you.” The old man had looked at the neat jacket and trousers, the polished brown boots of the city man, as he hoisted his trunks into the cart. “Such a weight!” he’d said.

  They were about to set off when a tired black horse pulling a cart crept slowly past, a small knot of people marching solemnly behind. He saw a coffin dressed with flowers, being gently shaken by the movements of the wheels upon the uneven, dirt-packed road. A mean-looking man dressed in sombre black, heavily be-whiskered with eyes sunk into dark, hollowed-out pits, slowly led the cortege.

  Tunny removed his hat and they sat silently whilst the cart disappeared round a bend. He noticed that many people on the street walked quickly away from the cart, some holding handkerchiefs to their noses and mouths.

  “Typhoid,” said Tunny. “People dropping like flies.”

  “A rather fierce looking man taking them to their final resting place,” his passenger mused as Tunny whipped the horse into movement again.

  “That’s Matthew Doble, the undertaker. A more troubled man you’re less likely to find in the whole of Penleith,” explained Tunny. “I overhead him say he was praying for a harsh winter to kill a few more people off as he could do with the extra business. He’s privately plagued with too many gambling debts, and some say a raft of other addictions. The typhoid epidemic has made him a happier man, in spite of his sour countenance.”

  The delay at the cross had annoyed him. He ached, his eyes were aflame from tiredness and the last thing he wanted now was to be caught out in a storm when he wasn’t dressed for it.

  The driver whistled a soft tune to himself, eyes playing over some murky memory, the reins hanging from his hands in a long, lazy curve to the bit of the old horse. The road had deteriorated since crossing the moor and was but a cart track, twin furrows deepened by winter rains, hardened by the summer sun and strewn liberally with rocks. It made for an uncomfortable ride. They passed a group of three men trudging along with their heads down, heavy bundles on their backs; they stood aside to let the cart past. The driver nodded and fingered the brim of his hat in acknowledgement.

  “Are they all headed to Porthgarrow? All told I must have counted thirty men, women and children spread along the way.”

  “That’s right, Mr Denning,” said the driver. “Pilchard season proper starts on Saturday when they launch the boats. Porthgarrow’s been filling up for days now with all sorts of people coming in to try and get work.”

  Stephen Denning glanced back at the retreating group of men, bearded faces shaded by hats, trousers and boots pasted with dust and dried mud.

  Fat, heavy drops of rain began to fall, pock-marking the earth. “What’s it like? Porthgarrow?”

  The driver creased his eyes. Was about to say something, then caught himself. Thought long and hard again. “Porthgarrow’s Porthgarrow,” he said cryptically. Then added: “It is as it always was.”

  Wilkinson – it seemed an age ago now – had told him he’d never forget Porthgarrow. He would, apparently, be instantly captivated by it.

  “The very feeling you get when being smitten on that first glance of a beautiful woman to whom you declare you will give your very soul,” he said, that faint curl to his lips which could be interpreted as puckish exuberance, jest, or both, “except with a degree more sincerity and permanence”.

  He prepared himself, narrowing his eyes in anticipation and against the rain that had begun to fall harder, whipped around by a cold wind that elected to greet them as the lurching cart broached the crest of a steep hill. His driver companion was sitting hunched forward, a dark formless lump of wet clothing, his face largely hidden by his wide-brimmed hat on which the rain pattered noisily.

  “Is it far?” he asked.

  “Not far, Mr Denning. Over the brow, down the valley,” the driver said.

  The wheels hit yet another stretch of deep ruts and proud rocks and the passenger was shunted violently, having to steady himself against falling over the side. He thought he caught sight of the driver smirking, but when he turned to look directly the old man’s eyes were fixed impassively on the swaying rump of the horse, a drop of rainwater twitching on the tip of his nose. He turned to check whether his belongings were still fastened securely on board, noticing as he did so a weathered stone
marker by the roadside; Penleith, twelve and three eighths miles.

  Wilkinson would have a lot to answer for if this were not all as he had first presented.

  “The light, my friend - ah, the light! I tell you, our European cousins in Italy or the south of France turn as green as that viridian smear on your palette at her very mention!” Wilkinson had enthused.

  The light? Denning was not impressed. Ahead was but a turgid, muted fug. The tempestuous clouds now disgorged thin sheets of rain that cloaked the hills. He noticed a small collection of cottages far ahead on the hillside, looking to huddle together for protection, the distance bestowing on them a corpse-like pallor.

  “This is the only route in?” Denning asked, his rear now a little sore from the chafing hard seat.

  “And out,” the old man returned. He bent his head in thought. “Unless you count the sea, of course, in which case it isn’t.”

  He began to whistle that same infuriating, formless tune that he’d been toying with since leaving Penleith.

  “It’s a jewel,” Wilkinson had continued. “Imagine if you will, encircling emerald hills, encrusted with a jumble of whitewashed cob cottages that tumble over each other down to the ocean. But not any ocean; this is of such a hue that all your precious stones wrapped around the withered necks and perched on the spindle fingers of the strutting ladies here in London society are rendered but cheap and artificial trinkets.”

  Denning applauded theatrically. “Fine words, no doubt encouraged largely by my fine port, of which you’re going to leave me very little. Let me see. How would my esteemed brother, strutting in his fusty wig, approach the facts of the case?” He lowered his voice. “In concluding my cross examination I put it to you, Terrance Steadman Wilkinson, if Porthgarrow is of such world renown, her beauty of such Hellenistic allure, then why do I – and indeed the rest of the world – know nothing of her existence?”

  Wilkinson stepped away from the fireplace, slumped down in the leather Chesterfield opposite. “Stephen, where is the beautiful woman who is yet to turn your head? Am I to say she does not exist because your paths haven’t yet crossed?” He rose quickly to his feet again, spun away, suddenly very serious. His face was smooth and round, pale, almost childlike in features, which women found charming and men often mistook for weakness. They would do well not to make that mistake. He had deep, dark eyes that could at once gleam with a jovial light, or sink to fathomless pools of excessive gravity, as they did now. He ran stubby fingers through his thinning, black hair. “I am done with Paris. I am done with London,” his flailing arm punctuating the mention of the cities. “I crave something more tangible, more real. I have not spent all these years learning my craft in order to end my time painting blooms, or stiff portraits of the grey and boring wives of grey and boring diplomats.” He realised what he’d said, turning to glance at the half-finished figure on the canvas. Shrugged sheepishly at Denning.