“Mr. Bramson,” his pretty, young, blonde secretary spoke into the box on her desk. “There’s a man here to see you. He says it’s a private matter. His name is Robert Kinsella.”
“Send him in, Michelle,” the voice came back out of the box to her.
“You can go right in,” Michelle said getting up to show the small black-haired man to the door, opening it and allowing him to pass into the office. “Is there anything I can get for your meeting, Mr. Bramson,” she asked over the man’s shoulder.
“No, Michelle, I don’t expect we’ll be long, just hold all my calls until Mr. Kinsella leaves please,” Bramson said smiling until she closed the door behind her, then his expression changed. “Do you have anything on him yet?” Bramson said as the black-haired man sat in the chair opposite his big modern desk.
“Only that there hasn’t been any activity on his credit cards for over two weeks and no sign of him at the Dakota, or the Museum, in the same time period. I don’t think he’s in New York. I have an associate checking the airlines to see if he’s flown anywhere, and since there doesn’t seem to be a need for medieval scholars in Miami, Chicago or Los Angeles, my guess is that he’s out of the country somewhere. I have my guy checking all the international flights for the last month. Don’t worry. I’ll find him,” the small black-haired man said, his eyes twinkling at the dollar signs that were dancing before them in the form of the check the old man had in his hand.
“Don’t come back until you have something, and I want you to keep an eye on Jack Edgeworth, too. He may lead you to him, and I want to know if he leaves New York,” the old man ordered then stood up dismissing the man, not bothering to shake his hand before he left.
***
The plan of action decided, Deck went to fetch Ivy and take her to the hospital, leaving Mitch and Simon alone at the table.
Out of the corner of his eye, Simon saw a small black car pull up outside the front door of the inn and heard a soundless voice, but this time it wasn’t the old man. It was-the black haired woman, Gayle. “Come,” it said. “We have work to do.” Simon stood up.
“I don’t feel so well, Dr. Bramson. I think I’ll go lie down for a while if that’s okay,” he said, looking a little green around the gills.
Mitch saw it and agreed; having completely forgotten what kind of effect the violence of the previous day’s discovery must be having on Simon, especially with his background. The poor kid. It really must have been an awful strain on him.
“Yes, Simon. I’m so sorry you had to see all that,” he said, taking Simon’s hand and giving it a squeeze. “You go and get some rest. I’ll stay here and keep an eye on things until Deck gets back,” Mitch said, his own eyes red and bloodshot from the strain and lack of sleep. Simon moved slowly to leave the table. He didn’t want to let go of Mitch’s hand; leaving him that way, all by himself. He heard the voice again.
“Hurry, boy! We haven’t much time.” He followed it obediently, going to his room, climbing out of the window and into the black car waiting for him by the side of the building. They made a strange pair that morning as they walked into the hospital entrance; a very tall, very stylish woman, all in black, and a smallish young man with curly black hair and a limp.
As they walked past the reception desk, the desk attendant spoke to them. “Pardon me, but you have to sign in and get a p…” Gayle raised her hand; nonchalantly pointing her finger at him. The attendant’s lips stopped mid-word and he sat back down as they walked past.
It took them only a few minutes to find the room where Malcolm was lying unconscious. “How did you know…” Simon started to ask.
“I can smell him. Can’t you?”
Simon took a second as they walked, trying to smell him before they pushed open the door. He picked up a gamey, earthy smell. It reminded him of what he imagined hunters might smell like, and he knew she was right.
Once they were in the room, the voice told him, “Pull the curtains,” so he did. Gayle stood back from the bed and the voice said, “Heal him.” Simon looked at her…frightened…his big blue eyes rolling like marbles at what she’d told him to do. He heard it again, insistently. “Heal him!” And she handed him one of the black roots and a small, sharp-looking knife from her purse. He took them, remembering what the old man had taught him.
His hands shaking, he sliced the root in half with the knife then sliced the palm of his right hand; rubbing the cut part of the root with his blood. Gayle went over to Malcolm on the bed, dead to the world.
She lifted up his head and pulled back the bandage covering his wound. Simon went over and put the blood-soaked end of the root on the stitched wound at the back of Malcolm’s head and held it there. “Now say the words,” her soundless voice said to him. Simon’s lips started to move, mumbling in the language the old man had taught him.
Malcolm’s body started twitching uncontrollably; little, pulsing jolts of electric current running through his nerves. His eyes flew open and his lips moved to speak. Gayle waved her hand in front of his face, “Sleep!” Malcolm’s head fell back into Simon’s hand. Gayle nodded and backed away from the bed, handing Simon a pillowcase she picked up from the fresh linen on the chair beside the bed. “He will not wake until I tell him. Now wrap the root. Take it back and burn it in the open air. Say the words when you see the smoke rise into the sky and he will be free,” her soundless voice said to him.
They passed Deck and Ivy on the road as they left the hospital parking lot and drove back to the Inn in silence. Before Simon got out of her car, Gayle looked at him, her eyes softening in a way he hadn’t seen before and said with her own voice, with sound. “You have done well, Holly. I apologize for being harsh with you the other night. Old Amos was right and I was wrong. Call on me if you need me…” and she handed him a small figure of a bird, carved out of wood, painted black and attached to a thin leather string, “…and I will come.”
When he held out his hand to take it, he saw the cut in his palm was healed. He looked at her, saying in his own soundless voice, “How? When?” She gave him a saucy wink. Then as he went to get out of the car she smiled at him and said to him in her soundless voice, “Your Master smells like ripe wheat, fresh from the harvest. I like that. Guard him well. I will guard you.”
“I will,” Simon said in his own voice, smiling and blushing as he got out of the car.
***
Lady Madeline rushed frantic and breathless through the entry doors at Cotswold Manor; her hair askew, her eyes wild with urgency. “Neville! Neville!” she cried out as she ran through the entry hall and burst through the drawing room doors. No one. Silence. Panicked, she ran out and down the hall towards the sun room in the back of the house, crying out, “Neville! George! Somebody, please!”
Shadows moved behind the opaque glass of the sun room doors. She ran to them, throwing open the doors wildly. “Nev…” and stopped, stunned by what she saw. Lord Neville Cotswold, the love of her life, was standing before her for the first time in five years, a wooden cane in each hand. George was standing guardedly next to him, expressions of surprise on both their faces. “Maddie! What…?” Lady Madeline’s eyes blinked for a moment and she collapsed on the floor.
***
She woke to the taste of brandy on her lips, finding herself lying on the drawing room sofa, Lord Neville stroking her hand lovingly and smiling, “Yes, it is a miracle isn’t it, my love?” She leaned up and threw her arms around him, holding him tightly. “I dreamt…I dreamt that you were dead.”
“No, no, my dear. I’m fine…more than fine. I can walk,” Neville said consoling his wife and giving her another sip of brandy. “But I had the strangest dream, too. I dreamt that three men came to me in the night. One of them spoke to me telling me that you had done them a great service and that it was your heart’s wish that I should walk again. He touched my legs. The next morning when I woke, I sat up in my bed by myself, just like I used to and could move them over the side.”
As she looke
d into her husband’s sincere gray eyes; a fleeting remembrance, a whisper from deep in the back of her mind, “Thou hast done well, daughter of Eve, and for thy aid we shall reward thee both now and hence.” Lady Madeline broke into great heaving sobs of relief, clinging closely to Lord Neville, weeping on his shoulder as he held her closer, stroking the beautiful auburn hair that would never have to be colored again, feeling the same way he had on their wedding night.
***
Mitch sat alone at the table, the repercussions of the previous twenty-four hours ganging up on him. It started with Sandrine. She still couldn’t come out of her room or even look at light, for God’s sake. Then Lady Madeline disappearing, out of nowhere, without a word. Now Malcolm losing his fucking mind and killing that boy and him sticking his neck out to cover it up.
It all seemed to come back to him somehow, just like Ivy had said. He was a spoiler. If he hadn’t come there none of it would have happened. Could that be true? But why? He saw Sean Donnelly walk into the inn and Sean’s words came back to him, ‘Leave it alone,’ he’d said that first night. It struck him like yet another sharp slap to the face. It couldn’t be. It’s just not fucking possible, or is it? Could it be that there’s something wrong with that place? He’d heard of such things happening, but in all his travels, he’d never had any reason to believe it was anything more than local superstition.
“I hear you might be in need of an extra man, Dr. Bramson,” Sean said as he sat down next to him, Yale lying down on the floor by their feet. Mitch snapped out of it. “I just heard from Constance Farrow over at the café that Malcolm’s had an accident and is in hospital. I also heard about the French girl and the antique shop.” Mitch looked at him, arching his eyebrows, picking up on the ever so subtle tone in his voice, controlled but implying nonetheless, and could tell Sean was going to go into that spooky nonsense about the site again.
Deciding to give him free reign to vent whatever he’d come there to say, Mitch took a deep breath, pressing his temples with his hand. “Okay, Sean, what exactly is it about the site that makes you think there’s something wrong with it?”
“Has it not occurred to you, Dr. Bramson, to think how or why a medieval castle in England of all places, could go undiscovered or unnoticed and untouched for so long?” Sean asked him pointedly. “Unless someone or something wanted it that way? Could it be that for all those centuries it’s given off some sort of subliminal signal to anyone coming close; a warning to stay away, like reverse radar? Then when I stumbled into it, blind to what it was trying to tell me, I was struck blind?”
“Sean, please, what are you asking me to believe, that it’s haunted? Cursed in some way?” Mitch asked, incredulous.
Sean shrugged.
Mitch couldn’t help but think then of the look in Malcolm’s eyes when he’d first met him and then again as the Mal-wolf. He wasn’t the same person or even a person at all at that point.
“Take me out there, Dr. Bramson. Now. Today,” Sean said, putting his hand on Mitch’s wrist as he’d done that first night; this time most certainly not drunk.
“But if that’s what you really think, then why would you want to go back out there? Aren’t you afraid?” Mitch asked him, trying logic to convince him not to continue on with this.
“Yes. I am very afraid. At first I wanted you to take me with you to prove to myself that I was not insane, or maybe that I was. But now, after the French girl and Malcolm, I need to do something to keep something from happening to anyone else. If it kills me, so be it. But at least it will convince you to leave it be and go home,” he said, gripping Mitch’s wrist tighter and doing his best to find Mitch’s eyes with his blind ones.
“Malcolm was struck on the head by a falling stone, Sean,” Mitch lied to him, desperately trying to convince himself that that was, indeed, true.
“Dr. Bramson,” he leaned in whispering, “…other than for the disappearance of that girl, there has not been a murder in this village or anywhere near it in over fifty years, not since before the Great War and both events happened when someone went into the ruins, first the girl that I followed, and look what happened to me; now you and your people, Malcolm and that murdered boy, within twelve hours? Something bad is going on around here!”
Mitch felt a coldness about what Sean said. Sean knew some-thing. Fuck! Mitch didn’t know why that should have surprised him. Sean was a cop after all, and a CID.
“Please take me out there,” Sean said again.
“Okay, let’s go,” Mitch said, throwing up his hands as he stood up from the table; a long blackening shadow of dread coming over his mind and his…soul.
“Thank you, Dr. Bramson,” Sean said, sighing with relief.
***
As they approached the entrance of the path to the site, Sean started to tremble then stopped, turning to Mitch. “Could I ask you for a very embarrassing favor, Dr. Bramson?” Sean asked, a slight quiver in his voice, like a small child who was terrified of going into the dentist’s chair.
“Of course, Sean,” Mitch replied, his humanity willing to give the poor man anything he needed.
“Would you hold my hand as we go in?” Sean said, wiping the tears out of his eyes with his shirt sleeve.
It made Mitch think of Simon in the theater and his conscience telling him not to let him suffer. And it wasn’t like he hadn’t held Jack’s hand all those times himself, when he was young and felt so alone and so afraid, the last time being when they were wheeling Jack into surgery after his heart attack. He didn’t answer; he just took Sean’s hand and held it tightly as they walked.
When they got to the towers Sean stopped and looked up. He knew where he was. He could feel it. Almost trance-like, he let go of Mitch’s hand and walked between the towers, his face always looking up toward the sky as if he expected something to come crashing down on him at any minute. Mitch followed close behind, giving him just enough space, in case Sean tripped and he had to jump. Sean walked forward, as if by some divination towards the Celtic cross they’d uncovered. He brought his hands down and touched it. “What’s this?” Sean said, running his hands over the carvings.
“It’s a Celtic cross we dug up from the center of the main hall of the castle.” Sean moved slowly around, touching it carefully, feeling the carvings. He stopped.
“What’s that?” Sean asked, his head cocked to the direction of Malcolm’s pit.
“What’s what, Sean”?
“That sound. It’s a bird, an owl, I think.”
“I’m sorry, Sean, I don’t hear anything,” Mitch said, looking around into the trees, listening closely.
“The cross…did you move it?” Sean asked, tensing as he held on to it.
“It was toppled,” Mitch replied. “We just stood it up after we uncovered it.”
“Do you hear that?” Sean asked again, starting to twist around, trying to locate the direction of the sound.
“Sean, I don’t hear anything. What is it?” Mitch said getting nervous; going close to where Sean stood by the cross. Before he could reach him Sean began twirling in a circle, his arms outstretched to the sky.
“Oh, Lord!” Sean shouted, the sound of owls screeching in his ears became almost deafening. “Oh Lord!” he cried out again, turning faster in every direction in an ever widening circle, tripping and stumbling over the uneven ground.
“Oh Lord! Oh Lord!”
Mitch got scared and went to Sean, trying to take him by the arm. Something bad was happening. He didn’t know what, but it felt really…bad.
“Oh Lord!” Sean kept crying out, resisting Mitch’s attempts to hold him still. He was in some kind of religious ecstasy, like the fanatics who claim that God, the Virgin, Jesus or some saint or other has been talking to them; like he was hearing voices coming at him from all directions. He kept turning to where he heard the last sound. Mitch couldn’t hear anything. It was quiet, not even the sound of birds.
“Sean, let’s go. Come on,” Mitch said, panic welling in his sto
mach as he tugged at Sean…he wouldn’t budge. Instead he pulled farther away; spinning like a top, around and around, calling to God. Mitch tried to hold on to him but he had a hysterical strength, pulling away, like he didn’t even know Mitch was there. Mitch grabbed at him again, putting his arms around him in a bear hug, holding him with all his might. “Sean, Stop! Please stop!”
“Oh, Lord! Oh, Lord.” Sean kept crying out to the sky, then with a burst of energy he pulled away violently, but it wasn’t like he’d pulled away. It was more like something pulled him away, breaking Mitch’s hold on him and taking him to the area behind the cross in a fever pitch of movement, chanting, “Oh, Lord! Oh, Lord!”
Suddenly Sean gave out one long terrified scream of agony and fell to his knees, beating at his lower body and legs. “Snakes! Snakes!” he screamed, feeling them crawl up his legs, dozens of them, hundreds of them, slithering around his limbs, covering him; then wolves, tearing the flesh from his upper body with razor-sharp fangs, pulling and gnawing; screams of torment and agony. Another shrill cry and Sean fell over on his side, rolling on the ground like a man on fire. Shaking and twisting on the ground like he’d been struck by lightning, then nothing, no movement, stillness.
Mitch ran to him, kneeling down beside him. “Sean! Sean!” He pulled him into his arms, “Sean, please. Wake up! Please wake up,” he cried as he held him close, rocking him and holding him tightly.
Sean’s eyes opened then his mouth, but no sound came out, only a strangled garbled sound. “Uh…ah…eh…”
Mitch had heard those sounds before. The man had been struck dumb. He pulled Sean in close to his chest, holding him as tightly as he could, crying like a baby. “It’s my fault, Sean. It’s my fault.”
Chapter XVII
DECLAN
Heaven can wait, And a band of Angels wrapped up in my heart, Will take me through the lonely night, Through the cold of the day. And I know, I know, Heaven can wait, And all the gods come down here just to sing for me, And the melody's gonna make me fly, Without pain, without fear.
The Digger's Rest Page 27