Her fingers went to the soft skin at the side of her throat and came away bloody. Carter pulled a clean handkerchief from his pocket, folded it into a pad and handed it to her. ‘We’d better get you to the hospital. You’re going to need a tetanus shot for that.’
Sian was shaking. ‘But they were real,’ she said, shock reducing her voice to no more than a whisper. ‘At first I didn’t think they had any substance…like the cat…but it hurt. Christ, it hurt!’ She held the pad to the wound as tears welled in her eyes again. Carter wrapped an arm around her shoulders and led her back to their car parked in a bay at the back of the house. He opened the passenger door and ushered her inside. ‘Wait here,’ he said.
She grabbed the sleeve of his jacket. ‘Where are you going?’ she said, close to panic. She didn’t want to be left alone. She was badly frightened and the fear was making her feel nauseous. She didn’t want Robert to take the risk of going back to the house.
‘Back in there,’ he said, and saw the panic flare in her eyes. ‘Don’t worry. I’ll be fine now I know what I’m up against.’
Sian chewed her lip, unconvinced. She was trying to conquer her fear, furious with herself for appearing so weak, so bloody girly! He’d never take her out on an assignment again. She’d screwed up and was anxious to make amends. ‘I’ll come with you.’ ‘No, you won’t. You’ve had enough for one day. This won’t take long, then I’ll take you to A and E, to get that wound looked at.’ He slammed the door and started to walk back to the house. Halfway there he pulled out his cell phone and punched in a number.
CHAPTER TWO
The call was answered instantly. ‘Crozier.’
‘It’s Carter. This is worse than we thought. It’s degenerated very quickly, too quickly. There are some nasty physical manifestations.’ He described the events briefly.
There was a pause at the other end of the line and Carter could almost hear the other man thinking as Crozier’s sharp and well-ordered mind weighed the ramifications of what he’d been told and considered his options. ‘Is the girl badly injured?’ It was typical of Crozier not to use a person’s name if he could show some superiority over them.
‘Nothing major.’ He was damned if he was going to give Crozier the full details.
‘Careless, Robert.’ The evident pleasure at a possible Carter mistake was like the purr of a satisfied cat.
‘I know. I wasn’t expecting anything quite this violent.’ He had, though. As soon as he entered the house he knew there were powerful forces there. He needed to check a couple of things inside the house; then he would know which direction to take his investigation.
‘Hmm. Do you need a cleanup team or do you think you can deal with it yourself?’ Crozier said. He made the possible need for help seem like a definite sign of weakness.
Carter had reached the French doors. He shaded his eyes with his hand and peered in. There were no signs of anything unusual; nothing flying about the room, the wallpaper smooth and undamaged. ‘I think I can handle it,’ he said. He wouldn’t be reckless enough to deny help just because it was Crozier’s suggestion; he was far too professional for that. But there were suspicions he had that had to be confirmed before he could let others into the house.
‘Okay. Let me know how it pans out,’ Crozier said and rang off. Letting him make the decision about when help was given was as near to a show of courtesy as Crozier would afford Carter.
Carter slipped the phone into the pocket of his jacket and let himself back into the house. He stood in the center of the dining room breathing deeply, eyes tightly closed. It was time to open up, to let down his guard, to try to discover the secrets of the house. Four investigations in as many months, each one progressively worse than the last. Something was happening. Something out of the ordinary, and he felt it was down to him to discover exactly what was going on. This was no poltergeist upset at not reaching closure before death. This was no ghost whose violent death couldn’t be forgiven. What was attacking this house, using it, was far more dangerous.
The process of opening his mind was easy, rather like taking off a pair of sunglasses and letting his eyes see the brightness, but it had to be done carefully. If he exposed himself fully he would be vulnerable to attack. If he didn’t open himself enough he would learn nothing. He’d been preparing for this moment for days; increasing his work rate at the gym, pushing his body, getting it as fit and as strong as possible to be able to withstand the sheer physical toll that his mind would demand.
He spread his arms wide and opened his eyes.
Nothing.
He frowned, puzzled. The electromagnetic disturbance and the manifestations he’d witnessed in the house told him that there were very strong influences here. So why was he not picking up anything?
He tried again, concentrating more deeply, lowering his defenses still further.
Nothing.
It was as if the house was depleted, a flat battery, devoid of energy.
It made no sense. He took another deep breath, stretching his arms wider. ‘Come on,’ he muttered under his breath. ‘Show me.’
A second later the forces in the house rushed at him like an express train and he cried out as he was lifted off his feet and hurled against the wall. He hung there for a second before sliding to the floor, his breath knocked out of him. ‘Shit!’ he said and struggled to stand.
It hit him again, this time with a more mental attack. His mind was filled with spiraling images. The beetles were back in the room, hundreds of them, flying at his face, nipping and biting his hands as he raised them to protect himself. In the next second they were gone and the image of a desolate landscape rushed into his mind. He felt himself transported, picked up and dragged through the air.
He was pulled upwards, through the ceiling of the dining room and the roof of the house, until he was hundreds of feet in the air. Unseen forces were holding him there, suspended over the house. He looked down and could see the streets of the town, the shops, the houses, the cars, and the people going about their daily lives. The church, easily identified from its steeple, was crumbling, brick by brick, as if it was dissolving into the ground. He blinked, once, twice and the scene changed.
He was staring down at the sea, choppy gray waves capped with white, rolling in on a clean sandy beach and crashing over rocks that guarded the coastline of a bleak, inhospitable island.
And then he was falling down to the ground beneath. He landed without impact, his body cushioned by pads of soft heather and bracken. Above him a pale sun glared down at him, its white light hurting his eyes. He squeezed them shut and when he opened them again he was staring up at a circular dish filled with electric lights.
He was lying on an operating table, a sharp antiseptic smell filling his nostrils. And he was seven years old again, at his most vulnerable, in hospital for a tonsillectomy, while about him white-clad figures stood watching him, their faces obscured by white masks, but their eyes earnest and threatening. A scalpel hovered in front of his own eyes, then with a swift downwards slash cut a line in his flesh from sternum to pelvis. Hands reached inside him, searching out vital organs. He could feel soft fingers caressing his liver, his spleen, his lungs, his heart.
He could hear a voice, whispering, the sound too muted to be clear, and then many voices, the sounds merging into one long sonorous drone. Finally silence.
Then ‘Take him back.’ Sharp, clipped. An order.
‘Will he return?’ A softer voice, almost female, but not quite.
‘He has no choice. Take the girl.’
And the light was switched off.
In the car Sian relaxed in the seat and leaned back on the headrest, closing her eyes. This was the worst ever. She couldn’t remember ever being this frightened. What ever the creatures were, elementals as Carter had said, or something else entirely, they had awoken in her a deep-seated, almost primeval fear. Somewhere, lodged in her trace memory, was the image of them, dark and scuttling, hiding in shadows, crawling into the ligh
t. They were at once foreign yet familiar.
She froze as she heard a soft whispering, like tissue paper tearing. She looked down at her chest. Something was moving underneath her clothes. With trembling fingers she undid the buttons and opened her shirt.
In the expanse of flesh between her bra and the waistband of her skirt, five lumps, no bigger than quails’ eggs, were moving under her skin. And, as she watched, the skin itself was turning gray, translucent, as the lumps moved actively beneath it. Panic surged through her and she prodded one with her finger. At her touch the skin split and a black antennal head forced its way through the bloody hole.
She screamed, but the sound was blocked by a horde of scrabbling creatures chasing the daylight glimpsed through her open mouth. They crawled up her throat, over her tongue, scrambling over her teeth and hanging from her lower lip before dropping to her chest. Within seconds the car was filled with the things as they exploded from every orifice — from her mouth, her ears, forcing their way down her nostrils, crawling out from her anus and, in a cruel mockery of childbirth, pouring from her vagina, ripping through the sheer material of her pan ties.
She struggled and in her panic the small gold cross and chain she wore was torn from her neck.
She reached for the door handle, but as her fingers connected with it the central locking mechanism activated and sealed her into the car. She looked round frantically, hoping to catch a glimpse of Carter through the bushes surrounding the car. ‘Come back!’ her mind screamed. ‘For pity’s sake, Robert, please come back.’ And then she slumped back into the seat as, inch by inch, the beetles devoured her.
He opened his eyes and he was back in the dining room. His body was soaked in sweat, his hair plastered to his scalp. He shook his head, trying to shake away the cobwebs that were draped over his thoughts. Gradually the cobwebs thinned and dispersed as rational thought reestablished itself.
Take the girl. The voice echoed in his thoughts, distant and inhuman. He pushed himself to his feet and raced from the house.
The car was where he had left it. He ran across to it and yanked the door handle.
Locked.
Locked and empty.
Of Sian Davies there was no trace at all.
‘Oh Christ!’ he said, and leaned against the car, his legs weak and trembling. He let his body slide down the metallic paintwork until he was crouching, almost slouching, on the ground. He was going to vomit; he could feel the bile rising in his throat. He retched, and his cell phone began to ring.
He fumbled for the talk button. ‘Yes?’ he choked back what ever was lodged in his throat.
‘It’s Crozier. I told you to report back.’ The impatience, the reprimand, was deliberate.
‘We only spoke a moment ago,’ Carter said, trying to gather his thoughts, wondering how he was going to explain what had happened to Sian.
‘It’s been over four hours, Carter. What the hell’s going on there?’
Carter took the phone away from his ear and stared at it as if it were some strange, alien artifact. Four hours! ‘I’ve changed my mind,’ he said shakily. ‘I need help.’
‘Details?’ Crozier’s clipped tones were legendary in the Department. He never used politeness when efficiency could do the job in half the time.
Carter was still trying to come to terms with the lost memory of the past four hours but a verbal battle with Crozier was always guaranteed to sharpen his brain. ‘Debrief me later. Just get a team out here as soon as you can.’
There was a slight pause on the other end of the line, and Carter knew he was weighing taking decisive action with a familiar rebuke that would be something like ‘I give the orders around here.’
Carter had to admire Crozier when he said, ‘Very well. Will you be around to brief them?’ Performing his job was more important than point scoring; at least he could give the man grudging respect for that.
‘Yes,’ Robert Carter said wearily. He suddenly felt exhausted, more tired than he had ever felt in his life. ‘I’ll be here.’ He switched off the phone and hugged his knees, lowered his head and closed his eyes.
He was in the same position when the cleanup team arrived an hour later.
CHAPTER THREE
If there was a bleaker, more godforsaken part of the world than Kulsay Island, John Harrison had yet to visit it. Lying three miles off the east coast of Scotland and subject to a ferocious battering by the North Sea, the island was a hard, desolate place, hunched and compact and resolutely self-contained.
As he flew the helicopter in from the mainland he could see the band of empty crofters’ cottages on the south of the island, decaying and rotten, their gray slate roofs gaping with holes, the stone walls, moss covered and crumbling, a testament to the harsh, ripping winds that blew in from the sea, and to the years of neglect. They were falling apart, tumbling down, as if the wretched landscape of the island was reclaiming them as its own. In a field to the right of the cottages were handfuls of scraggy sheep. They looked thin and unkempt, their fleeces matted and tangled, caked with mud. They had defied the odds (and the gods) to survive at all, but Harrison imagined that it was a cruel, grinding existence, trying to find ready grazing in such harsh and unforgiving circumstances.
He was heading to the north end of the island. A group of people had been stranded here as some sort of initiative course. No one had heard anything from the island in two days and the company the group worked for, Waincraft Software, was in a state of panic. The owners of the island had been contacted and Harrison had been dispatched by them to investigate, and if necessary, airlift the group off.
As he left the crofters’ cottages behind he stared down at the gradually changing landscape. The further north he flew the harder and more extreme the conditions. There was a wooded area at the heart of the island, mostly larch and spruce, but the trees seemed stunted and tortured, their crowns sorry affairs, sparse and spare, home to the ragbag nests of huge black crows who took flight in a cacophony of flapping wings and throaty cries as he passed overhead.
Harrison had been flying charters for the best part of ten years since his demob from the U.S. Air Force. Flying gun ships during the Gulf War had prepared him for any hazards he might encounter. But as he stared down at the gnarled and twisted trees he couldn’t suppress a shudder. There was something decidedly unpleasant about Kulsay: the hostile landscape certainly, but it was more than that. Experience had taught him that you get a feel for places, something deep-seated, instinctive. And Kulsay Island was working on him at this deepest level, making him feel uneasy and anxious to complete his mission and get the hell out of there again as soon as possible.
Beyond the trees the land was more uneven, with rocky crags and verdant peat bogs jostling for space within the island’s confines. There were the ruins of a small church, evidence that the community of Kulsay had once spread across the entire island, and half a mile away stood the old Manse, a great gray edifice of Aberdeen granite, imposing and austere. It was here the group was meant to be based, but as he flew over the building there was precious little evidence of habitation.
He decided to circle the island one more time before setting down. He increased throttle and the Bell AP139 bucked in the air before climbing higher into the dull, overcast sky.
Harrison had been told he could set down in the Manse’s sprawling garden, but he was concerned there were no signs of life below. If, as he had been told, the group had run into difficulties, then the sound of the helicopter should have provoked at least one of them to come out into the open. Unless something was stopping them.
As he came in for the landing his eyes searched the stand of trees surrounding the grounds, looking for any sign of life. Below him the scrubby grass of the lawn was flattened by the downdraft from the blades as he took the machine in. As the wheels settled on the grass he switched off the engines, unstrapped himself from his seat and climbed out of the aircraft, instinctively ducking his head as the blades slowed above him.
Several feet beneath the grass something stirred; something ancient and malign that sensed a new presence on the island.
In the cellar of the Manse, Eddie Farrant listened to the chopping sound as the helicopter flew over the building. His eyes widened in terror and he buried himself still further under the mildewed sacks that had been his refuge for the past twelve hours. They stank now, and were wet with urine, but this was his sanctuary and Farrant wasn’t moving, despite the hunger pangs gnawing at his stomach. He’d eaten a Mars bar shortly after secreting himself down here, but nothing since.
If he truly believed it was a real helicopter, coming to rescue him, he might have come out of hiding. He might have run all the way up to the roof and stood there waving his arms to attract attention, screaming for help. But he didn’t believe it was real. It was just another trick, another illusion, and he wasn’t going to reveal his hiding place that easily. So he wormed down deeper into the pile of sacks until they covered his head, with just enough of a gap for him to breathe in the rancid air of the cellar.
Before the helicopter there had been nothing to listen to but the screams of the others coming from the rooms above as one by one they were taken. Sounds so wretched and desperate they forced him to clap his hands over his ears to block them out.
Now, as he lay there in his own filth and squalor, his mind drifted back over the past few days, remembering the people with whom he had come to the island — their faces, their idiosyncrasies, snatches of conversation, things they had done to irritate him. They were people he had worked with every day. Some he got on with, some he didn’t, but he had been surprised how different they had all been out of the work environment.
Michael Bennett, Andrew Johnson, Casey Faraday, Sheila Thomas and Jo Madley. He repeated the names over and over in his head like a mantra, hoping the repetition would block out some of the images of horror that were crowding into his mind.
Black Cathedral (department 18) Page 2