Bane of Brimstone (The Bill Blackthorne Chronicles Book 1)

by Mike Mannion

“This thing could turn into a virtual orgy.”

  Bill nodded his agreement and gave the small packet in his hand a curious look.

  There was a big café on the street corner so the boys went in and had a fry up for lunch then spent the afternoon exploring Middenmere. It was an ancient and beautiful place filled with many gothic buildings, cobbled streets and narrow alleyways.

  When evening came they went back to Connaught Hall for a bite to eat, a bath and a shave. Bill changed into a fresh white shirt with cravat, black bell bottoms and velvet jacket. Arthur wore an orange and black paisley shirt with denim jacket and lashings of his dad’s pungent aftershave. Arthur brought the wine in a carrier bag and Bill carried the torch.

  By eleven thirty they’d left the college by the side gate and were making their way down a quiet road. It was fairly chilly now and everything looked washed out from the glow of orange street lights. The road turned sharply to the left as it skirted round the back of the college. The boys saw a dense wooded area, long and low, to their right – shrouded in darkness and looking quite sinister. It was cut off from the road by a brick wall but some way along the boys saw an iron gate.

  “That must be the entrance,” said Bill.

  “Can I have the torch?”

  Bill handed Arthur the torch. They went through the gate and set off down a wide dirt path that led away into a dark enveloping arch of trees, like the entrance to a mysterious cave. The torch gave out a fairly feeble light but there was a full moon so the boys could see the vague outline of silvery tree trunks, brambles and leafy branches. They trod gingerly on, into the ever-deepening woods and it grew eerily silent and even darker as the road and street lights receded into the distance. The only sound was the crunch of their footfall. The trees were very close and seemed to be reaching out to prick them with sharp silhouetted branches. An owl suddenly hooted from out of some dark hole.

  “Argh!” said Arthur jumping. “This place gives me the creeps.”

  “I hope we’re on the right path, it's a bit overgrown. The girls said it goes up hill but it’s been dead flat so far.”

  “Let’s just keep going and hope for the best.”

  The boys walked on for a couple more minutes until the path started to go up a gentle incline. When it levelled out the tress thinned, the sky and moon became visible again, and they saw the dark and brooding silhouette of a large stone building with a spire at one end, set in a wide clearing.

  “I guess that’s Saint Pius,” said Bill.

  “I thought there’d be music and lots of people. It is a party after all.”

  “The girls definitely said midnight,” said Bill checking his watch, “and it’s almost that now.”

  “You did get the day right?”

  “Let’s just go in and see what’s going on.”

  The boys made their way over to the church, picking their way by torchlight through the tombstones of ancient crumbling cemetery. The arched door was rotten and the lock was rusted so the boys pushed it open and looked tentatively inside. At the far end of the church they saw Lilith and Ophelia lighting red candles.

  “Hello?” said Arthur tentatively.

  The girls turned and saw the boys, then gave each other knowing looks.

  “You came. That’s marvellous,” said Lilith.

  “Funny old party this,” said Arthur. “Just the four of us is it?”

  “Step forward Bill,” said Lilith dramatically, “and prepare yourself.”

  The boys took a step forward but Lilith held up her hand. “Halt!” she said in a stern voice. “Just Bill is required. Arthur, you wait there a moment.”

  Bill gave Arthur a puzzled look.

  “Just a girly game I guess,” said Arthur. “Go on!”

  Bill walked forward, making his way up the aisle. The church was mildewed, with quite a few weeds growing around the pews. Moonbeams shone in through a hole in the high roof.

  A huge bald man with jutting jaw and bad posture crept up behind Arthur. A giant meaty hand clamped itself over Arthur’s mouth and he found himself being dragged backwards and out of the church. He tried to struggle but the man held him in a vice-like grip. Arthur’s eyes were wide with terror as he was dragged off behind a bush.

  Bill approached the girls and looked at Ophelia. “Is this what all student parties are like? I was expecting something a little more, you know... We brought a bottle.”

  “This is a special sort of party, Bill. More a ceremony really,” said Ophelia.

  Bill wondered why she looked so sheepish.

  “Take off your jacket,” ordered Lilith.

  “Yes, of course,” said Bill taking off his jacket. He couldn’t help admiring the girls. They looked very pretty. “Nice dresses by the way.”

  Ophelia looked at Lilith and said, “It’s midnight.”

  “Go to the altar,” said Lilith to Bill, flashing her eyes and pointing.

  Bill walked over to the altar, skirting past the candelabras full of flickering red candles. He saw a record player on a pew.

  “Let’s put some music on,” he said brightly. “Got any of that Crocodile stuff? Arthur loves that.”

  Bill looked down the nave to the church entrance but couldn’t see Arthur. He watched the door open and saw a huge bald man come running up the aisle. Bill didn’t like the look of him at all. He suddenly felt very scared. The man had a beetle brow, huge muscles and was carrying a rope.

  “Who the Hell's that?” he said.

  “You are to be sacrificed!” said Lilith in a loud but slightly nervous voice.

  Bill suddenly noticed a silver dagger, glinting in Lilith's red-nailed hand.

  “Please,” said Bill in a desperate voice, “you don’t want to kill me. I’m, I'm...” He found it difficult rattling off his best attributes, difficult even to find words in such a heightened state of fear, so he simply said, “I’m your friend Lilith. I thought we were friends.”

  “Bind him Stoop!”

  The big bald man lumbered forward and grabbed Bill. This beast of a man was at least three times the size of skinny bespectacled Bill and was glaring at him with small beady eyes. Bill was forced to lie down on a low stone altar and had his hands and feet bound with a rope. Then – after a nod from Lilith – the man ripped Bill’s shirt open, revealing a pale hairless torso.

  Stoop’s real name was David and he was Lilith’s older brother, but had a young mental age. He’d always been quite a handful, getting into all sorts of trouble. Eventually, their parents decided to put him in care when he was sixteen. He idolised his little sister and would do anything she asked.

  Lilith moved forward and stood over Bill’s body – breathing heavily and gazing at him with wide mascarered eyes. She slowly opened the Almanac Regenerationis

  that lay on the end of the altar and studied its pages. The spell she was about to incant was long and complex. This was the first time she’d performed it on a real live person and not practised on Peanut, her battered old teddy bear. She wanted to make sure she hadn’t missed any part of it – if it went wrong she knew Arddhu Og would be angry with her. Eventually, when she was sure the incantation was memorised, she held up the small but lethal looking dagger, and with trembling hand held it over Bill’s heaving chest.

  Bill closed his eyes and waited for the blade to strike. He was so terrified he found it almost impossible to breathe, but after a few moments agonised anticipation he decided to open one eye. Lilith had lowered the dagger and was looking across the church with an impatient scowl.

  “Ophelia! What are you waiting for? It says in the book we need all his senses succumbed to the service.”

  Bill saw Ophelia over in the nave, crouched over the record player.

  “Sorry,” she said, pulling an apologetic face, “I’ll do it now.”

  She put on a record.

  What can only be described as a wild cacophony of kooky music blared out, echoing around the vaulted ceiling of the old church. Ophelia hoped it was suitable, would d
o what the book demanded. She’d bought it from the Groovy Vault record shop in town.

  The girls had made a big effort in giving the old church a suitably atmospheric makeover for their sacrifice. The candelabras around the altar were filled with blood-red candles and were casting a soft flickering light. A pentagram was chalked on the floor and the silver dagger was real silver. They’d studied the book’s cryptic instructions very carefully but were still worried about getting it all wrong.

  Bill tried to free himself from the rope but knew it was hopeless.

  “Why me?” he moaned. “What have I ever done to you?”

  “We need the blood of a virgin, and from what I’ve seen you definitely fit the bill.”

  “A virgin?”

  “Silence!”

  Ophelia approached the altar carrying a small stone urn. Bill gazed at her beautiful face and felt a sinking feeling in the pit of his stomach. She hadn’t invited him to this ‘moot’ because she actually felt something for him, the way he felt something for her. Theirs was not a romance about to blossom. She only wanted his blood.

  Ophelia wondered if Professor Jareth would be very angry at them for disobeying her instructions. She’d specifically told them to get Simon Drew’s cask, but they had taken Lord Valentine. She knew it wasn’t what the Professor had wanted... but wouldn’t it be marvellous to meet someone who’d actually lived through Victorian times? Imagine being able to talk to someone from out of history. And he did sound very sexy in Rowena’s journal.

  “The urn is ready to receive,” she said, giving Bill a guilty look. She really liked this boy. They seemed to hit it off. It was a pity he had to face Lilith’s anger.

  “Then it is time,” said Lilith dramatically, “time to summon our new playmate!”

  Lilith had never felt more alive. She was actually doing it! How shocked would her parents be if they saw her now? Summoning the dead! And Stoop was here to help, not shut away in some horrible home.

  The blade glinted in Lilith’s hand as she raised it, ready to strike at Bill’s quivering hairless torso. She looked again in the Almanac Regenerationis and read the Incantation of Earthly Rebirth.

  I call for Percy, Lord of Brimstone, entombed and furled –

  to be brought back goodly faire from the bowels of the Netherworld.

  He’s slumbered in his grave for many a long year –

  but blood will conjure life from this yon ceare.

  Bone and flesh will grow from whence it’s poured –

  and fashion noble man with all essences restored.

  Then she decided, in her nervousness, to add a few of her own embellishments.

  “I call on you, Arddhu Og, God of all the nasty stuff. Restore life into this here dusty pot! She causally waved her hand over Bill’s prostrate form. “I offer, oh mighty Arddhu Og, this pitiful little man.”

  “Lilith please!”

  “Who shall gladly offer up his precious life-giving blood.”

  Bill squirmed as the tightly knotted rope cut into his wrists. He began to scream for help but his voice was somewhat lost over the crazy music. Stoop lumbered forward and placed a meaty hand over his mouth.

  Lilith looked down at the pale hairless torso, felt the dagger in her hand. All she had to do was strike. She was a rebel. She was evil. She’d show her parents just how bad she could be. She closed her eyes and plunge the blade downward, slashing it across Bill’s stomach.

  Chapter Five - Resurrection

  Ceare is truly the most remarkable substance known to science. Its cellular transformation is very rapid and quite miraculous. But you must take great pains with the source material. I experimented with blood from a rotting cadaver and the result was so monstrous I cannot bear to describe it.

  – Extract from The Journal of William Whitebeam

  – By William Whitebeam, Professor of Occult Biology, 1872.

  Lilith raised the dagger ready to strike again. Her hands were shaking. Now that she could see real blood seeping out of this young man’s body it freaked her out and made her scared. She had hold back tears.

  “Stop!” shrieked Ophelia. “You don’t have to kill him. Please don’t! It doesn’t say anything in the book about that. We just need ‘a fair and weighty extraction of thy victim’s bloode’.”

  Stoop removed his hand from Bill's mouth and Bill moaned softly. His eyes were closed. Lilith lowered the dagger and watched a rivulet of blood oozing out of Bill’s stomach, spilling across the altar and dribbling onto the floor.

  “Quick, catch it,” she said.

  Ophelia moved forward and tentatively held the cask under the trickle of blood. It landed in the black ceare, lumpen at the bottom. She began a gentle swirling and it quickly turned into a soggy mess. Her hands were trembling so badly she could hardly hold the cask. She desperately wanted to untie Bill and call an ambulance; but managed to control herself. A dark pagan witch doesn't worry about such things.

  “I’m just glad we didn’t kill him.”

  “Yeah,” said Lilith unsurely, “When the thing is resurrected it may be angry at us for not doing that.”

  Ophelia gave Lilith a scared look.

  They filled the cask for a few more seconds until something strange began to happen. Ophelia could feel jerking movements inside the cask! It felt like some tiny creature was struggling to be free. Soon, the movement got much stronger. Ophelia looked inside and to her amazement and horror could see that the ceare and blood was now a solid mass, red and stringy with tiny chunks of bone. It was writhing and convulsing.

  A finger of pink tissue came creeping out the top and Ophelia screamed and dropped the cask before the bloody mass could touch her hand. It smashed into many pieces when it hit the dusty marble floor, releasing a football sized ball of bone, vein and sinew. Violent spasms made it jerk around on the floor. It was rapidly getting larger.

  The girls watched in wide-eyed horror.

  Stoop ambled over and raised a hefty foot, ready to stamp on it.

  “No Stoop!” commanded Lilith. “You are to serve it when it comes.”

  Stoop couldn't understand why he wasn't allowed to go ahead and smash this horrible thing but eventually mumbled, “I do what Sis say.” He shuffled back into the corner with a confused look on his beetle-browed face.

  The record player was still blaring out kooky music, but the needle got stuck and it started playing the incessant bang of a drum, repeated every half second. It sounded like a doom-laden death knell. Stoop gave it an angry kick and it became silent.

  The writhing mass of sinew had now grown rudimentary arms, legs and a head. The girls were repulsed when they saw internal organs, liver, lungs and a beating heart, but these were quickly covered by fast growing flesh. Before long it resembled human form, but flayed of skin. Fingernails popped out, a nose, a gaping mouth, then the fuzz of hair. Pale skin formed spontaneously, then eyelashes, large side burns, a sprouting of wavy black hair and a dimple in the chin.

  Lying before them was a naked man, strong and muscular, a perfect specimen of manhood in every way. The girls felt suddenly quite embarrassed looking at him. Then they saw the movement of an arm, a wiggle of perfectly manicured fingers. There was a cough, then a well-spoken voice.

  “Where the blazes am I? The ground is so terribly hard on my back. I ache like the devil himself.”

  “It worked,” said Lilith in amazement. “It actually worked!”

  The figure turned its head and looked directly at the girls. They cowered slightly and took a step backwards. It got to its feet and stood before them. The girls were scared but they couldn’t help admiring its perfect physique.

  As it stood before them, with handsome eyes and strong yet vulnerable face, the girls somehow forgot the strange transformation they’d just witnessed. The thing was now a man, a very handsome man, who gave them an appealing, vulnerable stare. They relaxed and blushed, almost giggled to each other, but still felt oddly nervous – there was something about his presence that touch a
deep-seated feeling of menace.

  The man looked down at his body.

  “I’m naked as a newborn! Most terribly sorry ladies, please excuse me.” He turned and saw Stoop lurking in the corner. “You, my good man, lend me your coat. I seem to have embarrassed myself most egregiously.”

  Stoop looked very confused. He muttered darkly to himself and glared at Lilith.

  “Get the bag Stoop,” she said.

  Stoop picked up a black bag, imprinted with cute red hearts, and brought it over to Lilith.

  “We read you’d be coming back naked so decided to do a little shopping.”

  “From Underworld in town,” added Ophelia. “They’ve got some great stuff, this is from their Victorian dandy romantic line.” She immediately regretted saying something so silly.

  Lilith gingerly handed the man a pair of red socks, jockey y-fronts and a white shirt with ruffles.

  “Undergarments, a shirt,” he said putting them on. “You are most gracious.”

  She handed him a pair of black drainpipe trousers and a purple velvet jacket with dark orange lining. He put these on and stood before the girls, bowing slightly.

  Lilith was still very afraid but also wanted to throw her arms around him and give him a kiss. She didn't understand how these two contradictory emotions could exist together, yet each be so strong.

  “May I introduce myself, ladies? I am Lord Percy Valentine of Brimstone Manor, squire of these parts. And you are?”

  The girls looked at each other and tried not to giggle nervously.

  “My name is Ophelia and I’m... a student of these parts.”

  Lord Percy gave her a dark smile. “Ah Ophelia, Hamlet’s most tragic of woman. So beautiful and yet so sad.”

  “And I’m Lilith,” said Lilith, almost pushing Ophelia out of the way. “And you are the most amazing man I have ever met.”

  Lilith shyly presented her hand and Lord Percy held it and kissed it gently. Lilith felt a strangely thrilling chill pass through her. She liked girls more than boys but this creature was different, had a magnetic attraction stronger than either.