by Bill Hussey
‘Soon you shall return to the world and tell of this true resurrection.’
I had, of course, guessed the nature of this Godless creation, but still the rich tones of that voice harrowed up my blood. I fell to my knees, half in horror, half in worship.
TRANSLATOR’S NOTE: The anonymous author then goes on to describe how he was taken to a large chateau that rested in the saddle between two mountains, so that he could pen his ‘testament’. The main features of the rite that I have drawn out are as follows:
1. Only the body of a child-spirit, on the cusp of adulthood, may be taken.
2. The order of the rite is not set in stone, but the following acts are essential: (i). the fat of two children must be consumed to power the possession. (ii). the baptism clothes must be burned to show the path into the child (the vessel). (iii). the spirit desirous of new life (the possessor) must partake of the vessel’s flesh. (iv). the possessor’s exhausted life must be ended.
3. After his death, the possessor has the grace of ten days in which to enter the vessel. After that time, his psychic substance will deteriorate to such an extent that possession is impossible, except in one unusual circumstance [see the ADDENDUM to this manuscript.]
4. To take advantage of any special gifts of the vessel, the possessor must first ensure those gifts have been fully realised by the vessel at the point of possession.
5. When possession is complete, the possessor cannot end his new life by self-destruction. The life must either be taken by another or by natural decay. That said decay will be a living decomposition. A terrible rending of form and spirit.
‘Dear me, Mr Trent.’
Through bleary eyes, Jack looked up from the text. The librarian was holding the hourglass.
‘It appears that you have run out of time.’
‘No, a little longer.’ Jack’s hand shot out towards the librarian in a pleading gesture. Papers flew off the table. ‘There’s more to read. An addendum …’
The monk tapped the hourglass’ empty chamber.
‘Terms and conditions, Mr Trent.’
‘No. I can’t stay here. I have to go. Please, I have to save the boy.’
‘As I read the situation, Jack, you have things somewhat upside down. Much better for you to remain within these walls. Out of reach. Out of Time …’
TUESDAY 29th OCTOBER 2002
Behold, I shew you a mystery;
We shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed.
I Corinthians 15:51
The Doctor will see you now.
Oliver Godfrey, Post Mortem
Twenty-six
Jamie had been awake for two nights straight. His eyes ached for sleep, but whenever he closed them he saw terrible things: a chalk-white face in the half-light of a forest; an axe head cleaving through skin and bone; a little boy called Simon drawing a picture for his dead father. And blood, washing down centuries.
He wanted to tell his mum and grandad. But tell them what? That he was scared shitless to close his eyes? That he had seen something on that little bridge that had made him piss his pants, but he couldn’t remember what it was? They’d think he was cracked. Before you could say ‘I’d like pink polka dot pyjamas, please, and a warm milk for my invisible friend’, two Lurch-like attendants would be locking the padded cell.
He was dozing. Had to stay awake. He switched on the TV.
Jack had taken him to a retrospective of fifties sci-fi movies at the old ABC in the summer. In one sitting, they’d watched spooky kids with pudding-basin haircuts in Village of the Damned, giant atomic ants devastating LA in Them! and the ET robot from The Day the Earth Stood Still, who could only be stopped by the command ‘Klaatu barada nikto’. The old black and white, just starting on the TV, had been his favourite: one man’s fight against listless pod-people in Invasion of the Body Snatchers.
The film’s hero, Dr Miles Bennel, slammed on the brakes to avoid the kid who’d run out into the road. As Bennel and the boy’s grandmother talked on the dusty track to Santa Mira, Jamie’s mind wandered to the third row of the ABC. He longed to be back in that musty theatre now, with its hard seats, sticky floors and the soft, flickering light beam overhead. And Jack, sitting next to him, nudging him at the good bits. It was a safe, warm memory.
He was so sleepy … The Sandman sprinkled his dust …
And then Jamie was wide awake again.
Something had jarred in that last sliver of consciousness before sleep took hold. Something in the room? At the window? His eyes darted and focused at last on the TV. Dr Bennel had got back into his car and roared away but the picture had not switched to the next scene: Bennel’s surgery. The empty highway, with the regiment of telephone poles stretching into the distance, was frozen on screen. Must be a technical fault, Jamie thought. But the soundtrack still played, looping the rustle of the wind through the trees and the scuttle of grit on the road. Jamie blinked. Surely it was just an imperfection in the film. No, it was moving. A tiny dot coming down the road. A man, his head swaying rhythmically. As it approached, the shape of the figure became clearer: a bone-thin body wrapped in tattered clothes.
Jamie snatched for the remote. It slipped through his fingers and fell under the bed. He wanted to dive after it, but found he could not move. The shadows of the celluloid trees glanced over its withered form as the scarecrow-figure came fully into view. It stopped inches from the screen and blocked out the road behind. Beneath its hat, Jamie could see a scarred mouth tense into a smile. The scarecrow’s voice crackled through the speakers:
‘Don’t worry, Jamie. Later you won’t remember. Later you’ll think: it was just a movie.’
A maggot crawled between the cracks in the monochrome face. Then it pushed out into three dimensions and writhed on the surface of the screen.
‘Just a movie.’
The maggot plopped onto the floor and rolled there, fat and white. Identical gyrating bodies grew from the television until the screen was filled. Squeezing between the maggots came other creatures: beetles, spiders, centipedes, bluebottles, locusts. Below the TV, a carpet of exoskeleton and carapace formed and crawled out towards the bed. The mass buzzed and hissed, mating and devouring, as it moved like a dark battalion across the floor. An advance guard of mosquitoes landed on the counterpane. Jamie tried to swat them away. He managed, with a huge effort, to flick the fingers of his right hand. The mosquitoes took off, only to circle and come back, fixing him with tiny red eyes. Now the swarm was creeping across the bed. It tickled along his arms, up his chest, and rolled over his chin. Still Jamie could not move.
‘Just a movie.’
The hum of the fricative choir grew louder. Then the sound became at once intimate and muted as tiny forms skittered into his ears. Soft and hard, smooth and barbed, they fanned out across his body. They crawled between his toes, slipped between his buttocks, chattered in the forest of his hair. He felt their wetness, like miniature tongues, slip into the folds of his skin. Legs scampered through his pubic hair and mouths bedded deep into his penis. He whimpered, but could not brush them away. His hands were dead weights at his sides. A spider strained across his face, hefting a sac of eggs behind it. This webbed womb raked over the jelly of Jamie’s eye.
‘Just a movie.’
A sea of black flooded into his nose and mouth. He swallowed, and felt a large insect curl up and drown in his throat. Pinpricks of pain fired across his body. Wings, massed with tiny veins, cloaked his eyes. Something must have traversed the chambers of his ear and reached his brain. It was the final horror, that alien presence probing the tissue of his mind.
‘Just a …’
He could no longer hear, no longer feel. His senses gone, all he could do was lie there, encased in an undulating cocoon. These things would soon devour him; strip his flesh to the bone. But before that, he would become a nest. A place to feed and breed, in which to eat and, in turn, to be eaten.
Jamie thought of his mum and his grandad. He thought of Jack Trent, who mi
ght have saved him. And then there was nothing left to think. He gave himself up to the inevitable.
‘Wake up, Sir. You say you found him like this?’
‘You came round the corner just as I laid eyes on him, Constable.’
‘Hmm. Doesn’t look like a tramp. Do you get many of those?’
‘In the gateway some nights,’ the porter said, thumbing the brim of his bowler and scratching his temple. ‘Not laid over the Master’s parking space.’
The man, sprawled across the tarmac of Jericho’s private car park, was lying on his stomach, his hair jewelled with frost. His hands were covered in what looked like brick dust. In fact, there was a layer of dust all over his head and clothes, as if he had stumbled through a building site. Beside his lips stood a puddle of oil-like fluid. The man stirred.
‘The sands ran out,’ he said, pushing against the tarmac to raise himself.
‘I’ll get ’im a blanket from the lodge,’ said the porter.
The man’s coat, half-frozen, cracked as he eased himself onto all-fours. Dust rained across the reserved car port which had been his bed for the night. Dawling helped him to his feet.
‘Now, Sir, had a bit of an adventure, did you? Want to tell me … Jesus Christ.’
The stranger, who Dawling now realised was no stranger at all, blinked in the light that had just touched the spire of the Watching Tower.
‘I was out of time. I thought I’d… How did I get out?’
‘I don’t know, Sir. I think it’s best if you come with me. We’ll get you some breakfast.’
‘No. I have to see somebody.’
Dawling put a restraining arm on the man’s shoulder, but he twisted loose. The constable stumbled backwards and tripped over the little porter. He heard the clatter of the gate.
‘What were you doing, creeping around behind me?’
‘I’m sorry,’ the porter said, meekly. ‘I see our friend has escaped. Ah, well, only a vagabond. Didn’t outstay his welcome here at least.’
Dawling grunted, opened his notebook and scribbled: Insp Trent – found sleeping rough – J College – 0700 hrs.
Jamie ate his cereal in front of the TV. He seemed engrossed by the discussion of Chelsea’s chances of overthrowing the Manchester/Arsenal domination of the Premier League. He looked very pale and Dawn asked if he felt unwell. ‘M’fine,’ he muttered.
‘I don’t think he’s up to school,’ Tom Howard said, as she packed Jamie’s lunch.
‘For God’s sake, Dad, it’s probably just his hormones.’
As she watched her father grow smaller in the wing mirror, Dawn began to ‘tidy her mind’. First off then, Jamie had nothing to do with this case. Common sense insisted that, whatever was concerning Jack about her son, it was a separate business to the murder of Oliver Godfrey and disappearance of Simon Malahyde. Secondly, the picture she found yesterday was exactly what Jack had said it was: a present for the father Simon never knew. Thirdly, nothing was wrong with Jamie. It was hormones.
She turned to check the oncoming traffic. Jamie was staring at the ‘End is Nigh’ evangelist preaching on the opposite side of the street. Staring, but not seeing, Dawn thought. The horn of the coach behind wailed.
‘Okay to go, Mum,’ Jamie said. His eyes were sharp, his voice normal.
They arrived at the school. He was getting out of the car when Dawn touched his arm.
‘You’re all right, aren’t you, J?’
His head lowered. All she could see was the hood of his Parka. The school bell sounded. A huge-breasted teacher clucked around the playground, gathering up the children. Jamie looked up.
‘Please, Mum, I want to see Jack. I need to.’
‘But J, I …’
‘Jamie! Hey spacka, you weirdin’ out again today? Oh, hello, Mrs Howard.’
A ginger-haired boy, who Dawn remembered from football practice, dragged her son away. To her surprise, Jamie fell into animated conversation and did not look back.
He’s fine, she told herself. Everything’s fine.
‘Where the fuck is he, Dawn?’
DCI Jarski was at Jack’s desk, rifling through papers.
‘I don’t know. What on earth are you doing?’
‘Let me tell you something that may have slipped your notice, Sergeant: This is a murder investigation. Two kiddies dead and the press sticking to me like chewing gum to the cat. I told Jack I wanted a full report this morning, including this crackpot priest idea of his. I’ve got nada, so I’m looking for his notes. You know what? There are none.’
‘Two? What do you mean two?’
‘Am I running this case solo now? Have you even checked in with the Incident Room downstairs? Found, this morning, on the playing grounds near Renton.’
Jarski tossed her two black and white enlargements. Taken from different angles, they both depicted the severed head of a young boy. In the first picture, the left side of the kid’s face was resting in the churned earth between two goalposts, so that only the right eye could be seen, staring low across the ground. In the second, the head had been rolled over. Dawn found it difficult to pick out the cherubic features of Stephen Lloyd from the pulped mass that filled the close-up.
‘Before we found him, I had a call from his folks,’ Jarski said. ‘I was ready to give you a bollocking about needlessly upsetting the public, but it seems you and Trent were on to something there. That alone, Dawn, is your saving grace. You and weirdo boy are fucking good. But don’t push it.’
‘Don’t push it?’ Dawn snapped. ‘This is getting beyond a joke. I think I’d rather you give the case to Mescher; then at least I wouldn’t have to hear your constant whining.’
‘Talking of Mescher,’ Jarski looked up from the paperwork and pointed to the chair opposite. ‘He brought PC Dawling to see me this morning. Now, I’m going to tell you what Dawling found lying around like a fucking hobo in the grounds of Jericho College at seven a.m. Then you’re going to tell me what’s going on with Jack.’
Crow Haven Primary School. Opened 5th September 1850.
In Memory of those teachers and children who lost their lives in the fire of 1848.
‘Sleep after toil, port after stormy seas
Ease after war, death after life, does greatly please’.
A streak of bird shit had crusted over the stone plaque. Jack spat on his handkerchief and rubbed hard until only a faint outline remained. From inside the building came the hesitant chant of children reciting their times tables. It sounded almost religious, like a group of novices intoning mass for the first time. He was trying again to remember how he had escaped from the Yeager Library last night, when a voice interrupted his thoughts.
‘The fire was started deliberately, but the culprit was never found.’
A figure pushed through the glass entrance doors. In its wake, Jack caught that smell of damp coats, boiled vegetables and cheap disinfectant so redolent of school. The woman, probably in her fifties, had shoulder-length grey hair and a confident brusqueness of manner.
‘I would love to have seen the old schoolhouse,’ she continued. ‘It was built here with the town, you know? Sixteen hundred and forty-two.’
‘It was completely destroyed?’ Jack asked.
‘You can still find the odd brick in the forest, I believe. Strange how that happens, isn’t it? How the corpse of a building can spread out, as if the fabric of the place was returning somewhere. Still, the old school, like the town, didn’t have the happiest of histories. Perhaps whoever burned it down thought that he was purging the place. I’m not sure the children had to die, though … So, Mr Trent,’ she said. ‘I believe it’s time I introduced you to Simon Malahyde.’
Twenty-seven
‘Father Brody wants you to hear my story, though I don’t care to relive it.’
The wall behind Geraldine Pryce’s desk was a riot of colour. Plastered across every available inch, the children’s pictures lit up the room. They struck a discordant note with the austere Victorian furniture an
d pocked, industrial grey paintwork. On her desk sat a mug with World’s Best Teacher – Florida printed in faded gold letters. It should look hokey, Jack thought. But, because it was hers, it didn’t.
‘He’s contacted you?’ Jack asked.
‘Last night.’
‘And you didn’t think to report it?’
‘Mr Trent, I believe, from what Asher Brody told me, that you understand this business. You know Asher is a good man.’
‘I don’t know anything of the kind. I just want to know what he has to tell me. And quickly.’
‘I think he’s preparing you. Perhaps it’s like viewing the Bayeux Tapestry without knowing what it depicts. You can guess at what might be happening in it, but if you don’t know the history, the people, then you’ll be asking yourself, ‘Why’re they fighting?’ and ‘Who’s the chap with the arrow in his eye?’ It’s possible that you already see the tapestry of this story, but the why escapes you.’
‘All right, Miss Pryce,’ Jack sighed. ‘Paint me a picture.’
The playtime bell rang through the corridors. A wall of noise raced past the headmistress’ door: feet stomping, excited chatter, calls of ‘Quietly!’ ‘Slow down!’ and once an exhausted ‘Jesus, I need a fag’. Then everything was still. Geraldine Pryce began.
Her words washed over him. He was so tired. The story Geraldine told played out like a film in his head …
Crow Haven: September 1984 – January 1985
Over the long summer holiday, Arabella Nugent, seventy-three-year-old headmistress of the Crow Haven Primary School, received notice terminating her employment. She seemed to take it very well, chatting about ideas for her newfound leisure time: planning an herbaceous border; re-reading Middlemarch and other big fat classics; brewing her own cherry brandy.