CHAPTER NINETEEN
The savoury aroma of dinner seeped into the lounge overshadowing the old stately house smell that seemed to linger like time had stood still. I felt my stomach rumble and my mouth watered at the heavenly scent that filled the air.
Mrs. Gables appeared at the door, an unsure look over her face as she looked at us. “Dinner is ready. If you follow me, I’ll show you to your seats.”
She led us across the large hall. It seemed that every couple of seconds she would glance over her shoulder nervously at us and speed up if we got too close.
Stepping to the side of a wooden door, she said, “The bishop will be with you soon. Go in and sit down.” She backed away from us and disappeared through another doorway.
A mahogany dining table big enough to seat six, was covered with several china serving bowls and five placemats. We each took a seat and left the head of the table free for the bishop. The dining table was positioned by a set of French doors leading out into the garden. The room had been lit with some candles and a small fire crackled in the hearth, making the room warm and cosy. Every couple of minutes the sound of rain hitting the French doors would fill the room with a clatter, like gravel being thrown at glass. I looked across the table at Jude and Raven. A decanter of wine seemed to have caught Jude’s attention as he ran his fingers over a wine glass that was placed beside his dinner plate. Max sat next to me. He had taken the seat beside where the bishop would sit.
“Don’t you think you should take your jackets off?” said Jude, looking at Max and then Raven. “We are having dinner with a bishop after all.”
“I can hardly eat dinner with a bishop with no shirt on, Jude,” said Max. “I think that would look worse, don’t you?”
Jude nodded his head as if in agreement with Max and then turned to Raven. “What about you? You’re wearing that pretty flowered blouse – you’ve got no excuse.”
“I’m not taking the jacket off,” huffed Raven. “I don’t like the blouse and you know it – so quit trying to wind me up.” She zipped the jacket up tight to her neck as if in defiance and stared blankly up at the ceiling.
“Suit yourself,” shrugged Jude. “I wonder what Mrs. Gables has cooked us?” He patted his stomach. “I could eat a horse.”
“How do we know she hasn’t put poison in it?” hissed Raven. “It’s obvious she doesn’t want us here.”
“Sshh,” said Max. He frowned at Raven. “Keep your voice down. I don’t want to get thrown out of here before I’ve even heard anything about my brother.”
“Yeah, try to be pleasant,” said Jude. “I know it’s hard for you but just try.”
The door to the dining room swung open and the bishop walked in and took his seat. Mrs. Gables followed behind him.
“Is there anything else you need?” she asked, looking at the bishop, her hands clasped tightly in front of her.
“That will be all, Mrs. Gables,” smiled the bishop. “When dinner is over you can retire for the night.”
Mrs. Gables left the room, closing the door behind her. We looked at the bishop. An uncomfortable silence hung in the air. It felt strange to be sitting down for dinner with a complete stranger. Holy man or not, I wondered why Mrs. Gables seemed so on edge around him. Why had she tried to hide our appearance from him when we had first turned up at his home?
“Please, help yourself,” said the bishop, standing up and passing one of the serving bowls to Max. “Mrs. Gables is a very fine cook and I’m sure you must all be very hungry.”
Max took the lid off of the bowl and a flurry of steam wafted up. He took a large spoonful of peas and carrots and passed the bowl across to Jude.
After filling our plates with Shepherd’s Pie and vegetables topped off with some gravy, the bishop cleared his throat and said, “You wanted to know about your brother, Robert?”
“Yes,” answered Max, his mouth full of food.
“Your brother did come here.” The bishop put his knife and fork down and poured himself a glass of red wine from the decanter. “He was in a terrible state, as were the other two who were with him. At first I thought that they were drunk or on some kind of hallucination drug. But when I let them into my home in the light from the lamps, I saw their veins. When your brother started talking about Father William and Cruor Pharma, I knew they were telling me the truth. Just one mention of Cruor Pharma was enough to open my eyes and ears.”
“How come?” I asked. “Had you heard things before about Cruor Pharma?”
The bishop took a large gulp of wine and then wiped his lips with a napkin. “Father William wasn’t the first priest that I sent to Cruor Pharma. Before him I had sent Father Benet and after him, Father Peter. They both left their posts earlier than planned. Neither of them liked serving the chapel at Cruor Pharma, and when I questioned them about it, they were very reluctant to tell me of their concerns. I didn’t understand what the problem could be. After all, I knew that Father William had served the chapel many years before them and he’d never had one complaint against Cruor Pharma. After some persuading, Father Benet told me that he didn’t like the feel of the place. He said it was like something hung over Cruor Pharma, like a blanket of despair, and that the staff had become very vacant. When Doctor Middleton closed the old part of the hospital, Father Benet asked to be moved to another parish. He felt that there was little need for him now that there would be no patients and the hospital had moved more into research. He seemed very unhappy, so I agreed to move him.”
“Is that why you sent Father Peter – to fill the vacancy?” I asked.
“Yes. Just because there were no more patients to visit, didn’t mean I could turn my back on Cruor Pharma. After all, there was still the chapel and I think, back then, I believed that maybe Father Benet just hadn’t been right for that posting.” The bishop stood up and poured himself another glass of wine. “How rude of me, I haven’t offered you all a glass, would you like some?”
“Yes please.” Jude smiled and held up his glass. His eyes lit up as the red liquid poured in. “Thanks.” He took several large gulps and then wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. “That’s good.”
“Italian, I think,” smiled the bishop, offering the wine to Raven.
She screwed her nose up and shook her head, “No, I don’t like red wine, it looks like blood.”
The bishop moved round to me and Max, and without asking us he filled our glasses. “Now, where was I? Ah yes, Father Peter.”
“Why did Father Peter not like it there?” asked Max, taking a sip of the wine.
“He had only been at Cruor Pharma for two weeks when he came to visit me here at Dusk Fall Retreat. He was very pale and… how should I put it? On edge,” said the bishop, nodding to himself. “He asked if he could be placed elsewhere. I asked him why, and he said that he felt very unwelcome at Cruor Pharma. I remember my response to him was the Lord’s work is difficult at times and not everyone is ready to receive Him. I told Father Peter that he must be patient – not everyone goes to church and those who don’t may still believe but they worship our Lord in different ways.”
“And what did he say to that?” I asked, placing my knife and fork down on my plate.
“He took no comfort in my words and fell to his knees – pleading that I move him,” said the bishop, his wiry eyebrows raised. “When I pushed him further to explain his outburst, he simply said that there were terrible things going on at Cruor Pharma. Rumours amongst the staff regarding six coffins and a drug that turned normal healthy people into monsters.”
“Did you believe him?” I asked, watching the bishop wipe his mouth, flecks of his dinner caught up in his beard.
The bishop shook his head and paused for a moment before answering me. “I had never been witness to anything otherworldly at that time and I never wanted to even contemplate that such evil could really exist. So instead of facing it, I did the easiest thing and that was to agree to move Father Peter and try to brush off the disturbing things he had told
me.” The bishop finished the last of his wine and poured himself another glass. “It’s one of my biggest regrets that I didn’t do more. When Father Peter left Dusk Fall Retreat that afternoon, he threw himself in front of a train.”
“He was really messed up,” said Jude. “Poor guy.”
“Witnesses say they saw Father Peter struggling with himself – almost fighting something along the platform – like he didn’t want to throw himself onto the tracks but then he did,” said the bishop. “It was reported that Father Peter’s last words were something like – ‘They’ve come to kill me – they know I’ve spoken against them – Trabek has sent his servants.’ I don’t know.” The bishop shook his head. “I can’t quite remember exactly what was said and I’m sure the witnesses were somewhat disturbed, so they could have got it wrong but…”
“Trabek?” said Max. “Who’s that?”
“At the time I had no idea,” said the bishop, knocking back another gulp of his wine. “But I decided to do a little research on Cruor Pharma and this Trabek.”
“What did you find?” Raven suddenly piped in. “Devil worshippers and human sacrifices?”
“Not quite, my dear. I have access to records and archives of my diocese – my parish,” said the bishop, standing up and walking over to the French doors. “They contain such things as baptisms, marriages, burials, and deaths, and date back years and years. I found Doctor Middleton’s marriage recorded in these archives and the baptism of his son. All seems perfectly normal – you might think, only… his age doesn’t add up. The date his son was baptised doesn’t add up either.”
“How do you mean?” asked Jude, helping himself to another glass of wine.
“Well, Doctor Middleton shouldn’t even be alive – the dates put him at being well over a hundred and sixty years old now, and his son would be dead also. So does that mean that we have two people taking on the identity of Middleton and his son, or do we have something very otherworldly going on?”
The wind suddenly picked up throwing the rain against the glass. It howled an eerie wail through the old house making the door to the dining room open. We all jumped. The bishop spun around, a look of concern across his face. When he realised that there was no one at the door, he sat down.
I thought about what he had just told us. It wasn’t really anything surprising – just a confirmation about what we had already gathered from Father Williams’s journal. I was about to say so when the bishop started talking again.
“His wife’s death is recorded also,” said the bishop, “she died when the son would have been in his late teens. It states that she was murdered.”
“By whom?” I asked, taking a sip of wine.
“The murderer was never found,” said the bishop, her body had been hacked to pieces. A very unpleasant affair.”
Jude reached across the table and poured the last of the wine into his glass. “What about this Trabek? What did you find out about him or her?”
“Not too much. I have a very old book in my library and the name Trabek is mentioned in it,” said the bishop, “under the section about demons.”
“We already know that demons are involved in all this,” I said, feeling rather frustrated. I had hoped that the bishop might have had something new to tell us.
“Well, alongside this demon named Trabek are five other demons mentioned. It says that a group of servants travel with theses otherworldly creatures and it is believed that whichever demon can find a suitable body for the servants, then those servants will obey that demon and only that demon. When this has been successfully achieved, only then can the demon summon other servants who are yet to enter our world,” said the bishop, pushing his plate away. “It sounds like something you would watch in a movie, I know, but after everything I have heard and seen, it worries me greatly that these creatures are real and planning on infesting our world and our people.”
“Can you remember the names of the five other demons?” I asked, taking a sip of wine.
The bishop sat quietly for a moment, his fingers twiddled through his beard as he tried to remember. “Eras… Trabek… Quint… Doshia…” He shook his head. “I can’t remember the other two names off the top of my head, I will have to take another look at the book.”
“Doshia,” said Max, turning to look at us. “That’s what Hannah said.”
I leant back in my seat. With each piece of new information, not only did it give me answers but it also gave me new fears. Deep down I was still hoping that this was just one big nightmare and I would wake up. Instead it just reinforced the true horror that I was caught up in and the realisation that although I had escaped Cruor Pharma, there was no escaping the demons. I could run from them – keep moving from place to place - but I couldn’t run from myself. I looked down at the black veins on my hands. How could I get away from what was inside me? Wherever I went, the demons in me would come too.
CHAPTER TWENTY
We had left the dining room and were now seated in a room that the bishop called the snug. A large fire burned in the hearth and I sat with my legs curled up on one end of a tatty-looking sofa. The bishop had seated himself in a large armchair by the window, the curtains pulled tight. Max and Raven had taken the other sofa, and Jude sat on the floor, propped up against the sofa where I sat. The walls almost seemed to be moving as the shadows from the fire danced across them.
“So, can you tell me about my brother?” asked Max, looking at the bishop. “How was he? Did he look like us? Black veins and twisted nails?”
“Yes,” answered the bishop. “He had thick black veins and seemed to have a fever. But the other two were in a worse state than him.”
“In what way?” asked Raven, twisting a strand of her hair around her finger. “Did they try and eat you?”
“No, they appeared traumatized – disturbed,” said the bishop. “They were both covered in black veins and their skin had a sickly-grey colour about it. The young lady, Sylvia, was extremely distressed. There was no calming her. Your brother Robert had to hold her down. He begged me to perform an exorcism but I knew there was little point. They hadn’t been possessed – just drugged with something terrible. I remember suggesting that I call for an ambulance but your brother wouldn’t hear of it. After he explained that they had come from Cruor Pharma, and that Father Williams had sent them, I understood why they didn’t want an ambulance. Memories of what had happened to Father Peter was enough to stop me from contacting anyone. I had become convinced that if you spoke out about Cruor Pharma or the doctors then something bad would happen to you. I am ashamed to say that I wished that your brother and his two companions hadn’t come here. I felt they had put me in danger – placed me in a rather difficult situation – one that I didn’t want to be associated with.”
I slumped back on the sofa. I had hoped that maybe the bishop could perform an exorcism on us – rid us of this dark matter that infested our veins – but that hope had now been crushed.
“Well I guess you must have done a good job in keeping their appearance here pretty quiet,” said Max. “After all, you’re still here and nothing bad has happened to you.”
“Well, I thought I had done a good job in hiding the fact that they had come here, but here you all are, so… I hadn’t contemplated that Father William would write about it in a journal.” The bishop forced a smile. “Does anyone else know that you were coming here?”
“Just one,” I whispered, thinking of Hannah, “but she’s dead, so you don’t need to worry about it.” I looked up at a painting which hung above the fireplace and wished I could step into it and disappear. It had two old train carriages pulled in at a smoky-looking station. Passengers were waiting on the platform with suitcases ready to embark on a journey. If only I could be one of those people – leave this life behind and start a new one at the end of the train line, wherever that may be. I looked at the bishop. I understood how he felt. He wanted to cover any trace, any association with the victims of Cruor Pharma so nothing would come
and get him. He was right to feel this way. Hannah had been dealt with, Father Williams silenced, and the same had happened to Nurse Jones and her son. But if Robert, Sylvia, and Alex had been here and had left and no harm had come to the bishop, then surely we were safe here and so was the bishop.
“So they hadn’t turned into crazy zombies then?” asked Raven leaning forward in her seat, “they were like us but a bit more messed up?”
I looked at Raven, surprised by her sudden interest. She hadn’t seemed to be concerned in anything, really, other than ghosts and demons. Now she seemed to be engrossed in finding out about Max’s brother and the other two volunteers.
“They were in a bad way,” answered the bishop, looking at Raven. “But not like zombies.”
“Were they sane?” Raven pushed for more details. “You know… did they think straight… did they have full control over themselves?”
“Raven, why are you so interested all of a sudden?” I asked.
“Because if their normal, then we’ll stay normal,” she said. “And if we find them then we’ll be stronger – you know… safety in numbers.”
“What happened to them?” asked Jude. “Where did they go?”
“They stayed here for a few days and then they left for Derbyshire – Doctor Langstone’s I do believe,” said the bishop. “I’m sorry, Max, but I haven’t heard from them since.”
“So they had the same idea as us,” I said, looking at Max. “We know Sylvia never made it to Doctor Langstone’s but did your brother and Alex get there?”
“If they did, why hasn’t Robert contacted me?” Max slumped back against a cushion. “I feel like I haven’t got any further forward in finding Robert. When I get to a place that I know he was at, he’s already moved on.”
Dwell Page 11