Nightmare Valley

by David Longhorn

  Denny peered at the wall. She thought she could just make out shapes, a few dark patterns beneath the faded white.

  “I guess it was some kind of religious picture?” she asked, hoping the opposite was true.

  “Opinions vary,” Arkwright said. “But I know my predecessor was very keen for it to be covered. He painted over it himself, much to the chagrin of the archaeologists who wanted to study it. Quite a row at the time, I believe.”

  “Any photographs?” Denny asked.

  The priest shrugged.

  “I don't know. I've certainly not seen one.”

  Denny thanked him and left, pausing in the church porch to make a note.

  Mural – Seventies. Find pic?

  In the churchyard, she paused, scanning the townscape, seeing nothing especially interesting. Raising her eyes, she looked across the river at Branksholme Woods. The gray clouds cleared for a moment and a ray of sunshine reached down, bringing out the reds and golds of autumn leaves. The small woods looked far from menacing. But from her experience at Malpas Abbey, she knew that appearances were often deceiving.

  Might as well get it over with, she thought. At least I'll get some fresh air and exercise.

  Denny set off at a good pace, taking a few pictures along the way, and trying to convey the impression that she was just another tourist. Locals smiled and said 'Good morning!' as she passed, a novel experience for someone who had spent the last few weeks in London. She began to feel more optimistic about her assignment. Even if she went back to the Romola Foundation having drawn a blank, she had at least seen a beautiful, easygoing corner of England.

  She had just set off up a winding path to the woods when she became aware of the sirens. Looking back at Machen, Denny saw flashing blue lights. A car and a van with police markings were winding their way through the narrow streets. She stood watching as the vehicles slowed to cross the hump-backed bridge, then stopped at the bottom of the track. Dark-uniformed figures climbed out and began to ascend the hillside.

  Denny felt conflicted. Her instincts told her to get as close as possible to the scene of the incident – whatever it was. But she also knew it would be unwise to draw the attention of the police again in so short a time.

  Mysterious deaths happen when I'm around, she thought. Not a good look in the eyes of the law.

  She decided to play it by ear, standing just off the path as a group of police officers climbed the hill. One man in plain clothes glanced at Denny, but did not show any sign of recognition. Emboldened by this, she decided to continue her innocent tourist routine.

  “Excuse me?” she said. “Are the woods closed off or something?”

  A young constable stopped.

  “Sorry, Miss, but we're going to cordon off a large area, so no point in going up.”

  “Oh, right,” she said, not having to feign disappointment. “Has there been an accident?”

  “I can't comment on that, sorry,” the policeman replied, and followed his colleagues up the hill.

  Denny suppressed an impulse to follow them and set off back toward the town. A car marked with a caduceus symbol was now parked next to the police vehicles. A middle-aged man was just closing the door. The bag he was carrying jogged Denny's memory. She had seen similar bags before, at crime scenes in the US.

  “Doctor Wakefield?” she asked, as soon as he was close enough to hear.

  The man stopped, appeared surprised, and slightly annoyed.

  “Yes?” he said. “And you are?”

  “Sorry,” Denny said. “It's just someone mentioned you to me as an authority on local folklore. I wonder–”

  “This is hardly the time or the place,” he said brusquely, and walked past her.

  Fair point, she thought. But now I know who you are.

  Denny walked back into town, passing a group of people walking the other way. She realized that they were on their way to form the obligatory crowd of rubberneckers standing behind a police cordon. Discreetly, she dawdled by the bridge, taking pictures of the river with her phone, and trying to glean some information.

  “They say it's old Jack Larkin,” observed one man.

  “What's left of him,” said an elderly woman, with relish. “Torn up, something awful, just like poor Mrs. Wakefield was.”

  The small crowd moved on, and Denny stood looking up at Branksholme Woods.

  Could be a coincidence, she thought. But how likely is that?

  She thought back to the horrific violence that had occurred at Malpas Abbey. That had been weeks before the disappearance of the local children, of course. Then a thought struck her. It was so obvious she swore under her breath, cursing herself for being so stupid. She knew from personal experience that the Interlopers, in their own parallel reality, experienced time differently from human beings. A few minutes there amounted to several hours in this world.

  So, from the perspective of the Phantom Dimension, the children from Machen had vanished almost immediately after the events at Malpas.

  ***

  The senior police officer raised a hand to stop Wakefield. The doctor stopped at the police cordon, which sealed off the eastern edge of Branksholme Woods.

  “You don't have to do this, Russell,” said the detective. “We can get another medical examiner to deal with it.”

  “That's ridiculous,” responded Wakefield. “I'm right here, now. Why bother somebody in Hereford or Taunton?”

  “It's a bit …” the officer hesitated. “I think it might be a bit difficult for you, given what happened to …”

  Again, the detective hesitated, not meeting the doctor's eye. Then he took a breath. “Given what happened to Marie, I mean,” he said quickly.

  Oh God, Wakefield thought. I know what it is. What the body will be like. The injuries. The mutilations.

  “We're both professionals,” Wakefield said evenly. “If you can cope with it, so can I.”

  The officer looked levelly at the doctor for the first time, then nodded, and led him into the woods. Neither man said anything during the couple of minutes it took them to reach the scene. A photographer was taking pictures from various angles. It was a familiar sight to Wakefield. But the victim was startling, horrifying even.

  “Couple of my blokes had to throw up,” the detective said. “Glad I just had toast and coffee this morning.”

  “There's no doubt about the identity?” Wakefield asked, trying to sound professional.

  “Jack Larkin,” the officer confirmed. “His wallet was still in his pocket. No sign of attempted robbery. In fact, he looks like he fell into some kind of agricultural machinery, but–”

  “But that's not easy to do in the middle of a small forest,” completed Wakefield.

  The doctor knelt beside the body – or what was left of it. He took out a small mp3 recorder and started to make notes. It was an automatic process born of years of experience in forensics. He spoke the words – laceration, castration, viscera – while struggling with memories of Marie.

  No, he thought. The two Marias. The real one who died like this, and the false one who came to replace her.

  “I know it's tricky,” the detective said carefully. “But could you give us a rough idea of the time of death?”

  Wakefield recalled the time that the false Marie had left his bed. Then he calculated how long it would have taken her to climb the side of the valley, reach the woods. All the while, he was pretending to take temperatures, test degrees of rigor, and follow usual procedure.

  I'm assuming she moved no faster than a real person could, of course. They say the dead travel fast. If only she was a ghost …

  “I'd say between four and five this morning,” he said, standing up. “No later than five thirty.”

  The detective looked slightly surprised.

  “You're not normally so sure after a first glance,” he pointed out. “What's different about this one?”

  Wakefield shrugged, started to pack away his forensic kit.

  “Sometimes you
can just tell.”

  Nobody had mentioned Marie. Wakefield stood up, paused, waited for the detective to say something about the two killings. Wakefield had not examined his wife's body. It was against official procedure. But he had called in a favor and seen the county medical examiner's final report.

  Same killer, he thought. Same slash wounds, punctures. Great strength. Doubt as to the sort of implement used. Nobody mentioned claws then. Probably won't now.

  He was about to go when a thought occurred to him.

  “Will the woods be closed off?” he asked.

  The detective looked puzzled, glanced around at the brightly-colored markers, the taped cordon.

  “No, I mean after today?” Wakefield persisted. Hearing himself he thought, God I sound demented.

  “We haven't got the resources,” the detective replied slowly. “You know that. We have to get it all done before dark.”

  “Then you'll pack up, right,” Wakefield said, trying to sound casual, shaking the detective's hand. “Well, if there's anything – you know.”

  She will be free to come again, he thought, as he made his way out of the woods and into the weak morning sunlight. His heart surged at the thought of her, the feel of her body, her eyes looking into his, her moans, little gasps. He disgusted himself. A line of verse occurred to him. He could not recall if it was from a poem, or the Bible.

  After such knowledge, what forgiveness?

  Wakefield walked down to his car, making plans for the evening.

  Chapter 5: Dead Man's Diary

  After Wakefield's rebuff, Denny wandered back into the center of Machen. The town had woken up and the small main street was busy. She asked someone if they knew the way to the Copper Kettle, and was directed up a side street. The small teashop was already half-full of people she assumed were tourists. She took a seat, checked the menu, and ordered a pot of tea along with something called an Eccles cake, simply to discover what it might be.

  While she waited for the tea to materialize, she took out her cell and looked up 'Church of St David, Machen, mural'. The search results startled her. Among the words associated with the mural were 'Satanic', 'un-Christian', 'bizarre', 'pagan'. She spent several minutes exploring history and folklore sites.

  Eventually she found a picture of the mural, but it was a small, grainy black and white photo. Enlarging it merely lost almost all the detail. It seemed to show a vaguely-defined black mass to the left of the scene, and a group of people on the right. Something was going on in the middle of the picture. Oddly angular figures were crouching over something on the ground. It was easy to imagine them as Interlopers, but Denny was aware of the hazards of wishful thinking.

  She decided to send the link to Gould along with the message: 'Any higher quality pics of this?'

  Her tea arrived. An Eccles cake turned out not to be a cake, but a flaky pastry shell containing currants in a kind of syrup. Denny was taking a picture of her half-eaten 'cake' when Brenda turned up. A few heads turned when the old lady came in, but when she reached Denny's table there was no distinctive wave of feline odor. Brenda had also dressed in new, reasonably well-matching clothes.

  “Thought I'd dress up nicely,” Brenda said, putting a large shopping bag on the floor as she sat down opposite Denny. “I don't socialize much – and don't pretend to be surprised by that, dear.”

  “Have the cats come back?” Denny asked, keen to change the subject.

  Brenda shook her head sadly. She leaned forward and lowered her voice, as if imparting a secret.

  “I dread to think how they're faring on their own.”

  “Cats are pretty resourceful,” Denny pointed out. She started to tell an anecdote about one of her mother's cats, which had grown fat by scrounging meals from neighbors.

  “We thought he was missing,” she concluded. “But all the time he was being pampered by half the families on the street!”

  “You're a very kind girl, trying to reassure me and all,” Brenda said. “But I'm not here to talk about my missing babies. There's a mystery about those children, and I want to help you solve it.”

  Great, thought Denny. My Doctor Watson is the town's Mad Cat Lady.

  “I know what you're thinking dear,” Brenda went on. “I'm not going to follow you around getting in the way. I just wanted to help point you in the right direction.”

  Denny braced herself for a rambling anecdote or a wild theory. But instead, the old lady reached down, to the bag by her seat.

  “These were my great, grand-uncle's,” explained Brenda, producing a battered cardboard box. “Lord of the manor, he was. Hard to believe, I know, looking at me now.”

  “Okay,” said Denny warily. “Family heirlooms?”

  “Valuable for your research,” Brenda went on, nodding and smiling.

  She opened the box to reveal an assortment of items. There was a smaller box, covered in faded red leather. Brenda took it out and opened it, showing the contents proudly to Denny. There were three medals, metal crosses with faded colored ribbons.

  “These are from the First World War, I'm guessing?” Denny asked.

  Brenda nodded.

  “Major Reginald Pelham, Third Herefordshire Infantry,” she explained. “His Campaign medal, and the Distinguished Service Order, and the George Cross.”

  “He must have been a brave soldier,” Denny opined, gingerly examining the medals. She had no idea how significant the British decorations were. But they looked impressive. They reminded Denny of her grandfather's Vietnam medals. And, inevitably, of the old man's bitterness at the way he had been treated when he came home.

  Brenda nodded, satisfied at Denny's response. She closed the little box and replacing it in the bigger one.

  “Oh, yes,” she said. “He was courageous, nobody ever doubted that. Not sure if he was entirely wise, though.”

  She picked up a dog-eared book with a worn black cover. It looked to Denny like a small pocket diary, a view confirmed when Brenda handed it to her.

  “This is his war diary?” she asked.

  “Yes, I think it might help,” Brenda said. “It tells a story that's hard to believe, but it makes sense. Someone like you, who's seen the paranormal at work, might find it more credible than regular historians.”

  There was something else in the box, an object that seemed out of place. Brenda saw Denny looking and picked up what looked like a crude pendant. A purple stone was suspended on a length of blackened hide.

  “This is for you, too,” said Brenda. “I've never felt comfortable with it in the house.”

  “What is it?” Denny asked, weighing the stone in her palm. It seemed oddly light, and she vaguely wondered if it might be hollow.

  “A talisman,” Brenda replied. “That's one word for it.”

  The woman reached over and put her hand on Denny's.

  “Don't put it on!” she warned. “You can never trust any of their gifts.”

  Amen to that, Denny thought, if we're talking about the same kind of folks.

  “What is it?” she asked.

  “Read Pelham's diary,” Brenda said quietly. “But not here in public. Let's just have our tea.”

  ***

  Gould was summoned back from the park by a message from his boss. He knew that Benson would be aware of the incident with Lucy. He expected to be reprimanded for interacting with the captive without permission. But he found that quite another matter was occupying the foundation's chief.

  “Ms. Purcell's report intrigued me,” said Benson, gesturing Gould to take a seat. “Much more successful than I had expected. You were right to recommend her.”

  Forster was already in the chairman's office. The security chief and Gould exchanged brief nods.

  “It seemed fairly routine to me,” Gould responded. “She arrived, she checked the place out, she observed the children.”

  Benson gestured at the large screen on the wall. The blinds of the office were already closing. The screen came to life, showing a single image. Fors
ter gave a low whistle.

  “Quite,” observed Benson, drily.

  “But this is …” Gould began, still trying to process what he was seeing.

  The picture was a color photograph of a wall painting. Gould recognized the mural that Denny had linked to in her email of that morning. But this picture was much more detailed. The dark mass on the left was now clearly a crude likeness of a forest – evidently Branksholme Woods. On the right were a crowd of medieval folk. A priest and a woman in a hooded robe stood slightly apart from the group. They were holding what seemed to be jeweled pendants. In the middle of the scene, three oddly-proportioned figures stood over a swaddled infant lying on the ground.

  “The earliest known representation of the Interlopers, I believe,” Benson remarked. “Proof that they were present in Machen about six or seven hundred years ago. And that this Covenant referred to was of very long standing.”

  “Children,” said Gould.

  “Is this child a sacrifice?” asked Forster. “Maybe a protection racket?”

  Benson shook his head.

  “Note the items given to the priest and that woman, who I assume was the local witch. Two different traditions working together in rather special circumstances.”

  Forster leaned forward, squinting at the screen.

  “Are those jewels or something? Precious stones?”

  Benson turned off the screen, leaned back in his chair.

  “That is what I want to find out. And that means providing Ms. Purcell with some backup. No–” Benson held up a hand as Gould began to speak. “I think you're a little too close to the issue. Forster, send Davison down. Have him pose as a tourist, make it clear to her that he has the final say on any radical steps she might contemplate.”

  “Understood,” said Forster. “He'll be on his way in a couple of hours. Should he take any special gear?”

  Benson waved an elegant hand.

  “I think we can leave it up to him,” he replied. “Thank you.”

  Forster got up and left in silence, carefully not looking at Gould as he passed the latter's chair. After the office door closed, Benson remained silent as seconds passed, gazing at his hands folded before him on the desktop.