The Darkest Veil

by Catherine Cavendish

  “What is it, Father?”

  The priest crossed himself and staggered backwards. “There’s someone…something down there. Eyes. I saw eyes. Yellow. The devil’s eyes.” He tripped and fell, sprawling across the floor as he scrambled to get away from his own vision of hell.

  A loud roar thundered from the hole. Sister Immaculata screamed. Something propelled her forward and she fell next to the priest. The two clung together.

  “What was that, Father?”

  “Something from hell itself.”

  A dark, opaque mist ascended, enveloping the two people in a sulfur-tainted shroud. Cries, as of souls in torment. Cackling laughter. Words in a language she couldn’t understand assaulted her senses. Sister Immaculata clapped her hands to her ears. “Make it stop. Please, Father, make it stop.”

  Beside her. Father Patrick prayed.

  The mist cleared a little, sufficiently enough that the nun could make out figures. Indistinct at first and then becoming human. Dressed in Edwardian clothes. Chief among them, a tall man with long, white hair. As the mist cleared still further, his pursed lips and cold, hard eyes penetrated her soul.

  Sister Immaculata crawled backwards. She only made it a few inches before she hit a barrier. Behind her, a woman in a dark gray dress barred her way. Sister Immaculata glanced upward. The woman’s head snaked down on a neck that lengthened like elastic. Inches away from her face, the woman’s mouth opened, baring blackened teeth. It hissed at her, releasing stinking, poisonous breath.

  “Mother of God!” The nun crossed herself and the head withdrew, the neck shrank. Raucous laughter replaced the serpentine hiss.

  The mist had almost evaporated. It revealed a ring of men and women encircling the nun and the priest. Father Patrick’s eyes were shut tight as his lips moved in fervent prayer.

  The man with the white hair spoke. “You can stop the mumbo jumbo, priest. It will do you no good.”

  The priest’s eyes shot open. He brandished a crucifix, thrusting it at the man. “Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil—”

  In one swipe, the man tore the crucifix out of the priest’s hand and flung it across the room.

  “Where’s your precious God now, priest?”

  Father Patrick’s face blanched. He struggled to stand.

  “Let me help you.”

  Sister Immaculata watched in terror as some unseen force lifted the priest off the floor. He hung, suspended a few inches off the ground.

  Father Patrick’s lips trembled. “Hail Mary, full of grace—”

  “Enough.” The man made a sweeping gesture with his right arm. The priest flew across the room and smashed against the wall. Bones cracked and snapped. He collapsed, unconscious, or dead. Sister Immaculata stared at the crumpled body. Every muscle in her body twitched.

  The man laughed. “You do well to be afraid, Sister.”

  “Who are you?” she asked.

  “Josiah Underwood. You are in my house and soon you will be one with us.”

  The nun crossed herself. “Never. As God is my witness.”

  “But He isn’t, is He? We are your witnesses.”

  The group edged in closer, forming a tight ring around the nun. They began a deep, monotone chant and parted to allow their leader to pass through.

  Sister Immaculata felt a scream start in the pit of her stomach. It worked its way up her gut and exploded from her mouth. Once she started, she couldn’t stop. Across the room, through the gap made by the group, she saw the huddled shape of the priest quiver. What she saw next made her scream harder.

  The priest’s head jerked upward. He stared at her. But she didn’t see his face. Impossibly, in a parody of himself, he smiled and stood. Then walked towards her. He stood over her.

  “Now you see me, don’t you, Sister?”

  She saw it. But she didn’t believe it. The voice was the priest’s certainly, with its soft Irish brogue. But the face she stared at belonged to Josiah Underwood—his eyes transformed into a piercing, sickening yellow.

  “Did you really think you would perform some stupid Catholic ritual and rid this house of me?”

  “Where’s Father Patrick? What have you done to him?”

  The man laughed, a harsh, grating sound that tore through the nun.

  “But you already know the answer to that, don’t you, Sister? The evidence is here for you to see with your own eyes. I am he and he is me. We are inextricably joined together.”

  “That’s not possible. Father Patrick—”

  The voice dripped sarcasm. “I am your Father Patrick. Can’t you see that?”

  Sister Immaculata stopped trembling. She had to stare straight into the man’s eyes. He commanded it. She sank deeper into the bilious, swirling pools where black, indistinct shapes wafted, draping themselves over her, dragging her in further away from reality. She looked down and saw she no longer wore her nun’s habit. A black sweater and skirt reminded her of her old life before she entered the convent. The shadows enfolded her in their embrace, as she sank down into the darkness. The man’s voice spoke to her.

  “I had to bring you home, Anita. This is where you belong.”

  Chapter Nine

  2019

  I tried to moisten my dry mouth, but failed. “This isn’t happening.”

  Suzie laughed. “Oh, but it is, Alice. There must always be thirteen. No more. No less. If the balance is altered, it must be made good again. We are the thirteen, and we are one.”

  “Make it stop, Suzie.” Vicky pleaded, bursting into tears.

  That did it. A rushing wave of anger swept through me and I made a dash for the door. A sound I had heard before stopped me. The walls heaved and expanded. I had my hand on the door handle, turned it and it came off in my hands. I leaped back, moments ahead of the door falling off its hinges and crashing to the floor.

  “It’s happening again,” I yelled over the din of the howling gale which had erupted from nowhere. “The same as before. All those years ago.”

  Diana crouched on the floor, her hands over her ears. Vicky screamed like a fox in pain. Only the silent group in the middle seemed trapped in an invisible bubble, not a hair of their heads touched by the maelstrom of unholy wind.

  Josiah Underwood spoke. “Look at your friends. No time has passed.”

  Vicky stopped screaming and Diana uncovered her ears. We each looked from one to the other.

  The years had dropped away. My former housemates looked exactly as they did in 1972, even down to the clothes they wore. I looked down at my mini-skirt and platform shoes. I touched my hair. Long, thick, as it used to be. My joints no longer ached with the early stages of arthritis.

  The wind stopped howling as abruptly as it had begun. Without a word, we three moved closer together. Suzie joined us and we linked hands in a circle.

  “But there is one more of us,” Suzie said. “Perhaps you didn’t recognize her.”

  Anita stepped forward. Like us, she was dressed as she had been when I last saw her in 1972.

  Josiah Underwood and the rest of his coven stood silently, watching us, as gradually we each began to acknowledge the truth. Suzie spoke and the strange words she said made sense at last.

  “I told you I never left,” she said. “What I haven’t said is that you never left either. Only Anita, and we brought her back. Now the house is to be demolished, but we will remain. We will serve our master. We are the thirteen and we are one.”

  “But I remember my life after this house,” I said.

  “Do you, Alice? Are you sure about that?”

  “Yes, I…” but, as I searched my brain yet again, I found nothing. No memories of anything since that day in 1972. I knew the years had passed, but I had no idea what had happened.

  “I can’t remember anything,” Vicky said. “I must be going mad.”

  “If you are, so am I,” Diana said, shaking her head.

  Anita said nothing. She hadn’t uttered one word since she
had joined us.

  “But…why?”

  “Those memories you had were of your own invention,” Suzie said. “You have slept for a long time. Now you are ready to serve.”

  “Serve?” A fresh wave of anger dispelled my fear. “I don’t serve anyone.”

  Suzie smiled. “But you are so wrong, Alice. We all serve our master.”

  “What did you do to us all those years ago?” I demanded. “Murder us?”

  “Released you,” Suzie said, and that only served to incense me more.

  “Released? We were killed in this house.” Only when I said it did I realize for the first time what I had become—what all of us had become. What that evil bastard Josiah Underwood and his coven from hell had made us.

  “Anita?” The girl acknowledged me for the first time. “How did you get back here?”

  “I had to come,” she said. “Before I took my vows as a nun, I had to try and make everything right here. I came with Father Patrick, but…” She shook her head and lowered her eyes.

  I had concentrated my gaze on her and my companions. At some stage Josiah Underwood and the rest of his coven had left us. Only the five of us remained, in a circle, hands linked. I have no idea how long we stood there, silently.

  It began slowly. A creeping gray mist that crawled along the floor, approaching us from all directions at once. As it neared us, it billowed and swirled as the gray became darker and we were completely enclosed.

  We were in some sort of bubble, able to see each other clearly, but surrounded by the whirlpool of charcoal mist. No smell, no taste, no sound. I felt a strange calmness, but then it changed.

  The mist parted and a shape emerged. Eliza Montague Jordan. For a moment, as she stood there, watching us, she looked as she must have in life. At first, her face was expressionless. Then, to my surprise, tears filled her eyes. I wondered then how many of Josiah Underwood’s coven had joined willingly and how many had been coerced. Duped perhaps, with empty promises of eternal life—or else, enslaved.

  Eliza’s lips moved and I could hear her, not with my ears, but in my mind. I wondered if the others could, too. If so, they gave no indication of it.

  “You read my words. ‘The Darkest Veil’. It was meant for you, but you did not heed my warning. One day, the shadows will weep for you, Alice Lorrimer,” she said, then vanished.

  A rushing wind. Screams. Josiah Underwood looming over us. Eight feet tall. Dressed in purple robes with strange symbols. The gleam of a jeweled sword waved above us.

  A growling, deep voice bellowed at us. “On your knees before your master.”

  More screams. Mine. Diana’s. Vicky’s.

  A huge goat’s head with massive curling horns replaced the head of Josiah Underwood. The walls fell away. A flock of ravens flapped over our heads.

  We crouched, our arms over our heads, trying to protect ourselves. Shards of pain as the ravens’ claws scratched. Then they were gone. Or transformed. A screeching parody of a choir, dressed in black, with gleaming yellow eyes, sang out of tune. Even the tune itself sounded discordant. The rushing wind blew into a screaming hurricane.

  The voice almost deafened me. “You will serve your master.”

  We were back in the room again, its devastation all around us, but not for long. I looked around at the stunned faces of my old friends, Anita included. “I’m so sorry,” I said. “It was all my fault.”

  “No, Alice,” Anita said, her voice stronger than I had ever heard it. “I should never have left you with…that.”

  “And we could have refused to go through with the séance,” Diana said.

  “How do we get away?” I asked Anita, but I knew the answer.

  “We don’t. This is our destiny now.”

  The room shimmered and became the immaculate place it had been when we arrived. We too were transformed. I saw my friends’ clothes morph into the gray, Edwardian dresses of the other women of the coven. I looked down and I now wore one, too. Anita was right. There could be no escape for us. Not one engineered by ourselves at any rate. Ghosts can’t do that. Especially not cursed ones. Sometimes, I think back to my last real memories—1972, when the world and time stretched before me. Full of opportunity. Full of hope. All dashed on the rocks of folly.

  When the Master summons us, we must obey. We emerge from our shadowy sleep where dreams of our previous lives ebb and flow, their truth as uncertain as shifting sands. Suzie is back with us. She is the friend we remember, since he returned her mind to her. We form ourselves into a circle around the being who used to be Josiah Underwood. He stands in his purple robes, the ancient symbols shimmer in gold—the Eye of Horus, crescent moons, stars, all adopted and abused by this monster before whom we must bow our heads.

  He shows us his deeds. He is proud of his evil. Once, he showed us a vision of a city. Maybe Tokyo. Skyscrapers towered upward, cars jockeyed for position on clogged roads. Pedestrians hurried in all directions like worker ants. We chanted the words that he imprinted on our minds as we stood in a circle, each clasping the hand of our neighbor. I never know what the words mean. They are in some obscure long-dead language. Our voices rose. The Master raised his arms high, fists clenched. In the vision, the road began to tremble. People screamed and ran for cover as the sidewalks and roads cracked. Raised up. Created craters. Some men and women fell to certain death. Everywhere, glass shattered from windows. My spirit-self felt sickened. I tried to close my eyes, but this is not permitted. Our will is subjugated to his.

  He needs us. He cannot perform his wickedness without us. When one of us passes into the light, he must replace the missing acolyte before he can regain his power. He takes what he needs. We do not see where they come from. They are not allowed to tell us. He performs his evil rites and we know that, somewhere in the world, tragedy has struck.

  We, the thirteen, unlucky enough to pass too close within his sphere, can only link hands and recite the archaic, devilish chants.

  Time has so little meaning now I have to accept what I am. The house crowds around us, its empty rooms echoing with the ghosts of our pasts. Eliza’s book is lost in one of the rooms somewhere. If someone finds it, I hope they heed its warning and leave. Immediately. Before Josiah Underwood and his evil traps them with us, to wait until it is their turn to serve him.

  My spirit is ever-fearful. I offer up a silent prayer, that someone will find a way to save us from the promised eternity of serving an evil, despicable master from hell. That my friends and I will find our way to the light, away from this limbo—caught between the living and the dead—and will grant us peace, so we may truly rest, as death’s darkest veil shrouds us in its embrace.

  Afterword

  Two days later

  “At least it’s not raining, Del. You’ve got to be grateful for small mercies.”

  “It’s all right for you, Gavin. You didn’t grow up around here, with all the stories of ghosts and witches and stuff. This house is evil, I’m telling you. My parents told me. They used to live on the next street, back in the Seventies. Then four girls who were living here disappeared—three of them on the same day. No trace was ever found of them. Police searched the house from top to bottom. Nothing. They questioned the landlord, but he had been away at the time three of them went missing and there was no evidence to link him to any of the disappearances. Another girl who used to live here became a nun and returned here with a priest, apparently to try and exorcise the demons from this house. They both disappeared and no trace was ever found of them. At the same time this was all going on, the residents on this side of Yarborough Drive went through a reign of terror. Every night, windows smashed. They never caught anyone, and then it suddenly stopped.”

  Gavin, six feet tall in his socked feet and broad-shouldered, with a hint of the beer belly he would probably develop over the next ten years, shuddered.

  Del snorted. “Superstitious bullshit.”

  “It’s true, I’m telling you. The landlord couldn’t rent any of the rooms in th
is house, it was so notorious. He gave up in the end. Boarded the place up. He had to do it himself because he couldn’t get anyone brave enough to come and do it for him. He ended up in a mental home, so don’t tell me it’s all superstitious bullshit.”

  “Honestly, Gav, I never thought you of all people would be reduced to a quivering jelly by an old, derelict house. How many have you demolished? Hundreds I reckon. Come on, you know the drill. Got to check all the rooms. Make sure no dossers or druggies are squatting. Then we’ll get this baby down.”

  “You first,” Gavin said, his attention drawn to a large black bird with yellow eyes that seemed to be studying him from its perch on a branch of a nearby rowan tree.

  Del laughed and shook his head. “Wait ’til I tell the lads. They’ll never believe it. Gavin Hill scared of ghosts.”

  “Fuck off.”

  Del laughed harder. He fished in the pocket of his high-viz jacket, brandished a key and opened the front door of number four.

  “What is that stench?” He pinched his nostrils. “Smells like someone died in here.”

  Gavin muttered behind him. “I wouldn’t be surprised.”

  “Let’s get this over with. You check downstairs, I’ll go up. Don’t forget the cellar. If anyone is here and they heard us, they may have decided to hide down there.”

  Del kicked rubbish out of the way as he mounted the stairs, his footsteps heavy in his boots.

  Gavin took a deep breath and turned the handle of the first door he came to. He was rewarded by the sight of an immaculate room, seemingly locked in a time capsule of the early Seventies. It even smelled faintly of patchouli oil. Somehow this felt more shocking than the awful stench in the hallway. The wardrobe doors were shut. He strode over to them and pulled them open. Empty.

  He gave the room one more look and, with a shiver, returned to the hallway. As he made his way over towards the kitchen, crunching through debris and plaster, the smell grew stronger. He came to another door on his right just before he got there. He opened it. This time the room was as expected. Wrecked. Torn curtains, broken furniture, stained and filthy carpet. He didn’t need to throw open the wardrobe in this room, as the doors were on the floor anyway.