The Lychgate

by Devon De'Ath

  * * *

  Robert Mason opened his eyes, disturbed by a torrential downpour hammering against the hovel thatch. First glimmers of Tuesday dawn traced across Abigail’s naked shoulders where the woman sat forwards in bed, clutching her upper arms. After they’d left the skeleton at St. Guthlac’s the night before, the psychic’s agitation level increased exponentially. Bob was worried enough to ask her to spend the night. At first he thought the suggestion of servicing her raging libido might prove a suitable distraction. But Abigail wasn’t her usual self. Sex proved out of the question, along with her signature sassy and smutty demeanour. Instead, she begged Bob to hold her. This was a first. One of the ground rules to their casual arrangement had always been: no emotional attachment. They’d never broken it, and the idea of love or even mild affection kindled between the pair always felt ridiculous. Despite their history, Bob couldn’t stand by and watch her suffer alone. Abigail was a force of nature under normal circumstances. This sharp alteration in her personality left the historian concerned for her wellbeing, and more than a little curious about who the deceased holy man was. He reached one buff arm out to rub her right shoulder. “Hey.”

  She didn’t look at him. “You slept like the dead.”

  Bob picked an eyebrow with his free hand. “Well, the dead have a habit of sleeping. One reason they’re nothing to worry about.” Such an utterance sounded patronising and flippant, but where else to begin if he was to probe her worries?

  “What have we done, Bob?”

  “What you wanted, unless I’ve missed something. Didn’t you say we should dig that thing up?”

  “Yeah. I know what I said. Now I’m worried it might make things worse.”

  Bob craned his neck back to examine fine bullets of water slamming with harsh pin pricks against the bedroom windowpane. “It’s a bag of bones, Abigail. Once I get back from Lincoln, someone will be along in a day or two to take it away. Come on, we’ve encountered skeletons on our adventures before now.”

  “This is different. It wanted us to unearth it. Willed us.”

  “Now you’re being silly. How could a skeleton want anything, let alone will it?”

  Her head lowered. "Listen to me. I sound like a mental patient.”

  Bob grinned. “Well, I didn’t like to say-”

  “But I can’t escape this turmoil,” she interrupted.

  The historian sat up. “I’ll jump in the Landy right after breakfast and get the ball rolling. The sooner our emaciated guest is removed, the happier you’ll be. If we’re lucky, they’ll retrieve him before Halloween.”

  The psychic’s eyes bulged. “Oh God. It can’t still be here then.”

  A firm but hesitant fist thudded three times against the front door. Bob leaned back to press his nose to the glass. “It’s Reverend Colefax. Sit tight, I’ll see what he wants.” He pulled on a jacket and hurried into the other room to open the door. The sound of torrential rain sharpened across the exposed threshold. “Morning, Reverend. What a difference a day makes. You’d better step inside.”

  “Thank you, Robert.” The vicar swallowed and entered the home with a rigid posture, clothes dripping wet.

  “Everything okay?” Bob stirred up some embers in the fireplace.

  “No, I’m afraid it isn’t. From your appearance, I assume you haven’t been outside today?”

  The historian rested against a windowsill. “And from the look of it out there, I’ll try to avoid that as long as possible. Why do you ask?”

  “The skeleton has gone.”

  “What?” Bob’s nose wrinkled.

  “I went up to the church for a quiet time with the Lord this morning. The tarpaulin is still there, but the remains are nowhere in sight. Who could’ve moved them?”

  “If it’s a Halloween prank two days early, I’d say it’s pushing the boundaries of humour. Serious too, if they’ve damaged the skeleton. Could Tim or Sarah have done something like that?”

  The vicar shook his head. “No. I’d swear to their innocence over this. They’re responsible children, both of them.”

  “What about that other kid Tim sometimes plays with?”

  “He’s never been into the church. Not since I arrived. This can’t be the antics of a child.”

  Abigail couldn't hold in a high-pitched gasp from the bedroom.

  Stephen Colefax noted it with an unsurprised swivel of the head, then focused his attention back on the historian.

  Bob folded his arms. “Okay. Once I’m dressed, we’d better get the community together for a talk. I’m supposed to be driving off to report the find today. Until it’s located, that won’t be happening. Our joker needs to realise this isn’t a laughing matter.”

  “Thank you, Robert. I felt like someone had stepped on my grave when I found the empty tarpaulin.”

  Bob raised an eyebrow. “Shivers down your spine? Don’t worry, I’m sure it didn’t get up and walk away on its own.” A commotion erupted outside. “Sounds like someone else has been to the church.” Bob opened the door. Daniel Charter and Martin Bradbury hurried over. “What’s going on, fellas?”

  Martin’s expressionless face bore unusual marks of deep concern. The sight was enough to inform anyone who knew the thatcher, that there was a serious problem. “The pigs are dead.”

  Bob blinked. “Which ones?”

  “All of them,” Dan joined in.

  “Not drowning again?”

  Martin shook his head in vigorous disagreement. “No. They’ve been ripped open and shredded.”

  The historian grabbed hold of the lintel. “By what?”

  “From the ferocity, I’d have to say a big cat. Probably one of those escaped pumas some people used to keep as exotic pets. There are sightings of them all over the country.”

  Bob bit his lip. “Yeah, I know. Shit, and after losing the sheep too. How are Pete and Maggie bearing up?”

  Martin fidgeted on the spot, then clocked the vicar through the open doorway. “Reverend, would you come along?”

  Stephen Colefax stepped forward. “Take me to them, gentlemen. What a terrible thing.” He cast one glance back at Bob. “It seems we’re in for quite a day.”

  The historian watched them go, aware of Abigail now standing in the bedroom doorway. As the front door clicked shut to keep out the cold and wet, she stared at Bob with dilating pupils. “And it’s not yet Halloween. Things are only getting started.”

  Sarah Claridge and Tim Leonard huddled close in rain macs beneath a large umbrella. Eight feet away, Peter and Margaret Leonard held tight to one another, staring in breathless horror at the scene before them. Ginger hairy bodies of slaughtered Tamworths lay strewn across a meadow, some remains hanging out the entrance of their pig arks. Entrails dotted the space, tossed clear of their owners like wrapping from an excited child’s birthday present. Each carcass was split open along the belly, as though ravaged by the hounds of hell. The unending downpour caused rivers of blood to wash the rain-saturated, churned-up expanse in miniature, diluted pink breakers.

  Martin and Daniel approached with the vicar. The remaining Claridges and Joe and Naomi Hargreaves weren’t far behind.

  Stephen Colefax stopped at the fence. “Lord have mercy. Such vicious carnage.” He conducted a mental count, then reached out to the farmer. “Have any been taken or eaten, Peter?”

  “No, Reverend. It makes little sense. This can’t have been a predator searching for food. The pigs appear to have been killed for sport, like when a fox gets in amongst chickens. But this was no fox. I love Tamworths; yet a single pig can be a struggle for even a grown man to handle. Whatever did this, was powerful. It killed the lot with ease.”

  Dean Claridge joined them at the fence. “Oh Pete, what a mess. I’m so sorry.”

  “For all of us,” the farmer added. "They were a sizable investment in our meat futures."

  The butcher took a long breath then blew out his cheeks in a reluctant sigh. “Come on, old son. The sooner we get started, the better. Can’t
leave them there to rot. That’s not doing right by those beautiful animals.”

  12

  The Rising Storm

  Stephen Colefax woke with a start. His dreams had worsened in the last few weeks, provoked by many factors: Martin and Daniel’s encounters on the river, the continuing saga of a monk he believed to be St. Guthlac, and now the worrying disappearance of that excavated corpse. What agitated the minister more, was the striking resemblance its remains bore to a creature haunting those night-time psychodramas. One that invaded them long before Abigail Walters sought to go digging in the churchyard. Tuesday night’s unconscious adventure ran in a similar vein. This time the twisted, skeletal body stood leering at him from the lychgate. For whatever reason his brain had conjured, the creature appeared unable to cross the churchyard boundary. Instead, two fiery green eyes stared straight into his soul. A mixture of bone, cloth and that weird aura presented the top of its head as if the thing wore a crown. Did it signify the king of some infernal horde, or master of powers beyond mortal understanding? That scene flashed and alternated between his repeated visions of burning parchment, quenching well water and that final view of the old church chalice emptied into the Welland tributary slipping away towards the rising sun. The vicar got out of bed in his hut. Much as he loved the church, these last few days made him glad to no longer be living and sleeping inside it. Rain thrashed down unabated. The well-trodden and worn ground outside their hovels now resembled a quagmire. If it didn’t let up soon, the community Halloween get together in the barn would do little to raise spirits. He lifted the lid from a carved pumpkin resting on his deep-set living room window ledge. Tim and Sarah had done a splendid job on the faces of these lanterns, which now adorned every hut in the close-knit group. A match struck and the old minister lit the candle inside. It shone as a sign of comfort and the hope of protection to anyone passing by. The loss of the pigs weighed heavy on the community. Colefax went back and knelt by his bed, to offer prayer and supplication for his spiritual flock and the other souls at Deeping Drove.

  “Howie?” Tim Leonard peered through sheets of angled rain that stung his face. A young boy’s voice cried out, muffled by the ambient backdrop of constant striking precipitation. The farmer’s son slipped and slid up one side of the western bank, his feet dislodging clods of squelching mud. Water ran into his eyes and chilled him to the bone. Beyond the rise, the river had swollen. It looked grey and fierce. A growing wind churned the surface from its usual sedate meanderings to an engorged torrent. Most of the reeds near the bank had disappeared beneath its rising flow. Yet something moved along the now indistinct and blurred point where dry land met the intimidating watercourse. “Who’s there?” Tim made a cautious descent down the other side, aware that falling into the river in its present state might outmatch his swimming abilities. Two figures, half-obscured by a curtain of rain, struggled at the water’s edge. One appeared to be holding the other underwater. “Hey.” Tim cried out to break the attacker’s concentration. “Hey,” he called again, every breath bringing him closer. As he reached the spot, the frantic movement ceased and faded. “What the?” He thrashed about, rubbing streams of infuriating water from both eyes, as if they deceived him.

  “Tim?”

  The farmer’s boy whirled at the familiar tone of his friend’s voice. “Howie. I thought you were in trouble. What’s going on? Did you see somebody being held down underwater here?”

  The twelve-year-old stood ankle-deep at the river’s edge. His unblinking stare moved from Tim to a spot on the bank over the elder boy’s shoulder.

  Tim turned back, stumbling on wobbly legs in the cold and damp. A slow smile of relief broke his frown. “Thank goodness you’re here. Oh, you haven’t met my friend Howie in person. Howi-” The boy was gone when the farmer’s son swivelled at the waist to make introductions. There was scant time to process where Howie might have run off to, before a firm push shoved Tim off balance. He tumbled sideways into the water, arms rotating. A prodding foot rolled him over, and a sharp knee pressed immovable weight into the small of his back. Chilled fingers clamped either side of his head. They pushed him under, resolute and unflinching against any panic response from the lad. Tim tried to hold his breath as he fought, but it all happened so fast his nose and mouth flooded in seconds. When Brent Fuller showed him The Blue Goldfish, Tim knew he was in for short discomfort that would end in nothing worse than humiliation. This time he was dealing with someone he trusted, and it could not be a cruel game. Their intent was murderous. The end must surely prove mortal. Something grabbed hold of his thrashing right hand. It was cold, yet offered a squeeze of comfort. Fighting for air that would not come, Tim moved his restricted gaze enough to discover who it might be. Howie reached out of the depths, face pale and empty. No sound carried in the murky gloom, yet the boy’s voice rang clear in his head like a psychic transmission. “This is how I died too.”

  * * *

  “It’s a grotty afternoon.” Constance Creek ducked through the doorway into the forge. A welcoming blanket of warm air enveloped her soaking body.

  Daniel Charter hammered away at a glowing piece of iron on the anvil. He doused it in a bucket of water to produce a soothing hiss. “Been a grotty couple of days. How can I help, Connie?”

  The woman raised two pieces of a thin iron stick that had once been a single item. “I made the mistake of using my fire poker to lever open a swollen window.”

  “The poker must have been brittle to begin with. I’ll make you another. Won’t take long. Stick around if you like and dry off.”

  “Thanks.” She rested on the edge of a rough workbench. “So how’s it going?”

  “Okay. Got a few more projects in store during the run up to Christmas. Then I can focus on making some tools and other wares to sell at craft fairs in the spring. That’s a good idea of yours to bring in extra cash. Are you going to throw some pots?”

  “I should think so. By then we’ll need to top up the central funds. Got to cover items we can’t produce ourselves, like your metals.”

  “We should get a decent mark-up on our products.”

  A shrill woman’s scream cut through their discussion.

  Dan laid down his hammer. “Oh my goodness, who was that?”

  Connie raced to the door of the forge. “It’s Maggie.”

  “Not more dead animals.” Dan joined her.

  Margaret Leonard bobbed and shook on the spot atop the western bank.

  Connie and Dan ran through splashing mud to converge on her location with Naomi Hargreaves and Abigail Walters. At the top they noticed a body floating face down, drifting out towards the middle of the river. The farmer’s wife wailed again, her torso a series of uncontrolled jerks. Constance grabbed the smith’s arm. “It’s Tim.”

  Dan’s nostrils flared in time with a sudden glimmer of awakened mission in his eyes. He tore down the bank and dived into the churning water, arms pulling at the icy flow. The quiet boy had always been a kindred spirit, despite their age difference. Dan’s legs were dragged away as he caught hold of the lifeless child.

  Martin Bradbury reached Connie’s side. He was about to ask for an explanation, when the scene before him revealed the unfolding tale without words. “He needs help.” Martin followed the same route the smith had taken down the slippery incline. The powerful, experienced waterman reached his friend mid-river in less than half the time. Together they fought to bring the farmer’s son back to the edge.

  Peter Leonard appeared with Joe Hargreaves. The farmer’s voice cracked then turned to a heart-rending repetition of incredulity and woe. “My son. My son. No. Please God, not my son.”

  Pete fell to his knees. The builder supported him. Martin and Dan struggled and stumbled clear of the water. They laid the boy’s pale, lifeless corpse on the edge of the bank. Maggie Leonard sank down alongside. She cradled the drowned lad’s head in her arms and wailed to the gunmetal sky. “No. Tim. No.”

  Pete cried out. “Does anyone know the kiss of
life?”