The Lychgate

by Devon De'Ath

  Bob and Abigail splashed waist deep into the tributary. The historian kept hold of the psychic’s hand, while she stretched out across the grey torrent to grab Michaela. A fierce current pulled at their exhausted bodies, threatening to sweep all three away.

  “I’ve got her arm, Bob. Pull us in.” Abigail fought to get the words out. Ice-cold water drained her energy and threatened to prise open numbing fingers locked in a trembling grip on the teacher’s wrist.

  Bob dug his free hand into the bank like a bulldozer scoop. He clawed and threw his weight away from the robust flow. Abigail got close enough to the water’s edge to give herself extra support. With one immense tug, she pulled Michaela free. Bob’s legs found dry land. He reversed course to reach out and help both women ashore.

  Twenty feet away, Connie and Dean rolled from side to side in a wild struggle to gain the upper hand. The community founder pinned the butcher down, her thighs clamped either side of his waist, knees pressing into the mud. The accusing voice that hissed from her once pretty mouth, was not her own. Nor was it female of any description. “You - follower of the invading God, destroying all I control. I will have my vengeance.” Her fingers clamped around the butcher’s throat. They squeezed so tight, the breathless witnesses fresh from the river half expected her victim’s eyes to explode like two soft-boiled eggs. Michaela struggled to find any available strength reserves. It was an effort to even lift her upper body from the wet grass. Bob staggered to a half crouch. Dean Claridge’s hands flinched and groped around in the quagmire. The cold steel of his cleaver, embedded in the earth, teased his right index finger. What little light remained in his sight, began to darken into tunnel vision. Robbed of oxygen, the butcher fancied Connie’s face transformed into that of his slain daughter. One final outburst of rage flooded his body with a surge of adrenaline. Muscles contracted in his arms. His right hand gripped the cleaver and pulled its razor-sharp edge across his chest with near superhuman force. Connie’s head severed at the neck, span through the air and splashed into the raging waters. It bobbed for two seconds and disappeared downstream. Dark blood spurted from the fleshy stump. The woman’s body fell free of the coughing butcher, a pliable rag doll of lifeless meat. Dean forced himself up onto his elbows. Michaela crawled towards him through the sludge and matted greenery.

  Bob lifted Abigail to her feet. “Did you hear her voice?”

  Connie's decapitated torso spasmed from discharging nerves, like a slaughtered chicken. The psychic shivered as she watched. “It seems the spirit of Nechtan persists, even if his resurrected body has gone.”

  Bob nodded. “I suppose Connie was always susceptible to it, right from a young girl. At least her body isn’t rising again.” He lifted his head to the butcher. “You all right, Dean?”

  The butcher dropped his cleaver and lay holding tight to his wife. One hand rose from her back to offer a thumbs-up in answer.

  Bob staggered across to the clinging couple. “Give me your hands. You two will catch your death lying on the wet ground like that.”

  Both released a heartless, involuntary laugh at his statement. Dying from a chill - or any other natural sickness - seemed ludicrous and of little import on such a night. All four of them were soaked to the skin. After much slipping and sliding, they found their feet.

  Michaela regained a modicum of her dwindling energy. “Do you think that’s the last we’ll see of him/it/whatever the thing was?”

  Bob began an ascent of the rise. He offered a steadying hand to help her up beside him. “Let’s hope so.”

  The teacher surveyed the smoking embers of their homestead. “Should you see if that belt of yours survived the fire?”

  The historian shrugged. “We don’t know that it belonged to St. Guthlac, or if it’s of any use. Looks like our spiritual troubles are over.”

  Michaela clutched at her dripping body to ward off a chill breeze. “All the same, with everything that’s happened…”

  Bob grunted. “We’ve got to go that way to retrieve our car keys. If my metal box is still okay, I’ll bring it along.” He twisted to stare back down at the bank. Abigail lingered near the water’s edge, gazing downstream. Dean watched his wife and the historian stand atop the rise. “It seems your husband found his own way to deliver Connie from her sudden bout of possession.”

  Michaela sighed. “An extreme one; it killed her. Not that I’m sorry. I don’t know if that makes me a bad Christian, but what with Sarah and then attempting to strangle Dean... Not to mention all our other neighbours who’ve lost their lives on account of her duplicity." She rubbed her forehead. "I wonder how much of a victim Connie became in all this?”

  “You mean: was she an easily influenced child, driven mad by demonic forces; or did the woman have free will and greater culpability? Who can ever tell?” Bob reached down to offer aid to her husband.

  Dean took a step nearer. “Thanks, Bob. I-” A dull thud caused him to stumble. His eyes glazed over mid-sentence. The lopsided smile dropped into an open-mouthed silence. His invisible, departing soul followed one quiet, final gasp of air. The butcher toppled forward, face-first into the rise. His lifting hand missed Bob’s. What little moonlight that dappled the scene, glinted off the blade of a meat cleaver embedded in his back. Behind him on the riverbank, Abigail sneered with a twisted and disfigured countenance. Her right arm hung in mid-air where she’d launched the butchery implement on its fatal journey. The same hiss and spiteful male tone that came from Connie, now burst from her parting lips. “You're all going to die.”

  “Oh my God.” Michaela extended one useless hand in the air above her husband’s fallen body. Everything within her yearned to succumb to rising panic and pass out. The stress of the last few hours far eclipsed any of her breakdown-inducing experiences in the world of work. Self-preservation kept the woman from collapsing in a heap. That and a fire of rage now burning in her sensitive belly.

  Bob’s shoulders sank then stiffened. Nechtan now seemed to have a hold of the psychic. How can I slay her? It’s Abigail, for Chrissake. The teacher’s words moments before, caused him to half turn towards the ruined hovels. He thought of The Guthlac Roll and Stephen Colefax’s dream about the saint helping a demoniac. “The belt.” He grabbed Michaela’s arm. “Run. We’ve got to find that belt.”

  The butcher’s widow and bereaved mother didn’t need telling twice. They slid down the other side of the embankment and sprinted for the smoking collection of former homes. A violent howl of hatred echoed from the rise behind them. Michaela chanced a glimpse back to see Abigail standing with the meat cleaver retrieved from her fallen husband’s back. The possessed woman held the tool aloft and screamed at the pair of escapees. Michaela shrieked. “She’s coming after us, Bob.”

  “I know. We’re almost there.” He slipped over on the churned-up ground, adding a fresh coating of brown muck to his disintegrating clothing.

  Michaela helped the historian aloft and pushed him forwards. “Go.” She yanked out the knife her husband had given her. “Be quick. I don’t want to kill Abigail.” The corners of her eyes slanted downward. “If I even can.”

  Bob stared at her for a split second. The need to resolve matters dragged him away to where a pile of glowing embers represented all that remained of his hut. He pulled at the burning remains of ash and timber, dropping a blackened beam as it scorched his fingers.

  An inhuman wail from beyond the grave mingled with Michaela’s yell. The teacher’s outburst rang like a war-cry of the risen meek, wronged and angered by grievous loss. The struggling women rolled and spat in a frenzy on the ground, hacking and stabbing at each other. Blood soaked the torn and lacerated garments both combatants wore.

  Bob kicked at a heap of glowing wood in the approximate location of his bedroom. Dull metal from the box lid became visible. He thrust one trembling hand into his trouser pocket to retrieve a large handkerchief. Not much insulation against heat, but it could provide a second or two of extra protection. A pivotal moment before the
scorching container outstripped his ability to resist the pain, and he let go. The top creaked open. Inside, the old cloth from Peakirk had succumbed to the fire. It lay charred and blackened; ancient rag, cremated and worthless in a metal coffin. Bob plunged his hand amidst the crumbling fabric. The belt remained intact. He tugged it free of the box and stumbled away from the heat. To his right, Abigail lay atop Michaela. She brought down the meat cleaver across her adversary’s skull and stopped dead as if frozen. A single tear fell from the teacher’s fading eyes, as her head fell back to stare at the historian. The light of life dimmed in those grey orbs. One last flicker of recognition and hope drifted to the belt hanging from Bob’s grasp. Abigail rolled off her to reveal a deep stab wound in her own stomach, inflicted by a knife held between the dead educator’s clasped hands. The anguished male academic sank to his knees. “Abigail.” In that empty moment, Robert Mason realised the straight-talking psychic meant more to him than he’d ever let himself believe. Her semi-pudgy, cherub-like head stared right through him, one cheek pressed into a muddy puddle. Straight ends of her centre parted, white-blonde hair dipped into the sludge and darkened. Bob let out a cry that seemed to punch through the fog and cloud to hammer on the very doors of heaven. His stomach muscles clenched. He doubled over, as if punched in the gut and winded. Something spiritual clawed at his innards. Unseen hands seemed to grip each rib, like the gnarled fingers of an invisible beast using his chest cavity as a ladder to climb from the pits of hell. An insistent force squeezed his brain and wrestled for control of his mind. “Nechtan.” He screamed the name aloud. But what to do? Could this horror only end with his mortal demise? Bob scrunched his eyes. The image of Abigail’s lifeless corpse filled his vision. “No.” The world about him seemed to fade, replaced with blackened pits of all-consuming fire. Green-eyed and glowing, mouth stretched wide, the semi-regenerated figure of the lich strode toward him. Spiritual vision rather than present reality it might have been, but Bob knew this was the final battleground: the one for his life and immortal soul. He threw himself at the creature, striking with blunt force against its clicking bones. Desperate fingers grabbed the sharp, calcite crown, in a vain effort to tug its head clear of those skeletal shoulders. Nechtan shook the historian’s grip loose. A mocking laugh bellowed in triumph. His gnarled fingers dug like barbs into the historian’s soul. Soon it would have control of his entire essence. What then for the realm of the living, if this creature used his subdued body like a puppet? Bob closed his eyes for cheating him with imagery not evident to the physical world, yet no less real in its spiritual implication. The belt still hung from his mortal hand of flesh. I’m no saint. How could I drive out a demonic spirit from myself, even if I were? It was a heartless thought, dripping with despair. Nechtan’s potent force wrestled with his will. Faith or no faith, there was nothing else for it but to do the one thing a belt was designed for. Bob fell back on the liquefied earth between smoking ruins. His hands struggled against that insistent power within, desperate for ascendancy and dominance. He pulled both ends of the belt together around his waist and fastened it tight.

  17

  For the Record

  Mist rolled back to reveal a crisp, clear sky to herald All Saints' Day. Robert Mason’s eyes fluttered and twitched open. His body was now so wet and enmeshed with the claggy soil, it seemed impossible to demarcate where the earth ended and his human vessel of clay began. Only the tremor from a rising chill that warned him to seek shelter and heat, enabled the historian to sense his heavy limbs. The ancient belt remained fastened at his waist. When his hands joined its ends together, time slowed to a crawl. There was a vision: a tonsured monk in animal skins rebuking some vile, horned beast that burst from deep within the watcher’s being. Nechtan writhed and screamed with unfathomable rage and agony. But the lich was no match for whatever power emanated from St. Guthlac, or whoever his deliverer turned out to be. The belt at Bob’s waist had throbbed with pulsations of cool energy. They permeated his soul in waves of release that culminated in Nechtan’s defeat. The gnarled, skeletal hands let go of his innermost being. That vengeful holy man slid forever into some other dimension whence he could no longer plague the living or the dead of Deeping Drove. In the last fragments of consciousness before oblivion from total exhaustion, Bob fancied he saw something wonderful: the liberated souls of his neighbours and other former fenland occupants ascending to a beautiful, welcoming light. Last among them was Abigail Walters. Or was it all a fancy? How much of this was real? All the serious academic knew for sure was that he remained alive; the lone survivor in a landscape of terror and destruction.

  Dirty water drained from his ears as he sat up. The empty eyes of Abigail’s corpse still gazed at him, where she’d rolled off the departed form of Michaela Claridge. Blood congealed around the fallen bodies of both women. They appeared to be watching what he would do next, like mannequins arranged by some mentally ill window dresser. The historian brought his knees up beneath his chin. He stared at the lifeless eyes gazing back. Car keys. He squelched to crawl on unsteady hands and knees. In the persistent damp of Deeping Drove, Bob had always kept his car keys in a nook with his salt to one side of the chimney. Anything to prevent moisture from destroying the vehicle’s security plip. At least the stone chimney still stood, blackened and soot encrusted though it was. He pulled at some toppled, burnt wood before the fireplace, then slipped his hand into the storage hole. The keys were cool to the touch, their remote door locking switch undamaged. Given the casual and unpredictable nature of his former relationship with Abigail, Bob always kept a go-bag in the boot of his Land Rover. A change of clothes, a razor and basic washing essentials resided there, for any unforeseen moment of passion that saw him spend an overnighter with the psychic. When they moved out to the site, he’d left the bag in place and not given it a second thought. Apart from the rotting rags that clung to his frozen body, they were the only clothes in the world he possessed. Almost the only things of any description. Bob collected a few chunks of wood with enough life in to still burn and piled them into his former hearth. It proved a surreal image: one lone, wet and filthy man warming himself beside a free-standing fireplace without a building to surround it. Like a comedic statement, he looked for all the world to consider the open landscape his giant living room; as if a few crackling logs might heat it. But Bob didn’t care how it appeared. There was nobody for miles around. All he wanted was a chance to warm up.

  To his relief, the security plip still functioned. The Land Rover pulsed its indicator lights and the doors unlocked. The historian pulled some rags from the boot to dry himself as best he could. He followed this with a change of clothes from the overnight bag. A quick survey of the decimated hovels turned up at least one kettle and a surviving rack to hang it atop the fire. Three rainwater barrels came through the blaze unscathed, so he boiled water from what remained of their contents. All food and drink stores were history. With nothing to make tea from, the man contented himself with warm, boiled water. It took the edge off his chill. Once he'd paid the barest minimum of attention to his ongoing survival, the historian forced himself to wander up the incline to St. Guthlac’s. It was a dreadful journey. His hands trembled, mouth dry. The lychgate still stood, whole and undamaged. Beyond it, the church was now a crumbling pile of rubble. Half the stone tower had collapsed. What had once been the nave resembled some fly-tipping disaster area. No walls remained. They were replaced by heaps of roof tiles, scorched wood, broken glass and crumbling stone. Smoke rose from the pile as if a dragon slept underneath. Bob didn’t venture closer, instead opting to walk in a circuit around the old churchyard. The tumbledown tombstones still poked out of the greensward like broken teeth. Curious muddy pits sat before many of them, where former occupants had climbed out in thrall to the lich. No sign of the reanimated dead could he find; not even his modern peers. The only bodies anywhere at Deeping Drove were Michaela and Abigail near the remains of his hut, and Dean Claridge down by the Welland tributary with Connie’s d
ecapitated corpse. He considered his options. Do I attend to the bodies of my friends, or leave them where they lay? Sooner or later, somebody will venture out here and the authorities will get involved. Sooner, if Connie’s head washes up downstream. It might be better if my DNA wasn’t plastered all over the remains. A cold thought, but Bob knew he had to play it smart lest he find himself fitted-up for some kind of bizarre mass murder. How would he explain the desecrated graves, or the destroyed church, apart from everything else? When he’d moved out to Deeping Drove, the historian kept only a remote Post Office box as his address. Unsure whether he would stay, it seemed pointless to go through the palaver of amending records like his driver’s license. If the DVLA had any issues, he’d sooner risk a thousand pound fine. As it stood, there was precious little evidence to connect him with the site. A few folk might know he resided there for a time. Bob was certain he could claim to have left the place earlier (due to personal differences or some such excuse), if pressed. As long as nobody grilled him as a suspect, the deception would play out. He hated the idea, but what was the alternative? For now, he needed to get the hell out of there and find a new place to live.

  Later that afternoon, Bob took a recce down by the bridge. Water levels slackened along the site edges. With a bit of luck, his Landy would find enough purchase to get him away from the former off-grid paradise once and for all. He stood for one final moment staring at Abigail’s lifeless body. Stealing away like some thief in the night, felt wrong. But, there was no other choice. It was time for another new start. Somewhere he could look out the window and know the scene of this horrific drama wasn’t a few miles down the road. Before he left, Bob loaded the old metal box into the boot of his car. Inside lay the belt and the church chalice he’d retrieved from the river’s edge while saying a final farewell to the body of Dean Claridge. The maroon Discovery splashed through draining puddles, back along the exit track. What still stood of the half-visible bridge, appeared less than stable. But, he had to take the risk. The front of the Land Rover rolled clear on the other side, as what remained of the narrow stone structure gave way. With the rear of his car fish-tailing on a slippery bank, Bob gunned the engine in four-wheel-drive. His heart was still in his mouth when he stopped at a turning onto the tarmac road beyond. One last glance across the isolated fen, and he signalled to pull away; vehicle heater on full blast. His old colleague and friend Ndola Mwangi, would put him up for a night or two without asking too many difficult questions.