by Nick Brown
“Lisa, there’s someone over there. Have you told anyone else about this? Because if not, then I think we need to get out of here.”
Now he wanted to be away, the effects of the alcohol were evaporating and the sexual allure of his companion diminished. He’d made a mistake, had he been set up for something?
“Don’t be silly, it’ll be just someone up to what we’re doing, it could be the local dogging site; come on only a few more minutes.”
Her voice was urgent. She took his hand and hurried him through the gap in the village boundary and then they were at the tomb. Devil’s Mound looked desolate with the scars of the excavation fresh upon it and Steve couldn’t think of a place he less wanted to be. From the distant woods there were sounds: twigs snapping, perhaps some animal breaking cover followed by the mournful hooting of an owl.
Lisa froze and looked towards the woods while Steve, whose mind was not working clearly, found himself wondering if owls were meant to be out and about in winter or whether they should be at home hibernating like other woodland creatures. He was sure he’d been taught something like that at primary school. Then a sensible thought entered his brain for the first time that evening.
“Lisa, where’s the camera? You haven’t got a camera.”
She turned to look at him.
“What was that, Steve?”
“You haven’t bought a camera, we’re meant to be taking some important film but you haven’t bought a camera.”
“Doesn’t matter, I’ll use the phone, we can download the images, it’s no problem, come on.”
“For the excavation you had all the gear, tripod, light meter, lenses. Tonight, for a more difficult shot, only a mobile. I don’t think so.”
“Well maybe I like a bit of adventure, Steve, and from everything I’ve heard so do you. Perhaps I fancy it on the mound and we can take a couple of shots later; don’t tell me that you don’t want to, there’s no strings so loosen up, it’s your type of scene, come on.”
She took his hand and led him to the mound but stopped as if looking for something particular then said quickly,
“We’ll do it here.”
She positioned herself at the edge of the ritual pit where the bodies of the sacrificed men had lain for millennia as eternal sentinels.
He heard hooting again as the moon broke through the thin blanket of fog. Silver light flooded the mound dappling Lisa’s body and causing weird shadows to dance. She’d undone the coat and flung back her hair whilst opening her arms in a gesture both inviting and symbolic. Bathed in moonlight she stood like a mythical queen dazzling all around her.
“Well, come on, you won’t get a better offer than this.”
Mesmerised by the light and her presence he moved towards her, a supplicant to some pagan goddess. For that was what she seemed like to him; a promiscuously charged version of the goddess Diana, sexual and terrifying.
For Steve everything lost any sense of reality. He was physically aroused but mentally dislocated. He watched as a dark shape detached itself from the distant tree line. But now, within touching distance, inhaling the scent of her perfume he’d gone too far to stop. He felt her breath on his face and slid his hands beneath her coat. She undulated against him and he felt her breath on his neck. Felt the soft flick of her tongue moving up towards his ear as her left hand pulling at his long hair forced his head back. He noticed that the shadow from the tree line was closer now, capering in a way no human bone structure could possibly accommodate, like it was here and there at the same time.
But that was just part of the wonderful hyper-reality of the moment. His hands were under the skirt, on the back of her thighs, gliding upwards over her stocking tops, her perfumed breath wreathed his face, her mouth was over his ear whispering softly, sensuous but in no language he’d ever heard. Everything felt liquid; swooning, suspended, he felt himself dissolving into the moonlight.
Then sharp, terrible pain: tearing and cold. His ear was being shredded, bitten right through, and ripped away. The voice changed, the words the same but now harsh and high, the same phrase repeating. His head was jerked back. He felt hot liquid flooding down his neck soaking his shirt collar. He couldn’t move, felt, more than saw, her right hand stretch up and then come down with terrible force as something sharp and thin pierced his leather coat and glanced off his shoulder blade. He recognised the thing in her hand as a flint knife; she stabbed down at him again and again. There was sharp, jagged pain near his neck, the warm gush of blood. He tried to hold her off but she was too strong, the knife cut into his flesh and his strength leaked away as his blood spurted in spasmodic gouts onto the frozen ground. The voice, chanting, triumphant and vindictive increased in volume. She was shrieking, screaming in ecstasy and he was unable to move; now there was only pain, cold and terror. Something black and ragged was near, approaching like something fast forwarded. Now he recognised it: his death.
He was down on the cold hard ground slippy with his warm blood pumping out onto the mound. He felt her begin to cut at his left forefinger, he watched his death coming for him, he heard the voice, hers, change to something like anger, perhaps terror. Then nothing.
CHAPTER 20
A VERY ANCIENT EVIL
“Can yer move, can yer ’ear me?”
The words sounded muffled as if strained through cotton wool, his head ached and there was orange light slipping in and out of focus. Something soft and wet snuffled his face, there a dog standing over him. Two arms helped him to sit up.
“I were worried there for a moment, thought you was a goner.”
A man’s face swam into vision and the orange light settled down into a streetlamp seen through freezing fog.
“Give us quite a shock when you come running out of the Moss screaming and shouting, must have been a shock for that feller behind you. Mind, he made off sharpish like.”
Giles flexed his arms and legs, realised the shock had made him wet himself. He was sufficiently recovered however to be relieved that he was wearing black jeans and it probably wouldn’t show. He felt the man’s hands on his back.
“That’s strange and you didn’t get these when you made that bloody great jump, it looked like you’d been thrown. Your coat’s all tore down the back, it’s got bits hanging off like streamers.”
He stopped talking and Giles realised he was very frightened by what he’d found walking the dog. The man helped him to his feet; Giles didn’t physically feel too bad.
“Will you be all right? It’s just that me and the dog, need to be getting off like.”
“Yeah, I think I’ll be OK; thanks very much.”
The man started to go but turned back.
“You need to go to the police you know, with all them attacks and stuff. If it hadn’t been for me and the dog coming along who knows what might have happened?”
“Yeah, I’ll do that, thanks again.”
But he was pretty sure that whatever had been after him only wanted him scared and he was way beyond scared. His only consolation was that it must have only wanted to warn him: if it had wanted to do more it would have. He stood taking deep breaths to steady his heart while he got his bearings. Then dusted himself down and set off for Claire’s house.
An hour later, after a bath, he sat wrapped in a blanket in Claire’s lounge relaxed by several glasses of wine, apparently brought by the damaged ex-priest from his Shrewsbury cellar: Aloxe-Corton burgundy, and a good year according to him. Towards the end of the second bottle Giles understood some of the history connecting this strange trio.
Marcus and Gwen, contemporaries at Oxford, had not fitted the mould and had drifted into alternative lifestyles ending up as outsiders. Even after his scare Giles was sufficiently composed to recognise the fragile nature of Marcus’ character and his problem drinking. Before his Skendleby experiences he’d have laughed at them but not now. Besides, his fledgling relationship with Claire was the most important and satisfying element in his life and they were her friends.
“I’ve listened to your disc more times than I cared to. You have been very unlucky to get mixed up in it all but not as unlucky, I fear, as the one who opened up the tomb. I can tell you are one of life’s sceptics, feckless even, and the only reason you’re listening to me is that you’re scared. Your rational background denies all the things you’ve have seen and heard, yet still you are scared.
“I sensed it as soon as you appeared at the door. We live in a world we don’t understand, we utilise only a part of our brains, we can’t conceive of infinity. Despite the fact that quantum mechanics demonstrate that things can be in two places at the same time and that time itself is a human construct and therefore relative, we refuse to countenance the presence in the world of things that transcend the a priori.”
This was exactly the type of statement that Giles hated, typifying everything that he considered snobbish and patronising and which he bitterly resented so he reacted accordingly.
“Drop the lecture and get to the point, it’s been a long day.”
Giles may have been scared but he was also irked, after all he’d found the disc, and he didn’t like being talked down to in front of Claire.
“I’m sorry, young man, it was unintentional. I just wanted to establish there are many things we do not understand that future research might explain. Because what I am going to tell will not seem logical but you need to believe it. I often feel with academics it’s best to proceed from the established position of a cogently argued and reasoned base.”
Gwen leant forward and gave Marcus a shove, which coming from one as strongly built as she was, effectively stopped him in his tracks.
“Like he said, get to the point. I’m afraid Marcus doesn’t get out much these days, Giles, so now he makes the most of any audience he gets, not that he was much different in Oxford.”
“Well if you want brevity then here it is. That tomb should never have been touched. Whoever was put in it was meant to stay in it forever. They used procedures to keep her in place, things the credulous would describe as magic and the sceptical as superstition, things of which there are examples in deviant burials all over the world and which still happen in Eastern Europe as we speak. These procedures proved effective for several thousand years. People over hundreds of generations recognised the place for what it was and kept away.
“Then a bunch of meddlers turned up and became infected. Your disc is a tangible manifestation of this infection but I’m sure if you cast your mind back over the duration of the excavation you will remember people having mood swings, behaving strangely, imagining they see things no one else does.”
Giles irritation was replaced by a sense of sickening familiarity with the incidents Marcus was listing.
“And why is this? It’s because these things are actually happening. If the people who built the tomb were concerned to keep the spirit inside it you can bet they didn’t leave much to chance. The tomb and the stone weights are only part of the equation, they will have left other things to watch and contain. Those bodies you found in the pit opposite the tomb’s entrance for instance. Whoever went into those pits was special in life and special in death. They had to be, their role was to guard the tomb through eternity. However, the fact that this tomb was placed so far from any human occupation and they were prepared to travel to it, suggests the place already had an evil reputation stretching far back in the folk memory of the tribe. Doesn’t that fill you with a sense of awe as an archaeologist, Giles? A place associated with evil for so long that it pre-dates any records. Understand; we are dealing with a very ancient evil.”
He paused, stared at his wine glass, then stood up and moved to the fire as if struck by a sudden chill despite the warmth of the softly lit room.
“Anyway, it’s out now, thanks to you and your bungling friends. It’s moved into your photographer. When you listen to the voice on the disc, Giles, think of the photographer because that’s her now and she’s acquired millennia of accumulated malice. The first recipient of that malice will be whoever opened the tomb. So contact that individual and tell him to be careful and not spend too much time alone.”
“Steve. No need to worry about him. He’s sceptical as they come and probably never spends a night alone. If there’s one person you don’t need to worry about, it’s Steve.”
He paused and added as an afterthought,
“Strange about his hair though.”
If Marcus heard this he showed no sign, just continued.
“I’ve researched the area, there are legends attached to the local landed family and also a strange tale concerning one of the eighteenth century incumbents of the parish church. We need to contact the family and the present vicar.”
“The vicar, well that’s a coincidence because before he left tonight, Steve reminded me that the local vicar turned up on site and asked if he could carry out a blessing. Steve found it hilarious, called it an exorcism.”
“That’s what it should have been! I think I’ll pay him a visit, his name’s Edmund Joyce and, fittingly enough, he attended the same college as I did but about thirty years later. He’s lived a troubled life: I’ve already read his curriculum vitae and asked a few old acquaintances about him. It seems he suffered some sort of breakdown during his ministry in Birmingham and consequently left the parish to take some time out.
“Since then he’s continued very much as a moderniser, tends to shy away from any spiritual interpretations, sees the Bible as a social work manual rather than divine text. Makes one wonder why he joined the church, but I digress. Now he’s in the wrong place at the wrong time again. All the same we’ll start with him, see if he’s noticed anything strange in the parish. I’ve got the Rectory number so I’ll give him a call and arrange to cut across tomorrow.”
He got up and moved into the hall to phone leaving Giles and the others finishing the wine.
“You really believe Lisa’s inhabited by some ancient demon? Mind you, she scared the life out of Jim. I suppose I’d better just ring Steve and warn him. He’ll wet himself laughing at me over this for years; he already thinks I’m incompetent, now he’ll think I’m mad.”
He searched in his pocket for the mobile and keyed in Steve’s number. Neither of their calls was successful. The Rectory was engaged and Giles got the answering service on Steve’s phone, and unable to think of a reasonably sane message to leave opted to leave none. Marcus returned to the room.
“I’ll try the Rectory number again later. I think it advisable to talk to Joyce sooner rather than later. Because once the photographer’s finished with Giles’s colleague, it’s him she’ll turn to – the man of God; spiritual descendant of whatever shaman incarcerated her in the first place. Given Joyce’s mental state, it’s unlikely his spiritual defences will serve him particularly well. I take it you’re staying here tonight, Giles? Yes, I think that’s best. In that case we’ll have another bottle.”
***
The reason that the Rectory phone had been engaged was because just before Marcus left his chair to phone the Reverend Joyce the phone rang and Ed picked up the handset.
“Listen, Joyce, this is Si Carver. I told you to sort out the goings on in your churchyard, get rid of the dossers. Well you didn’t, so you’d better get over there right now or I’ll come across and bloody well sort it out and I’ll sort you out whilst I’m at it; you get where I’m coming from?”
“I’m sorry, Mr Carver, again you have me at a disadvantage, I’ve no idea what you are talking about. Perhaps you be kind enough to explain a bit more clearly.”
“Save that poncy talk for your church tossers, there’s been someone in the grounds again, near the old chapel.”
Si Carv
er paused for a moment as if uncertain, which surprised Ed, then he continued,
“They’ve been trying to get in there and I’ve seen lights and heard sounds over by the mound. I’ve already warned you about those tramps I’ve seen hanging around the churchyard. If you want to support work-shy dossers that’s your business but I’ve told you; keep them off my land, and listen, when I tell someone to do something they do it; understand Vicar? Now shift your arse over here and get them out otherwise I’ll be having a word with my friend the Bishop, do you want that?”
Having delivered this most unsubtle of threats he put the phone down leaving Ed to consider a course of action. He decided to ring Davenport and ask him to go with him into the estate hoping that, following their last conversation, Davenport would feel some sense of obligation perhaps mixed with a desire to revisit his old family home. Also he needed to tell Davenport about the phone call from Lisa. He had to tell someone as the voice had stayed clear and ominous in his memory and, although a pitifully weak man lacking courage and faith, he was aware of his own moral responsibility.
Davenport, to his surprise, agreed without hesitation and Ed met him at the Rectory door. He arrived carrying a torch and thick oak cudgel. There was heavy lying frost and the iron hard ground crackled under their boots as they set out together for the gate in the estate wall linking the church land with the old house. Their present circumstances reminded Ed of the passage in Heatly Smythe’s journal where the Squire on a similar night delivered his warning to leave well alone.
Now here he was, one of Heatly Smythe’s spiritual successors, accompanied by the Squire’s ancestor, making his own entrance into the story. He felt comforted not only by Davenport’s presence, but because it was evident that the normally unflappable village leader was almost as agitated as he was. For the first time Ed felt that he wasn’t alone in this nightmare.
“I’m only doing this because I feel you need looking after, Vicar, and I suppose I’m curious to see what that creature Carver has done to the estate.”