Skendleby

by Nick Brown

  Davenport was a brave man, he’d faced death as a young subaltern; he’d been wounded and decorated for his part in the pointless fiasco in Aden. He’d checked the man’s injuries; the left ear was almost completely severed at the lobe, and the fleshy flap left dangling by a couple of skeins of muscle that had not been quite cut through. There was a great deal of blood at the base of the neck and across shoulders and chest. He was in a state of shock, too terrified to speak, only emitting a continuous whimpering sound. He was also bitterly cold and near death.

  Davenport removed his own coat and covered him having checked the bleeding was not too rapid. He called the ambulance and, when he heard its approach, made his way down the rough track to the lane to guide its path. On his return to the mound with the paramedics the man had gripped his hand and held onto it until they arrived at the hospital.

  He answered Barford’s questions as quickly as he could and was offered a lift home. He accepted gratefully but felt obliged to find out how the victim was and who he was. So Barford accompanied him to the room in which he was being treated and left him at the door. A nurse told him the victim had lost the lower section of his right ear but that the piercing to the left shoulder and lower neck had done less damage than they’d feared and no major arteries were severed. However, she said, with a trained look of professional empathy, the main danger could be psychological. He was in a disturbed state and had been sedated but Davenport could see him if he wished. He didn’t wish. He’d carried out his responsibilities. As he trailed back down the long corridor towards reception he thought it was no wonder the mind might be disturbed. But what the hell was he doing on the mound on a freezing cold night with such a murderous fiend?

  The reception area was a bustle of activity as groups of nurses and orderlies standing round the desk watched a group of paramedics escorted by four police officers hurry a stretcher down a corridor leading to the isolation wing. Davenport noticed the figure on the stretcher was struggling but heavily strapped down. Barford was talking to a young, good-looking but unnaturally pale, WPC, but on noticing Davenport, walked over to him.

  “There’s a coincidence, looks like you’ve seen both sides of this incident, Sir Nigel, seems like that’s the thing what tried to kill your friend. She’s just attacked two of our officers, like something out of a horror film it were. It’s been knocked down by a lorry, stunned by a tazer, hacked down with a baton but it still took several of them to tie her down to the stretcher. Still I suppose it could be that we’ve solved all these attacks now: by accident as usual. There’s something creepy about that, I hope I never meet her on a dark night. Anyway, I’ve finished here for the day so I’ll drive you home; I’m sorry but I’ll have to speak to you again tomorrow, Sir.”

  On the drive home Davenport gazed from his rear seat as the moonlit countryside flashed past. Once off the main road the car took the country lanes near his home more slowly so he had time to look at the back of the Hall as it came into view and then recede. The site of the family heritage struck him, as always, with a mixture of nostalgic sadness and anxiety. He noticed that despite the lateness of the hour, it was 1.45am, there were still lights on in the Hall.

  The Rectory, by contrast, was in darkness, so at least the vicar was able to sleep. Wayne Barford talked throughout the journey but by the time he’d been dropped off and said goodbye Davenport couldn’t recall a single thing he’d said. Some lights had been left on for him, with a note telling him Debo had gone to bed and for him not to make any noise. He felt weary but not ready for sleep so he poured a half tumbler of brandy and sank into his armchair and tried to switch off his mind and float downstream but, after a few moments, the thing submerged in his subconscious surfaced.

  Finally it had struck: just when they’d fled the Hall and escaped, the meddling archaeologists had released the evil they’d contained over the centuries. The curse had come upon them and the modern world of science and rational thought was as powerless as they were.

  The family motto since the fifteenth century had been ‘Guarding the Watcher’. But he hadn’t noticed that all the elements of the family misfortunes had converged again. An attempt to open the mound, sightings of the Watcher, a disturbed cleric and now, tonight, a violently-possessed young woman. The past was re-woken, it had been on his watch but he hadn’t been watching.

  CHAPTER 22

  THE ANATOMY OF A GHOST

  Marcus Wolf put down the phone mildly surprised. He’d expected the Reverend Joyce would, at the very least, have asked a series of questions and suspected would prove very difficult to persuade. In fact Joyce sounded like he was expecting the call and was relieved when it came. He walked back into the lounge. Gwen was slouched, drowsy, in the armchair by the fire, legs stretched out towards the flames, thick grey woollen socks on her feet, boots discarded by the hearth, sipping a glass of wine. Giles was sitting in his blanket at the edge of the sofa with one arm around Claire, who was lying back against him holding his other hand in both of hers.

  Strange, Marcus thought: we create moments of peace even in the middle of disaster. His re-entry into the room broke the spell. He was used to this, his ravaged countenance wasn’t comforting. He sat in the chair across the fire from Gwen and poured himself half a glass of wine.

  “This is purely to soothe the vocal chords. I’ve arranged for us to meet Joyce tomorrow. Before that I need to explain what we’re facing. Giles, I don’t know how much Gwen has told you but some years ago I had a very unfortunate brush with the occult; I was prevailed upon to undertake a blessing to rid a building of something that was making a large number of highly sceptical people too frightened to work in it. A haunting I suppose you would call it. Initially I was sceptical; afterwards I was just very afraid.

  “I don’t know what was actually in there, but a memory of it still existed, an impression like the rather more apparent one Gwen will leave in that chair when she gets up. The things we do generate energy which does not immediately dissipate. Particularly evil things generate high concentrations of energy and these energies cling on and grow, like mould; thus a type of possession takes place.

  “Some places, for reasons we don’t know, seem far more susceptible to this and there are people whose minds are sufficiently attuned to pick up messages the trapped energy transmits. Animals are affected far more than us; we appear to have lost our antennae.

  “This is the basis of haunting. You, Giles, employ such a device to measure the age of artefacts because radio carbon dating operates on similar principles. Put like that it doesn’t seem too bad does it?

  “However, with concentrated evil the negative emotions are strong enough to take possession of any unfortunate who is sensitive enough to be tuned in. So the original evil is passed on spread through a living agent. Psychologically disturbed individuals are particularly prone to such infection and I wonder if what we diagnose as mental illness is often the manifestation of a haunting.

  “In the case I attempted to mediate, a random group of individuals claimed to have witnessed inanimate objects move independently. They heard voices and footfalls in empty rooms and witnessed a rocking chair gradually begin to move, at first slowly then with the full swing, as if someone was in it. All these individuals were frightened enough to refuse to work in the building until it was cleansed.”

  He paused for a moment and glanced at Gwen who nodded sympathetically and refilled his wine glass. He took a long swallow and continued more haltingly, the didactic and logical manner of his address now vanished.

  “I saw these things.”

  He paused again, blinking.

  “I spent the twilight of a winter’s day in the most affected room with two of the least affected workers, confirmed atheists, hard men. At dusk, as the light faded, we heard a faint voice and then footsteps crossing the room. Our eyes followed the sounds across the floor towards the rocking chair, there was a faint creaking of wood, then, almost imperceptibly, the chair began to move. My blood froze. Then, cre
aking and banging the floor, it was rocking violently and we were down the stairs and out of the front door.

  “The papers reported a blessing of the building I carried out the next Sunday, and that as far as the press was concerned was the end of the matter. But of course it wasn’t, the work continued but only in daylight and the workers refused to enter that room.

  “There was a child who lived in the building prior to the work being carried out. She was confined in a sanatorium with a severe personality disorder. The mother read the coverage in the papers and requested I visit the child to carry out a similar blessing. The girl claimed there were people inside her. She spoke in different voices, often saying things she couldn’t possibly have known. The mother persuaded me to see the child and the remembrance of the Tuesday afternoon that I spent with her in the sanatorium never leaves me. Foolishly I attempted to interfere with something for which I was unprepared. I lost my mind and, for a time, my faith.”

  He faltered and there was silence; time dragged, he rubbed his eyes then blurted out, voice quavering,

  “There was talk of abuse.”

  Again silence before he croaked almost in a whisper,

  “The Diocese managed to keep the matter hushed up. It was easier in those days. I lost my parish. I had nowhere to go and then I remembered Gwen.”

  They sat in silence listening to the crackle and splutter of the wood fire knowing he hadn’t finished. After some moments Gwen said gently,

  “But you’ve put yourself back together haven’t you, dear, you’ve had time to reflect and seek help.”

  “Yes. I travelled for a bit, joined the Orthodox Church and tried to come to terms with the experience. Since then I’ve hidden myself away in Shrewsbury and on the Welsh borders and tried to help out whenever I can. I’ve not got the strength to take a front line role in this type of thing anymore but I can advise you.”

  He sat back in his chair and sipped his wine, staring at the fire while he tugged at a fringe of wispy beard beneath his chin. None of the others spoke, partially mesmerised by the play of light and shadow across his face knowing that there was more to come.

  “The site of your dig is cursed; interesting that the last sacrifice is contemporary with those on Lindow Moss. Perhaps they are linked: strange also, Claire, that Lindow is the place you chose to live. There’s something about the spirit of a place and this place has been calling out to you: it wants you here but whether for good or evil I don’t know.

  “There are more things to be found deep under Devil’s Mound, it welcomes evil. If the police want to look for the cause of the attacks it’s your site they should investigate. I suppose that as an archaeologist you find all this far-fetched?”

  “As an archaeologist, yeah. But after the last few weeks I just don’t know any more and it scares the shit out of me to think there may be worse things deep under the mound. You’re right about place: loads of features are built on earlier sites, some dating as far back as the Mesolithic, but I’m not sure where that gets us.”

  Giles ran his hand through Claire’s hair as he spoke feeling comforted by the warmth of her body leaning against his.

  “It gets us further than you think. Whatever ritual they performed worked: it kept the thing in there. Whatever it was, the demon is still part of that culture. It doesn’t think like us, it’s not modern; it’s rooted in its own past and observes ancient laws and conventions, not ours. So we are dealing with something that still believes in those things and will continue to be conditioned by them.”

  Gwen turned to Giles,

  “Marcus is suggesting that if we can get this entity back into the tomb and recreate the ancient burial there’s a good chance it will obey the ritual laws and stay put. Your Iron Age villagers broke into the tomb. It scared them away from the place but they successfully resealed it. If they could do it so can we.”

  “You mean like we conduct a human sacrifice. Get real, who do you think we can convince to volunteer for that?”

  “No need to be sarcastic, Giles, obviously no one is suggesting that. But you could re-bury the original two sacrifices.”

  “Hang on, let me get this straight; you’re suggesting that having excavated this site we now need to go and put it all back. Like re-packing Pandora’s box, right?”

  “Precisely.”

  Marcus, having regained self control, reached across and gently squeezed his arm.

  “You took it out; you put it back, although not you alone. Your friend who opened it will have to close it up again. You’ll have to use the same stones because I think those stones with the eyes must represent some ancestors with undying power.”

  Giles was getting angry, finding it difficult to control himself. He spat out,

  “And that’s it yeah? That’s what you’ve come up with?…… That’s it; a de-excavation? A new one for archaeology text books that; magic.”

  Marcus didn’t react; he recognised stress when he saw it and he pressed on in the same gentle manner.

  “No there’s more to it than that, but we’ve not worked all of it out yet. If the residual is in your photographer, Lisa, then we need to find a way of getting it out of her. The church does have a manual on how to do that, fortunately.”

  Giles snorted with dismissive laughter and Marcus paused for a moment smiling coldly before saying quietly,

  “It has been known to work on occasions.”

  “Oh yeah and you can name check someone who’s managed it can you?”

  “Well, I think that Christ would be the best example; someone even you might have heard of, Giles.”

  The acid reply was a barometer of the way the conversation was souring and Marcus recognising this took a deep breath and tried to smile an apology, saying,

  “No, I’m sorry for that, it was a cheap retort but please hear me out. If we drive it out of Lisa it will have to return to the site it haunts, that’s one of the rules it’s governed by. Once it’s there we can reseal it. We just need to work out the necessary ritual so you can leave it as you found it. We must pray that it hasn’t been in the girl long enough to permanently affect her. Or, worse that it doesn’t switch to another, stronger, host. If it manages that, it gathers power and we lose it.”

  Giles saw Claire flinch as Marcus said this and, sorry to have lost his temper with her friends, said,

  “OK, OK, but even if I bought all of this stuff I’d never convince Steve. He’s angry enough about the way we excavated the site, he’d never allow us to put it all back and there’s no sane archaeologist who would disagree with him. When he stops being angry he’ll just laugh.”

  “Have you got a better idea, Giles? Have you forgotten how frightened you’ve been over the last few days? Forgotten the state you were in when you arrived tonight? No I thought not, don’t say any more now. I’ll work on the detail, you and Claire go to bed; we’ve a busy day tomorrow.”

  Giles hadn’t a better idea and didn’t want to argue any more, he was tired and the idea of going to bed with Claire sounded good. As they were leaving the room he heard Marcus say softly to Gwen,

  “And of course we will need a holy man, a shaman, to conduct the ritual; normally a difficult one that, but I think I’ve got the ideal candidate.”

  CHAPTER 23

  THE CALM BEFORE

  The morning sunlight streamed in like butterscotch, bathing the table and bowl of oranges in warmth. Claire stood at a work surface making tea, toast and honey for her and Marcus. Through the window, at the back of the garden, Lindow Moss, dusted with frost, basked benign and welcoming under a clear blue winter sky. At the table Marcus felt as close to peace of mind as his disposition allowed.

  “You know, Claire, this is about the closest I’ve been to family life since I was a boy.”

  He took a bite of toast failing to notice the thin viscous stream of honey gently sliding off its edge and onto his black sweater.

  “Admittedly a strange type of family, and I know this is the calm before the storm, bu
t we seem to fit together, a family of the failed and broken.”

  “Speak for yourself, I don’t feel either failed or broken, just a mixture of content and horror. I don’t know where one ends and the other starts.”

  Gwen had gone for a walk to buy the morning paper, Giles was still in bed. In an hour they would set off to meet the vicar of Skendleby and Woodford.

  ***

  In Skendleby Ed was sitting in the rectory kitchen waiting for Davenport. He’d called earlier asking him to come over. Ed was stuck between epiphany and malediction. He was involved in something too frightening to think about and last week he’d been on the brink of mental breakdown. Yet last night he and Mary had made love for the first time in as far back as he could remember, and now here he was awaiting the arrival of Davenport and Marcus Wolf with a sense of almost pleasurable anticipation. He wasn’t alone anymore; he was part of a team.

  Even more significant: he was convinced of the evil he faced; he’d seen it with his own eyes. He believed it existed and, if it existed, against all rational sense and empiricism, then God existed, so all this was happening for a purpose. It was meant to be and he was meant to be part of it and not just a smarmy and irritating presence at the periphery of other people’s lives.

  He was also enjoying another emotion for the first time, a strong, angry, dislike bordering on hatred, for Si Carver. Most unchristian yet strangely fortifying. Carver had threatened him twice in a contemptuous manner. But last night on Carver’s land he realised the link with the mound was not with the Rectory, not with him. Heatly Smythe’s problems had arisen from his trying to excavate the mound, his meddling in things that were none of his business. The parish priest was not the target of any animus, never had been, in fact the lurking thing that terrified him had tried to warn him off; perhaps even to protect him.