by Nick Brown
No, the link was with the Hall and its owner. The one who had most to fear was Carver. Cheered by this he experienced a delicious, if guilty, frisson and settled to his breakfast with a hearty appetite.
***
Later, at eleven by the chime of the clock, high in the bell tower, a strange assortment of pilgrims sat round the large rectangular Rectory table. At the head a smooth-faced, bespectacled cleric sat opposite a slender, beautiful, dark haired woman. At one side of the table sat two men who could not have looked more different. A youngish tousle haired man wearing old jeans and Parka over a T shirt baring a mildly offensive message, and next to him an elderly, strongly built man with the stamp of landed gentry like the writing through a stick of seaside rock. He was engaged in conversation about mutual acquaintances with a heavily built woman with short cropped grey hair wearing a second hand man’s suit.
“Yes, that would be Richard Davenport, a cousin of mine from the Devonshire branch of the family, a bit odd, some type of academic in Cambridge now, a sensitive sort of chap from what I remember.”
The others weren’t part of this exchange. They sat with eyes fixed on the sixth member of the group, an oldish man with a deeply lined face wearing a shabby wool sweater streaked with honey stains. He was fiddling with some notes preparing to make a speech but never had the opportunity because the shrill ring tone of a mobile phone diverted all attention. The youngish man fumbled in the pockets of his Parka and eventually located it.
“Hi, Giles here. Jan, what’s up? Steve? What’s he done now? You’re joking. Attacked? Jesus. Listen, calm down, no don’t worry, I’ll come and get you, we’ll go together, about forty minutes maybe an hour. OK, stay calm, yeah. See you.”
He turned to explain but before he could, Davenport spoke to Ed.
“Unless there’s been an extraordinary coincidence I think we now know who my friend in the ambulance from last night is. I’m sorry about this, Mr Wolf, I know you have important matters you want to discuss with us but I think we’d better tell you what we know first and I’ll be surprised if the two aren’t related. Do you want to do it or shall I, Vicar? Sorry, Edmund, I mean Ed.”
The question was rhetorical, Davenport’s tone and body language made it clear he was going to tell the story. He outlined the events of last night culminating in the destinations of Lisa and Steve, mildly satisfied to see the effect of his narrative on the others. On concluding he turned to Giles,
“It’s too late now to talk about blame but it would have been far better if you’d left that place alone, young man. I warned you about excavating in that field and now look what’s happened.”
But Giles wasn’t listening he was heading for the door.
***
The day was still crisply invigorating with deep blue sky and pale lemon sun but, for Giles, Davenport’s account of the previous night had drained any warmth from it. The image of Steve sacrificed at the site brought back his own terror. This wasn’t just some weird type of haunting he’d blundered into, that would have been bad enough, but Steve could have died and Lisa was possessed; a killer. Now the pattern of attacks, desecrations and disturbance made bizarre sense. His excavation had unlocked the gate which, over the millennia, kept them in check. This attack had happened whilst he spent the night with Claire almost enjoying the spookiness of it. He even felt a sense of responsibility, not something he normally associated with himself.
Jan was waiting outside the front door of her terrace, teary eyed and smoking. They drove to the hospital in silence. The police found her telephone number in Steve’s wallet at the hospital and had phoned her in lieu of next of kin. She spoke only once more as they approached the hospital gates.
“Why did he go there with that woman? He could have been with me, he knew that. The bastard, I don’t know what upset me more, that he nearly died or that he went off with some casual pickup. Oh God, makes me sound like Rose, what a bitch I am.”
She began to cry again. The tension of the drive made arriving at the hospital almost a relief. From reception they were directed to a side ward at the end of which was a small room with a police woman sitting outside.
The room contained one bed, one chair and a haggard, elderly man with long white hair propped up on some pillows. The right side of his face and ear were smothered in a bandage; other dressings covered his shoulders beneath the loose hospital gown. He greeted them without emotion, just a grunt of recognition. Giles sat on the chair, Jan on the bed, holding Steve’s hand, her face wet with tears.
“Oh, Steve, oh love, look what they’ve done to you. Your beautiful hair’s all white, even on your arms and chest.”
Giles looked and saw she was right, the hair on his arms and at his neck was as dead white as that on his head and his face seemed to have aged thirty years overnight. As Jan fussed and petted him Steve turned his gaze and attention to Giles.
“She bit my ear off, Gi, tried to kill me. I thought I was dying; it was like something out of a horror movie. And the voice, I’ll never forget that. But there’s something worse, frightened even her. I saw it. It makes no sense. But it’s real and I’m so scared, even in here.”
He faltered then started to cry, the tears soaking the thin material of the gown, Giles watched in silence as Jan cradled his head. Then through his sobs he blurted,
“It left me to die out there. So cold, alone and frightened. I could feel my blood pumping out but I couldn’t move. Someone found me, I felt him take my hand in the ambulance. I thought I’d died and that it was Dad come back for me.”
He stopped. Jan tried to brush back his hair.
“Steve, you’re safe now, love. I’ll stay here till they say when they’ll let you out. Why did you do it? What happened? Who was she?”
Giles decided he’d leave them together even though he hadn’t said a single word.
“Steve, you take care, all right man. You’re safe in here, but listen, I’ll come and see you tomorrow, OK? We need to talk. Jan, I’ll wait for you in reception.”
He walked to the door, noticing there were no flowers, no cards or chocolates in this room. No family, no ties, nothing. Steve called after him,
“Giles, it’s you that needs to take care, none of us are safe, maybe that witch woman was right.”
He decided to call in on Rose while he waited. It was the last thing he wanted but he felt morally obliged. He found her at the other end of the hospital grounds in a single room off the psychiatric wards. He needn’t have worried about the length of the visit, it was brutally short.
He thought he was in the wrong room at first. The wild looking creature in the badly stained hospital gown with part of its scalp shaved looked unfamiliar. It sat in bed rapidly turning its head from side to side snapping its jaws. Rose recognised him though.
“I see you Giles. You woke the dead, now you pay the price. Worse for the bitch, that witch you’re with, worse for her.”
She fixed him with her bloodshot eyes as she opened her mouth and cackled, he saw that there were teeth missing and her tongue was palsy white.
“It tricked me, it was never meant for me, it was for her and now there’s nowhere to run.”
She threw back her head and began to make a high pitched yipping cry. Giles backed out of the room.
***
It took several minutes out in the cold air to compose himself sufficiently to return to the main building and wait for Jan. Giles hated hospitals, everything about them, but most of all the smell and the lack of independence of action that outside of them, or prison, we take for granted. He wanted to be out in the clear, crisp air, not breathing the infected atmosphere of the wards. He saw two men approaching and Jim Gibson took him by his arm.
“Giles, what are you doing here? We’ve just been to see Lisa; this is her father, you know Councillor Richardson?”
It was only then Giles recognised the man who’d threatened him at the planning meeting: he was almost as badly changed as Steve, dishevelled, papery skinned, grey
and old. Giles felt an impulse of sympathy and offered his hand. Instead of taking it Richardson shouted,
“What we’ve seen in there is not my daughter, not my Lisa. It’s something broken, not right any more. Do you know what this is going to do for my reputation; it’s my turn to be mayor next year. You were meant to give her an interest, build up her bloody confidence. Well you’ve done that all right, turned her into a mad thing, dressed up like a tart and murderous, now she’s strapped down to a bed, drugged and raving.”
His jaw quivered and a tear ran down his sunken cheek. When he spoke again it was like a different man.
“What have you done to her, what have I done to her? To my little princess, my little girl.”
Richardson paused, choked back a sob then managed to refocus on Giles.
“But I’ll have you, or my lawyers will. When they’ve finished with you, you’ll wish you were under the bloody ground, not digging it up.”
His face was so close that Giles could feel the bubbles of spittle splashing his cheeks. Jim put an arm round him and steered him to the door.
“Come on, Derek, this won’t help Lisa. You’ve had a nasty shock. Let’s get some fresh air and then I’ll drive you home.”
He turned back briefly.
“Jesus, Giles, I’m not surprised he’s like that. He’s right, the thing in there’s not his daughter; it’s like something out of ‘The Exorcist’. I don’t know what we’ve done, the world’s gone mad, but something happened that day, you let out something unspeakable now it wants vengeance.”
His face was red and he took Giles by the arm as if trying to anchor himself.
“It could have been me, she sat in my car, bit my ear, I could be the one in that hospital room, not Steve. Thank God they’ve got her sedated. Look, I’m going to take Derek home. Don’t feel too bad about what he said, he’s pretty broken up, he’s really not as bad as he appears. He thinks what’s happened to Lisa is his fault, some type of retribution for his Skendleby scam. Listen, you need to watch out, don’t spend time on your own. See you.”
He walked off towards the automatic door but half way there he halted.
“I hope you’ve got some idea how to put all this back together again Giles, because I don’t think it’s going to stop; this is just the beginning.”
The doors soundlessly opened and closed and Giles was left alone in the hospital reception with all its stark associations. The next fifty-five minutes waiting for Jan dragged and dragged. He drank two plastic cups of foul coffee, paced the car park, watched the inane daytime television with the sound turned down and read the various targets of customer care that were proudly pinned up on the hospital notice board. From time to time a stretcher was pushed down one of the corridors. Eventually Jan appeared, red faced and weepy eyed, but under control.
“Amazingly, apart from his left ear the other injuries aren’t too bad. She tried to kill him with some type of stone blade, there were fragments left in the wounds. If it had been steel he’d be dead.
“He’s sleeping now but he wants you to come back and talk to him later. He wants to warn you again. He’s not so bothered about the girl who stabbed him now she’s been caught; it’s the other thing that’s really scaring him. He thinks it’s what attacked Rose and what Leonie tried to warn us about. He’s terrified it’ll come back to finish him off but he told me to tell you to watch out because it wants you too.”
They walked to the car and as they set off for her house she said,
“His hair started to go white the day we opened the tomb, there’s something toxic in there, and it’s poisoning everything it touches. That night on the mound only accelerated it. We’ve started something that we can’t stop and I’m too frightened to stick around. I’ve got some leave due, Giles, and I’d like to go and spend some time with my Dad. I’ll leave you his number in Glasgow in case you need to talk to me. When we get home I’m going to pack a bag and catch the first train I can.”
They lapsed into silence until they reached her terrace. She leant across and pecked Giles on the cheek, handing him a folded piece of paper.
“It’s Dad’s address in Glasgow. When they discharge Steve tell him he can come up to join me. But tell him to come only if it’s me he wants to be with, I want to help him but I don’t think I can stand being messed around any more. Bye Giles, take care.”
Giles drove to his own cold empty house. It felt different as if whatever haunted him here had moved on. Considerately, it had turned off the lights and taps. The house felt like an empty grave and he wanted out. He threw some things into a rucksack, constantly glancing over his shoulder. He was relieved when he’d locked the front door behind him and was out on the street.
Rose, broken up and raving, Steve, damaged in hospital, now Jan escaping to Scotland. There was only him and Leonie left of the core team. He tried to warn her to be careful but got no answer from either her mobile or her home phone.
Driving to Lindow he passed attack sites littered with floral tributes and thought about the thing that attacked Steve on the mound and chased him on the Moss. Marcus might have a plan for purging Lisa and re-sealing the tomb but what was he going to do about this other thing? He found himself muttering “it moves in a most peculiar way”. Despite the brightness of the sun and the warmth of the car heater he felt cold and very afraid.
CHAPTER 24
NO ESCAPE
Claire greeted him at the door; immediately he felt better.
“Gwen and Marcus stayed in Skendleby. Davenport’s going to take them to the mound and walk them round the estate boundary. They’ll have dinner in the Rectory and stay overnight; I’ll pick them up tomorrow. So we have the place to ourselves.”
They spent the late winter afternoon in bed watching as the onset of night exsanguinated the sky and the red sunset turned black. A wispy covering of fog began to drift in over Lindow Moss. Lying side by side and silent in the gloom they were thinking of the same thing: Lisa.
“You know I’m the one who has to do it, Giles.”
“Do what?”
“Do what Marcus said to drive out whatever’s inside her.”
“No way; you know what she did to Steve, what she’s become. Believe me, you don’t want to go anywhere near her.”
“Giles, it’s her on the disc, that’s what she’s become. I have to try, while she’s in hospital sedated, tied down, whatever. We decided how to do it when you were visiting Steve.”
“And how do you think that you’re going to manage that then? For a start you won’t be allowed to see her. I saw her dad today, Richardson; he’s as callous as they come, but even he couldn’t stand to be with her, his own daughter, she frightened him; he was crying, a man like that crying. You should have seen Steve; he’s like an old man, white haired and terrified. You can’t, it’s too dangerous.”
He’d already decided not to tell Claire about Rose and the image of Steve and Richardson stifled any desire for further conversation. So they lay slumped and silent in the twilight of the bedroom, until Giles couldn’t resist the urge to ask the question.
“What does Marcus want you to do?”
He was about to say ‘I won’t let you’ when he realised that he had no control over her, in fact he hardly knew her but he didn’t want to lose her, so again they lapsed into silence as the room darkened. But the question hovered over them so after about five minutes:
“Giles, it’s what I do or what I used to do, I have a type of gift. Under certain circumstances I can make contact with people’s inner consciousness and I can see things, things other people can’t, things most people think don’t exist. I’ve tried to run away from it but this is meant for me. The old sensations have all come back; it started with the dream of the dig. This thing, whatever it is, found me, I’m meant to be here. I know you don’t understand any of this but you have to trust me because this isn’t going to be without danger for you either.”
After his recent experiences he couldn’t find a convin
cing argument. He felt her slip from the bed and begin to shuffle into her clothes.
“Come on, get up, it’s grown too gloomy in here. I’ll take you out to dinner and tell you what Marcus has lined up for you.”
They ate in a bistro by the fire station that had changed hands and identity several times. It wasn’t particularly good but was just within walking distance. The place was noisy and decorated for Christmas. A large works-night-out dominated one end of the room, shouting and cackling, so they and some other couples were shoved over to the back by the side window, an area only infrequently visited by the waiters.
Giles picked at his food thinking about his meal in the Trattoria with Jim. It seemed a lifetime ago but was only a matter of weeks; he began to consider how much longer he could stay with Claire and was wondering if she minded he’d brought some of his stuff over when he realised she was waiting for an answer to a question he hadn’t heard.
“So will you be able to do it, Giles?”
“Sorry, I was miles away.”
“Will you be able to seal the tomb and put enough of the bones back to make it work?”
“Oh God, I didn’t think that was serious, I can understand some attempt to get this thing out of Lisa, you know, deal with the psychology of it and all that; but the rest, that’s just…”
He was going to say bollocks but he didn’t believe that either so he trailed off limply, fixed by her intent gaze, and scooped up a forkful of the glutinous and rapidly congealing gnocchi on his plate.
“Giles!”
She talked quietly but in a tone of voice he now recognised as her assertive mode; he’d learned enough about her to understand there was no point arguing. She spoke to him like a teacher instructing a slow and reluctant pupil.
“We have to put things back the way they were before. I know it’s not easy for you to understand, but you need to find a way to do it and you need Steve and, of course, Ed.”