Skendleby

by Nick Brown

  “Ed, you mean that vicar?”

  “Yes, the mound was closed with a ceremony. You opened it and you’ve seen the consequences. Now you need to close it. Believe me, it is very necessary.”

  Her angular face was sharper, her mouth a fixed line. Giles blurted,

  “Well there’s no chance of ever getting Steve near that place, you should have seen him, Claire.”

  The teacher in her was getting angry.

  “You will get him there whatever Giles. These entities are guided by the rules they’re used to. We are dealing with something that still exists in its own long dead time, we have to contain it using things it will recognise and obey. Once it leaves Lisa it has nowhere to go but the mound. Once it’s there we make sure it can’t move out again. Understand?”

  “It just doesn’t make sense.”

  Her face chiselled like a diamond, the line of the mouth more fixed; now he was almost frightened of her.

  “Whether it does or it doesn’t, Giles, you are still going to do it.”

  She must have realised she was being too heavy so tried to soften her face with a smile and said more gently,

  “Giles, don’t you understand the danger we’re in, what you’ve done? There’s no alternative. I’ve gone over this enough times for one evening, I’m going to the loo, you ask for the bill.”

  She left him gazing out of the window at the fog. It was crazy but he had no alternative ideas; here he was, an atheist cynic pursued by an ancient curse, and in love. So he had no choice and although it made no sense, he would do it.

  The opaque shifting light brought something else to mind: the stalker on the Moss. The same Moss they’d cross on the way home. It must have been there since the tomb was built, maybe even before. Steve was obviously off his head yet he was clear about seeing something which scared him more than Lisa had. What was it, what did it want? Would it just stand and watch as they carried out their ritual of de-resurrection? Claire and her crazy friends hadn’t thought about this or how to deal with it; he felt Steve’s terror beginning to infect him.

  Outside the night had one more shock for them. They walked through the freezing dark to Claire’s house arms round each other aware of strange sounds reaching them through the distorting blanketing fog. Tonight he saw no police cars and couldn’t decide if this was a good thing and was relieved to reach her driveway. But something had spooked her.

  “Look, Giles, the outside lights are on. I know I turned them off and what’s that on……oh, God.”

  Incised into the white rendering of the cottage wall, in letters a metre tall right across the house front, was a message. The lines of the letters had been made clearer for having been traced over in blood and the eviscerated body of what looked to have been a cat was spread across the doorstep. Giles cradled Claire’s head into his shoulder as he read the words,

  “BURN IN HELL FOREVER WITCH”

  CHAPTER 25

  THE DARK CHURCH

  In Skendleby, after dinner at the Rectory, Marcus asked Ed to show him round the church. Whilst Gwen stayed behind with Mary to finish the wine, the two clerics put on coats against the cold and walked across the churchyard to St George’s. Ice crackled underfoot as they picked their way between gravestones cobwebbed by frost to the vestry door. The familiar old dry smell of an ancient church brought Marcus a pang of nostalgia. Inside it was decked for Christmas with a large tree, traditional crib scene and oranges with little candles stuck in left over from the Christingle.

  Standing before the altar in the dimly lit thirteenth century body of the ancient church Marcus paused to pray. He insisted Ed kneel with him then raised his hands and called out in a surprisingly loud voice that echoed round the empty church and disturbed something high above in the rafters,

  “O Lord, lead your servant Edmund Joyce towards the faith he so badly wants and which will sustain him in the coming time of spiritual and mortal danger.”

  Then they sat side by side on the front pew.

  “I know you wanted to come here for reasons other than just to see the church, Marcus, so come on, out with it.”

  “I think you know what I am going to ask of you. This is happening in your parish. You are as much a part of it as Davenport and his family. We’re only here because of Claire, or at least Gwen’s here because of Claire and I’m here because of Gwen.”

  He paused for a moment aware of how small and insignificant they seemed under the high roof of the nave, the only section of the church illuminated, and how quickly the light faded to shadow then dark before it reached the aisles. The medieval stone of the walls radiated a cold that seemed to force back the light dimming its power. There seemed little cheer or sense of salvation here, just the dry cold odour of sanctity and centuries of fear. Ed thought about the bones of the dead slowly shifting in the crypt below their feet.

  “I think that you lost your faith in the same way you lost yourself, Ed. This is your chance of personal redemption, because your belief in what’s happening to us is stronger than your belief in God. There’s nothing more disgraced or pitiful than an agnostic priest, but now you can find self respect and regain your faith. Whatever we worship is far older than the rules of our faith and far older than whatever faith or ritual governed the people who built that burial mound. But they believed the ritual handed down to them would imprison for eternity the evil that terrified them.”

  He gripped Ed by his shoulders staring into his eyes with an almost messianic fervour.

  “You must understand this. Everything comes down to belief: if you believe then the rituals work! These rituals worked for thousands of years; they still have power. But you have to believe. To put all this back together, to remake the world as it should be, we have to retrace those rituals and restore that power.”

  There was a strange skittering noise high in the dark above them somewhere in the roof; an unnerving sound: dry and brittle. It stopped but its presence seemed worse in the silence that followed and both men sat gripped, waiting for it to start again. After some moments of heavy silence Marcus started to speak again aware of his faint distorted words echoing off the walls and dispersing through the columns and arches.

  “We have to put everything back the way it was. Giles needs to find a way of re-sealing the tomb and restoring the ritual pit immediately after we manage to dislodge the entity from inside Lisa. If we manage to accomplish this it will be lost and have nowhere to go but the tomb and, with luck, Giles and his friend can imprison it forever.”

  In the silence that followed this frightening if weirdly logical plan of action, Ed began, not for the first time in recent months, to doubt his own sanity. Even this church, his place of work, seemed strange, as if its dimensions had spread and he was trapped in a pool of light in a limitless stone cavern. Somewhere above he could hear a faint grating or rasping sound which he hoped must be occasioned by the effect of the extreme cold on the workings of the bell tower. Whatever it was he was pretty sure it wasn’t a metaphor.

  “But what has this got to do with me?”

  He immediately regretted the question.

  “You are the shaman. You will conduct the ritual. You are the holy man of this place, Ed, the spiritual descendant of shamans, Magi, cunning men and wise women going back to the beginnings of history, older even perhaps than those who left their marks on cave walls in the Upper Palaeolithic. All of them, like you, bound by ritual.”

  “But look at me, I’ve no faith, you must be able to see that; look at me, I’ve nothing, I’m empty, pitiful, not a real priest. I don’t believe in prayer, never mind ritual, to me it’s little more than…”

  He was going to say mumbo-jumbo; but managed to stop himself, merely letting the thought hang in the cold air as he shuffled in anxiety on the hard wooden pew.

  “Yes of course, I see all that, Ed: I can spot it a mile off and so can your parishioners. Probably, for them, no priest is better than you: but you, weak and lost as you have made yourself, are the only one w
e have.”

  He watched as Ed sat with his shoulders slumped then spoke again, hard and authoritative.

  “So it’s got to be you, hasn’t it? There’s no one else, no better option. Only you.”

  Then he smiled grimly.

  “But there is some good news because there is one thing close to faith that fills every moment of your life, Ed, and that’s fear. You’re terrified and you believe in the thing that’s frightening you and out of that faith may grow. So listen very carefully. Once you have conducted the ritual of the sealing of the tomb you will conduct another ritual where you will bury one of the bones under this church.”

  “Under St George’s? Whatever for?”

  “This is holy ground and was probably holy ground long before the church was even thought of. It’s why the church was built here: this is ground with the power to keep and hide the bone! Come on, think about it, Ed. You got into this business because you offered to conduct a ritual at the site, and that’s all you’re going to do.”

  “Don’t you patronise me in my own church; that’s not true and you know it; I may be weak but I’m not an idiot. Anyway, if you’re so clever, then why don’t you do it yourself, you’re obviously far more accustomed to these things.”

  “Because what we’re dealing with is not reaching out to me, Ed. This isn’t my story, it’s yours and besides, I don’t have the strength or courage, I’d be found wanting, but I’ll help all I can.”

  Deep inside Ed knew this was true but even so asked with a touch of petulance,

  “And when do you suggest I conduct this act of necromancy?”

  Marcus ignored the sarcasm.

  “On the twenty-first of course, the winter solstice when the power of the sun is at its weakest and the dark fully risen. The most ancient festival and the most appropriate. I do have one message of comfort for you, Ed. When things are at their worst and you feel about to break you will find help if you have the faith to look for it.”

  “What help? What do you mean? I’ve tried prayer before; it doesn’t work: no one listens or answers.”

  “No, that’s not what I meant. All I can say is that many before have trod the path you’re about to. What you are, Ed, stretches far back in time, you are part of something much bigger, one of many. You are just the last in the line, that’s all, and after you there will be others; so when things are at their blackest reach out to them, they’ll be there if you know how to see them. Perhaps even Heatly Smythe.”

  They sat in the cold silence listening to the noises in the empty church thinking of the restless dead. Then Marcus placed a hand on Ed’s arm and spoke to him like the father he always wanted but never had.

  “All your life you’ve wanted to be part of something but never made it, you want to believe in something. All you need is courage: God never went away: he’s there waiting, all you need for commitment is to take the first step and when you’re tested, as you soon will be, then love, don’t envy, be angry not scared. That’s all I can offer, the rest is up to you.”

  The great iron bell in the tower boomed out the hour of eleven, the reverberations rolling round the vast stone nave broke the spell. They felt the cold of the church stone penetrating their bones and heard the noise high above them start up again. Rising to leave, their breath steamed before them in the sepulchral light. They exited hurriedly through the vestry door which Ed locked behind them with a rusty iron key. As they retraced their steps towards the Rectory, Ed realised that the awful noise he heard intermittently in the church was now louder, harsher and nearer. They were met at the Rectory door by Gwen and Mary standing on the front steps looking over across the estate wall towards the Hall.

  “Ed, dear, this is most peculiar, look there.”

  He followed the direction she indicated. There was a monstrous dark mass like a groaning and shrieking thunder cloud. A dense swarm of large black shapes was slowly circling the Hall swaying between the trees and swooping down to peck and claw at the brightly lit windows in the roof.

  “What are they, Mary?”

  “Corvids: the ones that have gathered and swarmed round here these last weeks, the ones on the cricket club roof and by the dig. Except they’re all together now.”

  Marcus looked at the black swarm: crows, ravens, rooks,

  “This is their time. It has started and they sense it. They’ve been called.”

  “But they shouldn’t be out now, this time of year and at night, surely?” Mary asked, pulling Ed towards the open door, light and warmth.

  “Normal birds, no, but I don’t think these are normal birds. They bring retribution and there’s death on the wind.”

  Gwen took Marcus by the arm and walked him towards the Rectory saying to Mary as she passed,

  “Whatever they are that’s the most horrible noise I’ve ever heard, thank God we’re not over there in the Hall.”

  And the noise was horrible; the leathery flapping of the great black wings underscoring the grating carking and cawing of their savage calls.

  Well, better visiting Carver than us, Ed thought as he shepherded Marcus and the two women in through the front door. He glanced back over his shoulder at the dense raucous mass of ill omen above the Hall. He felt a shiver run through him as he closed and locked the front door.

  CHAPTER 27

  TERM’S END

  Giles was in the Unit early next day to clear his desk before he took the staff out for a Christmas lunch. Although not entitled to the generous University academic holidays, the Unit would shut down today and not open again until the second week in January. There wasn’t much festive spirit evident in the offices except for a miniature fibre optic Christmas tree on Sophie’s desk.

  This year’s Christmas lunch was a smaller event than usual with Rose sedated, Jan in Glasgow, Leonie missing and Steve in hospital. So the six survivors ate their travesty of a Christmas dinner in a dismal student pub. The news of Steve’s attack depressed spirits, and Sophie, feeling guilty, was tearful throughout the meal. The admin staff left as soon as was polite, to do some shopping in town before going home for the holidays, glad to be away. They left Giles and Tim Thompson finishing their drinks.

  “Let me buy you another, Giles.”

  “No, I’ve got to go back and finish a few things off before I close the place up.”

  “OK, well I’m not going back. I’ll finish here if you don’t mind. I think I’ve been overdoing it a bit. I never saw myself as the imaginative type but the site research on Skendleby was strangely unsettling and I’m glad it’s finished. I’ve left you a note about my last efforts at the office.

  “Apparently there are some Davenport family papers archived in Ryland’s library and the earliest date from the fifteenth century, you need special permission to see them; which could mean there’s some stuff in them not considered suitable for public consumption. Also there’s a collection of papers belonging to one of the Oxford colleges you might be interested in. One is written by Gilbert White. It makes reference to the Reverend Heatly Smythe. It suggests some quite odd behaviour on his part after he left Skendleby, and that the circumstances of his last days were somewhat unusual to say the least. It’s macabre reading.

  “He cites a college don who had dinner with Heatly Smythe after he fled Skendleby, telling him that he felt the man was terrified out of his wits. Apparently during the meal he drank heavily but just fiddled with his food and kept looking round the room as if searching for someone. Then, to his host’s surprise, before the college servant had even brought the port, Heatly Smythe jumped up from his chair, sending it crashing to the floor and shouted, ‘There you must have seen it. Again, look it’s there, yes over there, clear as day. Oh dear Christ, even here: it has pursued me; even here.’

  With that he ran out of the room and out of the college never to return. Straight out of a horror movie don’t you think, Giles?”

  Tim Thompson stopped and looked over Giles’s shoulder at the door.

  “Don’t look now.”


  He removed his glasses blinking his eyes as if trying to focus on something.

  “Sorry, I thought I saw someone staring at us from behind that screen. Lately I’ve had the most peculiar feeling that someone’s watching me from the shadows, even at home. It started when I was in Rylands looking at the Davenport papers. You know how strange the light can be in there particularly when you’re on your own.”

  Thompson stopped for a moment as if confused; Giles was certainly confused as he’d never noticed anything strange about the light and was about to say so when Thompson started again.

  “Yesterday as I entered the long gallery I thought I saw something tall and bent in a long black wrapping like a cloak flit across the staircase. It must have been some eccentric academic.”

  Thompson looked round again.

  “You see that’s why I was so sure one of the archivists was working in the next bay. I mean he must have been because I could hear him moving about muttering and whispering. I felt sure he was whispering something to me. Yet every time I looked there was no one there. I’ve been working too hard I suppose. As an historian you live with the dead and then there’s all this business with Steve.

  “Anyway I need a holiday so I’m flying out to Venice tonight for ten days. Oddly enough there’s a Davenport connection there too; some papers in a private collection I’d never heard of before. And listen, Giles, because this really is strange; this morning someone left an unsigned note about it on my desk in the faculty; kind of them, if slightly disturbing. Because how would they know I was off to Venice? I’ve told no one but you just now. How would anyone know about my research for that matter? Anyway the collection’s housed in an old palace off the Canale Della Giudecca just behind the Redentore so I might as well take a look at it while I’m there; I’ve already written to the curator.”

  He paused again as if struck by something he’d rather not remember; then got to his feet.