by Nick Brown
Claire looked towards the door but it was so far away now; it had receded to such a distant speck that it may as well have been on a distant star. She was gripped by the mental numbness that used to precede her attacks. The mouth in front of her exhaled a plume of steaming breath that hung rotten in the cold air whilst from under the bedclothes a claw-like hand that should have been restrained reached towards her; fingers open expecting to be held.
“Take it; you know that this is what you came for.”
And she knew it was, even though she’d been tricked. She had no choice, no freedom of will, so she took the hand in hers. A cackle, then the voice again, this time softer but more frightening.
“Now come inside.”
There was a brief sensation of cold, roughened and very ancient lizard skin and then fusion.
She was inside; Claire knew she was deep inside the ruined mind. This was how it used to happen but this time she’d not willed it. It was unclear, occluded, somewhere there seemed to be the sound of a bell ringing faintly on a sea shore. Then she was seeing through Lisa’s eyes, seeing the tomb as it had looked when she first entered it. Then Lisa’s mind was gone replaced in rapid succession by the minds of hundreds perhaps thousands of others, millennia of corruption and bitter hate. Claire’s final thought as an independent rational individual was that it was like getting random glimpses of the memories of different people, at first jumbled like the shuffle on iPod without meaning, but then as a sequence.
Starting with Lisa looking through the camera lens it changed and became Skendleby Hall, through the eyes of a girl running towards it, turning from time to time to look back at something black and insubstantial that came bounding out of the fringe of trees behind her. The door of the Hall was opened by a man dressed as a liveried servant from a bygone age and she ran through the door, but the fear of the thing outside remained. The image dissolved to be replaced by that of the girl in some type of ancient cellar watching as a man with blood streaming from a deep cut in his face, scraped a hole in the earthen floor to bury a small bundle wrapped in cloth. The man’s hands shook as he dug by the light of a guttering lantern set down on the floor next to a cloak and a bloodied sword. Then the vision that Claire had dreamt, the girl screaming and cursing, being dragged towards the opening of the low mound. Her voice, clearly the voice on the disc, terrifying yet desolate.
But this was not the end, rather the beginning. A group of people in rough dirty wool robes were holding down a naked man in a ring of high standing stones under the direction of a tall, red haired woman. Chanting ceremoniously one of the group opened the man’s throat with a flint knife. The memories now came thick and fast. A small boat on a storm-tossed sea; a child tied and carried through thick woodland, the smell of the place earthy and fungal. Then, heat and blue sky; dry arid terrain, a woman watching with shy pleasure while another was tied and placed in a narrow, hastily dug pit under the floor of a stone hut. Trying to struggle as a heavy grinding stone was broken then laid across her chest and the earth replaced. The chuckling of the woman faded and there was darkness, the smell of cold dry earth. By the flickering light of some stone bowls of burning animal fat a group of people danced, while a shaman in trance state daubed images of bison and mammoth onto the cave walls. He was watched by someone who envied his shamanistic power and would soon get it. Now some things that might have been people but might have been something else squatting by the side of a large body of liquid, making squealing noises as lightning flashed and rain tore down out of a pitch black sky. Then there was nothing, only darkness.
For a moment Claire felt relief, the journey was done. But it wasn’t total blackness. Cosmic microwave background radiation, the faint light of the newly formed universe. An empty landscape like a lunar surface, far away the cold light of some long dead stars, not the universe we know. But Claire knew that something waited there, waited for her. In this dead cold place where there was neither atmosphere nor sound, nor time, new life was beginning. Here was something far older than the Neolithic villages, the Palaeolithic artists or the glimpses of the earlier inhuman things she’d seen.
In quantum measurement, somewhere in the multiverse, this had been waiting for her across dimensions and beyond measurable time; unfeeling, shape unrecognisable, cold pitiless gaze, ‘fear in a grain of sand’. It looked up, saw her and recognised her. In the darkness she screamed but of course in the void there’s no sound.
***
Outside the secure room it was chaos. Once the door slammed behind Gwen and Marcus it proved impossible to reopen. In that sense it functioned as a good security door should; but in no other as it seemed to possess a mind of its own. Masters tried to open the door using its electronic code and then manually. He sent for technical assistance from the premises team but to no avail, the door wouldn’t shift. The hatch remained closed. The CCTV of the room, which had stuck on one angle, showed only Claire sitting quietly by the bed not moving. They shouted through the door to her but got no response. From the room there was only silence and on the screen just stillness. But it was not a comforting stillness, just an absence of movement, a state of non being. Of the occupant of the bed there was no sign, just a slight bump under the bed clothes. From time to time there was interference on the CCTV screen, but when service was resumed just the same image, no more use than a screen saver. Time dragged on and after about forty-five minutes they decided to cut open the door. During most of this time Marcus knelt intoning a series of prayer while Gwen obsessively watched the intermittent footage on the screen.
The cutting equipment arrived and was being prepared when suddenly the door swung open; without a sound, apparently of its own volition. There was a blast of cold filthy air from the room freezing them in their tracks like a physical assault. Across the room in the leprous stillness and silence Claire sat hunched over the bed, only the faint vapour trail of her breathing indicating life. Masters and Gwen, followed more slowly by Marcus, crossed the room to the bed. Gwen reached out to touch Claire but before she could, she sat up and turned towards them. Gwen couldn’t interpret the look in Claire’s eyes although she smiled faintly and her voice when she spoke was unexpectedly calm.
“It’s all right it’s left her, I reached her and it’s moved on.”
“How, Claire, how did you reach her?”
“Across strange dimensions, not the universe we know, something older, older than life, older than you could imagine and far away beyond dead stars, not even last time around. But it’s evacuated the girl, she’s served her purpose. Something stronger is needed now.”
Masters was taking Lisa’s pulse, the girl, recognisable as such now, was lying back on the bed her hair bathed in sweat despite the sub zero temperature.
“She’s breathing normally, the pulse is OK, and she’s certainly different to what she was, it feels like something’s gone, she feels empty.”
Gwen moved to help Claire but with surprising fluidity she sprang up from the chair. Masters stepped forward and for a moment he and Claire stared into each other’s eyes as if sharing something. Then, to Gwen’s surprise, they performed something that was almost a hand shake. Claire released his hand and moved towards the door; pausing by Marcus she stared straight into his eyes and whispered,
“You’d better hope those were powerful prayers, holy man.”
This sounded more like a veiled threat than an expression of hope. Claire moved out of the room and down the corridor towards the exit followed by Gwen. Marcus walked to the bedside, removed a small phial from his pocket and sank to his knees to pray whilst Masters continued to check the patient. Gradually some semblance of warmth returned to the room as the smell began to leave it.
This time they accepted the hot drink from Helen Moores as they waited in the visitors’ room. Claire sat still and upright in her chair, Gwen stood by the window sipping her tea. Outside the snow had, for the moment at least, stopped but a thin covering lay frozen hard on the ground contrasting oddly with the outc
rops of black rock, protruding like bones from thin white flesh. After twenty minutes Marcus returned and they quickly left the place. Driving rapidly through grey light the bleakness and desolation of the snow-shrouded moors stretched away on all sides.
While they’d drunk their tea Claire had said nothing and in the car Gwen, worried, tried to get her to talk but with little response. In fact she only spoke once to reply when Gwen asked her if she felt all right.
“Yeah, feels good, safe in this one.”
So, sitting in the back seats Marcus talked to Gwen.
“During all the time I prayed with her I could detect no sign of what we felt before, just exhaustion and emptiness. Whatever was there has moved on.”
“So Claire was right, she’s left.”
“If it was a she? Perhaps it was once, but there are things in God’s universe much older than we are, things that we never see but occasionally glimpse at the periphery of vision. An ancient Gramarye moving through time as enduring malevolence. But whatever it is, it’s not in that sanatorium any more. It’s time to make the call, Gwen.”
“But can they do it? Ed’s no real faith in himself, let alone God. You saw what it was like in there, Marcus, you couldn’t cope and you know what we’re dealing with. He’s such a puny excuse for a priest. If the demonic force that possessed the girl has returned to the tomb and it confronts him he’ll fall apart; you can’t have faith in him.”
“Faith is all we have. Make the call, Gwen.”
In the driver’s seat, unnoticed by the other two, Claire smiled out at the bleak expanse of snow strewn moorland and began to sing quietly.
CHAPTER 31
WINTER SOLSTICE
Earlier that morning they furtively opened the door of the Unit to see the soft twinkling lights of the Christmas tree on Sophie’s desk keeping its lonely vigil. It seemed out of place and cruelly inappropriate as a backdrop to their actions. They backed the Unit’s minibus up to the entrance, wanting to load it and be away as quickly as possible. Both men knew their act of de-resurrection was professionally unforgivable but they’d long passed the point when such things mattered.
They’d come for the three bodies and the rough stones with terrible carved eyes. Their removal wouldn’t be noticed for a considerable period, or at least until Giles published his report and the academic world showed interest. Fragile cadavers like these wouldn’t be exhibited and besides there were hundreds of Neolithic and Bronze Age bones bagged and tagged in museums, university departments and units the length and breadth of the country.
But it wasn’t being discovered that worried them, it was the crossing of a professional Rubicon; archaeologists didn’t do this. But it wasn’t for archaeological reasons that they hesitated before entering the lab’s cold storage room. It was fear. In the unnatural silence of the empty Unit they felt the presence of something they couldn’t see watching.
By the time they entered the mortuary in the lab it was worse and Steve, doubting his own sanity, couldn’t stop his limbs twitching. So Giles had to direct and display what was, for him, an unusual amount of leadership. They moved the stone weights first, trying not to look at the crudely scratched faces but horribly aware of the cold gritty feel of the stones as they manhandled them onto a trolley. Gently transferring the bones from the sacrifices in the ritual pit without damaging them was a nightmare that took forever, leaving them covered in sweat despite the near zero temperature in the lab. But it got worse because when they came to take the crushed remains of the body from the mound they saw the bones had moved, shifted along the slab, inching towards the door.
No one had been in the Unit since Giles locked it up. A month ago they’d have laughed this off as imagination; not now. The lights began to flicker and dim but they forced themselves to concentrate on not jumbling up the bones. Then one light died and Steve scrambled up and out. Giles heard his footsteps fade away down the corridor and worked on alone in the half light and shadow. He couldn’t afford a mistake, any cross contamination would provoke horrific consequences.
Finished, he carried the grisly cargo in its container back up to the Unit cradling it like a baby. Behind him, unseen, the lab lights came back on. Steve was sitting on a desk drawing frantically on a smoke, Giles caught the fragrance of cannabis: not a good sign.
Desperate to get away they hurried the bones onto the trolley and transferred the entire nightmare into the minibus. It was as Giles returned to the Unit to turn off the lights and lock up that the call from Gwen came through. He phoned Ed and arranged to meet him and Davenport at the entrance to the site in forty-five minutes. He switched off the lights including the tree wondering if this would be his last act as the Unit’s Director of Archaeology.
Outside, under the lowering city sky it was cold and grey with the threat of snow; they’d only a few hours of daylight left. The traffic was heavy. It seemed as if all the world was finishing early for the Christmas break. The queues radiated out from the city centre through the dilapidated inner suburbs then the progressively more affluent ones. Confined in the bus with the gruesome creaking cargo the journey seemed endless and when at last they hit the clearer country lanes leading to the site, they were running late.
Ed and Davenport were waiting for them by the gate, Ed wearing elaborate customised clerical robes that looked as if they belonged to an earlier age. It was bitter cold and they were stamping their feet on the iron hard ground to keep warm. By the time they’d unloaded the bus and transported the grim contents to the mound the light was fading. Unfortunately it was still good enough to see the tree at the estate boundary with the floral wreath attached and understand why it was there. The ghost of Richardson had joined all those others unfortunate enough to be tangled up with this place in order to watch their ceremony. The tree tops were packed with silent crows.
At the entrance to the mound Ed made them stand in silence as he said a prayer invoking protection. In a way that none of them had expected, particularly him, Ed had assumed control.
“Giles, take Steve, open the tomb and replace the bones as they were before the excavation, then place the stones over the skeleton in their original position: make no mistakes. Then as you close the tomb I will perform a type of blessing followed by a service for the departed. I’ve brought a wafer of the Host, consecrated wine and some sanctified water as a spiritual symbol to re-seal it. The transubstantiated body and blood of our Lord will prove the equal of human sacrifice.”
No suggestion of metaphor flickered through his mind as he spoke; this surprised him.
“If we believe in what we’re doing, our faith will replicate the ritual that successfully worked for so long. First though, we need to do the same for the two unfortunates from the ritual pit. You must hurry: the dark is rising.”
To the west, the Edge was beginning to blend into the shadows and the wind was stinging them with the first small flakes of snow.
Ed turned to Davenport,
“You know what your role is, Nigel?”
“Yes, I watch.”
“Then let’s do this.”
It was a phrase he had enjoyed in an American movie though never imagined himself using, but in a strange way it gave him a little jolt of self confidence.
While they opened and refilled the pit Ed paced in a circle round them sprinkling water and intoning a service. It was a most unusual service although as nonbelievers neither Giles nor Steve would have recognised much odd about it. Davenport might have, but he was halfway to the tree line, watching the birds circling the Hall, and therefore out of earshot. But an odd service it was. Ed had mixed the Anglican canon with borrowings from Greek and Antiochian orthodoxy and some suggestions from Marcus. It was a mixture never heard before, and which he hoped would never be heard again, intended as it was to quiet the restless dead whilst protecting the living. He’d even been able to borrow a censor from an Antiochian priest in Levenshulme. So, with much sprinkling of water, kissing of a large crucifix and scattering wafers of the s
acred host he hoped that even the most malevolent revenant should be sufficiently cowed to remain in place. He was deeply afraid.
***
By the time they’d reburied the bones of the sacrificed carefully in two distinct levels, the east wind had picked up driving snow before it and across the fields towards Skendleby and the Edge. Giles and Steve, cold, despite their exertions, tamped down the earth over the pit and moved towards the tomb. They picked up the cardboard container, fingers frozen with cold, and carefully carried it to the mouth of Devil’s Mound. Ed preceded them chanting his adapted service of burial. They crouched at the entrance, the wind and snow whipping at their faces, and then Giles followed Steve and the container into the tomb. He looked round once to see the increasingly violent wind swirling round Ed, attacking him, forcing his hair and cassock to stream out behind and carry the words of his shouted prayers away towards the birds in the wood.
***
Inside it was cold, deathly cold, the absence of the biting wind, surprisingly, didn’t improve this, it seemed worse. By the light of their torches they could see the two stones waiting to be replaced over their prisoner. Curiously in the half light the faces on the stones were clearer and the eyes were watching them.
Crushed between the crude stone walls in the weird freezing silence they manoeuvered the box with its grisly contents to the stone slab. They tried to ignore the whispering sound the dry bones made as they scraped against each other. This small sound was amplified by the silence of the tomb and they had to force themselves to begin the delicate task of painstakingly replacing the skeleton just as they’d found it, save for one ankle bone. This they removed to prevent the body from rising and pursuing them later as their Neolithic predecessors had done in the original ritual. Then, struggling in the narrow space, they replaced the ancestor stones over the crushed breast bones, wincing at the sounds of grating and crumbling.
The vicious wind driving across the fields outside was making strange sounds, a curious high pitched screaming whistle that echoed within the macabre shadow ridden tomb. Steve’s face, etched with suffering, reminded Giles of a representation of death in a medieval manuscript or one of the depictions of a suffering Christ found in church icons. They crouched still, side by side, looking at the body and stones; the eyes stared back at them. Outside the sound of the wind and the chanting of the priest seemed far away; a distant echo of a remote world.