by Lazlo Ferran
Chapter One
“I feel so alone. Even though there’s a whole city’s congregation in the Cathedral, 158 feet below me, none of them know I am here or of the battle is about to take place above them. I crouch down behind the sarcophagus, right next to the builder’s hoist, my hand near the knot that ties the rope to the massive oak roof-brace. And I wait. I am recording all this on the mini cassette recorder I have brought with me.
How did I get here?
Obviously the little wolf-angel statues had led me to this place and time, and you could say that it started in childhood with the incident in Highgate Cemetery, but really, the hinge-point, or the point at which my life became unhinged, was the murder of my daughter, Annie.”
I felt as if we were under water. The air around us rippled and shifted like the surface of a clear sea, seen from underneath. Suddenly a dark slit opened and something horrific came through it.
“Annie!” I screamed and threw her behind me, against the wall, crushing her there. A long, scaly arm whipped around me and took hold of her arm. It pulled her with a strength far greater than my own. In desperation I pulled against it but the arm and the hideous black body, topped with something like a giant snake's head that towered over me, pulled Annie into the slit.
With one last scream of, “Daddy!” she was gone and the slit closed up. I ran at it, clawing at the air, but there was nothing there.
“Please God, no!” I cried at the top of my lungs, the tears starting to fall. I did not understand what had just happened but the simple fact that Annie was gone was the only thing that mattered. I fell to my knees and wept for a few minutes before the will to search and do something gained strength inside me. I walked around sobbing, looking into every doorway, around every corner and eying every car suspiciously, before finally somebody saw the state I was in and spoke to me.
I couldn’t speak for the sobbing and I started to hyperventilate. I was desperate for help but unable to get my emotions under control.
Hearing my confused mix of French and English, the middle-aged man spoke in English.
“Wait here Monsieur. I will get help! I will only be a minute.” He ran to the end of the street and called out something in French. Several voices answered and he ran back. “Just a few minutes Monsieur.”
The normally pretty, tree-lined, street of Nevers looked like a scene from Thérèse Raquin. Murder had taken place and all was black and rotten.
The Gendarmes arrived and one of them recognised me from the earlier accident when Annie had nearly been run down by a car. I explained as best I could what had happened, at first believing that truth was best, but when their faces looked back at me with indulgent sympathy I simply said that something or somebody had grabbed my daughter. A search was launched and before long I was in the police station with Rose, my wife of thirty-nine years, holding my hand. The whole of Nevers rang with the sound of sirens. Of course I was distraught, as was Rose, and at first she exerted enormous self-control to appear calm, but as each hour passed and nothing happened, she began to grow angry.
“You should have taken her on the main road. What were you thinking?”
Her angry words became a torrent and I felt an anger rising in me too. I had not told her what I had actually seen but finally I could take it no more. “It was a snake,” I said quietly.
“What?”
I took a very deep breath before continuing. I felt a mad laugh forming in my mouth as I talked, as it dawned on me that my wife would not believe me.
“I don’t know if the Gendarmes told you but Annie was almost hit by a car earlier. I pulled her out of the way just in time. It was that ‘evil presence’ again. That is why I took the side street. Then suddenly the air around us seemed to distort and there was a kind of slit in it. Out of this something came, maybe five metres tall, like a snake with, with wings. It had arms too and it reached for Annie and – and took her!” I burst into tears again as I finished.
To my surprise Rose put her arm around me. “Oh, Darling.” She seemed to believe me and the relief was a release for me. I clutched at her and sobbed into her soft and sweet-smelling pink cardigan.
A uniformed Gendarme brought us each a cup of coffee and turned to leave us. We heard a chorus of loud voices starting up behind him and I stepped over to find out what was happening. The man who had given us the coffee stepped in front of me, blocking my path. “S’il vous plaît Monsieur. Asseyez-vous et attendez-nous.”
“This is bad Rose. I know it!” I could see from the look of panic in her eyes that she agreed.
“Monsieur. It is very bad news. I am sorry.” A well-dressed officer in plain clothes was addressing us but we hardly heard his voice. He said something to the effect that a girl had been found viciously killed and they believed it was our daughter. They would need us to identify the body as soon as we could.
We held hands as we looked at the little body. Even her face had been mutilated but we recognised our little girl. Rose couldn’t look but I had the unbearable urge to lift the sheet and look at the body. The Coroner’s assistant grabbed my hand to stop me but I gave him such a challenging look he pulled his hand away. The sight was enough not only to make me weep for Annie’s soul but for my own, too.