by Paul Finch
And as if to support her claim, shadows began to flit about the vast chamber. Both captors and captives glanced around uncertainly. The majority of the candles were still intact, yet their flames were suddenly guttering, threatening to extinguish themselves.
“As I think we’re all about to find out,” Craddock said.
Spall turned nervously to his sister. “Where are you at down below?”
“We’ve uncovered a casket. Partially.”
One by one candle-flames were now blinking out in the farthest reaches of the church.
“But it’s going to take a little time to get it out properly, and to get it open,” she added. “It’s made of solid stone.”
Spall drew the revolver again, and cocked it. “Why don’t you get back down there and gee ’em up. We’ll dog out up here.”
She nodded, and drifted back off towards the crypt, vanishing down the steps.
“Just stay alert,” came her disembodied voice. “And for God’s sake, try not to panic.”
Craddock watched Spall carefully. The big man was still watching the candles; more and more of them were flickering out, plunging whole corners of the interior into shadow. He was so distracted by this that he hadn’t yet thought to bind his new prisoner.
“Could be drafts?” Charnwood said, approaching up the central aisle.
“Aye, and what sounds like the wind at night could be pigs with wings,” Spall replied. Considering he was the lesser criminal of the duo, he was gruffer, more in command – though that might have been a front. “Ryerson!” he shouted up to the organ gallery. “You pot anything you see move, you hear me!”
The rifleman in the gallery gave a gesture with his hand.
Then fell to his death.
Or was flung.
Those below barely saw what happened, it was so quick. The first thing they knew, Ryerson was cart-wheeling down from his vantage point, with horrible, high-pitched shrieks. He turned three somersaults before cracking cranium-first onto the flagged floor in front of the north chapel. The impact seemed to vibrate through the entire cathedral. Silence followed – a stunned, breathless silence. All eyes were averted back to the high gallery, but to no avail. It was an empty recess, utterly still. A moment later, there came a second series of screams, these from another part of the church. They were dull and muffled, and at first Craddock thought he was listening to something in the crypt, but then he realised the truth – it was the man with the cutlass outside the west door. Abruptly, the screams were shut off.
Spall was the first to move. As Craddock had suspected, his anger in the face of danger had been a facade. Now his true personality came through – and why not? He was the local man, the fellow who’d been most exposed to the legends of this place.
“It’s outside,” he stammered, backtracking up the aisle and onto the altar, all the while pointing the revolver at the west door. Suddenly, he was shaking like a leaf.
“It’s no more out there than it’s in the upstairs gallery!” Craddock shouted after him. “Don’t you understand … it can be wherever it wants to be! We should stay together!”
But Spall ignored him, turning and staggering away into the darkness on the other side of the choir. Less than a second passed before he too began screaming. They listened terror-stricken, as feet stamped and kicked in what was clearly a battle of extreme ferocity. Such were the acoustics in the ancient minster that every sound was crystal clear; every gasp, every choked cry of despair.
“Lord ’elp us,” Charnwood breathed.
For a man who’d participated in all types of violent crime, who’d been in gang-fights and shootings, who’d survived Newgate and the Hulks, who’d been flogged three times, once almost to the point of death, he was waxy white, trembling.
Then there was a low, ape-like grunting. And a thing came at them from the direction of the ambulatory, ballooning down the central passage of the choir, shimmers of orange candle-light playing over it. It was draped with cloths and mantles and tabards clearly pillaged from the vestry. As it came, it gesticulated wildly, throwing out its limbs in all directions. They watched, frozen, as it stumbled over the altar, kicking aside the heavy benches. Within seconds it would be among them, and, Jake Charnwood, for one, knew that he couldn’t allow that to happen. He dropped to one knee, lifted the shotgun to his shoulder and triggered it. One barrel was enough, for the payload smashed the approaching thing in the midriff with the force of a sledge-hammer.
It was hurled violently backwards, its garbled words cut off mid-sentence.
When the echoes of the blast had finally receded, Charnwood strode warily forwards. Whatever the thing had been, it was clearly dead. The church-hangings wrapping it had become a blood-soaked shroud. To one side of them, a fat pink hand was visible, clenched up like a trodden-on spider. But not unlike a human hand.
Charnwood swore, hunkered down and tore back the tattered cloths – to expose the face of Harold Spall. The landlord looked more startled than slaughtered, though a dark gout of lung-blood had frothed between his lips, and they were still coated with it. The felon sank back onto his haunches. Fleetingly, the supernatural terror facing him was forgotten. He had just killed his employer’s brother. Accidental yes, but still something of a fundamental error. What in the name of Lucifer would it mean for him? Was there any way round it? Could he pass the blame to the two captives? Kill them out of hand and say that they had …
The captives.
A shadow fell over Charnwood.
He glanced up sharply, but was too late to avoid the blow that Craddock aimed at his head with a heavy brass candlestick. It made clunking contact, and Charnwood fell senseless to the floor. Craddock struck him again, to make sure. And again, just for the hell of it. He grabbed the shotgun, and scrambled back across the altar to where Hendricks sat tightly bound in his pew.
“I don’t know the full extent of the danger we’re in here, but I suspect speed is the essence,” Craddock said as he fiddled and tugged at the knots. One by one, they came loose. Soon Hendricks was able to help, shrugging the ropes off and yanking the wadded material from his mouth.
Craddock turned and scanned the darkened doorways – to the ambulatory, to the two chapels in the north and south transepts. All the candles within those compartments had now been extinguished, and silent blackness lurked.
“It may be there’s nothing we can do,” Hendricks stuttered. “This daemon has us all together now. If it seeks only to annihilate, why should it delay?”
Craddock’s gaze had come to rest on the crypt entrance. Lamplight still flickered from below. The clash of tools could still be heard down there. Along with something else: shrieks of rage, female rage. He moved towards it, the shotgun raised in front of him.
“Say some prayers, lock yourself in the vestry again, do anything,” he muttered.
“What are you doing?” Hendricks asked. “Have you gone mad?”
“I don’t know.”
“We should get out of here now!”
Craddock glanced back. “We’re men of duty, aren’t we? Doesn’t duty come first?”
Helplessly, the curate dropped his head into his hands. Terror was overwhelming him again, but there was nowhere he could run to … not on his own. Craddock, meanwhile, had reached the top of the crypt-steps. He peered down. Fiery shadows flickered beyond the stone arch at the bottom. He could hear a heavy scraping of stone, the further clinks of tools – and Jemima Corelli’s voice.
“Get your backs into it!” she shrieked.
Craddock tripped silently down. He heard a man’s voice, also raised: “You might pay the wages, missus, but you’d best learn how to talk to people!”
Craddock came down off the last step and peeked into the vaulted undercroft. He took everything in at a single glance. From the cleft in the far wall of the east chamber, the woman’s two remaining henchmen had hauled out an oblong casket, made from what looked like heavy slabs of slate. Both men, filthied with dust and sweat, were crouc
hing over it, working on its corners and edges with hammers and chisels. They seemed to be having no luck in their efforts to open it.
Jemima Corelli was standing over them, her face etched with anger but also a greedy desperation to see what was inside.
“One more word out of you, Tucker, and you won’t be getting paid at all,” she warned.
“And the day that happens, missus, you’d best grow eyes in the back of your head.”
“Get on with your work!”
The man laid down his tools. “In fact, maybe you should pay up now. Everything you owe us … in advance. And extras, of course, for all the trouble we’ve been put through.” He nudged his accomplice. “What do you say, Mallet? She can’t open this bleeding thing on her own, can she?”
The second man, Mallet, whom Craddock recognised as the villain he’d bashed across the nose with the water-jug handle, seemed uncertain. He didn’t drop his hammer and chisel, but he stopped using them.
“I’ll pay you, Tucker, don’t worry,” Jemima Corelli said. “With this!”
And apparently without a qualm, she reached into her purse and drew out a small, silver-plated pistol, with which she shot the rebellious ruffian in the face. The pistol-ball punched through his left eye and erupted from the back of his head, spraying the rotted brickwork with blood and brains.
She immediately turned the weapon on Mallet. “Now open this damned casket! Open it or you’ll get the same, by God!”
Craddock had seen enough. Levelling the shotgun, he stepped out. “You’re arrested, Mrs. Corelli!” he announced. “For that murder, and God knows how many others.”
The woman and her remaining hireling stared through the wisps of gunsmoke.
“Major Craddock,” she said, neither surprised nor displeased. “Just in time.”
He came forwards cautiously. The steel barrels of the shotgun were greasy in his fist. It was firmly trained on her, but the pistol was only by her side; it would be a matter of a second for her to raise it again.
“Drop the gun, or I’ll shoot,” Craddock warned.
She gestured at the slate casket. “But don’t you want to see? We’re on the verge of laying claim to the greatest treasure trove in history. According to the Reverend Allgood, when Anglo-Saxon England fell, it was the oldest, wealthiest kingdom in Europe. A sad loss to antiquity, I’m sure, but undeniably our gain. Because that priceless inheritance is contained here … in this very box.”
Craddock gazed at her. “Drop the gun.”
“I’ll split it with you, major,” she said. “A full share, just as though you were one of my own employees.”
“I’ve seen the way you share with your employees.”
Slowly, her smile faded. “You fool. This is wealth beyond your wildest dreams.”
“I don’t have wild dreams any more, Mrs. Corelli. The world’s too disappointing a place. Now do as I tell you. Drop the gun and step back. You … Mallet, or whatever your name is, put the hammer down.”
Mallet glanced from one to the other, clearly undecided where his best option lay. Sweat glistened on his grimy brow.
“Ignore him, Mallet, Mrs. Corelli said. “Continue with your work. Don’t worry, he isn’t going to shoot you … not for opening a box. Especially when he’s as keen to see what’s inside it as we are. Look at his face, it may as well be written there.”
Craddock couldn’t deny that what the woman said was true. Memories raced at him … things he’d learned at school and read in books. About the mythical treasure hoards of the distant past. About what this trove might contain: fabulous jewelry and raiment, finely crafted metalwork, gospels and psalters, heaps of gold coins and crucifixes, silver clasps, brooches, sacred cups and reliquaries encrusted with gemstones.
As though reading Craddock’s desire, Mallet again attacked the casket with his hammer and chisel, and now began to make progress. He swung a mighty blow at the top left-hand corner, and with a splintering crack, a gap opened down that side.
“Ah-ha!” Mrs. Corelli said. “We strike the mother-lode.” She turned to Craddock. “Major?”
Against his better judgement, he nodded. “Very well … open it. While we’re here, we might as well see. But you, ma-am… you throw that gun away. I mean it!”
She gave a delicate shrug. “Why not?” And she tossed the little pistol into the shadows. “I’m sure there’s no need for it in any case. When you see our prize, I feel certain you’ll be won over.”
They watched intently as Mallet inserted a pry-bar into the gap, and threw all his weight against it. After a brief moment’s grunting and sweating, there was a sharp crack, and the slate lid came loose and slipped sideways. Foul, musty air exhaled, but Mrs. Corelli squatted down eagerly. Craddock took several steps forwards, to see.
To see …
To see a heap of wizened bones; dusty desiccated sticks held together by threads of leathery sinew, which crumbled even as the interlopers watched. There was a suggestion of ring-mail too, but only brown, corroded fragments. The jagged, rusty pieces of cheek and nose-guards were also visible, on what remained of a conical iron helm clamping the hollow shell of a skull.
“What … what is this?” Jemima Corelli hissed, with a snake-like sibilance.
Craddock wondered the same thing. What – or rather, who? Who was so important that he would find his last resting place in the foundations of this final, myth-shrouded refuge of the Saxons? The church was called St. Brae’s. Was it Saint Brae himself? Craddock looked again at the nose and cheek-guards on the ancient helmet. No, not St. Brae. Not St. Brae at all, but … Hereward.
Great Heaven, these were the bones of Hereward the Wake!
And then Mrs. Corelli screamed – a ghastly, vulpine sound. She rounded on Craddock like a lioness, and Mallet, taking his cue from his mistress, swept out with the hammer. Unintentionally, Craddock had come within striking range, so the heavy tool connected with the shotgun and knocked it clean out of his grasp.
Craddock hardly had time to react before Mallet leaped up and swung the hammer again, this time at his head. He just managed to duck it, and, falling into a crouch, slammed a quick, hard punch into the felon’s groin. Wheezing in agony, Mallet came down on top of him, and they wrestled together on the ground. Craddock knew that he had to win quickly; Mallet was much younger and stronger than he was. With no option, the major butted and bit, raked and clawed, and brutally gouged at the eyes of his opponent, finally clamping his teeth on the felon’s nose, twisting and tearing it with every inch of strength he had.
As Mallet yowled and writhed beneath him, Craddock was vaguely aware of Jemima Corelli tottering across the room towards the shotgun. Frantically, he pounded Mallet with punches, throwing everything into them that he had. Mallet’s face was now a bloody, broken mass, but it was too late. As Craddock tore himself up from the unconscious body, the woman, with a fiendish look in her eye, was advancing towards him, the shotgun trained directly at his heart.
Craddock scrabbled backwards until he reached the wall beside the stone coffin. He raised his hands in surrender, but he knew it wouldn’t mean anything. This scheming harpy, even if she had a pinch of human pity inside her – which he sincerely doubted – stood to lose too much if she let him live. Under circumstances like this, she’d more than likely kill her friends, never mind her enemies. The shotgun muzzle was about a foot from the major’s heaving chest when she halted. With slow satisfaction, she thumbed back the hammer on the single loaded chamber. He glanced up at her. There was wolf-like glee on her face; white teeth clamped down on her bottom lip with such ferocity that rivulets of blood dribbled over her chin.
And then, simultaneously, they sensed it – the presence.
As one, they turned towards the arch at the foot of the crypt stairs.
The thing stood there motionless, watching them. It looked much as Craddock had imagined it did when he’d glimpsed it from the corner of his eye out on the marshes. It was clad in fibrous rags, garments of such incredible
age that they hung on its gaunt frame in the most threadbare fashion. Below those, it was swathed in the remnants of bandage-strips; ancient yellow linen now mildewed into loose swaddles of stinking cloth, beneath which a parchment flesh was stretched over shrunken, wand-like bones. But worse than any of this was its head, or rather its face. Its cranium was bald and shrivelled, as Craddock had already seen. Yet its face wasn’t there.
There were bumps and indentations for eye-sockets, mouth, nostrils, yet they, like the rest of the withered skull, were clad over in taut, tissue-thin skin. Somehow, by some horrendous supernatural mechanism, its visage had been wiped clean.
He was a man cursed, the major remembered hearing; a man without a bloodline or even an identity to call his own.
It came towards them, walking with a shuffling gait, as though small churchman’s feet took quick but dainty steps beneath its sackcloth skirts. Yet there was no sound from it, no click of footfalls, no rustle of material.
Craddock shrank back into the wall. Jemima Corelli tired to retreat as well, but she was obstructed by a buttress behind her. Instead, she raised the weapon.
“Keep back!” she warned.
As though in direct response, it veered towards her specifically, never breaking pace. With a mad shriek, she fired, the flash and detonation furious in the enclosed space. But if the bucket-load of shot found its mark, there was no sign of it. The monstrosity came on regardless, straight up to her – until they were almost brow to brow.
“No,” the woman begged, neck craned back, arteries pulsing in her exposed, sweat-sodden throat. “No, please …”
It gazed at her, if it could gaze. Then, slowly and deliberately, it lifted its right hand. It was a long, spindly thing of bleached, skeletal sticks, but it was a thing of death all the same. For the instant it touched her shoulder – noticeably it didn’t go for her throat, no attempt at strangulation was made – the colour fell from the murderess’s cheeks like milk draining from a jug. She gave a sucking gasp for air, but it was too little too late. Much too late.
Craddock watched, horrified beyond belief.