He took the book and a coffee back through to the library. Perhaps he might have better luck after listening to the ritual again on the tape—maybe that would bring fresh clarity to the words and help him find them in the text.
He sat in the fireside chair and, instead of using the portable reel to reel player decided for simplicity’s sake to play back the recording he’d made during the night on his personal recorder. He got an immediate surprise.
There was no extraneous noise on the playback—none of the pounding or high whining chanting that had filled the library, no sound of any skittering or scratching. There was just a flat, almost lifeless replay of what was on the original tape.
Did I really imagine it all? Was it some kind of a stress-related dream?
The only way for John to be sure was to play the original tape again, and he wasn’t sure he was ready for that just yet. He sat in the chair with the book in his lap, intending to keep looking for the chant. The pages seemed to swim and melt as he struggled to focus. His eyes felt heavy, the sleepless night finally catching up with him. What with that, the warmth from a freshly stoked fire, and a heavy breakfast channeling blood to his stomach, it was mere minutes before he fell into a deep, dreamless sleep.
= 17 '
John should have come with us. He’d have loved this.
Blacklaw had been right about the church being cold, and Carole was glad that she’d taken the time to dress warmly. But he’d also been right about the singing. Voices echoed around the small stone building, filling the place with noise. It reminded her of Sundays in her youth standing in the family row down in Devon while her dad bellowed at the top of his voice and her mum sang in tune, with a high soaring soprano that had always sounded to Carole like the voice of an angel.
Despite her lapsed religion since then, she was glad she’d come with the old man, even after the minister preached a fiery sermon on the sins of the flesh that would have had her blushing in embarrassment in her younger days. The service finished off with a rousing rendition of “Onward Christian Soldiers”—she hadn’t sang it since standing in Devon with her parents all those years before, but the words all came back to her in a flood. She found herself putting her heart into it—more like her dad than her mum, making up for her lack of musicality with enthusiasm and volume.
As they left the church she spotted that many of the elderly ladies in the congregation were looking her way, then turning their heads away quickly if she noticed them. Blacklaw saw her looking and laughed softly.
“They think you are my latest conquest,” he said. “My reputation as a dirty old man has not yet diminished, it seems.”
“Then we had better make sure it stays that way,” she replied. She leaned into him, turned her head and planted a full kiss on his lips, before taking his elbow—and McKinnon’s place—in helping him down the drive. The elderly ladies of the congregation gave up any pretence and gaped at her openly. She smiled back sweetly, which only seemed to cause them even more consternation.
Now Carole was really glad she’d come.
“Thank you,” Blacklaw said as they reached the car. “I’ll be the talk of the town for weeks now. Just like the old days.”
After they got into the back, he turned to her.
“Do you mind if we make a small detour on the way back? There’s someone you should meet—it would be a shame for you to come all this way and not see him.”
“Not all all,” she replied. “You’re the boss.”
He smiled again.
“If only that were true,” he said sadly.
^
They didn’t speak much during the fifteen minutes it took to get to their destination, but Carole hardly noticed—she was completely entranced by the beauty of the countryside they passed through. Light snow had fallen over the higher hills, and frost still covered much of the sweeping slopes of heather and the lower lying peat bogs. The sky had cleared to a cloudless pale blue that felt like living inside an overturned bowl of fine porcelain, and everything looked crisp and newly formed.
McKinnon and his wife—Carole still hadn’t spoken a single word to the woman—were up front of the Range Rover, with the butler driving. Carole sat in the back with Blacklaw. As she turned to remark on the view she saw that the old man was plainly getting tired again.
“Please, never mind the detour,” she said. “You need your rest.”
He waved her away weakly.
“No—this is part of my Sunday ritual, rain or shine, whether I feel up to it or not. I made a promise, and I’ll keep it until I’m no longer able. And today is a better day than most for my penance. We are nearly there in any case.”
The butler drove them up a gravel driveway to an old—indeed more like ancient—church on the edge of a small forest. It looked like it hadn’t been in use for some centuries—hawthorn grew through where a roof had been, and one of the walls had tumbled into a pile of rubble. Ivy ran over the frontage, almost obscuring the remains of what had obviously once been an imposing oak doorway. Carole wondered why the old man had brought her to this place.
As she got out of the car, her breath was taken away by the view. They stood at one end of a narrow loch that stretched, shimmering like silver the whole length, away along a deep-sided valley to a misty horizon. The valley walls were steep, and capped with blue-gray jagged rock and snow-covered peaks, the lower slopes an almost tartan mosaic of soft green, yellow and purple heather. Several hundred yards below their position a herd of red deer grazed as a tall stag kept watch.
It took Carole a minute to take it all in.
“It’s beautiful,” she finally said. “Thank you for bringing me.”
“It is indeed one of the finest views I have seen anywhere in the world,” Blacklaw replied, “But it is not why I brought you. Come and say hello to an old friend of mine.”
He took her arm and led her to their right. A small cemetery that looked as old as the church itself sat on the hillside overlooking the view. Most of the stones were aged and beaten so sorely by the weather that the inscriptions could barely be read. But there was one slab of gray marble that seemed almost new, and Carole knew what it must be before they walked around to read who was buried beneath.
“Hugh, say hello to your granddaughter-in-law,” Blacklaw said.
The inscription read Hugh Fraser, 1932–1968, Adventurer, Explorer and Friend. We will meet again.
“He loved this spot,” Blacklaw said. “And as it was to be either here or on the slopes of Kilimanjaro, we—the family and I—decided to keep him close. I come every Sunday, although some days I am barely able to get out of the car—but I come, to tell him what’s been happening, although there is rarely much to tell. Today is an exception—today he meets new family.”
“And so do I,” Carole said. “Thank you.”
Mrs. McKinnon was clearing wilted flowers from the foot of the stone and her husband fetched a fresh bouquet from the trunk of the car.
“Would you like to do the honors?” Blacklaw asked.
Carole took the flowers from the butler and knelt by the headstone. The cold immediately gripped at her legs but she hardly felt it as she put the bouquet down.
“I’ll look after him,” she whispered. “I promise.”
She bent forward and kissed the headstone.
Blacklaw laughed.
“Oh, he’d have liked that,” he said, and laughed. “He’d have liked that a lot.”
Carole put her hand on the stone to help herself get up, and as she did so had to half-turn towards the old church—just in time to see a hunched figure walk away and go out of sight round the corner.
If she hadn’t been with the old man she might have gone after him, but she let Blacklaw take her arm again and lead her to the car. She didn’t look back at the view as she got in—somehow its charms had faded as quickly as they had come, and she had a horrible feeling in the pit of her gut that her promise to Hugh might have been a hollow one at best.
= 18 '
John woke with a sore back, having been startled from sleep by a sudden sound. It came again just as he sat up in the fireside chair—a skittering, rustling noise from high in the rafters.
Whatever was up there, it was back.
Every instinct told John to get up and run, but he held his ground. He switched on his personal recorder again, hoping for better luck this time, and sat, as still as he could manage, while the skittering noise grew louder, getting closer.
He looked up, but saw only sunlight and a patch of blue sky high above through the skylight. A book moved in its position some twelve feet above his head—not enough to dislodge it from its place in the shelves, but enough to be noticed. The skittering got louder—it reminded John of a cottage in Devon they’d stayed in one autumn, where the mice in the walls had kept them awake most of the night.
Is that all this is—an infestation of vermin?
Another book shifted in position accompanied by more rustling and skittering—ten feet now, and creeping down towards the library floor. Still there was nothing to see, just the skittering sound and the tremble and shake of books that marked its passing.
“Hello?” John said, trying to keep a tremor out of his voice. “Is anyone there? Please tell me what you want me to do.”
The photo album fell from the table, the thud as it hit the floor echoing around the room. The skittering got louder still, and the pages of the album rolled over, as if something was flicking through it.
“Hugh? … Granddad? Is that you?”
The skittering stopped and the library fell quiet. The photo album fell open somewhere near the end, then lay still.
John remembered to breathe.
^
It was several minutes before he realized that whatever had happened was over—for now. He switched off his recorder before getting up to check on the photograph album. It was open at the second-to-last page, just at the start of the black-and-white photographs of the ritual. The book’s fall from the table had moved several of the photos inside the thin plastic sheets within which they were contained. The one on the top left had moved furthest, having shifted half an inch—more than enough to show that there was a second photograph tucked in beneath it.
John slid the newly discovered photo out from beneath the other. It was black-and-white again, and depicted two open pages of The Twelve Concordances of the Red Serpent. The right-hand side was a diagram of a serpent emerging from a cave. The left was a long piece of verse, and someone—Hugh again, by the looks of it—had written across the top of it.
“This is the one.”
I’ve found the ritual!
John went straight back to The Concordances and flicked through until he found the appropriate page. The lines were in Latin.
Rorate caeli desuper, et nubes pluant iustum.
He took the book and his recorder and went back through to the front room.
He fired up his laptop intent on tracking down the ritual’s source. His searches didn’t tell him much at first. He found the translation quickly enough.
Drop down dew ye heavens from above, and let the clouds rain upon the Just One.
A search for “The Just One” returned a single short article.
St. Brennan’s Abbey is long gone, wiped from history, but in the fifteenth century it was the focus of one of the largest religious trials in Scottish history. Twelve monks, long-time residents of the area in the Cheviot Hills of Southern Scotland, were found guilty of heresy. They had renounced Christ and instead had turned to worshipping a being they said lived in the bogs around the Abbey, a being they called the Just One.
The lights flickered and John’s heart jumped into his mouth. But the lights stayed on. He went back to the article.
Found guilty, the monks were sentenced to be burned at the stake, but they escaped that fate when a great storm hit. The roof of the Abbey itself fell in. When the storm was over, the monks were nowhere to be found. But local legend says that they can to this day be heard on the moors, singing their prayers to their god. The identity of this god is subject to much conjecture, but …
John’s laptop shut itself down, going black in an instant.
A chant rose, high and loud, from beneath him in the cellar.
Rorate caeli desuper, et nubes pluant iustum.
Peccavimus, et facti sumus tamquam immundus nos, et cecidimus quasi folium universi.
All fell silent once more.
John nearly leapt out of his skin when the front door opened with a loud creak and the others returned from church.
^
Blacklaw went straight upstairs for a rest, having clearly been greatly tired by his trip. Mrs. McKinnon went back to the kitchen without saying a word, while her husband helped the old man to bed. John brought Carole up to date with his findings as he rebooted the laptop.
“I damned near peed myself,” he said, trying to smile. “I know I’ve always said I don’t believe in the supernatural—but what else could this be?” He stopped when he saw how Carole was looking at him. “No—I’m not losing my marbles—at least I don’t think so. Let’s see if I got any proof.”
He switched on his recorder and turned the volume high. And this time he had indeed captured something. The skittering, scratching noise was clearly audible on the tape. John heard himself speak.
“Hello? Is anyone there? Please tell me what you want me to do.”
There was more scratching and skittering, then John spoke again. “Hugh? … Granddad? Is that you?”
The tape fell silent.
“That’s it,” John said, but just as he moved to turn the machine off, he heard it, faint and as if coming from a far distance, but plain as day. A soft Scottish voice he recognized immediately from the tapes spoke.
“Thank you for the flowers.”
= 19 '
Carole was still staring, dumbfounded, at the machine when McKinnon arrived at the door.
“The Maister will not be down for lunch. Can I get you some sandwiches and beer or would you prefer something hot?”
John had to answer, for Carole was dumbstruck.
“Sandwiches—and plenty of beer—will be fine, thank you.”
McKinnon left again, and Carole jumped when John took her hand.
“You heard it too, didn’t you?” he asked.
She nodded.
“I don’t know what it means, but…”
She interrupted him. “I do,” she replied, barely more than a whisper. She sat down hard on one of the dining chairs and fought for calm. Her hands shook as she reached for a glass of water, but after a gulp or two she was able to talk.
She told John about the trip to the grave, and the placing of the bouquet. She left out the part about the hunched figure—matters were weird enough already without adding any more—but John had stopped listening to her in any case.
“I was right,” he said. “It is Hugh. And he is trying to communicate.”
“I’m not so sure,” Carole replied. “What’s all this Latin stuff about? Mad monks and ruined abbeys sounds like something out of a bad seventies horror movie to me.”
John shrugged.
“It’s that blasted ritual thing again. I think Hugh accidentally found a real magic spell, used it the wrong way, and suffered the consequences.”
“Come on, John. There’s no such thing as real magic.”
He pointed at the recorder.
“And there’s no such thing as voices from beyond the grave. But that’s exactly what we’ve got here, and…”
“And what—your granddad died in this house forty-odd years ago and is still here now? Why?”
John shrugged again. “I don’t know why—but I mean to find out.”
^
McKinnon arrived with a tray of sandwiches and a pitcher of beer before Carole could formulate a reply.
John ate while surfing the web.
“What are you looking for?” she asked.
“Two things—the ritual i
tself, and any information I can find on ‘The Just One’. There’s not much on either as far as I can see. The first part of the ritual is from an old medieval madrigal, that much I do know. As for the thing the monks might have been worshipping—there’s very little data. The article I was reading when my laptop crashed calls it ‘an earth spirit’—whatever the hell that might be. It’s all very vague, I’m afraid.”
“Smoke and mirrors, that’s what it is. And what will you do with this information if you do find it?” Carole said. “I’m not convinced it’s got anything to do with that voice on your tape—that could just be an anomaly, some electromagnetic thing you picked up from the old reel-to-reel player.”
Even she didn’t believe that one, and John was dismissive.
“What are the chances of an ‘anomaly’ mentioning flowers and thanking you? Come on, Carole—you know what this must be, don’t you?”
She wasn’t thinking about monks and chanting—she was thinking about hunched figures trudging through bogs, getting ever closer. It felt like she was being stalked. She took a hefty slug of beer, and the bitterness and tang did much to anchor her in reality.
“I’m just having trouble getting my head around it,” she replied. “And I still don’t see what good any of this information is going to do you, even if you do find something.”
John was quiet for a minute before answering.
“What if I could talk to him?” he said softly. “What if I could talk to Granddad?”
He went back to his laptop and sat scribbling notes. Carole ate more sandwiches than were good for her, her mind racing. She kept coming back to the hunched figure.
Is he the Just One?
She couldn’t make herself believe it. A voice from the Great Beyond she could just about handle, but not some kind of ancient spirit worshipped by monks in centuries past—it was just too outlandish.
The House on the Moor Page 8