That thought reminded him he had a dual purpose for being here, and he seemed to be in the best place to gain local information. But first he’d investigate the Red Lion for any paranormal phenomenon, and then take a look around the churchyard for some of the names his gran had given him while there was good light for photography. So Mark sat in the armchair, rolled his shoulders to stretch out any tension, and leaned back, closing his eyes.
When he was seven or eight, when the voices and the images had begun to assault him, scaring him into hysterical tears and bed-wetting, his grandmother had gently taught him to visualise the perfect playroom, with cheerful curtains over the windows and a brightly painted door. That door had a lock, and a shiny golden key to hang on a chain around his neck. He and his talent lived in that room, and only he could draw back the curtains, only he could open the door.
It had taken a while, but as soon as he had built the picture in his head and somehow anchored it in place, the voices and attendant images fell under his control and could be kept outside the walls, unseen and unheard unless he chose otherwise. The details of the Safe Room had changed as he grew older, but the purpose remained the same.
Now he opened his inner eyes in that room. There he lounged on a long, wide couch, facing a huge wall-mounted, flat-screen TV. Instead of pulling back the curtains to look for who or what might be there, he picked up the remote and turned on the television. A burst of white static flared across the screen and slowly resolved itself into a series of faint slideshow images.
In a kitchen that no longer existed in this time, a small boy had curled into a corner. The child was intensely, vibrantly happy. He had a warm, safe place with regular food for the first time in his short life, and all he had to do to earn it was turn a spit. The joy of it had sunk into the very foundations of the inn.
In an attic room above Mark, a scrawny girl wept over her stillborn infant in a storm of grief and fear and betrayal. She’d wrapped the tiny body in bloody rags, and her own blood poured from her. Somewhere else in the inn, a voice called insistently, repeatedly, for George…
Three entities. That was all, and only one of them distressed. Later on, if he had the chance, he’d see what he could do for the girl. Mark turned off his inner TV and left his Safe Room.
Chapter Two
Mark found none of the names on Alice’s list in the churchyard, but no lack of evidence of the Curtess/Fitzwarren feud. There were a lot of Fitzwarrens buried there, and the dates of births and deaths gave added weight to the story of the curse. A sense of all-pervading angry sorrow hung around the Fitzwarren crypt and surrounding graves, an invisible cloud far more than just the echoes of grieving. Mark didn’t dare open up to it, even though he trusted the wards around his inner room implicitly. Instead he made the barriers stronger. There were too many restless souls here, all trapped by resentment of their untimely deaths. In a blinding instant, he knew those deaths had been caused by a thirst for vengeance so great it had not cared to separate the guilty from the innocent.
The curse was sickeningly real, and he did not have a clue what he could do about it. A headache began to pound in his temples, and Mark retreated to the church in the hope there’d be some respite from the anguished miasma emanating from the dead Fitzwarrens. Sure enough, as he pushed open the heavy arched door, the pressure fell away, and he walked down a modern non-skid ramp into the nave of St. Michael’s. The place had that musty old stone-dust-flowers-and-beeswax smell peculiar to Church of England establishments. No incense here, no odour of sanctity. Just peace and quiet. There were a couple of people down by the pulpit, so Mark strolled towards the west door to inspect the stained glass in the ornate window above it.
Malice struck at him, and he staggered, going down on one knee before he could catch himself. He must have cried out because running footsteps came towards him and hands steadied him.
“Are you alright?” a man’s voice asked, and he looked up at a handsome face. He guessed the man to be perhaps a few years younger than himself, and a couple of inches taller, with grey-blue eyes and short, neatly styled light brown hair. Where Mark was angular, he was slim.
“Yes, I think I tripped,” Mark said, shaken and desperate to be out of the range of that corrosive hatred.
“The flagstones are uneven. Come on, let me help you.” He proved more hindrance than help as Mark lurched to his feet.
“Is your ankle alright?” a girl asked, staring at him with concern. Her hair was a straight bob, a few shades lighter than the man’s and brightened with sun-streaks. She had a pretty face, freckled across her cheekbones and without makeup. They were obviously brother and sister, like enough to be twins. A modest engagement ring sparkled discreetly on her left hand, Mark noticed distractedly. “Help him to the pew, Phil. It’s not the first time someone’s come a cropper just here,” she added with a frown at her companion, as if she blamed him.
“Don’t start, Di,” he muttered.
“I’m okay, really,” Mark put in quickly. “I think I’ll go outside.”
“See?” she hissed, her frown becoming a scowl.
“It’s that bloody stone, isn’t it? One day I’m going to take a sledgehammer to the blasted thing!”
“What?” Mark gaped at her. “Stone?”
“Di, pack it in! Take no notice; she’s being a superstitious idiot.”
“I am not! Sorry, we should introduce ourselves. I’m Di Fitzwarren, this is my brother, Phil, and we’re cursed,” she finished. Phil sighed and rolled his eyes, but said nothing.
“Mark Renfrew,” Mark replied. “What stone?”
“Renfrew?” The girl drew back from him as if he had suddenly contracted the plague. ” Renfrew? I don’t believe it! What the hell are you doing here?”
“Whoa!” Phil exclaimed. “Di, stop it! He’s no more responsible than we are!”
“Sod off!” she snapped, and stalked out of the door, slamming it behind her. No mean feat, given the weight of the thing. The massive boom echoed through the church, and the two men gazed at each other in consternation.
“Sorry,” Phil said before Mark could speak. “It’s a long story, and that stone is part of it.” He gestured behind him towards a table. It had the usual religious leaflets and church booklets spread over a heavy white cloth that reached the floor. “Listen, I think we need to talk. Do you have time?”
“Not now,” Mark said. He wanted to be out of there as fast as he could make it. “But I’m staying at the Red Lion.”
“Great. I’ll meet you there in half an hour?”
Mark hesitated for a few seconds. “Alright,” he said reluctantly.
“See you later, then. I better get after Di before she finds that sledgehammer.” He disappeared out through the door at a run, and Mark wanted nothing more than to follow him. Instead he forced himself to walk the few paces that took him to the covered whatever-it-was, and lifted a corner of the cloth.
Beneath the table lay a nearly six feet long slab of sarsen stone, one of those time-worn boulders that littered Salisbury Plain, aftermaths of the last Ice Age, deposited as the ice sheet retreated. Thousands of years ago, people had dragged some to sacred sites and planted them in circles and avenues and used them as facia for long barrows.
Gritting his teeth, Mark folded the cloth right back and knelt to give the stone a closer inspection. It hadn’t been shaped, but what looked like a lot of words had been carved into it. He couldn’t read them, and he simply couldn’t stay near the stone and the bitter darkness that seeped from it any longer. He let the cloth fall and hurried out of the church.
That had to be the curse-stone. But if a consecrated church couldn’t dispel its malevolence, how could he?
* * * *
Trade had slackened off by the time Mark returned to the inn, and the twenty-something barmaid who pulled a pint for him proved happy to chat with a customer. It helped that Mark was good-looking in a rather gaunt, harassed librarian kind of way, and wasn’t above using that fact to hi
s advantage when it came to getting information.
Charlie and Carol Fitzwarren, Josie told him, looked on the Red Lion as their local pub, and often used to drop in for a pint. But not recently since she’d become pregnant again. Phil, the younger brother, was also a frequent patron. Diana, the middle sibling, was supposed to be getting married in St. Michael’s at the end of the month, but they might have to postpone the wedding again if Carol lost another baby.
“The Fitzes have had a lot of problems,” Josie said with quiet sadness. “I feel so sorry for them. Sometimes I think that silly legend might almost be true. It just not fair, you know?”
“I know what you mean,” Mark said with quiet sympathy. “But more often than not bad luck is just that.”
“Huh. Then the Fitzes have been having bad luck for four hundred years.”
“Yes, well… So, um, what’s the story behind that stone in the church? The sarsen?”
“That’s the Fitzwarren Inheritance,” Josie said, a wry twist to her mouth, but she didn’t elaborate further.
“There’s writing on it,” he persisted.
“Yes,” said Phil from behind him. “As Di said, the family’s cursed. But the curser, who happens to be an ancestor of the Renfrews incidentally, left us some helpful hints on how to lift it. The stone reads, When the one who reads the earth joins with he who sees beyond, when the warrior and the healer stand to swear a sacred bond, when the one who seeks in danger is sworn to the landless lord, then shall my curse be lifted and all the lands restored. Very helpful, isn’t it?”
“That’s on the stone in the church?” Mark stared at him, baffled. “It felt more like the bloody curse!”
“Did it?” Phil frowned. “What do you mean felt? That’s why you went down?”
“I—tripped. Uneven flagstone.”
“Bollocks. You felt something. And you’re a bloody Renfrew.” But he sounded more bemused than angry.
“Yes, I’m a bloody Renfrew.” Mark took the Reverend Simpkins’ small book out of his hip pocket and slapped it on the bar top. “This was written in 1899 by the vicar of St. Michael’s. He doesn’t mention that stone being in the church, just the curse-stone up at the castle.”
“That’s because they only found it when the wheelchair ramp was put in fifteen or so years ago. It had been the threshold stone for the church porch and laid on its side. The words couldn’t easily be read, so everyone must have forgotten about it.”
“So what did your family do about it?”
“Do?” Phil snapped scornfully. “What do you think we bloody well did? Dad guessed the sees beyond meant psychic and contacted as many as he could. Most of them talked a complete load of bull, and a few nearly passed out when he showed them the stone. Just like you did.”
“So what did they tell him?”
“Nothing! Fulfil the requirements and the curse would go. Simple, right? Josie, a whisky, please.”
“And I’ll have a coffee, please. Put them both on my tab. Come on.” Mark picked up his book and retreated to a corner table. Thankfully they were nearly alone in the bar, though they were collecting some stares from the few old men nursing beers across the room.
“So what did you feel?” Phil asked as he joined him.
“Vindictiveness,” Mark answered shortly. “He didn’t intend it to be lifted, just wanted to twist the knife. I read some of my grandmother’s genealogy research before I came here, but I found nothing on that stone in the church, and not a lot about your family at all, just names and dates.”
“Thank God. We don’t want a lot of freaks poking about in our business. Sorry. That wasn’t aimed at you. But why are you here? Genealogy, you said?”
“My grandmother’s addiction.” He explained briefly about the family tree hunt, but no more.
“So you came to see how the curse was coming along?” Phil asked bitterly.
“No, sod it! Gran only showed me the book yesterday, and that’s the first I’d heard of it. And the Fitzwarrens. I knew she’d been tracking down family connections like some kind of elderly bloodhound, but this… I didn’t believe it was real until that stone hit me.”
“I can understand that.”
By mutual consent they paused when Josie brought Mark’s coffee. She slammed it down on the table so hard the liquid slopped into the saucer and splashed the book.
“Suddenly I’m persona non grata?” he snorted.
“Does everyone know the Renfrew connection? Are they all genealogists or what?”
“Pretty much,” Phil answered. “The curse has affected the whole village, one way or another. It’s well-documented that Curtess’s son reverted to his mother’s family name when he grew up. She was a Renfrew.”
“Look,” Mark spoke loud enough for the retreating girl to hear, “I can’t be held responsible for what my ancestor did nearly four hundred years ago, any more than you are for what yours did.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?” Phil snapped, suddenly hostile.
Mark shrugged. “From what Simpkins says in here,” he said, tapping the book, “the Fitzwarren of the time wanted Curtess land, so he accused him of crimes that in that century would whip up the most frenzy. Witchcraft and sodomy. At least, I’m assuming that’s what ‘unnatural practices’ mean, given another poor bugger got taken and burned by the mob. So Fitzwarren instigated the hunts that ended up with two people suffering horrific deaths so he could buy out the widow at well below the going rate.”
“That’s—” Phil began hotly.
“And my ancestor,” Mark continued over him, “struck back with way too much viciousness. I can see he would want revenge, who wouldn’t? But what he did was out of all proportion. So your man wasn’t exactly blameless, but mine was patently a vindictive bastard. Agreed?”
Phil sat there in silence for a while, his fists clenched as if he wanted to beat Mark into a pulp. Then he slumped a little and nodded.
“Agreed,” he said grudgingly. He might have added more perhaps, but a young girl rushed into the saloon, white-faced and shaking.
“Mr. Fitz,” she gasped, clutching his arm and tugging. “Mrs. Fitz has fallen down, and there’s blood all over!”
Phil shot to his feet. “Where?”
“Just down the street.”
Phil didn’t hesitate. He ran out of the door, Mark sprinting after him, and the inn’s few patrons trailing in their wake.
A small crowd huddled on the pavement. Phil pushed through to kneel at the fallen woman’s side. Before people pressed between them, cutting off Mark’s view, he saw an obviously pregnant twenty-something sprawled awkwardly in a widening pool of blood. Her eyes were closed, and a deep gash in her scalp bled profusely. Mark felt sick.
“Poor girl…” whispered a middle-aged woman beside him. “This’ll be the fourth she’s lost. Has someone gone for Doctor Lester?”
“That evil, evil curse!” her companion sobbed.
Then there came a mutter from behind him and a sharp prod between his shoulder blades. “Him. He’s a Renfrew, a Curtess.”
“Curtess?” The two women rounded on Mark, and the hostility in their faces sent him back a pace, forcing the man behind him to shuffle aside. It was one of the old men from the inn.
“This isn’t my fault!” Mark protested. “It’s an accident!”
“A Curtess?” someone snarled. “Where?”
That was enough for Mark. He wasn’t a coward, but he wasn’t a fool, either. He continued to back away, then turned on his heel and walked quickly to the Red Lion. When he reached his table, he found a cigarette stub floating in his cooling coffee.
Mark could take a hint. He went straight up to his room, grabbed his backpack, left enough cash to cover his meal and drinks and the night he wouldn’t be staying, then hastened down to the car park behind the inn. His heart didn’t stop racing until Steeple Westford was miles behind him.
Chapter Three
As soon as he reached home, Mark phoned his grandmother.
“Well, of course it is, dear,” she answered imperturbably. “I told you so. Have you decided what you’re going to do?”
He gave an unamused snort. “Yes, stay in Staple Hill. By the way the locals reacted when they discovered I had a connection to the Curtesses, the bloody thing could have been cast last week. If I hadn’t got out of there fast, I might have been tarred and feathered.”
“Mark, you can’t just up and leave!” Alice said quickly. “You have to do something!”
“I can try,” he replied. “I’ll research all I can from home. The malicious bastard left a virtually impossible to interpret crash course on How to Lift a Curse.”
“He did? What is it?”
Mark recited the quatrain as accurately as he could and won an irritated sound from her.
“He’s a nasty sod, and no mistake,” she muttered. “Is he still hanging around?”
“No idea. I only found one of the curse-stones, the one in the church. The other is, I suppose, still in the castle. It’s possible I can find out enough that’ll give the Fitzwarrens the chance to fix it themselves.” He hesitated for a moment. “Gran, I think Carol Fitzwarren has just had another miscarriage.”
“Oh, no! Then you need to be quick. Never mind the stones. Find the place where he died or where he’s buried. Either of those might give you an edge.”
“Yes, I know.”
“Mark, dear,” she said with a gentleness in her voice that provided all the warning he needed, “I think you shouldn’t have left. You must go back.”
“No. Absolutely not. I can do everything necessary from here. Gran, you have no idea what that stone was radiating. Even with all my walls up, it nearly knocked me flat.”
“Yes, I’m sure, but… never mind. See what you can discover, then decide. I have to go now; my TV show is starting.”
“Okay, Gran. Take care. Love you,” he added. He so very rarely said it, and right now, it seemed important to him that he did.
The Fitzwarren Inheritance Page 2