by Davies, Neil
“Do you live in London then?” He turned his head to look at her as he spoke, his eyes hidden behind the darkness of his sunglasses.
“No. I’m just down here visiting a friend.”
He hesitated before speaking again.
“Does your friend live near here? Is he….”
“She has an apartment not too far from here.”
“How long are you staying?”
“Depends on what there is to keep me around.”
He stopped and turned towards her.
“Do you have plans for tonight?” he said, with a boldness she found pleasing.
Her smile broadened.
“Nothing I can’t cancel.”
He reached out to her, placed his hands on her shoulders and gently pulled her towards him. She didn’t resist, raising her head to meet his. Their mouths met, open and passionate. She felt butterflies in her stomach, something she hadn’t felt for many years.
It was spontaneous, unexpected and the most exciting kiss Susan could remember. She knew at that moment that Richard was special.
For almost two years they were the perfect couple, if you ignored the tension over her wanting to keep her own place to herself.
When the break came it was sudden and devastating and her fault.
She had finally decided to tell Richard the truth about her work with her father.
3
“I hope you’re not sleeping.”
The voice was her father’s and it disrupted the memories like a rock thrown into a pond. As the last ripples of Richard receded she glanced towards her passenger. He was looking at her and smiling.
“No, I’m not sleeping,” she said.
“You seemed to drift off for a moment there.”
“I was thinking. It is possible to think and drive at the same time you know?”
He laughed. “Don’t think and drive. Next year’s government campaign?”
She laughed with him, relaxing a little. She hadn’t realised how tense her muscles had become. She hadn’t realised how much the memories could still affect her.
The Professor looked down to his hand resting on his lap. He held his mobile phone there. It was old but reliable. He had no use for smart phones.
“Expecting a call?” said Susan.
The Professor shook his head slowly.
“Not as such. I sent a text to Father Rex a while back. I thought he might have replied by now.”
“Maybe he’s not got it switched on?”
“He always has it switched on. He’s the only priest I know who has his mobile with him during Mass. He sets it to silent and vibrate, ever since someone called him during Holy Communion.”
Susan laughed again, feeling her muscles finally letting go of the last of the tension caused by her memories.
“Maybe he just can’t answer at the moment? What were you texting him for anyway?”
The Professor shrugged and put the phone back into his pocket.
“Just letting him know we were on our way. Nothing important. Nothing that can’t wait until we’re a bit closer.”
He turned and gazed out of the passenger window at the stretch of open, flat fields fanning out from the roadside, looking more like moorland than cultivated land. A mist was settling just a few hundred yards in, blurring the horizon, melting land and sky into a uniform slate grey. He would not have been surprised to see Holmes and Watson come running out of the distance following by a great loping hound.
Or was that some other moors? He could never remember.
The scene suited his grey mood and worried thoughts. He really had expected the Father to get back to him by now, but he had no intention of letting his daughter know the depth of his concern. He saw no reason to worry her.
4
Katrina stood at the top of the cellar steps, smiling.
Behind her, Mark struggled not to gag as his stomach churned.
The smell that rose from the darkness was a foul, decaying smell. A smell of death and rot and evil. It permeated the whole house, but only mildly. It was possible, in the hallway, to mistake it for the smell of an old house, old furniture, old age. But once the heavy oak door to the cellar was pushed open, it crawled out like a living creature, smothering, filling mouths and nostrils.
Mark stared through watering eyes at Katrina and wondered how she could stand there, seemingly oblivious to the smell.
“It’s all about willpower and self-control,” she had told him once.
Katrina had more willpower and self-control than anyone he had ever met. And there were other powers in her that he didn’t even begin to understand. He only knew he would follow her to his death if necessary. She owned him.
Katrina turned to look at him as his stomach spasmed once more and he spluttered and coughed.
“Are you quite finished?”
There was contempt in her voice, at his weakness, at his lack of self-control.
Why do I tolerate him? Why do I allow someone so weak and pathetic to follow me around?
He was a no-more-than-adequate lover. He could be clumsy and slow in performing the simplest of tasks. His stupidity drove her to distraction. Yet he was willing to do whatever she asked. He worshipped her, and that in itself could have its advantages. Most of all he was loyal, and loyalty was all-important. She could trust him.
She softened her tone as she spoke again.
“We can wait longer if you need to.”
He waved his hand in the air, palm out, as he caught his breath and willed himself to breathe properly. Eventually he opened his mouth and took most air that way. It eased the smell a little.
“It’s okay. Let’s do it. It gets a little easier each time.”
She looked doubtful but began to walk, slowly, down the steps.
Mark followed, dragging the bin liners. They thump, thump, thumped down the steps, heavy and solid. A dark, wet trail marked their path.
As the dim light from the corridor above faded they were engulfed by absolute blackness. Neither carried a torch, Katrina would not allow that, but both knew they would see once they were allowed to see.
Katrina stepped off each stone stair with absolute confidence, never faltering. She could feel the grittiness beneath the soles of her shoes. Once or twice her foot slipped into the depression in the centre of the stone where numerous other feet had worn it away over time, but she was never afraid she might fall. If her own control should fail her, she knew there were others nearby who would not allow any harm to come to her.
Behind she could hear Mark’s shuffling, unsure footsteps, and the thumping of the sacks.
As soon as she reached the cellar floor she stepped aside, leaving room for Mark to stumble down the last few steps. She closed her eyes and breathed in deeply, drawing the decay and death of the place into her lungs. And, as always, she sensed the age of this place. So much older than the house above it, the house that had been built on its ruins. The stone walls, the uneven floor, were centuries old, excavated as the house was built, converted into its cellar by people unable to feel its significance, its importance. Centuries old, with the residual energies of so much life and death, joy and tragedy. So many people had died here.
Not all of them had left.
Beside her, Mark finally stopped shuffling and tugging the bags. He stood as silent as she did.
She smiled and projected her thoughts out into the darkness.
We are ready.
A dry, cackling laugh rolled out of the emptiness before them. A laugh that slid almost imperceptibly into a moan, a growl, silence.
Katrina could feel Mark trembling alongside her. After all this time he was still afraid.
A faint glow, a blue orb, faded into existence in a far corner. It floated, drifting seemingly at random. It pulsed, spluttered and exploded, blue light bursting outwards, filling the cellar, forcing both Katrina and Mark to close their eyes as they were blinded.
When they opened them again, the cellar was bathed in a di
m light, tinged with blue. It left dark shadows in the corners and the hollows of the walls, and in one corner the shadows deepened, drawn into a small opening where the stone had been chipped and hammered away. The hole was roughly circular and behind it was complete blackness.
Then something moved, shuffling, dragging itself out of that blackness. Claw-like fingers grasped the stone edges of the hole and pulled.
The head that followed had thick, long, matted hair. Knotted and twisted and filthy, it was almost impossible to tell it had once been blonde and cared for. White eyes stared out of an almost black face, covered in dirt and dried blood.
The body that squeezed through into the cellar wore the tattered remnants of a blouse, unfastened and unable to cover the heavy pendulous breasts beneath. The belly was distended. Naked from the waist down, the legs were thin and skeletal, barely able to support the body above. Everything was covered in dirt and shit and black, crusted blood.
Christina Jameson smiled through stained, sharpened teeth at her visitors.
Other shapes began to fill the void of the cellar. Shadowy, near-human shapes, sometimes almost complete, other times barely a suggestion. A sudden movement would take on the form of an arm, a hand. The air would twist, solidify into facial features, stretch and disappear. A low susurration began, indistinct whispering and muttering.
Mark struggled to contain his trembling. He felt surrounded by people he could barely see. A tingling across the back of his neck. Had one of them touched him? He shuddered, looked across to Katrina.
She stood, head back, arms stretched out, mouth open and smiling. The air around her was alive, squirming with shifting shapes and shadows. He saw the vague shapes of hands stroking over her breasts, her belly.
He was jealous!
He ripped open one of the bin liners, grabbed the plastic, tipped the contents out onto the floor.
Crudely severed arms and legs, hands, feet, fingers, tumbled onto the stone ground, swept along in their own river of blood.
The shapes left Katrina and gathered around the bloody body parts. She glared at Mark, knowing he had interrupted her pleasure deliberately.
Christina shuffled forwards, her tongue flicking around her lips, saliva dribbling from the corners of her mouth. She crouched in front of the mess on the floor, picked up a dripping slab of thigh, the hair on the skin matted with blood. She lifted it to her mouth. Her sharp teeth bit into the flesh, tearing a chunk off, chewing, her eyes closed in ecstasy. Blood and raw meat dropped to the floor between her feet.
The shapes seemed to be watching her, sounds of satisfaction and even laughter behind the constant low whisperings.
Mark ripped open the second bag, relieved that the anger in Katrina seemed to have been replaced by satisfaction in watching Christina feed. He tugged on the corners of the bag, upending it clumsily, his hands wet with the blood that oozed from within, having to rip more plastic before the contents were finally free. A dismembered torso thumped to the floor, its guts strung out from the ripped open belly, then a head, rolling to lie against Christina’s right foot.
The dead eyes seemed to stare up at the feral girl, the mouth open slightly as if about to speak. She stared back, still chewing. Then she began to laugh, a harsh guttural laugh that spit blood into the air before her in a faint mist.
Around the neck of the disembodied head was the only remnant of clothing remaining. The blood-stained dog collar of a priest.
Katrina smiled. The afternoon meeting with Father Rex had proved as interesting and entertaining as she had expected. Very entertaining indeed.
AELLO
Strength flowed into her, the strength of blood, the strength of death!
She sat on the headstone, claws twitching. Great leathery wings, for so long curled against her back, heavy and useless, stirred, as she tried to unfurl them. She screamed with the effort but, although they lifted momentarily off her back, she could not command them to stretch out.
She longed to feel those great wings beating the air again. The tug of them on her shoulders as she searched for prey. The straightening, stiffening, stretching of every fibre as she glided in silently for the kill. One snap, one twist, and she was flying again, disappearing into the dark as villagers screamed and sobbed around the headless body of their companion.
She would fly again.
She would hunt again.
Her crow of remembered triumph was cut short as a strange sensation crawled into her belly. An empty, hollow sensation.
A presence had entered the cemetery. A human.
This was not, in itself, unusual. Humans came and went regularly through the cemetery. Occasionally she watched them, stalked them in her mind, imagining the hunt, the kill, but mostly she ignored them. So why was this one different? And what of the strange feeling in her stomach, that strange fluttering emptiness that still disturbed her thoughts?
She recognised the symptoms from vague memory. A prescient warning of danger. And there was something else, something she had not experienced for almost four hundred years.
Fear.
CHAPTER SEVEN
1
Tim walked slowly through the cemetery gates, not at all sure why he had gone there. To visit his parents’ grave? Perhaps, though he had not been consciously aware of it. Not yet. Not on his first day back.
There was something else, some other reason. He just didn’t know what.
He stopped at the first row of headstones, at the edge of the gravel path that meandered through the graves and tombs. The cemetery was large, stretching back into the mist. It had been a small parish church graveyard but had been built on and expanded until it served Byre and the area around it. The local council owned it and, by the look of the short grass and well-kept borders, still maintained it well.
Stepping onto the path, he studied the worn engravings in idle curiosity as he passed them.
This was the old part of the cemetery. Most of the headstones dated back to the 16th and 17th centuries. It was sad to see the young ages of so many of the dead, younger than Tim was now, and it made him reflect on death, on the inevitability of it, more than he cared to. He had been through that soon after his parents’ death, the introspection, the reasoning, the anger, the depression. He had no wish to return.
Someone’s watching me.
Senses, sharpened and toughened during his years away, were suddenly alert. He drew his hands out of his pockets. Adrenalin flooded his system. Skin prickled.
Someone was watching him.
He scanned the cemetery, staring hard at the headstones for signs of anyone trying to conceal themselves. He could see no one, and yet every sense, every instinct, told him there was danger close by.
He slowed his breathing, listening for anything unusual.
There was nothing.
And yet the feeling would not leave him.
Slowly, cautiously, he walked on. As each step took him deeper into the cemetery and no danger manifested itself, he began to impose a calmness on himself. He breathed deeply, pushing the breath out slowly, evenly. Perhaps it was simply the unrealised strain of coming home, of walking into the place where his parents were buried? Perhaps the danger was that he would finally decide to join them?
It wouldn’t be the first time he had contemplated such a thing. Nor would it be his first attempt.
2
His parents had been dead for less than a month when Tim, eighteen years old and staying with family friends, had found himself standing before the bathroom mirror, looking into deep set eyes rimmed by dark shadows from too little sleep and too much crying.
The reflection had stared back and asked the one, major question he seemed to have no answer for.
What’s the point in carrying on?
He shrugged. He couldn’t answer.
Your parents are dead. You hate living with the Walters. Katrina’s moved on to other friends, other boyfriends, and you never told her how you feel about her.
Katrina.
They fucked her, Tim. Face it. They fucked her. And you just stood by and let it happen.
His reflection sneered at him, spitting the terrible words out.
He began to cry. He loved his parents and they were gone. He loved Katrina and she was gone. Everything he loved had gone.
What was the point in carrying on?
Barely able to see through the tears, he slid a new razor blade out of Mr. Walters’ Wilkinson Sword blade dispenser. Carefully he unwrapped it, laughing at the absurdity of worrying about cutting his fingers.
He held the naked blade up for his reflection to see.
His reflection smiled and nodded encouragingly.
But remember, don’t cut across the wrists. Cut from the wrist up along the arm. Slice that sucker open.
Tim nodded his understanding and, holding the blade in his right hand between thumb and forefinger, placed its edge against the upturned wrist of his bare left arm, trying to hold it steady as heavy sobs shuddered through his body.
“Mum. Dad. I miss you.”
He pressed, watched the first blossom of blood on his arm, and then pulled.
He was surprised he felt no pain as the sharp blade opened the skin and the vein beneath. Blood filled the cavity quickly, overflowing, pouring out of his arm onto the bathroom floor.
He felt light-headed, dizzy. The razor blade dropped from his fingers, clattered into the sink. He collapsed, folding up, quietly, on the floor.
Someone hammered on the locked door.
“Tim? Will you be long?”
A pause.
“Are you all right?”