by Davies, Neil
He led her through the back streets of Byre, never once stopping, never once looking back. She tried to memorise the journey, so she could retrace it at a later time, but many of the streets seemed to have no visible names and the houses soon became uniform 1930s terraced cottages. This was old Byre, narrow houses and narrower streets winding away from the quayside and shops of the tourist-friendly village.
She began to feel uncomfortable and vulnerable, aware that it had been some time since she had seen any person other than her target, still keeping a steady pace on his crutches a short distance ahead of her. There were no crowds to merge into, no shop windows to gaze at with apparent interest. If he turned he would see her and, she feared, he would recognise her. But he had not looked back once since leaving the college. He seemed oblivious of anything other than moving forward to his destination, wherever that might be.
What would she do when he got there?
She knew she had no plan of action, other than following and observing. She began to feel foolish, realising how ill-planned this whole excursion was. She had rushed off that morning determined to prove to her father that the Principal and Galton and the college were all somehow involved in whatever was happening in Byre, but she admitted now that she had thought no further than that. She had seen that Bayley woman arrive at the college, but there had been no sign of Galton. She had seen this bald headed youth leaving the place, but it was hardly earth shattering to discover that the teenager went to the one and only Sixth Form College in the area. Now she followed.
At the very least I’ll find out where he lives, or where he and the others meet. Then I’ll get back to Dad and we’ll plan our next move.
She would not return to her father with nothing to show for her morning’s impetuous actions.
Up ahead, her target turned off the road and, for a moment, she thought he had reached his house. But the narrow alleyway revealed itself as she drew nearer and, with only a moment’s hesitation, she too turned into it.
The alley ran straight for several hundred yards, high brick walls either side punctuated by the occasional narrow wooden gate, each painted with a dull green paint that flaked in places. Further down, the alley turned and she was in time to see the flash of a crutch disappearing around it.
She navigated a path between black bin bags and green bins, not walking too fast, but not wanting to completely lose sight of the youth.
She took a deep breath as she reached the corner, hoping that the alley was not too straight the other side, hoping that he had not completely disappeared.
She stepped around the brick wall and saw, too late, the crutch swinging towards her face.
6
The quayside was almost deserted, at least as far as humanity was concerned. The Professor’s pedantic mind could not leave his first thought without qualification. It was true there were few people about, only a couple of fishermen mending nets down the far end, but there were numerous birds, seagulls, circling and calling, their harsh cries echoing around the boats and buildings.
He paused, looking out over the grey sea, taking the pipe from his mouth and breathing in the air filled with brine, the smell of fish, of seaweed and damp. It was powerful and exhilarating, and for the first time that morning he felt truly awake. Stepping to the edge, treading carefully so as not to slip on wave-tossed seaweed and wet stones, he peered down to where the water lapped against the stone. A faint scummy froth fizzed into nothing on the quayside while a discarded cigarette end and, further along, a juice carton and the remains of last night’s takeaway bobbed gently on the calm sea. The Professor sighed. Mankind left its mark wherever it went, but he had seen much worse on the beaches he and Mary had taken Susan to when she was a child.
Susan.
He stepped back, turning to face towards the unseen village through a cloud of aromatic tobacco smoke which, for once, did not calm or distract him.
Where are you daughter? I hope you haven’t done anything foolish.
7
Christina stirred in the tunnels beneath the old Galton house cellar.
She was not aware of her surroundings, other than the security and privacy they gave her. It seemed this had been her home forever. Her place, her purpose, was here. She was a conduit, a channel for the power of the sacrifices to Aello. She would not be truly fulfilled, could not know rest, until Aello was once again made flesh.
The spirits of the caves drifted around her, drawn over the centuries to this unholy place, long before the house above was built. From ancient burial grounds, from pits dug by the victors and filled with the dead and dying of the vanquished, from the dungeons of persecution, they had slowly gathered at this place. Called, at first, by the ancient power that still lingered from early witchcraft. Called, later, by Aello who had sensed the residue of evil and seen the potential.
The caves, and the tunnels that interconnected them, were natural chambers in the rock beneath Byre. Early followers of the old ways had extended the caves, opened out the tunnels, to become places of worship and sacrifice. When Aello had escaped from her centuries old prison, taken from her home country unknowingly among many other stolen artefacts, she had found this place waiting, below the very home of the thieves. It had been simple to revive the old practices with herself at the head.
Later, when her enemies, villagers led by the Galtons, the very people who had brought her to this shore, cornered her and tried to kill her, she had sealed the entrances to the cave system, trapping many of her enemies and followers alike. As the sorcery was unleashed that banished, yet did not kill her, the caves had been forgotten by the living.
Aello did not forget.
There was only one entry into the caves now, opened up by the weight of the grand Galton house being built on the ruins of the one she had destroyed in that final battle, sealed off again for a time by the walls of the cellar. But the wall had been breached several years before the young Christina Jameson and Colin Riley had ventured inside the empty house. Colin had not been the first victim of the spirits from the cave, but Christina had been the first they had kept and turned to Aello’s will. Aello had seen a potential in her, had judged that this girl had the strength to channel the power. It had driven Christina mad, but she was still alive. Few others could have survived.
Christina listened now to that inner voice, the voice of Aello. It was almost time for her to leave the caves, the cellar, and face the outside again. To stalk her own prey. To kill her own food. Aello was almost strong enough to allow The Hunts to begin again. And even though the last Hunt had been centuries before Christina’s birth, she howled into the dark of the caves, howled her joy, her excitement, her hunger.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
1
In the confusion of her slow return to consciousness, Susan thought she heard an eerie spectral howl. Distant, more felt than heard, oozing from deep beneath the ground, ground that pressed hard against the side of her face.
An intense pounding at the back of her head and sharp pain from her nose and upper lip pushed all thoughts of distant, ghostly sounds from her mind. Memories rushed dizzyingly back to her as she lifted her head, grimacing as her cheek seemed to stick to the concrete ground, small pebbles falling from deeply pitted flesh.
She had been following one of the bastards who attacked her and her father. Followed him down an alley, round a corner, and he had been waiting. A swinging crutch, an explosion of pain, and now this, raising herself off the alley floor, dried blood cracking beneath her nose, at the edge of her mouth, over her chin. A sudden stab of agony from her right wrist as she tried to push herself up. She had fallen badly on it. She couldn’t tell whether it was sprained or broken.
Managing, finally, to get to her feet, she thankfully found only minor scrapes and bruises on the rest of her body. She tried to focus, but her eyes blurred, vision pulsing with the pounding of her head, the sharp pain in her nose. Carefully she lifted shaking fingers to her face, winced as they touched. She suspected her
nose was broken, felt tears filling her eyes and angrily blinked them back. This was no time for self-pity.
On the alley floor before her was a congealed pool of blood, her blood. She must have been out for some time. Her wounds no longer bled. It was still daylight but the sky had the old look of late afternoon or early evening. She checked her watch but it had broken in the fall. Stiffly she bent and picked up her cap from where it lay like an upturned turtle against the alley wall. Tugging it down onto her head, she felt some relief as the peak sheltered her still bleary eyes.
She reached round to the back pocket of her jeans for her phone, cursing as she realised it was in the car, left behind in the excitement of following her target. Just how easy it would be to find her way back to the college, back to her car, she was unsure of. Although she had tried to take note of the twists and turns on the way here, the attack and loss of consciousness had all but obliterated them. The only thing she knew for certain was that she wanted to get out of this alley, with its claustrophobic brick walls and unsettling blind corners. She was just deciding which way to walk when she heard the voices.
They were young, male and female, getting steadily louder. At first she could make out no words, but then small phrases, shouted louder than the others, set her stomach churning and increased the pounding in her head.
“I’m telling you it was her. I fucking laid her out. No way is she going anywhere.”
Her decision was made.
She turned away from the voices, hurried down the alley, limping slightly from stiff and aching muscles. She was lucky to have been left unmolested when she had been completely vulnerable. Now she knew the bastard had just gone to get his friends.
Dogs barked. Gulls screamed their eerie cries in the distance over the bay.
She ran blindly, not knowing, not caring where she was going, only knowing what she was running away from.
Angry, shouting voices grew closer. Closer than she would have liked, but far enough that they could not see her. She didn’t think about what would happen if they caught her, did not allow herself that imagination but used the fear of it to spur her on, gritting her teeth against the aches and pains, snuffling through her bloodied broken nose, gasping between cracked lips.
The maze of alleyways ended abruptly and she was stumbling along a narrow street, desperately glancing at the houses either side, hoping to see movement, to see somebody who could help. She wanted to run up each pathway and hammer on the doors but was afraid it would slow her down too much, that she would be caught before anyone answered.
Why had she left her phone in the car? That was stupid of her. Unprofessional. Her father would never let her hear the end of it, if she ever saw him again.
She shook her head to clear it of such morbid thoughts and cursed her forgetfulness. The movement slashed slices of pain through her skull, her face, her neck. Stumbling, momentarily disoriented, she grabbed for a nearby gatepost to steady herself. Barely suppressing the urge to vomit as her stomach muscles twisted and contracted in fear and panic, Susan blinked her eyes into focus and stared back the way she had come, back through the old houses and the narrow street, back towards the mouth of the alleyways that wound through this old part of town.
They were closer, their voices louder. Any moment they would burst out onto the street and see her.
Gathering her failing strength, growling deep in her throat at the effort of will and muscle, she pushed herself on. The street widened as she crossed the border into a modern, grid-planned estate. The regular box-like houses gave her no comfort, however, as they seemed as deserted as the old irregular structures she had just passed.
A change in the timbre of the voices following her, a slight lessening of the echo and she knew they had left the alleyway. They were on the old street.
She ducked into the neatly ordered garden of the nearest house, dropping to the grass behind the low wall that divided one lawn from the other, biting her lip to stop the cry that tried to escape as her body screamed its pain. Crawling forward on elbows and knees, she scrambled towards the edge of the house. If she could just get round the back, perhaps they wouldn’t see her. They couldn’t search every garden, could they?
She stopped, tried to slow her breathing, quiet the laboured air passing through her broken nose. The voices had stopped. That frightened her more than anything. They had stopped talking because they knew she was close. All it would take was for one of them to walk far enough, to look over the wall into the garden, and they would have her.
She jumped, almost screamed, as the door on the side of the house opened and an old lady, with a small dog peering round her legs, waved frantically at her.
“Get in here, dear. Quick, before they see you.”
2
“We’ve lost her.” Candida stopped at a low wall edging a well-kept lawn on the estate and sat on the bricks, breathing heavily from the unaccustomed exercise.
“Fuck!” Jimmy kicked at a loose stone on the ground, watched it skitter away down the road before turning to Brian, struggling to keep up with the others on his crutches. “Why did you leave her like that?”
“She was out of it, shithead.” Brian’s anger helped cover the guilt he felt, rightly or wrongly. “I couldn’t carry her like this,” he raised one of his crutches for emphasis, “so I went to get you guys.”
“Never heard of a phone dickhead?” Janie spat the words as she sat herself next to Candida.
“Didn’t have it on me, cunt.”
“Fuck you.”
“Enough.” Jimmy stepped between his two friends. “No point arguing about it now. She’s fucked off and we’re in shit.”
“We’ll have to tell Bayley.” Candida sighed the words in resignation.
“Why?” Brian turned to look at each of the others in turn. “She doesn’t need to know about this. So the bitch got away. So what? Bayley doesn’t have to find out.”
“Think about it you stupid fuck.” Jimmy stepped closer to Brian, his lips drawn back from his teeth in an angry grimace. “You think the bitch will just go home and forget about this? You knocked her out with a fucking crutch, man. She’s bleeding all over the place. She’s going to tell everyone she can. We need Bayley’s protection.”
The girls nodded agreement and Brian looked forlornly at the sky, wishing he had killed the woman when he had the chance.
3
“My name’s Ethel, dear. Would you like a cup of tea?”
Susan, stood near the door of the darkened kitchen, trembling, fidgeting, as though she wasn’t sure whether to run or stay, gritting her teeth in pain, her nose dripping blood once again. She stared at the old woman and said nothing.
Ethel smiled patiently. She had seen the look before, during her time overseas in the war. Fear and shock. The girl’s face was bruised and bloody, she was in obvious pain. Those scum outside had been chasing her, maybe to kill her, maybe to drag her into one of their disgusting rituals. Ethel had heard the shouting, looked out her window and saw the girl doing a poor job of hiding in her back yard, obviously untrained. They would soon find her.
So long ago now, but still vivid in her aging mind, Ethel, too, had hidden from pursuers. SS troops, armed with guns, ready to shoot on sight. But she had been trained, had dug in, camouflaged her hiding place well, lay still and silent. Others had escaped from the camp too, but not all had been as well-trained. If she closed her eyes, she could still hear the German shouts, the dogs barking, the two women captured less than a hundred yards from her hiding place. Through the smallest of gaps in her cover, she had watched the SS Commander, like some evil slug in his black leather coat and black cap, approach the two women who stood trembling and crying in the small clearing in the woods, their hands held high in surrender. He had shot them both, clinically, in the head. Ethel had watched the blood, bone and brain matter spray, heard it splattering wetly on the leaves covering the ground, the nearby trunks of trees and the camouflage above her head. She cried silently as the two w
omen, women she had shared food and drink and imprisonment with, fell to the ground, dead before they hit. At that moment she could do nothing to help them, only knew that she had to survive, escape and continue the fight.
She would not stand by again.
When she had seen the girl hiding, had heard the anger in the voices of those chasing her, she had not hesitated. This time she could help. As frightened as she was of them, she would not stand back and let them claim another victim.
“It’s all right.” Ethel spoke softly, calmly so as not to startle the terrified girl. “They’ve gone now. They stayed for a moment, talking, but I heard them leave. You’re safe. Let me show you where the bathroom is so you can clean yourself up, and I’ll get making that cup of tea.”
Ethel smiled as she took the girl’s arm. At first, the girl pulled away, but then nervously allowed herself to be led towards the stairs. Ethel almost felt as she had as a twenty-two year old sitting in the airplane, waiting for the night time parachute drop into occupied France. Scared, determined, excited and proud to be finally doing something to fight back against the enemy.
CHAPTER TWENTY
1
As he left The Angling Emporium, after wallowing in nostalgia and tea with Mr. Crosby, Tim saw Professor Hall, easily identified by the pipe smoke that trailed after him as he paced. He was slightly disappointed that the Professor’s daughter was not with the old man. Her obvious dislike and distrust of him was strangely interesting and challenging. Perhaps she was on the ferry, slowly approaching the quayside.
With a friendly pat on the shoulder, Mr. Crosby walked past him to help secure the boat. On deck, Steve Ives waved, first to Mr. Crosby and then, with a broad smile, to Tim.