by F. G. Cottam
Below are the words that must be incanted when the ritual is performed. I write them phonetically, as the Lutherans wrote the bible liturgy once they had renounced Latin. It is an inexact science, this. But it is as close as I can get in my mother tongue to the sounds as told to me by the Albecheian. I hope never to have to recite them. Magic undermines everything my vocation and schooling have encouraged me to think is true. And I am not brave. Were I called upon to confront the being that hungers in the darkness, I think my courage might in that moment fail me.
Written in Truth,
Thomas Arthur Horan
Fortescue closed the journal. He did not share Horan’s vacillating faith concerning the subject of magic. He had encountered Ballantyne’s sea chest and its unquiet contents and he had encountered the ghost of Elizabeth Burrows and when he had read the Albecheian’s boast; I can make puppets afterwards of those who choose to take their own lives he had almost jumped out of his own skin in fright and recognition.
Kaddeh had accomplished what he’d threatened. In a sense, he was still doing it, because nothing he started had stopped or gone away.
Ballantyne’s bird had not arrived. He’d remembered Horan’s offer of help. Something had reminded him of it on New Hope Island and he’d begged for the ritual and for whatever reason, Horan hadn’t sent it. Unless he had and the bird had been shot down for the pot or ended up feeding a hungry sea eagle on its fraught route through the Hebridean skies.
That was what had likely happened. Horan had sent the words of the ritual, bound to the leg of the carrier pigeon and the missive had never reached its intended destination. And he had not been able to go himself because by that time he was living the clandestine lie of another man’s life in Barnsley.
Fortescue looked at his watch. It was 8.40am. On New Hope, Jesse Kale was loading a Land Rover on what was to be the last morning of his mortal life. Patrick Lassiter was leading a search party in the fruitless hunt for a missing senior journalist. Alice Lang was lacing on her hiking boots for the walk along the shingle that would take her and her two companions to the cottage built by the crofter, David Shanks. In his room in the expedition compound, a Belgian priest was on his knees, praying. The Keeper of Artefacts knew none of those things.
He called Edith Chambers’ school and explained who he was and waited for 15 minutes for her to be summoned to the phone.
She said, ‘You’ve taken your time.’
‘That’s gratitude.’
‘Was Jacob Parr telling the truth?’
‘For once in his life, yes, he was.’
‘So you found Horan’s account?’
‘I did.’
‘And it contains important information for my mum?’
‘It contains vital information, for all of them, Edith.’
The other end of the line was quiet. Then Edith said, ‘Their lives are at risk, aren’t they? They’re going to go the way of the New Hope settlers, if they haven’t already. Have you heard the news?’
‘Not this morning. I’ve been reading. What news?’
‘Radio contact with the island had been lost, apparently. There’s no internet either. The newspaper is saying it’s nothing to worry about and probably just because of a bad storm last night. But if they’re in trouble and they’ve got no radio they can’t send a mayday signal.’
‘You’ve thought this through.’
‘Course I bloody have. My mum’s on New Hope Island.’
‘What do you intend to do?’
‘The question is, what do you intend to do, Doctor Fortescue? I’m a kid, remember? You’re the one with the information they need.’ She hung up.
‘Ungrateful little cow,’ Fortescue said, to the burr of the dialling tone. But that wasn’t what he felt. What he felt was that he couldn’t really fault her logic. She was perky and intelligent but at 14, she was a child. It was why he had agreed to help her in the first place. He could do things she couldn’t. Right now, he didn’t know what to do. But the first part of any plan of action had to be calling into work to say he wouldn’t be there that day. He had other, more pressing obligations than research and cataloguing.
The phone rang before his hand could reach it.
‘It’s Edie Chambers.’
‘Hi, Edith.’
‘Please call me Edie.’
‘Okay.’
‘Look, I think you’ve done brilliantly. I think you’re really clever and kind. Amazingly so, actually, it’s just that I’ve been frantic about my mum.’
There was a snuffle on the line. Edith began to cry.
‘I’ll do anything I can, Edie,’ Fortescue heard himself say. ‘I’ll do everything I possibly can, I promise. I won’t rest until I’ve seen your mum and given her the message.’
‘Thank you.’
Now you’ve gone and done it Phil, he thought, ringing the museum’s number.
Chapter Twelve
They called off the search at 3 o’clock in the afternoon. By that time there was nowhere left to look. At 5 o’clock, Lassiter told Napier that he thought it odd that Jesse Kale had neither called in nor returned to the compound. He said this quietly. There were others present and he didn’t wish to stir unnecessary panic.
‘The walkie-talkies are unreliable,’ Napier said, speaking equally softly. ‘They’re good kit normally, but nothing requiring a signal or wavelength seems to work here with any dependability.’
Lassiter said, ‘How long does it take to identify a mass grave? That’s a rhetorical question by the way, Sergeant, because it doesn’t take very long at all. Not when you’re someone with Kale’s level of expertise. Recovery is the time consuming bit. He was only trying to establish that the bodies were there.’
‘He could have got carried away,’ Napier said, aware of the ambiguity of his words before he’d even completed the sentence.Carried away like Blake and Carrick were, he thought.
‘If he’d found anything, he’d have been back here boasting about it,’ Lassiter said, ‘and recruiting helpers to rig a shelter over the site. I’m concerned.’
The Chinook that had unloaded the Land Rover Kale had taken had also deposited a pair of quad bikes for the expedition’s use. Both of the men knew it. Lassiter glanced around.
They were in the galley, which most people seemed to prefer to the recreation room as a place to gather and socialise. It was as though the bickering of the previous evening had left a bad atmosphere there. He saw that everyone but Cooper and the priest were present. And Kale of course, he was absent too. A meeting had been called for six to discuss the events of the day. A quad bike could easily get to the peat bog and back in less than an hour.
‘I’ll go,’ Napier said.
Lassiter nodded. ‘Be careful, Paul,’ he said.
Napier felt quite relieved to get away for a bit. He thought the tension in the compound was growing all the time. The search had brought home to all its participants just how wild and barren and remote the island was. Their failure to find any trace of the man they were searching for was a frustrating blow to general morale.
The women had got back from the cottage shaken by whatever experience the three of them had shared. They looked scared, frankly. And he thought that Alice Lang had aged about five years since their shared banter at breakfast.
Nobody had really forgiven Karl Cooper his boorish digs at Jane Chambers of the previous evening. He had sulked his way through the search for Carrick, seemingly aware of this. Then against Napier’s tactful advice, he had gone off to the settlement on his own. They could hardly forbid him from doing so; the weather was benign and he was a grown man there to investigate a mystery, not to be chaperoned. All they could say to him was to make sure he was back for six and the meeting, which Patrick Lassiter duly did.
The priest was behaving oddly. Father Degrelle didn’t seem to Napier like the man he’d seen pulverizing Karl Cooper verbally once on an edition of Question Time. He seemed withdrawn and preoccupied. Generally he was a galvanic adv
ert for his faith. Since the chopper had touched down on the island, he’d become almost unrecognisable.
He hoped the meeting would clarify a few things. The main mission of the day had been the search and that had ended in failure. The experts were supposed to be there to solve a mystery, not to create more of them. It seemed callous to carry on without James Carrick but he supposed that was what they would do.
Practically, they had to try to re-establish radio contact with the mainland. That was the urgent priority now that hope of finding the missing man seemed to be exhausted. Napier thought that if they did that, a sense of urgency would return to the experts who were after all competing to be right about the cause of the New Hope vanishing.
He was there. He could see Kale’s land Rover in front of him as he crested a ridge and nursed the bike into the shallow vale where the peat bog lay below. He could smell the peat. Grass ruffled beneath him fingered by a slight breeze. The ground dulled when the sun slipped behind one of the small clouds dotting the sky.
There had been a couple of showers earlier in the day. Here there had been, anyway. He saw that the Land Rover’s canvas roof was up. The windows were rolled fully shut and the interior of the vehicle was invisible behind glass reflecting the scenery. He saw the neat turf rolls of Kale’s punctilious handiwork and the black exposure of peat under which the archaeologist thought bodies might lie.
Of Kale there was no sign at all. Napier switched off the ignition and climbed off the bike. It was very quiet there. He could hear the ticking of his engine as it cooled and the metal contracted. There was no birdsong. He approached the vehicle. He cupped his hands to either side of his head and stooped forward against the pane on the drivers’ side so that he could peer in at the Land Rover’s interior.
He saw what he suddenly knew he’d been looking for and swallowed hard and recoiled. A white incisor lay on the fabric of the driver’s seat, its root a torn encirclement of bloodied gum.
He blinked and regulated his breathing and looked around. He was alone there. Kale was as absent as though he had been plucked right off the earth. He opened the driver’s door. There was a slight odour in the cabin that smelled to Napier like camphor and fish oil. It was vague, subtle. But it was there and it wasn’t a scent the archaeologist wore. Kale wore the brand of cologne he was paid to endorse. Or he had. He didn’t anymore, because he was dead.
Napier didn’t know what to do. It’s picking us off, he thought. He had to get back. They had to consolidate. He had to get his men out of their encampment and into the compound. They could bunk down there as well as guarding its perimeter, there was ample room and it was much less vulnerable structurally than their tents.
That begged the question, vulnerable to what? He didn’t know. Perhaps he would have some insight after the six o’clock meeting. He was only certain that Kale was dead and that for the time being, his death was a fact it was probably wisest to share only with Patrick Lassiter.
Fortescue drove. He’d bought the car he was driving because his brother, who’d sold it to him, had said it was a babe magnet. This had not proven to be the case. It was a 14 year old Fiat Coupe Turbo with a thirsty two litre engine. It was not the run-around he had driven to Barnsley but he was driving to Scotland now and whatever its faults, the Fiat was a mile-eater. It hadn’t lived up to his brother’s claims, not even once, actually. But the leather bucket seats were comfortable on a long drive and it was powerful and extremely fast.
He was quite surprised that McIntyre had agreed to see him so readily. He’d first recounted his tale over the phone to the Chronicle’s editor, a man called Marsden. Marsden had said that there was only merit in his plan if he brought Edith Chambers along with him. But Marsden was seeing the whole thing as a sensationalist news story and Fortescue was seeing it as something else entirely. Eventually he lost his temper and demanded to speak to the man whose idea the expedition had originally been.
McIntyre called him back. He did so almost immediately. He was polite and attentive to what he was told. And then he asked a lot of questions Fortescue thought not strictly necessary or relevant about Lassiter’s visit to Liverpool. He asked about Fortescue’s own experience with Seamus Ballantyne’s sea chest. He asked about Elizabeth Burrows; about her physical appearance and the manner of her death and what an encounter with her apparition could possibly signify and whether it was a portent of personal danger. Eventually, the penny dropped.
‘You’ve seen her, haven’t you, Mr McIntyre?’
‘Last night.’
‘Quite glamorous, I’ve always thought, for a radical feminist.’
‘Dead people are not glamorous, Professor Fortescue. They are disconcerting. I took to my bed afraid.’
‘I don’t think she is a harbinger of death or anything like that. I think she’s prevented from resting in peace because she took something that didn’t belong to her. And she took her own life, which makes her a puppet of Horan’s sorcerer.’
‘David Shanks took something. And he killed himself too, according to Alice Lang. And he doesn’t pop up frightening people.’
‘He put the thing he had stolen back. Anyway, I don’t have all the answers, Mr McIntyre.’
‘And it wasn’t Horan’s sorcerer, Professor. In the end it was much more Ballantyne’s, would you not say?’
‘Will you help me to get to the island?’
‘Come here. Show me the journal. I want to read it for myself.’
‘I’m genuinely sorry to be bothering you like this.’
‘I’m enormously relieved that you’ve called, Fortescue. I’ve had a bad feeling about New Hope for weeks. I’ve ignored it because I’m a stubborn man and I was reluctant to appear foolish in the eyes of the world. I just hope the document you have in front of you is genuine. I hope it’s fate that’s put me in a hotel on Loch Awe in Scotland and not in some other part of the world where people gather to be rich together.’
‘Scott Fitzgerald.’
‘What?’
‘That phrase about gathering to be rich together is Nick Carraway’s in The Great Gatsby.’
‘Never read it. Get here as quickly as you can.’
Fortescue drove. He did not switch on his car radio. He didn’t wish to hear the mournful opening chords of The Recruited Collier insinuate their way into his personal space. Whatever lurked on New Hope Island, whatever Shaddeh had unleashed, was capable of mischief and of real malevolence. But there seemed to be something gleeful in the malice. Some of the tricks, like the one played on Lassiter with Ballantyne’s watch, seemed to have been played simply for amusement.
Between where the Sat-Nav told him the speed cameras lurked, he averaged 130 miles an hour. He thought they would get him at some point and that if he came out of this the penalty points would mean he would be cycling to work for the next six months. But he also thought if he came out of this, he would have a good case for asking Alexander McIntyre to pay any speeding fine he incurred.
He had a bad moment just beyond Carlisle, when he began to ponder on what McIntyre had said about Elizabeth Burrows. And what he had said himself. He should not have said she was glamorous. It trivialised her and was disrespectful. It ran counter to her pioneering student ideology. If she appeared in the seat beside his, fusty and grinning and dead, with her straw hair and facial skin restless with the inward toil of maggots, she would not be glamorous at all. He would lose control and leave the road and the Fiat, with its full petrol tank, would become his funeral pyre.
For several miles he drove expecting just such a visitation, his arms locked at the elbow and his hands clammy on the wheel and his eyes rooted to the road ahead of him. But it didn’t come.
Eventually the sheer, drear monotony of motorway driving re-imposed itself and he chastised himself in ripe thought-language for his own spineless cowardice. He was an odd choice for this sort of task, he knew. He was the only person who could have done what he had and the least well qualified he could imagine for what he was about
to. If everything worked out, he would at least meet Jane Chambers. For the rest of the drive, he took what consolation he could in that prospect.
Cooper switched on his hand-held Geiger counter and took a reading. Nothing registered on the gauge. That didn’t prove anything, though. He thought that the radiation might be variable and depend upon the proximity of the visitors or their hardware.
He shook his head and switched the device off. He seemed to be the only person on New Hope Island still capable of rational thought. Radiation wasn’t the only thing contaminating the place. There was a sort of panicky, irrational mood of fear and superstition than seemed contagious. Even the ex-cop and the security guy had fallen prey to it. They’d seemed capable men when he first met them. It was genuinely disappointing. It was disillusioning.
He reminded himself to talk to McIntyre once radio contact was re-established. He would do it discreetly, because he didn’t want to alienate Lucy Church and she was clearly attracted to Paul Napier. But he’d meant what he’d said about getting him fired. No one was going to make a physical threat against Karl Cooper and get away with it. It was something he just wasn’t prepared to tolerate.
And anyway the last thing he needed was a love-rival. If he was going to fuck Lucy – and he was – he needed her undivided attention. Napier’s rightful place was in a Polyester uniform and a cheap peaked cap chasing shop-lifters around the aisles of an inner-city supermarket. He’d got above himself and needed putting back in his sad little slot. A few choice words in McIntyre’s ear would see him sent there. There was no point having influential friends if you didn’t use the influence they had.
The tooth discovered in the crofter’s cottage had led him to his current theory about matters on the island. It had not belonged to Blake. It had belonged to David Shanks. Loose teeth were one of the classic symptoms of prolonged exposure to low to medium levels of radiation. They loosened and eventually they fell out. Obviously the tooth hadn’t belonged to Blake. He hadn’t been on the island for long enough. Fuckwit Napier had put two and two together and characteristically got five.