by Devon De'Ath
Hilary tapped her heels together several times where she sat, like Dorothy wishing to go home to Kansas. Come on, you two. Some of us have the burden of sex to release. She’d never warmed to Leonard Poole or Betsy Slade. The pair remained tight-lipped about their private lives, although obviously knew one another outside work. While they’d not quoted scripture at her or Kevin, both suspected them to have quiet, religious affiliations. Neither appeared interested in enjoying any kind of physical intimacy. Cold, but professional. That was the assessment she and her lover arrived at to pigeonhole the colleagues joining them on duty this evening.
Betsy approached the desk. “Why don’t you and Kevin take your break, if you’d like?”
Hilary leapt up, then slowed her blatant enthusiasm. She cleared her throat. “Everything okay upstairs?”
A faint smile traced Betsy’s lips. “All quiet. They’re good as gold tonight. You two scamper off. Leonard and I won’t interrupt without good reason.”
Hilary pushed the chair in. “Thanks, Betsy. We’ll see you in an hour.” She hurried away with Kevin around a left-hand corner. Once out of sight - but not earshot - their footfalls quickened in the basement door's direction.
Leonard folded his arms. “I’d say we have good reason to interrupt them.”
Betsy hovered near the desk. She tapped a blouse pocket. “I’ve got the kitchen keys. We’ll give them fifteen minutes to get going. The more distracted they are with each other, the better.”
Most people would find the basement atmosphere at Mordant Grange oppressive or downright frightening. Dark and filled with junk; only thick, dust encrusted spider webs suggested any living thing. For the imaginative or sensitive, its inky blackness swam with myriad ghosts. Hilary and Kevin had rearranged the space according to their pressing hormonal needs, three months earlier. An old mahogany dining table stood in one far corner of the arched, red brick space. Dim lamps - little more than emergency lighting - cast exaggerated shadows across the walls and low ceiling. At midnight on this particular Friday, those shadows heaved with frantic urgency. Hilary had bought some scatter cushions in a charity shop for a few quid. These offered her bum relative comfort from the rhythmic impacts of Kevin’s enthusiastic servicing. It wasn’t the most romantic or arousing environment (she hated going down there alone for anything), but beggars couldn’t be choosers. Ankles up around her ears held tight by slender hands gripping her thighs, Hilary groaned and gasped while the sturdy table jostled in time. The pale whiteness of Kevin’s exposed buttocks bobbed like an excited spirit. He drove himself home, getting a full upper body strength workout. The divine suction of Hilary’s wetness, lubricating his rigid piston, caused him to pant like a thirsty dog. Any moment now she would spasm and go taught. Then he could open the floodgates straining against his intimate muscles with a tidal wave of semen.
From out of the darkness, a pair of faint whispers disrupted Hilary’s mind-scrambling approach to full climax. Intertwined male and female voices, like ghosts from some long forgotten age, spoke in a language she didn’t recognise: “Templi omnium hominum pacis abbas.”
Kevin caught the sound too, but he had the finish line of intimate release in sight now. He didn’t believe in ghosts. If this was Leonard and Betsy’s idea of a prank, he’d leave them in little doubt what he thought of it once he got his trousers back on.
The whispered phrase grew louder. Someone kicked an old pot over in the near darkness. It rolled to a slow halt. Kevin glanced over one shoulder but kept the pace going. Who the fuck is that? Can’t Hilary and I catch a break?
Hilary closed her eyes as waves of orgasm broke upon the shore of her sex. She clenched and unclenched against Kevin’s magnificence. Her eyes opened again on the second round of gasps. A broad-bladed chef’s knife glittered beside Kevin’s head. She tried to scream, but her body couldn’t respond and rise above the coital sensations at that moment. A rough, male hand grabbed Kevin’s chin and yanked his head back. The blade incised his exposed throat, showering Hilary’s naked, bouncing breasts and horrified face with crimson spray, as Kevin’s passionate seed coated the interior of her womanly canal. Leonard Poole’s grim face appeared beside Kevin’s empty-eyed countenance. Betsy Slade emerged on the other side, a maniacal glee dancing in her stare. Leonard held Kevin’s flopping head up, while Betsy licked blood from the gaping wound with the pleasure and tongue-curling sensitivity of a skilled cunnilingus practitioner.
Hilary gave voice to her terror, but the noise didn’t even penetrate the ground floor above them.
Leonard tugged Kevin’s lifeless torso away from its intimate insertion. He tossed the body into the darkness, where it shattered the dry wood of an old crate.
Betsy pinioned Hilary in place, squatting over her with one palm pressing hard against her chest. Behind, Leonard lifted her dress and let his trousers fall. The warmth and wetness of Betsy’s aroused womanhood startled Hilary further. A gentle squelching sound between her legs followed. Leonard gripped Betsy’s hips and started to fuck. That inhuman, ancient evil light in Betsy’s eyes smiled at the blood-soaked visage staring back at it. Hilary whimpered. She and Kevin had been wrong about these two. They weren’t religious, frigid, celibates; rather, a pair of sick, murderous perverts. In the brief moments before Leonard’s violent pounding reached its peak, her mind clamoured for an avenue of escape. What did these lunatics want and why had they killed Kevin?
Betsy grinned. Her free hand lifted an identical chef’s knife to that wielded by Leonard earlier. Hilary squealed. Betsy threw back her head, chanting in a husky voice of mixed erotic and spiritual abandon. “Templi omnium hominum pacis abbas.” Her abdomen clenched.
Leonard groaned, “Baphomet.” He let go inside. Betsy fixed Hilary with an unblinking look of superiority and disdain, like some feudal lord disgusted by a peasant occupying their demesne. The blade whipped across Hilary’s throat, silencing an attempt to scream and turning it into a wet gurgle.
Leonard withdrew himself and Betsy stepped back. Hilary’s limp form slipped forward off the cushions into a silent heap at the base of the mahogany dining table.
Betsy pulled up her knickers across those tattooed thighs.
Leonard placed one hand on her shoulder. “We’d better shower before the vans arrive. If we wake the kids up covered in blood, they’ll freak out.”
Betsy checked her fob watch. “We’ve got twenty minutes. Faye said to rupture the gas line before they arrive. The house is so big, it’ll take time for the required accumulation to build.”
Leonard moved back towards the basement steps. A solid old gas boiler stood on a concrete plinth near the exit. He rummaged in a box of rusty tools to locate a long screwdriver. “This should do the trick. Go up, I’ll be there in a minute.”
At one a.m., Betsy opened a rear service door at Mordant Grange. Two white, long wheelbase Toyota minibuses and a black Lexus saloon pulled up behind the building. They remained obscured from the view of its sweeping, tree-lined driveway.
A toned, thirty-year-old woman with luxuriant, silvery-white hair down her back darted to the opening. She was clad in a white blouse and tight, black leather trousers. “Is everything in hand?”
Betsy nodded. “We sacrificed the other carers. Leonard is rousing the children upstairs.” She turned, then stopped as the woman gripped her forearm.
“You did well, young novice.”
Betsy glanced back. “Thank you, Faye.”
“Where’s the basement entrance?”
Betsy pointed along a corridor. “Round that corner, first on your left.”
Faye twisted to grim silhouettes assembling in the darkness behind. “You heard her. Boiler team that way. The rest of you follow Betsy. Remember to keep the children calm.”
Betsy led two eight-year-old girls, one in each hand, across the upstairs landing. One girl reached back towards her room. “What about my clothes?”
Betsy squeezed her fingers. “Easy, Margaret. The building is in danger. We must get you
out of here to a safe place as soon as possible.”
Margaret’s chin wobbled.
Betsy let go to tweak it. “Don’t worry, now. We’ve a comfortable manor house in the country waiting for you. Its owners will provide everything you need.” She leaned closer and whispered. “Shall I let you in on a secret?”
Margaret nodded wide yet tired and confused eyes.
Betsy smiled. “The place we’re moving to is much nicer. It’ll be an adventure. And there’s always ice cream for tea. How does that sound?”
A Downs Syndrome boy, following two paces behind, beamed. “Oh goody. Ice cream for tea.”
Leonard brought up the rear with their peers, all masquerading as caring adults to lead the children downstairs.
Some kids held their noses at a growing aroma of gas. One complained. “What’s that smell?”
Betsy called over her shoulder as they approached the rear door. “Hurry now, children. There are minibuses waiting outside. But we have to be quick and quiet.”
Those wayward shepherds led their innocent flock into the night. Sliding doors clanked shut on both Toyota minibuses. Leonard hopped in the front passenger seat of one, while Betsy took the other.
Faye stood outside the rear house door, checking her watch. A powerful stench of gas wafted from the structure. Two grim figures emerged, clutching a bag of tools. They followed Faye back to the Lexus and climbed inside.
At the end of the long, main driveway to Mordant Grange, the Lexus paused. Both Toyota vans vanished into the night. Faye turned round in the front passenger seat. She studied the large dreary house, standing firm against a velvet sky. On the rear seat, two men fidgeted to gain the same view. Faye took a deep breath. “Do it.”
One man pulled a mobile phone from his pocket. He keyed in a number, held the phone aloft and pressed the ‘Call’ button. Moments later, the house erupted in a deafening fireball. Splinters of wood and powdered masonry combined in a mock mushroom cloud of tinkling glass and other debris.
Faye watched with emotionless indifference. “Did you use the right charges and accelerant?”
The man with the phone nodded. “There won’t be anything left to raise suspicions. If there is, we know someone with clout at the fire investigation branch.”
Faye got comfortable in her seat again. “Excellent. Such a tragic accident. Twenty special needs children and four adult carers all killed in a horrific explosion. That’s what happens when charities tasked with caring for people cut corners. Betsy and Leonard will stay with us now. They need to disappear.” She smiled at the driver. “I imagine this organisation will be lucky to get off without criminal negligence charges. At the very least, the Charities Commission should squash them.”
The driver put their car in gear and pulled away. “We’ll make sure of it.”
13
The Contact
“Well, what do you know?” Bill leaned back in his chair at Raven’s kitchen table. Fresh dots appeared on the GPS tracker map. “The car’s at Carlton le Moorland again, now. But overnight it paid a visit to a lane near Temple Bruer.”
Vicky sat beside him sipping a morning cup of herbal tea.
Raven crossed the kitchen to plonk down three bowls of muesli. She bent backwards and tugged clattering spoons from a drawer. “I’ll check my e-mail while we eat. My friend, Tawny, said she might have an update by the end of the week.”
Bill logged out of the tracker site. “Is that one of your pals in the esoteric community?”
Raven dragged the laptop in front of her cereal bowl. “Yes. She’s been asking around in a group I’m unfamiliar with. Their members work outside our normal circle. It’s the only way to discover more: a friend with contacts.” She noticed her dry muesli. “Sorry, everyone. Vicky, can you reach in the fridge for the milk? Behind you. That’s it.”
Vicky stood up to retrieve and uncap a carton of milk. She waved it at the assembly. “Shall I be mum?”
Raven caught Bill’s eye for a second, memories of their hopeful discussion about Vicky’s future flashing between them. “Please.” She tapped away on her computer while Vicky poured. Raven opened an e-mail from her in-box. “Tawny Lewis. With a subject of ‘Hopeful News.’ Let’s see.” Her eyes remained fixed on the screen while she read between spooning muesli into her petite mouth. Bill watched, flashbacks to their intimate exchange threatening a fresh bout of morning wood.
Vicky poured milk on his breakfast. “Wake up, dreamer.”
Bill shook the images from his head and picked up a spoon. “Can you drive Vicky and I over to Temple Bruer this morning, Raven?”
Raven didn’t turn away from reading as she replied. “You’re welcome to take my car yourselves. Tawny lives across the village. I’m going to run round and visit her after breakfast. This is worrying, she sounds stressed. That’s not like her at all.”
Vicky added milk to her own breakfast, then deposited the carton back in the fridge. “Is it about the cult?”
Raven’s eyes narrowed. “She says she has information, but won’t share it on-line. Only in person. Some of her contacts are deep into the dodgy end of occult practise. I hope she hasn’t put herself at risk.”
Vicky sat down to eat. “So do I. It’s bad enough DS Quarry losing his life on our account.”
Raven let her spoon drop. She made eye contact. “His murder isn’t on your account, Vicky. Nor Bill’s. Come on, you’re smarter than that. These people are evil.”
Vicky lowered her head. “I know. But if Bill and I hadn’t snooped around, DS Quarry-”
“Might still be alive?” Raven interrupted. “But a lot more people who may yet live because of your intervention, would die.”
“That’s if we avert any murders.” Vicky’s voice came mournful and subdued.
Raven sighed. “They’ll wish they hadn’t messed with Lambo, by the time you’re through with them. Mark my words.”
Vicky’s spirits lifted at that familiar, comical nickname from her university days. “Did you sleep okay, last night?”
Raven delivered a deadpan expression to show she wasn’t taken-in. “When I wasn’t enjoying Bill’s magnificent cock, yeah.”
Bill coughed, spluttering milk and muesli across the table. Several grains stuck in his throat, causing him to gag.
Vicky walloped him between the shoulder blades with a flat hand. She let go with a laugh as Bill’s blue face returned to a normal colour, but his eyes remained saucer like with shock. “Raven and I are old university roommates. We share everything.” A sudden realisation of that double entendre made her blush. She stiffened to backpedal, pushing both hands downward on the table as if willing to apply conversational brakes. “I don’t mean we share everything in that way.”
Raven grinned. “Tease backfiring on you, is it? Bill couldn’t believe his luck there, for a minute.”
“Easy,” Bill said.
Raven closed the laptop screen. “Why don’t you drop me at Tawny’s on your way to Temple Bruer? It’s approximately three miles to the preceptory from there. I’ll walk back on my own. Try not to get caught.”
Temple Road turned out to be a single-track, tarmac affair with hedgerows on one side and fields dotted with farm buildings on the other. All that remained of the preceptory at Temple Bruer was one of two square, stone towers capped with a pyramidal roof made from distinctive red regional tiles. It stood in the middle of a farm yard and remained unlocked during daylight hours. Passing visitors were welcome to pop-in for a gander. A flight of seven stone steps led up to a wooden door in the tower beneath a semi-circular arch. Before Bill and Vicky could push the door open, a familiar sound of scrubbing greeted their ears. They crossed the threshold to find the interior ran from floor to roof beams without interruption. A circular stone stairwell led up to where additional flooring might once have existed. They studied an information board depicting a computer-generated image of the site in its former glory. Once upon a time, a classic, round Templar nave led into a rectangular chancel wit
h two towers at its far end. The remains of the south tower they stood in represented one of the last Templar structures still standing in England.
A chubby woman knelt beside half cleansed remains of the expected red painted sigil. She muttered to herself, then looked up at the newcomers. Soap suds dripped from a stiff brush in her hand. “Don’t mind me.” A rattling cough that followed suggested a life spent in the company of cigarettes. “Vandals broke in and defaced this wall last night. Why anyone would do such a thing is beyond me. There’s nothing here of value. Now I must replace the door lock. Once I finish this tedious task.”
A passing cloud dissolved strong rays of sunlight slanting through the tall, thin tower windows.
Vicky kept out of the intermittent light, supposing the less scrutiny she and Bill received, the better. She addressed the woman in a polite but warm voice. “Some people have zero respect for the past. We won’t hold you up.”
The woman continued scrubbing without looking at them. “Stay as long as you please. You’re not in my way.”
Bill performed a quick circuit of the interior, to make sure they'd missed nothing significant. Vicky sauntered up the circular staircase to peer down on him and the woman from above.
Five minutes later the pair pulled the wooden door to behind them. They descended the short flight of steps onto lush green grass.
Vicky drifted beyond a thick-set bush and gazed up at the tower. A blustery wind blowing off the Lincolnshire fens rotated a weather vane at the pinnacle of the pyramidal roof.
Bill reached her side, shielding his eyes from the re-emerging sun. “It looks like the wind’s changing direction.”
Vicky rubbed gooseflesh on her arms. “Let’s hope that’s a metaphor for things going our way at last.”
“It seems you were right about the sigils matching the pilgrim’s path. Bristol will confirm it without question.”