by S. T. Boston
Lucinda stared at him, her head cocked slightly to the side and something about how she looked at him made Mike feel uneasy. A cloud seemed to pass over her green eyes and without warning, she sprang for him with feline agility, the robe flowing out behind her. Mike felt her make contact, his leg jarred and pain flared, the force knocked him backward onto the bed where she straddled him, pinning him to the double mattress like some dominatrix in a palace of pain, her hands on his forcing them back behind his head. “What’s the matter, Mikey?” she spat. “I thought you wanted to fuck me!” As she spoke flecks of her spittle hit his face. Any lustfulness in her voice was gone, and what replaced it was venom.. “Most of what made Lindie, Linde left a long time ago, part of her is still with me, but such a small part it’s insignificant now." And with that she threw back her head, like a lover in the throes of an intense climax, then before his eyes the skin on Lucinda’s face morphed and for a brief second it was as blank as that of the mask which she’d been wearing. As it came back to human, she was no longer Lucinda, she was Lindie or something that had once been Lindie. The scar was more prominent, the freckles more visible and the hair not quite such a deep shade of red. The anger left her and what replaced it was that childhood innocence he’d seen in the picture. “They took me, Mikey,” she said sadly. Her voice had changed too, and now it matched the look of a girl in her mid-teens, one who should be stressing about exams and boys and if she had enough money to buy those shoes she wanted so badly. “They took me from my mummy and daddy and held me here, held me in The Chapel where the men raped me. Beat me and raped me, over and over, giving me their seed until I was pregnant. After I’d had my baby, they sacrificed her so that I could become.” Her green eyes changed as she spoke, blackness flooded them until she regarded him with no more than two bottomless pools of darkness. “Your baby daughter is down there with my Hope now, Mikey. Your precious little Megan.” And now her voice changed, too. It lost that childhood innocence and became that of many, many tortured voices speaking to him from somewhere far beyond this world. “Down in all that darkness,” the Lindie-thing continued. “She cries for her daddy, Mikey. She cries for you as the demons devour her pure flesh, and your slut, whore of a dead wife can do nothing but listen, listen to her screams! They’re waiting for you there, Mikey, all you need to do is let the darkness in.” She bent forward to kiss him and Mike knew that if her lips touched his he would be lost to this world; the darkness would come flooding in, filling him up until all that made him Mike Cross, was gone.
“Wherever my wife and daughter are,” he said with indignation, “they are not in your hell!” And as he spoke Mike rammed his knee up between her legs in a move that would bring any good man down. The impact caused the Lindie-thing to let go of his arms and he bucked his body up, and hit out at her with both palms, forcing her back off the bed and causing her to tumble to the floor. The Lindie-thing looked up at him now, and the blackness had gone, once again she looked at him as a child, eyes welled with tears as if she'd just been scolded by a parent and for a moment, he felt guilty. Then she came at him once more, springing at him from the floor like an attacking animal with agility that seemed so inhuman. Mike dove right, rolling off the bed as adrenaline flooded through him, plugging the gaps in the pain that the Naproxen had not managed to find. The Lindie-thing landed right where he’d been not a second before where she crouched on all-fours ready to pounce. Her red hair had fallen over her face, the black eyes were back, and they drank him in, regarded him with pure and unfiltered hatred.
Outside the room he could hear Tara banging on the door, the handle rattled but wouldn’t move. He heard her crash her body against it, but she didn’t have the strength nor the size to break it open.
“Get the gun!” Mike managed to scream as the Lindie-Thing came for him again. It pounced off the bed and landed on him, legs wrapped around his, hands clawing for his face. He stumbled back, hit the closed curtains and pulled them down, the wrought-iron pole crashed to the floor and struck him on the back of the head and shoulders.
“She screams, Mikey, she screams for her daddy,” the Lindie-thing cried triumphantly as he felt nails digging into the flesh of his neck. Her breath was on his face, only now it wasn’t intoxicating, it was rancid and smelt of decay and of things dead and buried. The futile banging on the door continued, and somewhere Mike could hear Tara screaming his name. He fought the Lindie-Thing off him again, and with his back pinned to the wall, he managed to get his good leg on her stomach and kick out with all his force. Her body was light, maybe even fragile and she tumbled away from him, his weight and size besting her, but he wasn’t sure how much longer he could continue to ward off her relentless attacks. Blindly he grabbed out behind him, found the wrought-iron pole from the curtains and whipped it around, tearing the fabric from the loops. As she came for him, he swung it at her, the pole hit the side of her face splitting open her right cheek. She – it, whatever it was screamed in a mixture of pain and frustration and Mike knew she would come again and unless he could stop her, she would keep coming until his strength wavered and she got the better of him.
The pole was about four feet long, half an inch thick and finished in what looked like a spear, giving it that slightly gothic effect that bestowed itself upon the whole place. As he knew she would, the Lindie-thing sprang forward in another attack and as she came at him, he went for her, driven on by no more than the involuntary will to survive. He thrust out the pole with all his strength. If she saw his move she was too late, her body had too much forward momentum and the decorative spiked end struck her hard in the chest. There was the slightest moment of resistance before the bones in her breastplate gave way with a sickening cracking sensation that traversed down the pole to his hands. The strength of her own attack paired with the force of Mike's counter assault meant that it kept going right through her body until it breached her back, impaling her completely. An ear-piercing shriek of pain and surprise filled the room and her eyes fell on the appendage now jutting out of her body. From the pole, her eyes turned to Mike’s and the blackness drained from them, replaced now by their natural greenness. She looked at him, as if looking at him for the first time and then just like there had been the previous night there was the passing of something, not pressure this time, something else, something he could not put his finger on, and as it passed the door opened and Tara rushed in followed by June.
Mike felt the weight of her slight frame on the curtain pole - turned deadly weapon for a second, maybe two, before he released his grip on it, and as he did, she dropped to her knees, then fell to the floor. Blood flowed from the wound, pumping out steady spurts of deep red from around the pole. It looked black against the fabric of her cloak until it hit the cream carpet. Mike looked from Tara to June and back to the girl, who was still a child, still that girl in the photo from so long ago, and he knew she’d not change back. Whatever had been Lucinda Horner was gone, cast out in death. She looked at Mike for a few seconds, and in her eyes, he read not pain, but relief, and it stayed with her until she closed them for the last time.
Chapter 49
Mike dropped to his knees beside Lindie’s body, a mixture of emotions running through him, one juxtaposing against the other. Part of him felt relief, yet at the same time, he felt a deep sadness in the knowledge that the girl's torment hadn't ended in 1969 when she’d been taken. They’d assumed that Lindie Parker had been the victim of some gruesome murder through the act of sacrifice, yet they’d been wrong, and in a way, what had happened to her had been worse.
Just how much of that original girl had been trapped in what had been Lucinda Horner he did not know. Had they shared a consciousness? Lindie there all along like some silent passenger, a prisoner in her own mind. Or had she been no more than a memory to Lucinda? Like the previous tenant of a flat you might rent and have met only once on the day you moved. Mike had no idea, it went far beyond what he could comprehend, but he hoped it was the latter, for to consider that Lindie Park
er had been trapped in there for the past forty-eight years was inconceivable to him. And yet at the point when she’d died, he’d read relief in her eyes, those eyes had almost seemed to thank him, and he knew that in those last few seconds, in death, the girl who had been Lindie Parker had been with him in that room.
Mike touched the scratch marks on his neck, his hands came away with only the faintest traces of blood on them. It was enough to tell him that she'd only managed to inflict superficial scratches to his skin with her nails and the pain was hardly noticeable next to the steady throb from his leg. He’d been lucky, lucky for a second time and he wondered if he could chance that luck for a third.
Tara was stood the other side of the body; her eyes were fixed on the girl’s face and they were eyes full of disbelief. “She was Lucinda Horner,” Mike said, his voice sounded taught and strung with the stress of having to fight for his life twice, against two people who’d generally wanted to kill him, and all in under a half hour.
“But, how?” was all Tara could manage.
“I don’t know,” he replied, staying on the floor by the body. For a few moments, he just wanted the weight off his legs, both the good and the bad one. On the floor by his side, a tide of red was slowly spreading out, soaking into the woollen carpet, the fibres absorbing the blood as eagerly as a sponge does water.
Mike looked at June, her grey bob of hair framed a serious expression. “She told me that they beat and raped her, got her pregnant and then sacrificed the baby so that she could become.”
“Then it’s likely that all of the women in this village, who make up this coven,” June began.
“Are on that list of missing girls I put together.” Tara finished off.
“They are using the act of sacrifice to promote one of possession,” June said thoughtfully. “Witches, true witches, live far longer than humans. Device was part human and part demon, a very powerful Warlock. Through ritual and sacrifice, he has enabled the witches in that coven to live even longer. Be almost immortal, just that immortality is of the soul and not the body. When nearing the end of their already unnaturally long lives they are literally ported into a new body. Fascinating, quite fascinating.”
“She said they were his daughters,” Mike added, understanding now why Lucinda Horner had looked so young, why at sixty-eight she had looked more early forties. “That the men in this village are nothing but men, men who wish to serve the Dark Lord by serving his daughters.”
“Did you know this?” Tara asked, looking at June.
June shook her head which in turn swayed her grey bangs, "No my dear. Mr. Hawke, the man I told you about when you came to me at my museum, had no idea of this. In all my experience I have never known anything as unnatural.” As she spoke a deep crack of thunder shook the sky and reverberated through the building. “If Tara’s research is right, she was the last one, back in 1969.” June pointed to the dead body of Lindie Parker, her face even paler in death than it had been in life, highlighting the redness of her hair. “The next time one of the witches in this coven reaches the end of her life, that is when another girl will go missing, of that, I have no doubt."
"Which explains why there is no pattern to it," Tara jumped in with, then paused. "But that doesn't explain Ellie, Henry, and Scotty."
Mike stood, took the weight on his leg, winced a bit but then it got easier. Grimacing and feeling like some zombie slayer in a horror movie he placed his left foot on Lindie’s chest, grasped the curtain pole and pulled it out of her small body. It came free with a horrible sucking sound that made him want to vomit. “Scotty is dead,” he said, hating how callous he sounded saying it, almost nonchalant. And as he spoke, he avoided Tara’s eyes, for he knew that if he looked into them and saw her grief then her pain would bestow itself upon him and add to his own, and he wasn’t sure he could handle that.
“You can’t know that,” she said with noticeable anger. “If you think he is dead then so are the Harrison kids, and if that’s the case then what is the fucking point of us being here?” And now he did look at her and he could see tears welling in her eyes. June placed a hand on Tara’s shoulder which she didn’t shrug off.
Mike threw the pole aside, took one of the curtains he’d torn down and covered Lindie’s body with it. “They killed him, Tara,” Mike said, his voice softening. He went to her and she slid from June into his arms. “I don’t need to see his body to know what she said was true.”
“Why,” she sobbed. “Why would they do that?”
“I don’t know,” Mike answered, talking into her hair as he held her, as he spoke he could feel individual strands of it sticking to his lips. The physical contact felt good and he realised that right then they needed each other, and only together could they get through this. “But now is not the time to grieve for him. There will be time enough for that if we live through this thing. We need to find Ellie and Henry and end this, make sure he didn’t die for nothing.”
Mike felt her move her face away from his chest, he looked at her. Her eyes were red, and her lashes wet with tears. “You think they are still alive?”
“I do,” Mike nodded. “And I know what they want them for, or at least I think I do.”
“Maybe you should enlighten us then, Mike,” June said. She’d stood aside and allowed them both their moment of pain, but her voice told him it was time to get on with the job.
“Lindie, Lucinda, whatever it or she was said that tonight the Minister would come back in human form and that their father would lead them again.” Mike looked at June as he spoke. “Now I’m guessing that they sacrificed those babies to enable the mother to become because she was firstly, a blood relative, and secondly the child offered was pure.”
“A virgin,” June added nodding. “Pureness of the soul is very important in occultism, and you’re right on both counts.”
“So, am I also right in assuming that would work if the one being sacrificed and the one being possessed were brother and sister?”
A look of realisation broke like the dawn of a stormy and cloud-capped day on June’s face. “As long as the sister was a virgin then yes, it would be no different,” she said hurriedly. “But Ellie Harrison is eighteen-years-old, Mike.”
“Ellie was not taken to become,” Mike said, speaking to them both. “She was taken because she is a virgin, it is the only explanation. The one who is going to become is her brother. Tonight they will kill her in a sacrifice and Henry will become Device, only not the ancient Device who died in the fire, Device reborn in the form of a five-year-old. Other kids stayed in this place before the Harrisons, and whilst one of them was killed by its mother after staying here, they were not taken. They have been waiting, waiting for the perfect combination, and Henry and Ellie were, are it." Mike had that feeling, the one he used to get when he was on the force and working a difficult, yet high profile case. One that had the team stumped. That feeling came when you had a breakthrough when the answers to all the questions that had been puzzling you were answered.
“But that doesn’t make sense,” Tara cut in. “That fire was back in two thousand and eight? If they wanted him back why wait for ten years, why not do it right away?”
June smiled at her, "You are thinking three-dimensionally again my dear. Time does not have the same meaning to the dead. The time is immaterial. I believe that Mr. Cr – Mike, has hit the nail on the head as they say."
Mike frowned, looked about the room and said, “What I don’t understand is this. If this building was where all those atrocities took place, if this was their chapel then where is it going to happen?"
June looked at him knowingly as more lightning strobed the de-curtained window behind her. "This building is the heart of this village," she said. "And heart has many chambers."
“I don’t follow you?” Mike said.
“Okay, let me try a different metaphor. When you look at an iceberg what do you see?”
“Why can’t you just tell me?” he asked in frustration.
“Because, Mike you need to figure it out and understand,” she replied. “Now tell me what you see?”
"A fucking iceberg," he said, starting to feel anger at her mystical shit.
“The tip,” Tara said, “You see the tip.”
“Quod superius, sicut inferius,” June said seriously, then translated, “As above, so below.”
Mike looked at the floor as if it would suddenly turn translucent and allow him to see into the bowels of the building. "You think that this is just the tip of the iceberg, that there is a below to this place."
“Mr. Hawke only spoke of this building, this was a chapel, they held certain ceremonies here, and it was also the home of Device. He never got to the point where he learned all of the secrets of Trellen, though. And until now I have never had a desire to find them out. I can feel it, though. The energy coming up through the floor of this place is so strong it's flooding through me like a tuning fork. Why, if we listen I may even hum," she grinned at them, but the grin was a façade that hid her fear. “The term as above so below holds prominence in many religions, it appears in the Lord's prayer in the lines, on Earth as it is in Heaven. It is also important in the occult. In witchcraft, it is denoted by the mirrored tree, adjoined by spiralling roots that symbolise the gateway between the physical world and that of the spirit world. I believe that this building is its own symbol, one above, and one below. Only for this place the below is its own metaphor for the Abyss, and the below is where the worst atrocities will take place, where this village hides its deepest secrets, and that below is where we will have to go to save those kids.”
“There must be another way into The Old Chapel then,” Tara said excitedly. “Which would explain how Henry and Ellie went missing from a locked building, how Scotty vanished and,” Tara pointed her finger toward the covered body of Lindie Parker, blood had started to blossom through the fabric of the curtain, “how queen fucking bitch there got in!”