by Stephen Laws
And then, the wind was gone, sucked away and vanishing into the night through the ragged gap of the window frame. Pages from torn books fluttered through the door and whispered into the church. Mark felt Father Daniels go limp as he slumped backwards into a faint.
Raging and tearing, that which had been fed so well by its Catalysts in their remote seclusion, fled shrieking maleficently in dissipation down dark corridors of night. For a brief instant, it had known a freedom from the lines that it had never experienced before. In secrecy it had lived and fed. Growing stronger upon the Chosen Food which had never dreamt of its existence. Until now. Two Who Should be Tasted had gone to the holy man with the intention of moving against it. With the pulse of food strong within it, drunk on the glut of power which had freed it to act, Azimuth had moved against them. Unwisely, it now knew. It had not been strong enough to taste them. But the Time of Arrival was imminent. Even now, the Catalysts were returning from their place of communion, summoned to join it on the lines where their final purpose would be enacted and it would be free forever. Two men and one priest. What could they do to resist? The Tasting would be good. And the one called Mark Davies – He Who had Thrice Denied – would be tasted and savoured for all eternity.
Soon . . . Soon . . .
‘What was it?’ asked Father Daniels at last. His voice sounded stretched thin; wavering and lost in the echoing, empty church. He sat in the back pew where Chadderton had propped him, his robe disarrayed, thin white hair dishevelled and straggling forwards over his forehead.
‘I . . . we . . . think it’s some kind of demon,’ said Mark quietly. ‘Something called Azimuth. Does that name mean anything, Father? Does it have any religious significance?’
‘I don’t know . . .’ said the priest as if he could never know anything again. He was looking down into his lap, knotting his fingers in the same cat’s cradle. He gave vent to something between a sigh and a sob. Mark turned back to where Chadderton stood framed in the vestry doorway. He was looking back into the vestry, reluctant to pass through, as if something was hiding amid the shattered ruins of furniture and torn paper. Leaning heavily on his walking stick, Mark limped over to him.
‘It’s all right, now,’ he said. ‘It’s gone.’
Chadderton looked at him anxiously, as if seeking confirmation that his words were true. Then he stepped into the vestry, shoes crunching on broken wood and glass.
‘It’s getting stronger, isn’t it?’ he said.
‘Yes,’ said Mark. ‘In a very short time, there’ll be no stopping it.’
‘Where has it gone?’
‘Back to the lines. Back to feed. I don’t think it was strong enough to take us of its own accord yet.’
A light footstep sounded behind them. And in that instant, both men had a vision of something from Hell circling around behind them, trapping them in the close confines of the ruined vestry. They whirled round in alarm, Mark almost losing his balance and tumbling to the floor. Chadderton grabbed his elbow and steadied him as they saw Father Daniels leaning against the door frame, sucking in deep lungfuls of air.
Chadderton moved forward to meet him, but the priest held up a hand to restrain him.
‘I’m all right, thank you. I just needed time.’
Mark tried to shrug off a feeling that time had stood still, that the three of them were frozen in some kind of still-life portrait: Chadderton standing hunched, hands clenched; the priest sagging in the door frame; Mark leaning on his walking stick.
‘You said it was a demon,’ said Father Daniels.
‘Azimuth,’ repeated Mark. ‘It knew we were coming here to try and enlist your help. It knew and it tried to stop us.’
‘I felt . . .’ The priest struggled to find a word to describe it, clasping his arms around his body as if he had been frozen inside. ‘. . . something. It was evil. And so . . . powerful.’
‘Next time it comes, it’ll kill us,’ said Mark quietly.
‘But it’s not as clever as it thinks it is,’ said Chadderton. ‘If it hadn’t come here, hadn’t tried to stop us, we could have spent hours trying to convince Father Daniels that it really does exist. After all, like you said, all it needs is time. Days. After we’d failed to convince you, Father, you could have dismissed us as a couple of raving lunatics. And that would have been that. But by showing its hand, it’s done our work for us.’
‘How can I help you?’ asked Father Daniels. To Mark, it seemed that the priest was somehow distanced from them by his experience. There was a faraway look in his eyes that reminded him of the look in the eyes of his own wife and daughter when he left them in the hospital. When Mark spoke again, his voice was slow, measured and deliberate so that the priest could understand and digest everything he was saying.
‘We have to perform an exorcism, Father. We have to exorcise one of the trains on the King’s Cross railway line. It doesn’t matter which train – any one will do, so long as it’s moving. And it doesn’t matter which carriage. Azimuth exists on the King’s Cross line itself, feeding on and corrupting its passengers. An exorcism of the line is the only thing that can stop it before it grows strong enough to free itself.’
Father Daniels looked blankly at Mark for a long time, uncomprehending. After a while, Mark wondered whether he had heard anything he had said.
‘Trains?’ he said at last, ‘I’m afraid I don’t . . . trains?’
Chadderton rushed to the priest’s side as he convulsed, bent double in the doorway, retching onto the littered floor as the delayed reaction of shock set in. Chadderton helped him across the vestry as Mark pulled a splintered chair upright between them and helped him into it.
‘Why did . . . why did you come to my church? Why St Christopher’s?’
‘He’s the patron saint of travellers,’ said Mark quietly.
‘Oh, no. No . . .’ Father Daniels seemed to reply too eagerly. ‘Not any more. He is no longer officially a saint, I’m afraid. There’s no longer a feast day or a place in the Eucharistical calendar, do you see? This church has only retained its name because . . .’
‘Father!’ said Mark sharply. ‘It doesn’t matter. Any church would do, so long as it’s a Christian church.’
‘I’m sorry . . . I feel so . . . so terrible.’ The priest wiped a trembling hand across his mouth. ‘What was it?’ His eyes had suddenly lost their blank sheen as the horror of what had happened came fully home to him. Mark could see a familiar terror lurking there behind his eyes. ‘What in God’s name was it?’ He was gripping both their arms now, his eyes seeking some rational explanation.
‘It can make you see things that aren’t there, Father,’ said Mark. ‘The things you fear the most. By creating fear, it’s creating food for itself. This . . . thing, called Azimuth, feeds on fear.’
‘It can get into your mind,’ continued Chadderton. ‘It’s happened to both of us. When it attacked us here, it tried to make me see again, but I resisted it. If we’d stayed in this vestry I wouldn’t have been able to keep it out much longer. What about you, Davies? Did you see anything?’
‘It’s tried to take me three times and failed, as I told you. Somehow, for reasons I don’t yet understand, I seem to have become immune. It couldn’t get into my mind. But as I said, it’s getting stronger. When it’s free, no one will be able to resist it – not even me. Father . . . did it make you see anything? Because if it did, you must understand that what you saw wasn’t real. Only an illusion.’
The priest continued to stare at them, clinging to them all the tighter.
‘Did you, Father? Did you?’
Father Daniels screwed his eyes shut and strengthened his grip so that Mark could feel his flesh pinching. ‘I saw . . . nothing . . . Nothing!’ But to Mark, it sounded as if the priest was trying to deny something that he had seen.
‘I want you to listen to everything we have to say,’ said Chadderton.
‘Davies will begin and I’ll fill in the story where appropriate.’
The priest was nodding his head vigorously, breathing deeply as Mark began: ‘It started for me fourteen months ago, with the accident . . .’
Chadderton saw the terror lurking behind the priest’s eyes, just as Mark had done, and he understood how Father Daniels felt. He remembered how calm and composed the priest had been when they had first spoken to him in the church. It seemed that a different man was sitting in front of them now and Chadderton supposed that he himself had also changed in a radical way in the space of a single day. Reality and nightmare had hung in the balance and Chadderton had forced the scales down; had forced himself to accept the existence of something that defied sanity. Only by accepting the nightmare could he fight it. A hatred of this thing . . . this Azimuth . . . was building inside him. It was a pure hatred, somehow.
He watched the priest as Davies continued with his story and saw the mark of fear etched on his face. To Chadderton, it seemed that the priest had seen the very devil himself.
Twenty-one
The windshield wipers swept hissing zig-zag swathes of rain from Philip’s vision as the car sped down the highway en route to Newcastle. Behind them lay a deserted holiday cottage which had been booked for two solid weeks of seclusion. The scenes of horror in three of the cottage’s rooms would remain undiscovered for the duration of their holiday period. And by the time they were discovered – it wouldn’t matter. Because by that time, the Arrival would have been completed. And nothing mattered after that.
The Tasting had been good and they knew that it had pleased their Master. His anger had been placated after the little girl had prevented the Tasting of Three. But now, One Who had Thrice Denied had sensed their presence and had laid plans to move against them. The Master had told them this during their commune and they had sensed by His terrifying anger that He had been unsuccessful in taking the Two again. But none of this really mattered. They knew what was planned against them. And the Catalysts knew what they had to do. Three faces bearing three spectral smiles nodded in unison.
And the car sped on towards Newcastle.
Father Daniels’ hand was trembling as he replaced the telephone receiver. He rose creakily from the telephone seat in the hallway and moved into the vicarage’s lounge. His wife was at a bridge party with friends that evening and was not due back for a couple of hours. He was glad that she was not there to see him now. It had been two days since the incident at the church and he knew Sheila had sensed that something was very wrong. His story that vandals had wrecked the church vestry had sounded pathetically weak. She had tried to get him to explain, but he had brushed aside her enquiries with an uncharacteristic brusqueness which had betrayed his inner turmoil.
His hands were still trembling as he opened the drinks cabinet and unstoppered a crystal decanter. It was only sherry for visitors; that was all they ever kept in the house. But for the first time, Father Daniels wished that they had something stronger as he poured out a drink, liquid splashing over the rim of the glass and onto the silver tray. He had seen. Oh, God in heaven, he had seen . . .
The Bishop had given approval for the exorcism after two days of deliberation. He had spoken to all three of them, and Father Daniels had hoped beyond hope that he would decide against it. It was too insane to contemplate. Even if he agreed to a secret exorcism, then surely there were priests better qualified than himself to carry out such things. Surely the Bishop could not take the view that, because he had experienced this thing himself, then he should be the one to see it through? But the decision had been made. And he had to obey.
Father Daniels was a man with a social conscience who prided himself on his modern outlook. He recognised the real evils in the world: murder, famine, hatred and greed. By comparison, the evil which he encountered in his own quiet parish was slight indeed. The sins he absolved in confession were usually deeds or thoughts which, whilst requiring God’s forgiveness, were perhaps not major matters in the overall pattern of life; arising more often than not from social pressures such as unemployment, divorce or . . . many others.
As a child, the belief in a mediaeval, mythical Hell had been imposed upon him in all its terror. The demonic, hideous terrors depicted in Gustave Doré’s paintings were to him a real depiction of what awaited the unrepentant sinner. The depiction of the Devil as a horned, leering monstrosity with forked tail and pitchfork had struck fear and horror into his soul and had been the subject of many a childhood nightmare. One such painting had disturbed him particularly and, even now, when as an adult and a priest he had resolved such childhood terrors by an understanding of the symbolism which Hell clearly represented, the face in the painting would suddenly surface during his sleeping hours. Real evil was perpetrated by man upon man. No one believed in the reality of a Hell any more. It was symbolic.
Father Daniels gulped another mouthful of sherry at the memory of what he had seen standing in the doorway of the vestry. He sat down heavily, reaching for the decanter again, realising that the entire foundation of his priesthood had been upturned. The glass stopper rattled to the floor from his nerveless fingers.
The one, great, unreasoning fear of his life had been realised. The child had known more than the man.
There was a Hell.
Faced with a real Evil for the first time in his life, Father Daniels felt fear as he had never known it before. How could he possibly vanquish what he had seen? He drank again.
‘Why you, Mark? Can’t you see that you’ve suffered enough? We all have. What possible good will it do if you go with them?’
‘I’ve got to go. I’m the only one who knows what it really is; how it thinks. They need me.’
‘We need you.’
‘Joanne, if it isn’t stopped, God knows what will happen to us – or what will happen to every living creature on this planet. Don’t you understand? Once it’s free, really free of the lines, there’ll be no way in the world that anything will stop it. It could mean . . . the end of everything. You felt it yourself – you could see what it’s capable of. I’m the only one who knows Azimuth.’
‘But it knows you too, Mark. It tried to stop you. And if it’s getting stronger all the time as you say, then what’s going to happen next time?’
‘It’s a risk we have to take. The only alternative I have is to stay here and wait for the world to end.’
‘Why you, Mark? Why you?’
‘I don’t know, Jo. I really don’t know. But I have to go.’
‘If you go, I know that you’ll never . . .’
‘Of course I’ll come back. But if I don’t go with them, they’ll be walking into its . . . its lair . . . completely blind.’
‘Chadderton knows all about it!’
‘Yes, he knows. But he can’t sense what its motives are. I can.’
‘What shall we do if we lose you?’
‘You’re not going to lose me. If anyone’s able to cope with Azimuth, I am. It’s taken part of our lives, Jo. And I’m probably the only person in the world capable of dealing with it. Apart from Father Daniels . . . and I’m sure that even he doesn’t realise yet what he’s up against. Azimuth can’t control me any more. It’s had its chance and failed.’
‘For God’s sake, be careful.’
‘For your sake, I will.’
‘Come back to us, Mark. I lost you once before and I couldn’t stand it. Don’t be lost again.’
‘I love you, Joanne.’
Part Three: The Ghost Train
One
It was three o’clock by the time they arrived at the station, purposely avoiding the rush hour.
As they walked through the main entrance, a luggage trolley rattled and clattered past, sending loud, crashing echoes bouncing among the criss-cross girders overhead. Mark could feel fear in his guts as he surveyed the obsessively familiar sights of t
he newsagent’s shop, the benches, the overhead clock, the fluttering pigeons, the cafe, the endless stream of people moving quickly on unknown business. But it was a different kind of fear from the terror he had experienced before. This time he knew that his fear was not feeding some hideous parasite hiding in his mind.
As they moved towards the ticket line, he found himself examining the people walking past, both passengers and railway employees. Could Azimuth be hiding in their minds? Did that porter bustling past have a small, hidden part of the Thing in his mind, eating away at his brain? Was that young man carrying suitcases to the barrier totally possessed by Azimuth?
‘Are you thinking what I’m thinking?’ asked Chadderton.
Mark nodded. ‘I’m wondering where Azimuth’s three special people are.’
‘Any more of those “feelings”?’
‘Nothing yet. But it’s here. And I know it’s waiting.’
‘Keep your eyes open. If they’re around here, they’re almost certainly watching out for us. And if they know what we’re up to they may try to stop us boarding the train.’
Father Daniels was now at the head of the line. He placed his large, battered briefcase on the ground, something clinking inside. He leaned forward almost confidentially to talk to the ticket clerk and, for some reason that Mark could not explain, he suddenly felt very, very sad for the priest. Father Daniels’ words were whispered, so that Mark could not overhear, but the clerk’s puzzled reaction was plain enough.
‘An entire first-class compartment booked yesterday? I don’t think that’s right. You have to book well in advance to secure something like that . . .’