Buried Fire

by Jonathan Stroud

  The teller paused for breath and the crowd let out a collective sigh of appreciation at this mystery. Joe Vernon pressed his fingertips slowly and deliberately against the metal of the car door.

  "Why didn't you tell me this earlier, Jack?" he said. "This might have a bearing on things."

  "Clean forgot, Joe, what with the fire and all. Only remembered it when Lew said you were looking out for the MacIntyre boys."

  "We're looking out for them all right," said a grim-faced woman. "After what they done."

  Joe Vernon spoke quickly. "There's no proof of anyone doing anything," he said, "and I'll thank you all to remember that. We're following up those who've gone missing."

  "Anyone seen George Cleever this morning?" someone asked.

  "Didn't see him last night either."

  "He passed in his car. I saw him. Took one look and drove."

  There was a growl from the crowd, and a few curses. Sick men had risen from their beds that night and come with brooms and buckets to the fields. Joe Vernon made haste to interrupt.

  "Jack, you said you saw the vicar too. Did you?"

  "I did, and I'd tell you about it, if I could hear myself speak." A sizeable portion of the crowd, comprising many of the older villagers, were whispering loudly and urgently amongst themselves.

  "Please! Mrs Gabriel, please!" Joe raised his voice to a previously unsuspected level. The whispering subsided. "Go on, Jack."

  "It's just this. Stevie MacIntyre set off for Fordrace. No sooner that, than he was back, but this time in the vicar's car, with the vicar at the wheel. He must have met him in the lane. They turned in the Monkey's car park and were away again. Not ordinary goings on – eh, Joe? I had to have another pint."

  The noise of the crowd rose again, discussing the revelation and its implications. "That would have been just before the fight with Geoff Pilate," someone said.

  "Mr Pilate and Mr Cleever always were thick as thieves," said an old lady. "Mr Pilate was always going round to his place, spending half the evening with him."

  "And where are they all?" an old man said. "Cleever, Pilate, those boys, the vicar. All missing, since the fire."

  "It doesn't make any sense," said Joe. "We don't know that there's a connection." But his heart betrayed him. He remembered the fire-lashed earth in the church-yard trench.

  "I'll tell you what the connection is." Mrs Gabriel, shorter than all, spoke at the very centre of the crowd, and the hubbub subsided. "It was the vicar who did it. He raised the cross and broke it. I told him the danger, but he wouldn't listen to me. Since then, what's gone right? The church has been defiled, and worse than that, a piece of the cross stolen: now fire has broken out again, and it won't be the last. The vicar's gone – perhaps dead, and the enemies are moving."

  "Listen to me." Joe Vernon spoke, and everyone turned back to look at him. "We must remember that there is no proof that any of these things link up. It was a terrible night, but there is no proof that the fire was started deliberately. We have no proof at all. Remember that." He paused. The crowd waited.

  "But I've just been up at the cottage. And there has been a fire there too, inside the house. That is itself a serious matter. Even on its own. So I want to speak to any of them – the MacIntyres, Mr Cleever, Mr Pilate. Urgently. And I want you to be patient while I try and find them."

  He broke off, sensing a shift in the crowd's mood which he didn't understand. The whispering had started again.

  "The fire is coming again," said one old man quietly.

  "Above the crag," said another.

  "And the seal is gone," said Mrs Gabriel.

  Joe Vernon felt his command of the situation, if it had ever existed, had ebbed away entirely. Yet with his sense of powerlessness came a growing feeling of the need for action. He longed to give himself up to the mercy of events, to the momentum which was stirring in the crowd before him. He made one last plea for order.

  "I shall first go in search of Mr Cleever," he said, "and see what light can be thrown on this."

  "We shall all go!" cried an angry voice, and the crowd murmured in agreement.

  "He'll explain himself to us," said another. It was the younger, and hotter-blooded voices that cried out agreement: the elder members of the crowd hung back, doubt and fear in their eyes.

  "Find Pilate too, the swindling bastard," said someone at the back.

  "He's shut up shop this morning," said someone else.

  "Well, we'll knock on his door, then. He'll be happy to exchange a quiet word."

  The crowd began to surge forward. Joe Vernon hesitated, then reached through the car window to take his helmet off the back seat. "All right then," he said. "Follow me, with the best of order, please."

  Even so, he had to jog to keep ahead of the pressing throng. The younger villagers came first, then the elders at the back, shaking their heads, but seemingly unable to break away from the edges of the group. They crossed the green towards Mr Cleever's house. In his garden, one or two of the younger men seized bamboo canes from the flower beds and held them loosely by their sides as they crowded round the porch. Joe Vernon rang the bell. A long silence flooded out over the quiet group. Joe rang again. Then the muttering of the crowd began to grow, swelling louder and deeper, until with a burst of rage, the first blow fell on the thick oak door.

  40

  On the steep summer-hard dirt of the winding track, studded with rocks and little gullies which caught the foot and twisted it, Mr Hardraker's chariot was a heavy burden. Its bearers had been changed several times: only two among the company had not borne it at least twice, one whose arm was broken, and the other whose hands were tied. At the halfway point, where the path turned sharply at the head of a precipitous gully, Mr Pilate and Mr Cleever were bearing the weight. They struggled on, heads resolutely downward, mouths agape, studying the remorseless movement of their boots upon the dust. Alongside them the others toiled, arms hanging wearily, brows drenched. Only Vanessa Sawcroft, whose injury had spared her a turn at the pole, had energy to spare, and she used this to keep a firm eye on the prisoner.

  Sarah now walked behind the chair. At first leading, she had begun to outstrip the rest when the incline became severe, and had been ordered to follow directly behind the chariot among the others. Her face was impassive, but her mind was racing; she took in the details of everything around her.

  After her night at the Hardraker farmhouse, and Michael's appearance and rejection of her, Sarah had passed beyond despair into a kind of desperate calmness. The nightmare that surrounded her was so grotesque that her commonsense had rebelled against it. She refused to be overwhelmed.

  Just ahead of her, Michael was walking. He was not as weary as the others – his head did not hang so heavily – but he seemed nervy and agitated. Twice, when the chariot had stopped for a change of hands, Sarah had seen him start, and stepping to the edge of the path overlooking the gully, gaze long and hard into the haze of the distance. If he had seen anything down there, he gave no sign. For the rest of the climb, he watched his companions unceasingly, his eyes darting from one to another. But he would not look at Sarah; once only he caught her eye, and then he flushed and turned away.

  He seemed older than she had ever seen him, older in the way he gazed at others, and there were lines on his face where there had been none before. Yet at the same time, in occasional movements or expressions, he was the same younger brother that he had always been.

  Ahead of her, the hood of an orange anorak hung over the side of the chair, bouncing with a horrid heaviness. There was no sign at all that the body was alive, but Sarah had not forgotten her first meeting with Mr Hardraker.

  The purpose to it: that was what obsessed her. They had been climbing all afternoon with slow and single-minded determination. Why should they do this – scaling the Wirrim, taking such trouble to bring the catatonic old man? There was no conceivable reason. And yet . . .

  Sarah squinted against the glare of the sun up across the dark cleft of t
he gully to High Raise, the brow of which was pimpled with cairns and barrows. Then suddenly she thought back to 'The Book of the Worm,' the picture on the farmhouse wall, and the carvings on the cross, and deep down she knew what they believed.

  And she was being taken with them.

  With a sudden clarity, she saw again in her mind's eye the creature on the cross, with all its loops and coils and teeth and claws.

  And a cold weight settled in her stomach as she guessed why she was there.

  41

  Tom and Stephen made their way along the course of the hill-stream, hopping from stone to stone, clambering across the tumbled boulders which were embedded in the long grass of the bank. Never, along all the meandering course of the stream, no matter how rocky the ground, did they stray further than three or four paces from the water's edge. Stephen led the way, Tom following, adjusting his balance to accommodate the spear which he carried in his right hand.

  The sunlight of the afternoon no longer penetrated to the depths of the gully, and the steep walls of the Wirrim above were suffused with brown and blue. Somewhere high above, where the light still turned the grass golden and the air was hazy and indistinct, the footpath from Fordrace ran west to High Raise. Tom and Stephen shadowed its route, in the coolness of the gully, moving as swiftly as they were able, pausing here and there to check the skyline.

  Once only Stephen had halted.

  "There."

  Up on the right, away ahead of them, where the incline was less steep than average, they saw a movement – a series of movements – near the hill brow. Tom caught a flash of colour, a glimpse of a little line of stick people moving slowly in single file before they disappeared around some turn in the path.

  "It's them, all right," said Stephen.

  "Did you see—?"

  "I didn't see anyone. Clearly, I mean. But they're there. I felt them."

  Stephen did not say what he had felt. Even as he had sensed his brother, he had felt a response, quick and precise, which had surveyed him in his turn and then drawn back.

  'He knows,' he thought. 'I shouldn't be coming. But there isn't anything else I can do.'

  Ahead of them, the slope of the stream quickly steepened, forcing itself down between great slabs of rock which had fallen from the crags above. The temperature of the valley was cold now, the air around the cascading stream especially so. They stopped beside a vast rectangular boulder, half covered in damp moss, and considered the position.

  "We've got two choices," said Stephen, who had explored this way on several occasions in the past. "One is, we head to the left of the stream, which leads up into the crag – that takes us as straight for the Pit as makes no odds and we'll come out a hundred yards or so from its lip. The other is," he paused, and shielded his eyes against the spear-blue light above the hilltop, "to head right. The way up is easier, and we'll hit the path soon enough, but then we'll have to follow it along the level towards the Pit, and we'll be on the skyline."

  Tom grunted, scanning the austere face of the crag. It was deeply incised with great cracks and weathered screes. "How easy is it to climb the crag?"

  "Difficult, not impossible. We were always warned it was too dangerous. One time Michael and I gave it a go, but we only got halfway, to where that scree starts, and we gave up. It was getting dark."

  Tom made a face. "It gets us close to the Pit."

  "Without being seen. I'd say we should do it."

  "Then let's not waste time."

  They crossed the stream. On a whim, Tom trailed the black, misshapen tip of his spear in the churning water. As they began to negotiate the tumble of stones at the foot of the crag, he looked back down the gully. Light was already draining out of it, while above them, sharp and pale, the sky showed eggshell blue. Traces of water glinted on the spear.

  42

  No trace had been found of any of the missing. Mr Cleever's door hung open, the window beside it smashed. Across the green, the entrance to the grocer's shop was gaping, villagers congregating on the pavement outside. Two car-loads of tourists, approaching from the direction of the A-road, slowed at the sight of the milling throng, took in the broken glass, the angry faces, and drove off fast. Joe Vernon emerged from Mr Cleever's hallway, blinking in the sunlight. He walked out onto the grass, to be surrounded by the excited crowd, anxious for a new clue before their collective daring drained.

  Mrs Gabriel, who had refused to enter either building, had been speaking with Lew Potter, who had not. She turned to Joe.

  "Mr Vernon. Lewis has reported what he has seen inside Mr Cleever's house. Images and engravings of evil things."

  "Hardly that, Mrs Gabriel—" Joe's voice trailed off. He had been brought up at Fordrace, and even for him, aspects of the ancient sites of the Wirrim carried uneasy connotations.

  "There is no doubt about it," she said, and Joe realised that the group was giving all its attention to her. "His obsession with dark things is all too clear."

  "But he's not to be found," said Joe. "They've gone, and we don't know where."

  "I think I do," said a tall gaunt woman, Mrs Plover from the Post Office. "Mr Cleever collects parcels sometimes, and letters, addressed to Mr Hardraker. Since the old man died, Mr Cleever has been his executor: he collects the post which builds up once in a while, signs for them, and takes them off. He still spends time up at the farm, he told me; he's going to put it on the market when the prices are more beneficial."

  The crowd gave a mutter, whether of gratitude, eagerness or uncertainty, Joe Vernon could not tell.

  "Well then!" One of the young men flourished his stick in the air. "To the Hardraker farm it is. We'll take our cars and see who we can root out. Come on!"

  The crowd split into several knots, running towards their vehicles. Joe Vernon and Mrs Gabriel were left on the Green, Joe rubbing his wrist in indecision, Mrs Gabriel standing silent, brows furrowed, as if trying to remember something she had long forgotten.

  "We seem to be the only ones who haven't got a lift," he said at last. "Would you care for a ride in a police car, Mrs Gabriel?"

  43

  The band of stone is broken.

  (Time suggests itself once more. The pin-prick flares to an acorn's size, to that of a large pebble. At the centre is a white heat. It glows in response to the movement it senses, away and above, but growing closer. And to an intent which it recognises as its own.

  The earth has grown deep now, compacted through millennia, yet the flame, though weak, remembers.) Men dying but among them a white arm raised, unburning, though the sky itself was scorched and a force closed in, squeezing the scales till they burst and buckled with the pain of it. Men died but among them, one man laughed as the earth rose, shutting out the light and the circle of stone lay like a dead weight all around. (So the worm reminds itself of the age with which it has been forgotten. Time impinges on its brain. Impatience flares. In the fiery heart of the blackness, it feeds quickly on its rage, and the heat grows stronger.)

  44

  The way up the crag was easy enough at first; an old scree, turfed over, which rose by gradually steepening increments, until it met the true rock face almost halfway to the top of the bluff. Thereafter, a series of irregular cracks and chimneys in the stone allowed Tom and Stephen to continue the climb, but the going was slow and difficult, particularly for Tom, who was carrying the spear.

  Stephen was thankful for one thing. The crag bulged to their right, cutting off all view of the top of the gully, where the true path ran. The vulnerability he had felt earlier faded, and he was able to concentrate on the practicalities of the climb.

  After half an hour, he passed the point where he and Michael had given up their ascent. The going was tougher here, but by no means impossible, although the rock was brittle and occasionally treacherous. Once or twice, he took the spear from Tom to enable him to negotiate a tricky stretch. Each time, he felt the reluctance of Tom to part with it, and noticed how swiftly he took it back when the difficulty was
over.

  It's becoming part of him, he thought, and for a moment tried to recapture the picture of Sarah's Tom that he had known – was it two or three days ago? But that image seemed frail; it faded almost as he thought of it, to be replaced with the harder, more determined man scrabbling against the rock six foot below him. Sarah won't recognise you now, boyo, Stephen thought, and addressed himself to the next stretch.

  A little way ahead, the rocks became slippery with water, which dribbled from a narrow fissure in the cliff. After warning Tom to take care, Stephen negotiated the wet stone until he was level with the opening. A sudden cry made Tom lift his head and squint upwards.

  "What is it? What's happened."

  "The water. Get yourself up here, Tom. Quick. And I can smell it as well."

  Tom drew himself up. "What is it? Good Lord, that's sulphur."

  "Yes, and feel the water."

  "Warm!"

  "Put your hand against the rock of the opening. Just inside the hole. Feel it?"

  "Yes – the rock's warm."

  "And this is right against the open air. There's something very hot in there."

  They looked at each other for a moment. Tom said, "How much further to the top, do you think?"

  "Not too far. You can see we're higher than much of the spur. The Pit can't be too much beyond that break in the rocks, though it's difficult to judge."

  "When we get there—"

  "We'll lie low and wait for our moment. There's no point in planning it. We don't know what—Christ!"

  A short scream of despair sounded above them against the sky, then floated down the gully, echoing off the rocks on either side.