‘And what is it he wanted, my dear?’
‘Why, them! Not me…’ Willimina deflated, and slumped back on the chair.
Mrs Ashby got up, and fled the room.
‘Let’s all close our eyes again,’ Miss Collins indicated. Everyone did as they were told, and they continued holding each other’s hands as she started reciting her words again.
‘Sun. Moon. Light. Darkness. Male. Female. Line. Circle. Clarity. Shadow. Sound. Silence.’
It happened then. Something happened to Helena. Images appeared inside her mind. How was that possible? And then she saw it: the ruined Tudor manor, and Samuel Moncrieff, wandering around it as if he was lost, considering the walls, caressing the fallen stones, in a daze, looking intently into the rotten fungus-clad walls. She saw the old beggar woman, and she could imagine her lying in the foetal position. And then she metamorphosed into a little girl, sleeping in the same way. She saw a man walking towards her, extending his hand. A man who looked like a beast, with a long mat of grey hair and a strange-looking overcoat, big and tall and otherworldly. And Helena saw, sensed, that she had been waiting for him, for a long time. And in her mind’s eye, the man looked like the two-faced creature with pointy teeth that she had encountered in London, in London of all places, at the estuary.
AUTOMATIC WRITING DEMONSTRATION
NORFOLK, MARCH 1901
MEDIUM: WILLIMINA LAWRENCE
Brief initial statement: Session performed under the presence of impartial witnesses. Miss Lawrence claims that the spirit is called, or calls himself, Old John. She also claims he is now her new spirit guide.
* * *
I decided to wait for the young lady in my favourite spot. I hoped that she was not going to ask about that ugly affair back in the big house. I hadn’t seen Lady Matthews for some time, but I still respected her. She wasn’t like the other lords and ladies who owned the land up and down the county. She had always let me feed my family, on account of how poor she had been when young, and the times when I had come to her and her mother with some game. They never had anything to give me in return. But one day Lady Matthews—or Rosie as she was back then—gave me a fairy stone with a hole in it, and told me that it would keep the devil away. It was shiny and green.
Back in those days, people said that Rosie’s mother was a witch. People can be so cruel. They were used to the harshness of life, to be fair. People now are so detached from nature; they do not know where the meat that they eat comes from, for it is prepared for them in abattoirs and slaughterhouses. But they knew it back then, knew how to kill it and prepare it and gut it and bleed it. And I always thought that was something to be proud of.
It wasn’t an easy life being a poacher. You need to be a good shot, and move silently, and see game from far away, while hidden among the reeds. And be willing to spend hours waiting in the frozen night, in the whirling snow, mellow with rum. And still not fail when the game approaches you.
Lately, I had been thinking about those days very often, my parents making the effort to send me to school to learn reading and arithmetic, to honour and obey the Queen; the children of the two villages under the same roof, the deadly rivalries, the lasting friendships. My parents had done well for me, for other children were sent to work at such young age! That little one, no more than six or seven, sent to keep the birds away from the stacks of corn. It was such a cold winter, deadly, and they found him nearly perished one day, dead of the cold. He was brought round eventually, and lived to a ripe old age.
For we endured the cold and the hardships—but at least there were no demons who took us.
Life in those days was simpler: the feasts when the last of the fields was cut and got up, and the Lord of the Harvest took his fork with the sheaf of wheat up to the Master’s house. The lonely nights in foggy weather, the boiled oats on cold December nights to lure the partridges into the sack, the eternal game of hide-and-seek with the keepers.
I think I saw it first on one of these nights, one of those when the fog is so dense that you may pass next to somebody, and not know until they have left you behind. An out-of-shape double of himself, that’s what it looked like to me. Made of wood, or of clay. Unliving. I was a poacher at the height of my powers, and feared nothing. That night I was after a couple of youngsters who had stolen a gun, for I wanted to scare them, to make them think twice about doing things like that, the two silly boys who had stolen a gun and were poaching with it. They would be dead by the next morning, although I didn’t know it yet. I was hidden in some holly bushes near a road I suspected they might come by. But I never saw them: it was the devil who came instead, and found me there. It would also be the devil who got to the youngsters before I could scare them back home, poor lads.
I had always known why he let me go that night: the devil was looking for someone else.
But I knew also that one day he would come back for me, for the devil doesn’t like being observed, and even less being recognised. And I recognised him, beyond a doubt. It could be nobody else. Who else could that be, a terror with your own face? For I understood then that everyone would see the devil with his or her face, to be ashamed of their own sins.
The creature was bigger and taller than any man ought to be, with broad Viking shoulders and an overcoat made up of vermin and shadows that moved of its own accord. The devil seemed to be carrying a green light around with him, so dense it left behind a trace of a sticky white substance. I remembered then about the fairy stone, which hung around my neck, and I held it as if it were a golden cross. And the devil looked at me, and in that look it told me all that I needed to know.
Not now, John. But one day.
Then came the dreams, in which sometimes I was the devil himself, and sometimes I was his victim. But always, always, it ended with those empty black eyes looking into my skull and putting there the words.
Not now, John.
I hadn’t dreamt for years, hadn’t thought for years of it, of that night. For the dreams had gone at last, or I would have ended my days in Fulbourn.
I hid myself under the tree, and I woke up, for I had dozed sitting there, waiting for the young lady that was to come. And I had dreamed again. And the devil had said: Now, John. Twenty years later.
I wasn’t surprised to see the shadow advancing towards the tree, and gaining consistency as it came nearer. And I wasn’t surprised when the world around the devil changed light, and a white sticky substance seemed to impregnate the air around me, bringing rot and decay and death along with it.
Then I looked for the fairy stone, and did not find it, for I had passed it on, long ago, to my own daughter. So I whispered a prayer instead. But I knew somehow that it would not help.
I wasn’t surprised at all when the devil opened his mouth and showed me hell inside. And when he beckoned me in.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
‘And now, for the jewel in the crown,’ continued the guide, ‘neither a gadget nor a contraption, but something infinitely more fascinating, ladies and gentlemen: a creature that possessed a life that we can’t even imagine, in our era void of magic.’
‘Hear, hear!’ someone shouted with passion.
Helena had bought a ticket for a tour of The True Dawn’s headquarters, hoping to gain some insight, but now she was regretting the idea. The shaman had been preserved in a meditative fashion, sitting with his legs crossed over each other, his palms open and delicately placed on his knees. He was wearing what the guide identified as ‘magical robes’, with a curious hat, and had a dried snake wrapped around his legs. And open, infinite beady eyes.
Helena needed a second to digest it: she was looking at the desiccated body of a human being. A wave of profound disgust ran through her. This atrocity brought to mind other atrocities, and she found herself panting heavily, and had to make a huge effort not to vomit then and there, not to shout at everyone present what the hell was wrong with them.
‘This shaman,’ resounded the guide’s voice, ‘served on a scientific e
xpedition to the Chita region, in Siberia. After his death, his body was perfectly preserved due to the low temperatures. He was brought back like this, and it is now one of Count Bévcar’s dearest possessions.’
‘Marvellous!’
‘How horrid!’ someone thankfully said.
‘Is it true he cures wasting diseases?’ someone wanted to know.
‘Can you all see that he is wearing a necklace of teeth? They are bear teeth. It means that he had the power to transform himself into a bear.’ Everyone wanted to say something at the same time, and Helena sensed that the hubbub was gaining consistency on the indignant side. She felt relieved to see that she wasn’t the only one horrified by the dismal ‘object’; for that was what they had made of this human being.
* * *
The drunken man in the estuary guarding the kidnapped boy had been one of Bévcar’s acolytes—the visit to The True Dawn’s headquarters had been illuminating after all. But other matters were pressing. A baby farm had been dismantled. The case had started, as most cases do, with a seemingly unrelated affair, which had quickly and horridly evolved into something other, something malign. A woman checking into a hotel with a small child, leaving him sleeping, and going out to do some errands. She got lost, of course, in the chaos of the streets, and did not remember the name of the hotel, nor the street where it was located. It seemed to have simply vanished, disappeared. Helena could not take the credit for solving it, for there had been many agents involved, but she now needed to finish the necessary paperwork, to write her report for Scotland Yard compiling the final data. In short, dealing with the low-level administrative duties that would mean she would be compensated. Solving a case was a matter of placing pieces together, and this was also part of the puzzle.
There had been moments recently in which even her rational mind had reacted against the things that were happening in the capital. She had found herself assessing the known city like a huge, unexpected beast, moving around it unsure of how to interpret its signs. For the first time since she had established herself here, Helena thought that she saw it for what it was, a horrid labyrinth, and for once she did not enjoy the challenge; she was not in the mood to solve it. She feared she was starting to lose touch with what was real. Measurable data, facts, things that she could understand. Not strange visions in the middle of séances; not creatures who changed, twisting from a monstrous beggar to a gentleman with a cane.
Everywhere she went, she felt out of place, an oddity for her usual self. It was an unexpected feeling, deeply unwelcome. She sensed that her usual confidence, her determination to get things done, her resourcefulness, were all slowly receding. If she didn’t get a grasp on things, she feared she might lose herself. And if something frightened her it was that: she had worked long and hard to attain a freedom she had only dreamed of when growing up with her grandfather, a freedom that was precious to her. She had always prided herself on her rationality, but her thoughts, the new ideas that her mind was rehearsing, were not rational. Her case notes, she observed, weren’t rational either. They talked of shape-changing men, and young people either lost or catatonic. Or of children ‘used’ as vessels for older people, in some strange rituals. She had purchased Bévcar’s book, but reading it had not helped. It was gibberish.
She had to admit it to herself: the unusual occurrences she was encountering, roughly since the Queen’s passing, were dangerously close to tainting her capacity for rational thought. Still, she had accepted a huge challenge: solving a twenty-year-old riddle, the three vanishings. So she had to pull herself together, somehow. She was very angry with herself, and shocked at her anger.
A knock at the door.
‘Miss?’ Her maid was carrying a letter.
‘Thank you.’ Helena opened it.
Information pertaining to the last known movements and current whereabouts of a Samuel Moncrieff, Esquire:
Mr Moncrieff abandoned the house of his godfather, Mr Charles Bale, seventeen days ago, reason unknown. He was accompanied by his college friend, Mr James Woodhouse. They took a train to Edinburgh, travelling first class. There was some occurrence during the journey: he was expelled from a women-only carriage, where it seems he had taken refuge, or was hiding from someone. He used one of the refreshment stops of said vehicle to remain behind in some middle station, and later climbed on another train, this time due for York. Mr Moncrieff didn’t stop in the city, but, almost at once after setting foot off the train, he moved on to the village of Grewelthorpe. Stayed a couple of days, after which he reappeared in York. His trace was lost for up to a week. Next seen last Saturday, boxing for money in one of Manchester’s illegal rings. He badly beat a man and bolted town. His opponent will recover. Left the city on a third-class carriage bound for London. Please follow key PSALM 137.
The canal and tinker network had outdone themselves. The fee would have to be equally handsome. Before setting off back to Norfolk, she penned a note to her solicitors with the required instructions.
* * *
The next day Helena reached the abbey shortly after lunch was finished, and was shown into the spacious and impressively stocked library, where Mrs Ashby was taking coffee. Lady Matthews was nowhere to be seen.
Lady Matthews lived in the abbey with only her friend Mrs Ashby for company. Mrs Ashby had come to Great Britain as a rich American heiress thirty years previously, but had never got used to her late husband’s northern seat. They were attended by a few servants, and kept some parts of the house shut. The house was crumbling, disorderly, chaotic. In every room, corridor, landing, a bunch of sempervivums was slowly dying inside their vases, an old local custom to make sure the devil would not come near.
Later on, Helena would put in writing a few impressions of the abbey itself, a curious building to her eyes, both close to and isolated from the coast, set in a remote area where sea and land blurred into each other. That part of the country, she was amused to find, was rotten with superstition, filled with old women who still buried cider bottles in the marshes as offerings. The region was surely an oddity, as it was rich in rhyolite, not very prominent in marshy areas.
Helena had read about the architect who built the abbey, Mr Williams. He had built the Matthews family a house based upon the ideas of a French château of the time of Louis XI, rather than in Italian medieval architecture. This alternative Gothic Revival style, she was surprised to find, was based on the writings of Eugène Viollet-le-Duc, an artist who had designed buildings heavy with a curious ornamental style, an antiquarian feeling: gargoyles, fanciful crests of arms, unnerving animal heads. James was connected to the development of some metropolitan cemeteries, and Helena could sense a running funereal discourse in the ornamentations, as if she were in front of a large mausoleum. The fantastical and rich display was too much, and produced the opposite effect: she could not really consider each affectation, and, head giddy with detail, avoided to look, preferring to rush inside. In the middle, overlooking it all, sat the odd-looking tower, too small to be of any consequence or use, as if it were a strange folly integrated into the building instead of being put in a meadow, and as out of place as a hummingbird on the English coast.
Once inside the building, the Great Hall with its large staircase revealed at once the effect the place wanted to have on the visitor: that of an oppressive grandeur. At the top of the staircase, before turning right or left, one was greeted by it: an imposing portrait of a younger Lady Matthews in the pre-Raphaelite manner, with long abundant hair, profusely jewelled with strange antiquated things. Something about those jewels impressed Helena a great deal; the painter had made a point of mimicking their maddening green shimmer in Lady Matthews’s emerald eyes. The effect of the rhyolite in the painting was simply magnetic.
* * *
Helena had always prided herself on being a good observer, not only of human nature but of the places humans haunted. It did not take her long to see that the house, which to a passing visitor would seem in perfect order, was after closer
inspection under the spell of some form of decrepitude which haunted its venerable walls. If one looked carefully, the cracks and damp stains on the painted paper were revealed, as were the cobwebs shrouding the ceilings, although she had to look twice to notice anything amiss. The tapestries were moth-eaten here and there, costly woven pieces which had obviously been left to their own devices, and the mirrors were clouded from inattention and lack of polish. The oil paintings were darkened by the dirt and dust that accumulated in the corridors, on every surface, even over the books in the library—as she found out to her dismay—and on each one of the items from the collection of mummified birds that was the pride of the household.
As soon as she went out she ascertained the degree of abandonment in the gardens surrounding the property: the ornamental hedges had grown in a strange fashion after years without a human hand to tame them, now transformed into shapeless things.
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