Trish had both hands on his shoulders and was trying to lead him back to the house. ‘Please,’ she begged, but by then it was too late, because the shadows were already moving.
The shadows unwreathed themselves from around Her like garments slipping to the ground, and She stepped right up to the stone, as close as She dared so that he could see Her properly. Peter fell back, letting Trish pull him away.
‘Fuck me,’ he breathed. It was the girl from the construction site.
Hester smiled and blew him a kiss. Then She turned to look behind Her, where the darkness was seething more busily than before, and made a beckoning gesture to it.
This time She had brought company.
Men and women, haggard and plague-ridden, dressed in shifts and shirts, woollen caps and leather shoes. The victims of the Clegeham massacre bore the marks of their deaths as proudly as the weapons with which they had tried to defend themselves: scythes, rakes, shears, billhooks, pitchforks and knives. They assembled behind Her in a wide line across the garden, held back by the prohibition of the parish stone, but the avidity in their faces and the light from the picture window spilling on their blades left Trish in no doubt that if that prohibition were to fail then they would kill without mercy. They didn’t leer or threaten; they didn’t need to. They’d been patient for centuries, and that sheer force of will carried its own weight.
‘Costumes…’ Peter said vaguely. He seemed to be mesmerised, or at least frozen with shock. ‘Hallowe’en costumes. This is a… must be some kind of prank…’
‘I tried that,’ said Toby. ‘It didn’t work.’
Peter turned to see him standing in the back doorway and that broke his paralysis. ‘Get back in the house!’ he yelled, seizing Trish by the arm and dragging her inside after him. She was too surprised to resist; she’d never seen him so panicked before.
The three Trustees were still in the living room. In the glass of the big picture window behind Joyce Dobson the reflections of the living were superimposed on the figures of the dead, who hadn’t disappeared and were still out there, as patient as the grave. Peter let go of Trish and marched across to Nash. She knew exactly what was in his head but it all happened too fast for her to do more than shout, ‘Peter, no!’ before her husband punched the chief executive of Haleswell Village Trust square in the face. Nash collapsed back into his chair, bellowing, hand to his nose which was already squirting red. Toby was yelling at his dad while Trish, Joyce and Esme all tried to drag Peter away, but he had his fists bunched in Nash’s shirt and was screaming into his face.
‘And you put us in the middle of this, you lying fucking bastard! You let us move in to this nice big house with your village green and your grammar school and your jobs-for-the-boys bullshit, and all the time you knew what was going to happen! You fucking knew! You’ve been playing us from the start, haven’t you?’
He was shaking Nash like a doll, but the three women managed to drag him away to the other side of the room and get him up against the wall.
‘Peter?’ said Trish, trying to sound calm, even though right at this very moment all she wanted to do was slap him. ‘Now you really are scaring our son. You need to deal with this. We all do.’
‘You seem to be coping just fine.’
‘No!’ she hissed, and shook him with each sentence: ‘I am fucking terrified! And I’m as pissed off with them as you are. But I am not going around punching people!’
‘Have you got this?’ Esme asked her, looking back at Nash, who was staggering into the kitchen with his hands cupping his face.
‘I don’t know,’ Trish said, staring at Peter. ‘Have I got this?’
His gaze met hers for a moment and then it slumped, along with the rest of his body. ‘Yeah,’ he muttered.
‘Good.’ Esme went off to check on Nash.
‘As long as we remain inside the old parish boundary, we are safe,’ Dobson continued. ‘Hester cannot touch us, directly or indirectly. Even outside the boundary, She isn’t able to cause physical harm by Herself but you saw how easily She was able to manipulate you into nearly breaking your neck, Trish. She also has some control over rats, probably because they were the original plague carriers, and as Toby can testify, She uses them very effectively.’
‘That’s why She never came further into the garden than the stone,’ Toby realised.
‘Yes. It’s also why we encouraged you to take up a place at the grammar school – it’s inside the parish boundary. All the children of Trustees go there. You will be tempted now to run – to get all your things together and escape with your family as far away as you can. This would be a mistake. Hester will find you, and find some way to kill you, Patricia. She’s done it before; no Trustee who leaves the parish survives for very long. Mostly She drives them to madness and suicide, or else they meet with unfortunate “accidents”.’
‘I saw Her,’ said Peter, his voice barely above a whisper. ‘Before, I mean. Weeks ago. At the site. She tried to…’ He swallowed. ‘Tried to kill me.’
Trish was aghast. ‘My God, Peter, why didn’t you say something?’
‘Like what? “Hi honey, I’m home! Just another day on the site, nearly got decapitated by a dead medieval peasant girl, you know how it is, what’s for dinner?” Because it sounds insane even now when we know it’s true – what would it have sounded like then?’
He sketched out the details of what had happened at Lot 9, by which time Esme returned from the kitchen, drying her hands on a tea towel. ‘My predecessor died in a car accident,’ she said. ‘He was walking outside the bounds when a car mounted the kerb and pinned him to a wall, crushing his pelvis. The driver later stated that he had swerved to avoid a girl who had stepped out into the road, but no witnesses reported seeing a girl, and no girl appeared on the street CCTV.’
Peter snorted. ‘How did the Trust trick you into taking this gig after that?’
Esme looked at him levelly, and her voice was bleak. ‘Because he was my husband,’ she replied, and went back to her chair.
‘It’s only the Trustees She’s after,’ said the reverend to Trish. ‘But She’ll go through anybody to get to you, especially your loved ones.’
‘But if we leave and I give up the Trusteeship, let someone else take over the house, maybe…’
‘You think it’s that easy?’ said Esme. ‘You think you can just wash your hands of the whole thing, say “sorry, changed my mind” and walk away? Do you imagine, if that were possible, that any of us would still be here? You’re a Trustee now, and that’s for life – not because we say so, but because Hester does. She doesn’t give a shit who you are, what you think, or what you want. She will kill you if She can.’
‘And even if you could walk away,’ added the reverend, ‘who would you choose to replace you? How would you choose them?’ Trish couldn’t answer that. ‘Not so easy to commend the poisoned chalice to somebody else’s lips, is it? Now maybe you start to appreciate that we do this with nothing but the heaviest of hearts.’
‘Oh, poor you,’ replied Trish, feeling her bitterness etch the air between them. ‘This must be so hard for you.’ But now she understood why Great-Aunt Stephanie hadn’t left Stone Cottage to any family members or loved ones in her will – who could you inflict this on except strangers?
Nash returned from the kitchen. He had a bag of frozen peas wrapped in a tea towel pressed to his face. ‘I can’t say I blame you,’ he said to Peter, his voice nasal and thick. ‘I might have done the same thing in your position. But you only get one free pop, mate; the rest you pay for.’
Peter’s frustration had by now channelled itself into the much safer act of pacing about the room with his arms crossed tightly over his chest, hands shoved deep into his armpits. ‘But do there have to be people living here? Why can’t you just use CCTV or something like that?’
‘It’s been tried,’ said Nash. ‘Her rats just eat through the wires. And yes, now we have Wi-Fi, but even if you mount the cameras inside the house the rats st
ill get in without anybody to keep an eye on the place. Plus She gets them digging under the stone, trying to upend it. There needs to be a human caretaker.’
‘But it’s more than just a practical point,’ added Joyce. ‘Houses are like people, and when they’re empty they attract unwholesome attention. Hester is an empty spirit – She has no soul, nothing to keep Her going except rage. With a family living here, a close-knit family who love each other, it seems to strengthen the blessing on the stone and keep Her more subdued. Every time Stone Cottage has been empty, Her activities have increased. When we had gardeners looking after the place we would only ever let them work in pairs.’
‘Hasn’t anybody tried to, I don’t know – exorcise Her or something?’ asked Toby. ‘I mean you’re a priest, right?’
‘But, Toby,’ said the reverend, ‘that’s exactly what the Beating of the Bounds is. By blessing the parish boundary stones we banish Her from our village and keep ourselves safe for another year.’
‘Yes,’ said Peter, ‘but She’s still fucking there, isn’t She?’
‘I’ll admit, it’s a less than perfect solution, but it’s what we have. Please try to remember, the people of Haleswell have had nearly seven hundred years to try all kinds of more, ah, definitive attempts to remove Hester and those who follow Her, but each attempt has ended in tragedy.’
‘We did a huge amount of research before we were sure about you,’ Joyce continued. ‘All three of you. Stephanie had very few relatives to begin within and for one reason or another we were forced to reject those who were a lot more closely related to her. That’s why the house was empty for so long and why the legal procedures dragged on.’
‘Trustee positions are often hereditary,’ added Nash. ‘Some of us come from families that have lived in Haleswell for generations, and see the responsibility of protecting our home as a great privilege rather than a burden.’
The reverend glanced at him as she said, ‘Some of us argued against the introduction of a child into the Trust’s business, but at the end of the day we agreed that you are the best possible person to be the custodian of Stone Cottage. You were not just the nearest warm body – you were carefully selected for your strength of character. Have faith in that if nothing else.’
Trish shook her head. ‘I’ll never trust you. Ever.’
Dobson nodded acquiescence. ‘That’s fair,’ she said. ‘But never is a very long time, even for the dead folk outside. I sincerely hope that as the years pass you may find that you come to think of Haleswell as your home rather than a prison.’
‘Don’t hold your breath.’ She gathered Toby to her on one side and Peter on the other. ‘I suppose I should thank you for finally telling us the truth, at least.’ She nodded at Barlow. ‘And thank you for seeing to Toby’s hand. We have a lot to process. But one thing I am in firm agreement with my husband about,’ she said to the three of them. ‘I’d very much like it if you all got the fuck out of my home.’
Quietly the three Trustees left. When they were gone the first thing Trish did was go to the big picture window and draw the curtains on the darkness and the things that waited in it.
* * *
‘We should take off on our own, just the three of us,’ said Peter, his words slightly slurred. Once the Trustees had gone and Toby had disappeared into the cave of his bedroom they’d broken out the bottle of spiced rum that Peter liked to save for Christmas and special occasions, and had gone through half of it. Trish was mixing hers with cola but he was slurping it neat. ‘Put as much distance as we can between ourselves and this bloody madhouse. We can live in a caravan. Join the circus. Become the Flying Feenans.’
‘Which puts us in no better position than we are already,’ she pointed out. ‘At least here we’re surrounded by people who know what’s going on and can help us. Who knows? Maybe we can even work out a way of stopping it.’
Peter hmphed and took another swig of rum, grimacing. He swirled it around in his glass thoughtfully, watching the toffee-amber liquor catch the light. They’d shut all the doors and turned off all the lights except for one small table lamp next to the sofa, where he was sitting and she was curled up next to him with a blanket up to her shoulders. The warmth and safety was an illusion, she knew, but hopefully getting drunk would help them both forget that for a while. ‘We could stay with your mother again,’ he said with a little snorted laugh. ‘Remember how much fun that was last time?’
‘And explain all of this how exactly?’ she replied. ‘We can’t take this anywhere near anyone we love. What if something happens?’
‘So who can we stay with that we really, really don’t like?’
She chortled. ‘Your cousin Geoff.’
Peter tipped his glass to hers in salute. ‘Hi, Geoff! Mind if we crash at yours for a bit? What? How many? Oh, just the three of us. Don’t mind the mob of angry undead medieval peasants, they’ve brought their own sleeping bags.’
Her chortling became giggling, and her giggling infected him until they were crying with laughter and clutching each other. Toby came downstairs to see what all the noise was, and found them in a heap on the floor by the sofa, laughing like drains.
‘You two are weird,’ he scowled, and went back up.
23
VOLUNTEER
JOYCE WAS WISE ENOUGH TO LET THINGS CALM DOWN for a few days before she approached Trish again, and the reverend didn’t insult her intelligence by trying to pretend that everything was back to normal. She simply showed up at the front door of Stone Cottage one morning with a wide, low cardboard box in both hands and an offer: ‘If you like, I can show you all of the information we have on Hester,’ she said. ‘You’re owed that, as a Trustee. I don’t promise that it’ll make you any safer, but it might help to know that we’re not hiding anything from you. It will also help you to understand Her limitations, and how safe you and your family can be here.’
Trish still had the front door on its chain, and she regarded the reverend without replying. Her eyes glanced down at the box and back up. Joyce flipped open the lid. Inside were four cream buns covered in squiggles of what looked suspiciously like strawberry syrup. ‘I also have cake.’
‘That’s low, even for you,’ said Trish. She unhooked the chain, opened the door, and jerked her head towards the hall. ‘In with your buns,’ she ordered.
Joyce smiled and stepped inside.
* * *
Later, she invited Trish back to the vicarage to show her the Trust’s archive. An ordinary-looking door in the hallway behind the stairs opened onto a flight of steps leading steeply down.
‘Mind your head,’ Joyce warned. ‘This used to be the cellar and the ceiling is still quite low.’
At the bottom there was a second door, much older and more solid, with heavy iron hinges. Joyce took out a set of keys. ‘We keep it locked not just for security,’ she explained, ‘but also because some of the documents in here are incredibly old and very fragile, so the room is climate-controlled. You’re welcome any time you like, though.’
She unlocked the door and led Trish inside, flicking on a row of wall switches.
Low-wattage fluorescent strip lighting blinked into life along a ceiling which was made up of rows of intersecting arches so that what used to be the cellar wasn’t so much a tunnel as an interconnected series of low, vaulted chambers. Where they met the walls they formed arched alcoves that Trish could well imagine being full of dusty wine racks in an earlier century, but now they held bookcases, filing cabinets, display cases and storage racks crammed with archive boxes. Just a cursory circuit of the nearest chamber showed Trish a collection of bound sermons of the vicars of St Sebastian’s church, Haleswell, 1714–1756; index-card boxes full of carefully catalogued postcards of Haleswell in the Victorian era; large cartographic journals of proposed urban redevelopment projects on Pestle Road; and a locked glass case full of neatly labelled animal skulls. She saw racks with old flintlock muskets next to agricultural tools, rails of antique clothes in protective
plastic wrappings, chamber pots, paintings, wax recording cylinders and microfiche films, brass lamps, stuffed animals (one was a fox, she noticed with a jump), and this was just one alcove – there were dozens more.
‘My God,’ she breathed. ‘You’ve got the village’s entire past down here.’
In the midmost chamber was a circular reading table with hooded desk lamps where Joyce had sat herself while she let Trish explore. ‘Not quite, but a lot of it, yes. We even have some of the original fourteenth-century manorial records. There are some gaps in the continuity, due to events like the Reformation, the Civil War, the Great Plague. But it’s not indiscriminate – everything you see here is in some way connected to Hester Attlowe. The witness accounts of people who have seen Her, the possessions of Her victims, even the remains of some of the rats She’s used to do Her bidding. Anything which might one day give a clue about how to lay Her to rest.’
‘You still think She can be stopped?’
‘I can’t believe that She is entirely evil. There has to be some way of reaching Her.’
Trish trailed a hand over a wardrobe rail of old dresses in their shrink-wrap, trying to imagine the number of lives this treasury accounted for, the weight of history which pressed down on the arched ceiling overhead.
‘And yet despite what it looks like,’ Joyce continued, ‘Her attacks are actually quite few and far between.’
Trish uttered a short laugh. ‘Well She’s certainly upped Her game recently, I’ll give Her that.’
‘That’s because this is a time of instability, as you establish yourself as the new custodian of Stone Cottage. She’s not some continually prowling beast, watching and attacking at every opportunity. When things calm down She becomes quieter – often a decade or more might go by without a sighting or an incident. In some way Her… moods, shall we say, are tied to the prevailing spirit in the community, so in times of uncertainty like war or social unrest or a new Trustee taking up their position She becomes more active, testing the Beating for gaps and weaknesses. As you and your family settle in and become a part of the village, She’ll subside again, and you’ll all be able to live here almost as peacefully as if it were any other ordinary part of the city.’
The Plague Stones Page 17
