Siren of Depravity

by Gary Fry

  “Except of course—as I imagined you’ve guessed, Harry—some never made it. These errant creatures, caught in a glacial freeze in the northern hemisphere, were trapped in ice and swept across rapidly changing territory, finally coming to rest in new locations. All this occurred before the bergs began to melt, leaving behind many natural materials—boulder clay uppermost among them—as well as them in the otherwise ancient land.

  “I hope you’re beginning to see where I’m heading with all this, my friend.”

  “I think you’re about to suggest,” I said, relieved to make a comment in the wake of all this outrageous material, “that one or more of these things has been left behind in the North York Moors, buried deep underground.”

  Strangely, that blow I’d received to my head back in the farmhouse had sharpened my senses rather than dulled them, and I was able to connect what I’d just heard to the event I’d pushed to the back of my mind after experiencing it, the weird message inscribed inside my car once I’d emerged from that clearly haunted dwelling: THE OLD ONES WILL RISE AGAIN.

  Did this relate to what I now learned about? At the time, I’d dismissed the intervention as the work of local mischief-makers, but in hindsight, now time had passed and it felt safer to speculate, that was surely foolish. After all, nobody else had been in the area…except for the person I’d seen out back, of course: that ill-defined figure that had disappeared only moments after I’d spotted it.

  I didn’t wish to dwell upon these alarming thoughts and so glanced at my host, intent only on listening to more. I believed he had much to teach me yet and that my best policy was to remain as silent as possible, at least until I had the whole story.

  Then the man went doggedly on.

  “You’re right in your reasoning, Harry, and now I suspect you’ll want to know where this belief came from. As I’ve said, it’s certainly not from any archaeological find, rather from the fact that, for many centuries, people living in certain parts of the North York Moors have reported experiencing certain phenomena, including dark dreams, morbid forms of creativity, and even mental health conditions in the form of frequent delusions. It’s been shown that all have involved some element relating to those ancient creatures rumored to occupy the region in underground locations.”

  I tried hard, really hard, not to think of Dexter’s childhood preoccupations, and this was almost a success. At any rate, I said nothing in response, merely clenched my hands and gritted my teeth, sensing time pass in the real world while feeling as if it had slowed here, certainly enough to make my heart rate accelerate to a speed I could perceive deep in my skull. That was just suppressed unease mounting; I’d experienced it many times in the past.

  “The basic idea, Harry, was that certain locations where these monsters are buried act as a…well, as a radio of sorts, broadcasting on short wavelengths to sensitive people in their proximity. And yes, I can see your next question written all over your face. I believe you’re about to ask, if these creatures scattered around the district were dead, how could they communicate at all?”

  I again avoided speaking, simply stared back at the man with unblinking attentiveness.

  With troubling predictability, the journalist answered his own inquiry: “Well, many believed that they weren’t dead, that they were merely slumbering. And what’s more,” he added, shrinking back in his seat with an embodied display of fearful awe, “some believed that with the right kind of occult practices, they could be reawakened.”

  19

  While thinking again about that message written on my windshield’s interior with something decidedly twig-like, my mind turned over all this latest information, trying to fit it into the bigger picture being revealed. My host, the seemingly implacable Greg Church, leaned forward in his chair.

  “I must apologize, Harry,” he said, bringing his hands together in a clasp. “I haven’t offered you a drink. Would you care for one—tea, maybe? Or coffee?”

  “I…uh—”

  “I’d certainly recommend something comforting. After all, what I’m about to add is even more unsettling than what I’ve already discussed.”

  “Ah…well, in that case, a tea would be good,” I said, still feeling disorientated by all I’d heard, particularly as I’d failed to combine this new knowledge with existing facts.

  “Okay. In the meanwhile, you might take a look at these,” he added, rising from his chair and leaning toward a small bookcase in one corner I hadn’t noticed upon entering. From the top shelf he produced a cardboard folder before crossing the room to hand it to me. “When I got your message this morning, I assumed you’d turn up and so printed them off from some old computer files, each dating back to my investigation over thirty years ago.”

  I took the folder, noticing it was a standard cardboard one with a flap at the front. Once my host had left the lounge, I lifted this flap and found what I’d expected to see inside, about five pieces of A4 paper, all bearing copies of drawings and paintings. I removed them and examined each in turn, reluctantly acknowledging that sketches made by my brother in the North York Moors during our childhoods in Dwelham were hardly unique in the area.

  One had almost certainly been composed by an adult; the technical skill on evidence exceeded that of a boy. Nevertheless, it bore a similarly grotesque subject, some kind of amorphous entity whose body was huge and covered in innumerable tiny orbs that were undoubtedly haphazardly arranged eyeballs. I could remember thinking, while examining Dexter’s drawings about two decades early, how so many scattered peepers stood in violation of terrestrial nature, allowing the beast to observe in all directions, as if it was either highly defensive or—surely more likely on the basis of its immense teeth and bullish limbs—predatorily savage.

  The next sketch, rendered in vibrant pastels, was similarly unsightly, a front view of the thing, its head like a gaseous cloud, as if what controlled all its foul functions—a kind of otherworldly brain—was not wholly based on organic matter, rather a seething alien mass capable of withstanding the usual decay that burdened every creature that had ever evolved on this planet.

  The third picture—another pencilled effort, possibly made by a child much like Dex had been—showed the monster’s bared claws, each a lethal curl of glistening material that might have no origin on earth or even any proximate world. I was put in mind of what my brother had once found in a wood near our native village, laid on the ground like any other fossil might be. It hadn’t been the flesh-ripping tool of a dinosaur, but maybe that of something bigger, hungrier, angrier.

  Was I starting to believe all this now? If so, the fourth and fifth artistic creations, surely the work of lunatics, were enough to upset my only tenuously maintained mental equilibrium. These paintings showed the beast in all its primal fury, each including natural landscape features to provide humbling context. Every multi-limbed entity, whose forms looked so unstable that they might be varying postures of the same thing or different representatives of a single otherworldly species, must be about half a mile long to judge by the presence of hills and valleys nearby, all of which, based on earth’s common attributes, were of similar scope and dimensions.

  In one of the portraits, the monster filled a great dip in the landscape, its feet sunk ankle-deep in a river; in the other, it rested on top of a slope, a dark starry sky beyond it, roaring to the heavens with a fire-filled snout. Its countless eyes, running all along its endless frame, glinted in fierce moonlight; its teeth and claws clenched and flexed, every one as lengthy as a human torso and seemingly made of some uncommon substance.

  I stood from my seat, setting aside the pictures, before strolling around the room, hoping mobility might help to control my thoughts, which threatened to tumble into panic. The similarity between these macabre portraits and the sketches Dex had executed in his youth couldn’t be coincidental…could it?

  I didn’t want to speculate, simply kept focusing on my surroundings as a way of returning my thoughts to terrestrial matters, with no wi
ld ruminations about creatures from other worlds buried underground and awaiting revival by black magicians. But then, as my mind slipped its rational leash, such a feather-in-a-storm resolution was mercilessly overruled.

  Was my brother a similar practitioner of the dark arts? Was he continuing some terrible legacy, inscribed in DNA inherited from a victim of that original occult experiment? Had an Irishman called Thomas Hartwell, who’d either owned or occupied a house in the region where one of these terrible creatures was supposed to reside beneath the earth, unwittingly produced an heir?

  My thoughts becoming riotous, I concentrated hard on the sounds of drinks being made in an unseen kitchen. Then I switched my focus back to the lounge walls, to the certificates I’d noticed earlier, each boasting bold headings associated with a press organization as well as previously too-small-to-read text. But that was no longer true; in fact, I could now perceive every word. And this was what one said:

  ON THE OCCASION OF HIS RETIREMENT, THE NEWCASTLE GAZETTE TAKES GREAT PLEASURE IN CELEBRATING THE CAREER OF ONE OF ITS FINEST JOURNALISTS. IN TERMS OF DOGGED TENACITY, HONORABLE COMMITMENT TO TRUTH, AND A GENUINE PASSION FOR REGIONAL AFFAIRS, THERE ARE FEW EQUAL TO…

  This much made me smile and even feel privileged to be in the home of the recipient of such a prestigious commendation from peers. But what followed reignited all my confusion and fears:

  …PETER MARSH.

  Peter Marsh? I wondered, my heart drumming hard as my stomach sank. But aren’t I supposed to be in the company of someone called “Greg Church,” the owner of the website that drew me here?

  At that moment, the aged man started pacing back down the hall passage, with teacups chattering, slippered feet whispering on the carpet, and breath coming in hurried gasps. By the time he arrived, I’d rushed to retake my seat, trying to control my hands, which had begun to shake.

  Now I recalled him saying that his former office had been in Newcastle, which was where he’d first met his informant, a bedraggled-looking Louise Patterson, who’d presumably been seeking payment for what she’d considered a major story. Targeting a regional newspaper made more sense than offering information to an unaffiliated online journalist, but how did that fit in with what I now knew: that Greg Church on the Internet was actually Peter Marsh in his print-based previous career?

  After my host had sat again and passed me a brimming cup from a tray on which he’d also brought sugar and milk (I requested none of the first and a dribble of the second), I decided not to pursue these additional inquiries in favor of learning more about the case of Norwood Farm. I had a sense that I was halfway there, with all the background information established before this break, and that my host was about to address the meaty material, which was perhaps even worse than what I’d already learned about undead monsters seeking to rise after hundreds of thousands of years.

  “Now,” said Greg or Peter once we’d both sipped cautiously from our drinks, “we must tackle far grimmer stuff.”

  I said nothing, merely held my vessel, feeling its heat combat my chill, even in this reasonably warm room.

  Then the man went on.

  “To briefly recap: Hartwell, the man at the heart of all this dark business, needed a mechanism by which he could achieve his ultimate purpose. This is where Louise Patterson and Sara Linton enter his story, two young women who’d been abducted on separate occasions and in different parts of the country: one in Leeds, and the other I’ve never been able to establish where.

  “I have spoken with Sara since, but…well, let me put it sensitively: she wasn’t keen to discuss the matter, having built a new life in Scarborough and even changed her surname. This wasn’t through anything as dramatic as deed poll, rather after marriage to a man called Harrison, who’d sadly died by the time I got to meet with her—this was in the late eighties, half a decade after events I’d hoped to discuss had occurred. She grew hysterical during my visit—a bad time, I imagined. And I haven’t ventured there since, nor know if she still resides at the same address. Or even if she’s still alive.”

  “Did Sara have any…” I began, but suddenly found it hard to swallow. After another sip of tea to facilitate the process, however, I finally asked: “…did she have any other children? Other than my brother, I mean.”

  “I’m almost certain she didn’t, Harry. At any rate, when I called by unannounced and even got as far as her living room, I observed no evidence of any happy family in the building.”

  Yes, household interiors can be revealing about people, I thought but refused to pursue it, lapsing again into silence as the journalist, who now had a suspected double life, swiftly continued.

  “Okay, let’s go back to the farm. Hartwell had run this place as a small operation, including cattle and sheep, along with plenty of pigs and at least one horse. However, after making inquiries with meat-processing organizations in the region and even local butchers, I found no evidence that the man ever traded with these animals, rather kept them standing in his land, a good distance from prying eyes.

  “According to Louise—who incidentally, after driving a hard bargain, was paid a decent amount of money for her story by my employer at the time—Hartwell had no intention of butchering, selling or even eating the creatures, preferring to use them in quite a different way. Basically, Harry, he was trying to condition the two women, preparing their bodies for particular rituals while also transforming their minds with repeated utterances of non-English chants.

  “Let me now tell you about what I learned from those genetic experts at Newcastle University. Louise seemed unaware of these facts when I described them during a second interview at my office, but admitted that they made a lot of sense in relation to her unfolding story.

  “I was told that females are theoretically closer to nature. I’m referring to their chromosomal purity, the status of their DNA. As an educated university man, Harry, I imagine you know that a girl or woman possesses two identical chromosomes to determine her sex—XX—whereas a boy or man has different ones: XY.”

  How had Peter/Greg figured out my profession? Had he conducted research on me, too, before accepting my request for information? But then I remembered a simple detail: I’d emailed him from my office account, which included my occupation in a preprogrammed sign-off.

  But none of this was important; what was related to his latest information concerning gender issues. I replied at once.

  “I’m aware that some commentators believe—controversially, in many cases—that females are more in tune with the motions of our planet. That both physically and psychologically, they operate cyclically, like the seasons, whereas males tend to function in a linear manner, like most societies. Is that the kind of thing you mean?”

  My host smiled and put his cup back on the tray, which he’d left on the carpet in front of his chair. “Believe me, I’m no expert on these matters. But I think that’s roughly what I’m driving at, yes.”

  I nodded, trying to absorb all these points by giving further voice to them. “So what you’re suggesting is that…is that women are more bound up with the natural world than men are.”

  “Yes, that’s the basic idea, but you must remember this is all speculative, merely my attempt over thirty years ago to make sense of some messed-up events. But it nonetheless gives us an idea about what Hartwell was trying to achieve at the farm, preparing two young women, who’d grown up in the northeast of England—Louise in the town of Malton and Sara in Pickering, both on the fringes of the North York Moors—for such carnal, misanthropic duties.”

  Two aspects of this new information disturbed me: one was the fact that both women had been “born and bred” in the area, as if this was essential in terms of their capacity to summon creatures stationed underground thereabouts; and the other was my informant’s use of the words “carnal” and “misanthropic,” the first of which suggested sex—an attribute I’d once associated with myself—and the other death: the characteristic I’d always related to my brother.

&
nbsp; Feeling afraid in a way I couldn’t understand, I said, “I think I’m ready to hear about what I need to know.” I hesitated, set aside my cup on a nearby table, and then gripped the arms of my chair. “Can you tell me what happened at that farm?”

  20

  “Okay, Harry, here goes. It’s extremely unpalatable, I’m afraid, but as your family is involved in the case, I think you have a right to know about it.

  “Basically, Thomas Hartwell—that educated, possibly independently wealthy man—was trying to reduce the two women to the status of animals.

  “Judging by what Louise told me in a profoundly flustered state—which reinforced my suspicion that she’d survived her ordeal since by use of hard drugs—this was a merciless procedure, without a single moment of her and Sara’s time in Norwood lacking bestial humiliation.

  “They were forced to sleep in separate rooms, almost always with pigs. They had to dine with cattle in barns, their hands tied behind their backs and—as the saying goes—sticking their snouts in troughs to eat. They were subjected to the same fungicide treatment as sheep, their naked bodies forced into dips. And I’m reluctant to describe what role at least one horse played in their new lives… Let me put it this way: the horse was male and uncastrated.”

  I swallowed awkwardly, but somehow managed to say, “Go on.”

  Then he did.

  “To move around the farmhouse, which bore locks on every door, they had to do it on all fours. If they ever spoke, they were beaten by their abuser. On the few daily occasions they were allowed outside, they had to pass water on grass and excrete in mud. Then their master made them roll in their own feces, the way puppies do before they learn better.