The Castle of the Demon

by Reginald Hill

  No one will miss me. No one will come looking.

  Except Inwit and Plowman.

  I’ve been sitting here long enough, she thought. Too long perhaps.

  She pushed herself up from the crouch like a swimmer on the turn, took a single step forward, discovered she had developed cramp as her knee buckled under her.

  The movement saved her. There was a sharp explosion and a spurt of flame a few yards away which lit up the beaded lines of driving rain and gave her a brief glimpse of the figure behind. Something plucked at her anorak hood. A swarm of small insects seemed to go whistling through the bushes. Then she was off, cramp forgotten, scuttling bent double like a chimpanzee, dreading to hear the second barrel which would send small lines of fire drilling through her back.

  It didn’t come. Perhaps only one barrel was loaded. Perhaps he was short of ammunition.

  Perhaps the further she ran towards the Point, the happier her pursuers were.

  The Point. A good place for a murder. A desolate spot where the signs of habitation—Anthom across the estuaries of the Waver and Wampool, Dumfriesshire across the Solway—merely served to accentuate its own separateness and isolation.

  The Point. A headland. A ness. Skinburness. An odd kind of name, meaning … she didn’t really want to remember its meaning but it pushed its long length insidiously into her mind. The castle of the headland of the demon. God! She could give the author of that history a chapterful of new horrors.

  From the darkness of the ground before her a dozen shapes leapt violently up and shouted mockingly, hoarsely at her.

  She stopped with such violence that she fell heavily to the earth and the shriek in her throat was jarred out as a broken rattle. It turned into a whimper of hysterical relief as she recognised her assailants for what they were. Sheep. They had turned instantly and leapt away into the darkness.

  But they would have heard too. Her every move seemed to be charted as a motorway on a road map. Only speed counted, she must put her trust in speed. She was young, fit, lightly clad. They were middle-aged, dressed in heavy clothes, which must be sodden by now, and rubber boots. She could outpace them surely with ease. If she just kept her head. Direction was all important. Visibility was almost down to nil. But she had just to keep the sea on her left. As long as she did that she couldn’t go wrong.

  She set off at a jog-trot again. She knew where the sea was; she was absolutely certain, but down in the hollows where the paths ran she had been unable to see it, and now she angled her run to the left, suddenly desperate for reassurance that she hadn’t somehow turned and headed back towards her pursuers.

  The rain lashed into her face, forcing her to close her eyes to the merest slits. She could hear nothing but water, the hiss of the rain as it foamed through the coarse sea-grass and somewhere the deeper, stronger surge and pull of the tide. But the noise seemed all around her and she could not tell whether it grew stronger or weaker.

  Then there were sand and stones beneath her feet and she sensed rather than saw the vast openness of the Solway before her.

  She shielded her eyes from the rain and now she could make out the pale line where the waters were running up the shore, breaking here and there with faint flashes of fluorescence. For a few yards she moved along the beach, but the noise of the stones beneath her feet, the sense of being out in the open plus the sheer discomfort of running on such a surface soon drove her back to the grass-line and the turf.

  A flash filled the sky ahead of her. For a second all she could think of was the shot-gun. But the crash that followed almost instantly was the crack of thunder, not the simple bang of a cartridge.

  That’s all I needed, she thought. They’re really laying it on tonight—corpses in the ground, guns, attempted murder, the headland of the demon, and now a real giant-size storm!

  As though submitting itself for her approval the lightning ran crazily through the sky overhead like cracks in ancient marble, and the thunder boomed and broke with an almost human gusto.

  Emily was pleased to find she could still be entertained. Storms held no fear for her and in normal circumstances she would have been delighted to stand and watch such a display of natural pyrotechnics. Now she was very conscious of the double-edged aid offered by the lightning. It helped her get her bearings; indeed for seconds at a time the landscape around was lit up clear as daylight, though clarity was the only quality this ghastly, shimmering light shared with the familiar brightness of day. But this meant that she was as visible to anyone else as her surroundings were to her.

  She dropped to the ground and peered back during the next flash. Bushes, grass, paths, backed by waving trees and boiling clouds, but no human figure. She set off running again, bent low. When the next flash came, she dropped again to the ground. Ahead she made out in the glare the squat roundness of the pill-box which stood, a memorial to a war which never came near here, right on the Point. She used this as a mark and ran straight at it in the following darkness.

  Another flash. The box sat there a hundred yards ahead, squat and sinister. The cairn on top of it seemed grotesque misshapen. Like an old weather-eaten tombstone.

  The lightning seemed to play around the sky for a good half-minute, dying away reluctantly, flickering up again when it seemed gone.

  Like old-fashioned footlights, thought Emily, her eyes fixed on the crouching black pill-box. It’s a show. Childe Roland to the dark tower came! Tarantara!

  It was dark. She set off full pelt, careless of the ground beneath her feet. Her examination had revealed no obstacles. Once round the box, it was a straight run on a good path down along the creek to the safety of the hotel.

  The box was further than she thought.

  Nearly there! She gasped encouragingly to herself. Nearly nearly nearly there.

  She had almost made it when the next flash came and down she dropped. It was less than ten yards away, no longer sinister now she could see the crumbling brickwork and the mossy window slits and the stones in the cairn.

  Part of the cairn, the bit that had seemed misshapen and askew, detached itself from the rest and leapt lightly down towards her. For a second this seemed so absurd that she just lay, staring in disbelief.

  The demon?

  It had an axe. Did demons have axes?

  Inwit.

  The light went out as he reached her.

  She came up fast towards him as the trenching tool swung down and his arm crashed into her left shoulder, forcing her down once more.

  He went over the fields and came round by the creek, she thought, feeling somehow like a child who had been cheated. You silly, silly bitch!

  She had her arms round him now, keeping close so that he could not swing his weapon at her again. They spun round and round as he tried to throw her clear, but she hung on dizzily as though it were some crazy dance. Neither spoke a word. The only sounds were the thudding and slithering of their feet on the sodden turf and the hiss and strain of desperate breathing. After a few moments Inwit had dropped the tool to free both his hands for the in-fighting. His body had looked weedy enough when she glimpsed him through the hotel door, but it had a wiry strength which was proving more than a match for her. She remembered the casual ease with which he had dealt with her the previous night (she was certain now it had been Inwit) and knew that once he had freed himself from her clinging grip, she was lost.

  Her arms were round his waist, her forehead level with his chin. She tried to straighten her legs to lift him off the ground, but he resisted this move with ease. His hands had been trying to push her clear. Now one of them went snaking round behind her, seized her long blonde hair and pulled. Her head was dragged slowly back from the protective closeness of his chest till her face looked almost vertically up into his. He looked quite unchanged, a little flustered perhaps, but basically as cold and unemotional as ever.

  He nodded down at her, as though casually acknowledging her presence, then smashed his forehead down on to her nose.

  The pa
in was terrifying. Tears flooded her eyes till she felt the balls must be washed out and roll down her cheeks. She was sure that her nose was pressed flat against her face. But she still did not let go till his forehead came down again.

  Now she went backwards, pushing as hard as possible, reacting instinctively now, all reason sunk fathoms deep in pain. He had been leaning backwards against her weight and the sudden release sent him a couple of steps back and he sat down as a tussock of grass caught at his feet.

  Emily didn’t sit. She fell, sprawling full length on her back, and looked up at the heavens into a wet darkness. She might have been blind for all she could see. The next flash of lightning convinced her she wasn’t. It ran wild pulsating veins of light over the whole dome of the sky. She raised her head.

  Inwit was on his feet and coming in for the kill.

  She dragged herself up on one knee, her fingers scrabbling in the grass as they had done the night before, desperately searching for a stone, a piece of wood. Anything. Anything.

  ‘Please God!’ she sobbed.

  She felt the smooth wooden shaft of the trenching tool.

  And brought it up with one sweeping movement between Inwit’s legs as he stood over her.

  ‘That’s the place to get’em!’ her old gym mistress had told the class with more than educational relish. ‘If you ever get attacked, girls, cool their ardour by cracking a couple of eggs in the turtle’s nest!’

  She had left shortly afterwards under a cloud of fascinating rumour.

  But she was right, thought Emily, as Inwit emitted a thin high-pitched scream and doubled up like a buttonhook before her.

  What have I got to do with button-hooks? wondered Emily as she set off once more. She didn’t dare touch her nose, which still pained horribly. She marvelled that she could still run and wondered if Inwit’s recovery would be as rapid.

  She wasn’t going to wait to find out. She wasn’t going to stop for anything.

  The lightning came again, more distant now, but burning bright still.

  She stopped dead.

  ‘Stupid, stupid, stupid!’ she cried out loud. She had done what she had feared before, lost her sense of direction, and instead of rounding the Point, she had somehow struck off to the left again and was now on the edge of the grassy foreshore overlooking the beach down to the Solway.

  This was quite near the spot where she had lain out in the sun and woken to find the marks of Scott’s horse around her. For a second her mind was diverted from her own predicament to consider how and where Michael Scott might be.

  Some magician! she sneered, then disliked herself intensely as the image of the blood starting out of his shoulder and his face, suddenly white, high above the pain-maddened rearing horse, came into her mind.

  She sneezed and the pain of sneezing brought her back to herself.

  Perhaps her mistake might prove to her advantage. If she kept low and doubled back along the edge of the beach she could surely outwit them. Inwit was out of the hunt, temporarily at least. And Plowman would surely expect her to be making for the path along the creek. It was all so simple. Suddenly, absurdly she felt almost safe.

  ‘It was most considerate of you to sneeze, Mrs. Follett,’ said a pleasantly hearty voice behind her. ‘I might have missed you else.’

  It was Plowman, of course, standing a couple of yards away, the shot-gun levelled steadily at her midriff.

  She turned and ran towards the sea. The tide was coming in fast and the water was only about twenty-five yards away.

  She expected to hear the shot almost instantly. She had seen at the cinema the damage a shot-gun could do. She had no reason to believe it was exaggerated.

  When it didn’t come, she wondered for an optimistic second if her earlier surmise had been right and Plowman was short of ammunition. But a glance over her shoulder showed him walking steadily behind her and she knew then exactly what he was doing.

  He was saving himself a job. Not for her the dubious dignity of burial in the gorse bushes. He was going to shoot her in the shallows, then leave the incoming tide to suck her out to sea.

  She acted on the thought, turned right and accelerated with all her remaining strength, running parallel to the water.

  Behind her, Plowman turned too, half stumbling in the loose stones which littered the sand. Then the gun came up to his shoulder. It was time to finish it.

  Emily changed direction again, left this time, straight down into the water. She brought her knees up high to lessen resistance, ran as far as she could into a depth of about a yard, and flung herself forward.

  Behind her the gun cracked, slightly double, and the air above her hissed momentarily.

  Both barrels. He had meant to make a job of it. How long to reload? She swung her arms over desperately, forgetting the long easy stroke which had made her her school’s distance champion from the age of thirteen on. Distance she would want shortly. At present speed was everything.

  A dozen strokes she promised herself. Just a dozen.

  … Eight, nine, ten, eleven, twelve. One for luck. Then down in a steep dive. The bottom not far. Still no real depth. Swim steadily down here. Change of direction so he couldn’t follow the line. Lungs beginning to strain now. A little longer. Not too long though. Don’t want to explode to the surface. Just up gently. Hardly break it. One deep breath and …

  A foot in front of her face the water boiled momentarily as hot shot screwed viciously into it. He was nearer than she would have believed possible, almost up to his waist. He must have guessed she would turn and swim along with the tide.

  This time she stayed down till her lungs almost burst, came up like a dolphin, straight back under, kicking hard all the time away from the shore. Twice more and she risked a glance back. In the rain and the darkness the shore was quite invisible.

  Now she settled down into the long easy stroke which came naturally to her, conserving her energy from time to time by treading water and letting the considerable momentum of the tide sweep her along. After twenty minutes, perhaps more, she could no longer tell, the storm had moved away and the rain died down to a steady drizzle. Suddenly she thought she made out a dark shape on the water and heard the creaking of rowlocks. She dived instantly, remembering the boats which lay along the edge of the creek and fearing that Inwit and Plowman might have stolen one to continue the search.

  Surfacing again, she decided she must have been mistaken as a large wave lifted her up and gave her a reasonably clear view of the sea ahead. She slid down into the trough and turned on her back, trying to conserve her energy and at the same time give herself some sense of direction if the wind had torn a gap in the clouds for the stars to shine through.

  It hadn’t, Another wave rose above her threatening to break over her body. She was unworried knowing she would be driven before it or lifted upon it. Unworried till cutting its crest she saw the broad prow of a rowing boat.

  It was purely fortuitous, she told herself as she duck-dived. They weren’t trying to run me down, they couldn’t even know I was there. They were bloody lucky to get within a mile of me. Perhaps it wasn’t even them.

  She came up for air, heard the now almost familiar bang, saw the water immediately ahead pocked with more violence than the rain could cause, and went under once more.

  It was them all right. Plowman again, Inwit could hardly be thinking coherently yet, clever fat little Plowman knowing she’d move with the tide; so he played the odds and had been sitting out in the estuary waiting for her to show up.

  This time she came up almost alongside the boat. A wave tipped it towards her and she saw the inmates quite clearly. Inwit was straining at the oars, using them for balance rather than propulsion, while his partner peered menacingly over the prow, shot-gun at the ready.

  Inwit saw her first and screamed something. What he said was inaudible in the wind and rain, but the noise attracted Plowman, who turned, saw Emily, and moved rapidly towards her. She watched his awkward bobbing approach for a s
econd, then seized the side of the boat and forced herself up out of the water. The sudden intensification of the already considerable rocking action took Plowman by surprise. He stumbled to his knees, slid towards the side of the boat and let go of the gun as he grabbed the gunwale to stop himself from going over.

  Emily reached casually down, picked up the gun and flung herself backwards into the sea. Treading water, she brandished the still gleaming weapon over her head with sudden memories of Excalibur flooding her triumphant mind, and let it slide slowly down into the waves. Plowman shouting inaudible abuse wrenched one of the oars from Inwit and lifted it up in a final effort to deliver a death blow. Inwit’s mouth funnelled in a panic-stricken warning; the boat, relieved of one of its restraining arms, bounded high aslant the next wave; the other oar, traitor now it was alone, exaggerated the perilous steepness of the angle by burying itself too deep for Inwit to hold it, and effortlessly the swelling waters flipped the boat over.

  Only one head broke the surface, too far away for Emily to see whose it was. She swam with all possible speed towards it, but while she was still yards short, another wave crashed down and sank it from view.

  She moved in a circle for a while, watching to see if anyone appeared again. She could see the capsized boat quite close, but there was no one clinging to it. She dived underneath to make sure neither of the men was trapped, and after that, knowing it was almost certainly hopeless, she dived deep and searched till her lungs could bear no more.

  When she came to the surface again even the boat had gone. There was nothing but herself and the water, sweeping her she knew not where. She had used a great deal of vital energy, and was beginning to feel very cold. She had discarded her anorak and her shoes as soon as possible, and her sweater and slacks were beginning to weigh more and more heavily. It was time to make a landfall.

  This proved more difficult than she would have imagined. Eventually visibility improved sufficiently for her to get a bearing on the tall red-lighted masts at the Anthorn naval base. But this was only a vague help, as there was nothing to indicate from which angle she was seeing them. Occasionally as she trod water she felt the bottom underfoot, but this always proved to be merely sandbanks, and sometimes the sand was suspiciously ready to yield to her weight. She decided to keep afloat as long as possible till she was sure of her footing.