by J. F. Penn
Standing on the hilltop, Jamie could see for miles around. In front of her lay the village and behind her was Hearnton Wood, a densely forested area that ended in a finger surrounding the church. Bare branches stood out against the cool sky, its absence of color epitomizing the English winter. When covered in leaves, the branches would conceal everything but, with the sparse cover of winter, Jamie could make out a shape in the distance, something cornered that broke the natural lines of the forest. She opened the map and searched for the structure but there was nothing shown in that direction. It was supposed to be pure forest. The title deeds showed that this whole area was now owned by the Nevilles, so this forest would be under their care as well. Was there something hidden within the wood?
Feeling a pulse of excitement, and daring to hope that this would lead her to Polly, Jamie took a bearing with the compass from her pack. She followed a path down from the church to the wood in the direction of what she had seen. When the well-trodden path started to circle back towards the church in a large loop, she set off between the trees, following the compass heading.
It was dusk now, the forest shielding what little light was left of the day. Jamie listened to the rustle of leaves around her, as woodland animals scurried away at her approach. She remembered when Polly had been able to run as a child, how she had loved foraging in the New Forest, finding field mushrooms for their dinner. Jamie smiled at the memory. There had never been much money, it was always a struggle, but there had been a lot of joy until Polly’s pain had overtaken her and the little girl hadn’t been able to run or explore again.
Jamie pushed on through the trees, letting her eyes adjust to the encroaching darkness, not wanting to use torchlight until it was really necessary. Finally, she saw something looming up ahead, a patch of darker grey between the tree trunks. As she approached, she realized that it was a wall, made of solid metal panels over ten feet tall with a sign indicating it was private land and warning trespassers to stay out. Jamie put her hand flat on the metal, as if somehow she could feel what was behind. It was cold and lifeless on her skin, and she felt her body heat leaching into it. She leaned forwards until her forehead was resting on the metal. Part of her just wanted to sink down to the forest floor and weep, but night was encroaching and she knew there was little time left to find Polly’s body before the Lyceum, whatever it was, began.
Jamie listened to the night forest, straining for some indication of which way to follow the wall around. She had to find other some way in, because there was no way that she was getting over this barrier without any special gear. She could hear nothing so she went West, remembering from the map that there was a tiny lane running close to the forest. Keeping the wall on her right, Jamie picked her way through the undergrowth. She kept the torch off, preferring imperfect night sight, walking carefully and trying not to make a sound.
After twenty minutes of walking, the fence was still impervious, but Jamie heard the sound of a van in the distance. The barrier began to curve inwards as she walked, and suddenly she saw the outline of another color ahead, a darker grey indicating a change in material and finally, a gate. She froze against the trunk of a tree, waiting to catch any movement, but all was silent, so she crept forward to look at it more closely. The gate was electronic, clearly activated from the inside. There was an intercom and a camera mounted where a driver would pull up. Jamie made sure to stay out of range, circling behind to inspect the side of the gate. There was no way to climb, so she pulled back into the trees and considered her options. She could wait until much later and try to get back into the caves, or she could call Missinghall and see if the local police would cooperate in investigating this location. But she still had no evidence that anything was going on, and it would take time she didn’t have.
Suddenly, she heard the engine of another truck and this time it seemed to be slowing as it drove along the road. Jamie crouched down to avoid being caught in the beam of the headlights as it swung into the short driveway in front of the gate. She quickly circled back through the trees as the truck driver spoke into the intercom. The gate swung open and Jamie ran up behind, hopping onto the back board and clinging to the material there. The truck drove through the gate and, once on the other side, Jamie jumped off again before it could speed up too much. She dropped to the ground and crawled into the trees, now on the other side of the fence. Once she was sure that the truck was out of sight, Jamie started to walk after it, her night vision slowly returning as its lights faded.
Looking at her watch, Jamie felt an urgency building inside her that crushed the exhaustion she felt. Whatever the dark purposes of the Lyceum, there wasn’t much time. I’m coming, Pol, she thought. Jamie started to jog down the road, ready to sprint back into the trees if the truck returned and soon she saw lights on a low warehouse building ahead. There were no markings, nothing to indicate which company the place belonged to. It looked to be only one story, camouflaged by the dense trees that surrounded it. The truck was parked outside and a man was offloading boxes from the back onto a trolley. He wheeled them into an open loading bay area and left them neatly stacked, before reversing the truck and driving away. Jamie hugged the side of the building and slipped into the loading bay, checking the top of the box for the address slip. Neville Pharmaceuticals.
Brilliant light suddenly flooded the loading bay and a ferocious barking filled the air. Jamie was blinded, her heart pounding as fear flooded her system. She turned towards the sound, ready to defend herself, squinting into the light.
“Detective Brooke, what a lovely surprise.”
Edward Mascuria stepped forward and Jamie saw the satisfied look on his face. He held a Taser pointed at her and an enormous Rottweiler stood leashed at his side, snarling lips pulled back over sharp teeth.
“You’ve been doing quite a bit of investigating I hear,” Mascuria said. “Shame that will now have to come to an end.” He smiled and his eyes were cold. “But what an end it shall be.”
Chapter 22
Jamie stood her ground, holding her hands out in an unthreatening posture. She felt vulnerable but she also had nothing to lose anymore.
“Do you have Polly’s body?” she asked, head held high.
“Such a beautiful specimen,” Mascuria said, and Jamie couldn’t help herself. She started towards him, violent fury on her face but the Rottweiler leapt forward barking, teeth snapping at her. She had to retreat before it began to rip at her legs. It stood in front of Mascuria, straining at the leash, desperate for the command to attack, salivating at the possibility of blood. She could see that Mascuria was relishing the power he held over her now.
“You bastard,” she said, bile rising in her throat. “Why Polly?”
“I needed a female with her kind of spinal deformity for my teratological collection. When you came round to my flat with your - attitude - I found out more about you and your desperate family situation. But don’t worry, I’m taking very good care of her body.” He indicated a doorway with the Taser. “This way, Detective. You’re a little early for tonight’s Lyceum, but I think you might enjoy a tour. Don’t even think about running. Max here will bring you down and rip your throat out on my command. He’s not fed often and he enjoys the taste of human flesh.”
Jamie heard the pleasure of reminiscence in his voice and imagined the poor victims that Mascuria had used to train his dog, skin shredded from their bones as screams echoed in the dark forest. She shuddered, but she didn’t want to run. She was so close now and once she was with Polly’s body, she could consider her options. Dealing with this bastard would have to wait, and she tried to calm her anger, shutting away her feelings and concentrating on her surroundings.
Jamie walked ahead of Mascuria through the open door. Inside was a short corridor and another door at the end with retinal scan entry. Next to the door was a waiting room with glass windows.
“In there, Detective,” Mascuria indicated the room. Jamie walked in and turned to face him. “Now strip for me, and I m
ean everything.” His eyes glinted at her hesitation. “Oh, don’t worry, I’m not going to touch you - yet. Warm flesh is not really my thing, but I need to check that you’re not armed before I take you inside.”
Jamie shut her eyes for a moment and gathered herself. He was playing a dominance game but her body was just a body like any other. He would only take pleasure from her resistance and embarrassment.
“Sure,” she said, pulling her jacket off and swiftly shedding her clothes. She steeled herself to ignore the dog’s growling as her bare skin was revealed. She met Mascuria’s eyes as she unhooked her bra and pulled down her panties until she was naked. She stood tall and didn’t hug her arms around her body even though the cold made her nipples harden and her skin pucker. She felt a moment of victory when he broke their stare, his eyes dropping to her breasts.
“Turn,” he said, and there was a gruffness in his voice. She turned slowly all the way around. “Now face the wall.” She did so and he advanced into the room, the dog’s growling louder now. Jamie could feel the heat from it just behind her legs. Every inch of her wanted to run and she couldn’t help imagining vicious teeth tearing into her intimate, vulnerable flesh. Mascuria could do what he wanted here and she cursed her own independence at proceeding without backup.
Mascuria passed a scanner over her clothes, checking for concealed weapons and bugs. He stood close to her, and she could feel his breath against her back. He pressed the Taser against her buttocks.
“I’d love to press this button,” he whispered. “I want to see you writhing in your own piss on the floor, arching in agony for the way you treated me, bitch.”
Jamie realized that he was turned on by the thought of her pain and that was terrifying. She wasn’t afraid of death, but didn’t want to die by his sadistic hand. “But that’s not enough for someone like you. You think you’re so strong, but I’ll break you when you watch me slice up your daughter’s body.”
Jamie forced herself to remain still as he whispered close to her ear. Every fiber of her being wanted to turn and beat him to a pulp. She would kill him for what he intended to do, but not yet.
“Please,” she whispered, feigning submission. “Let me see Polly.”
Mascuria walked out of the anteroom and the dog padded after him.
“Put your clothes back on and cuff yourself,” he said, brusquely. “There’s a lot to do tonight.”
Pulling her clothes on, Jamie felt relief at the flimsy barrier between her and the dog, as well as respite from Mascuria’s stare. She put on the plastic tie cuffs, pulling them with her teeth so that they were still loose about her hands, tucking the end between her palms. Mascuria put his eye to the retina scan and the door clicked open. He indicated that she should walk in first. Jamie held her head high and made to walk past him, but he stopped her and yanked at the tie cuffs, so they tightened and bit deep into her wrists. Jamie winced at the sudden pain.
“Wouldn’t want you trying to get away now, would we,” Mascuria said, and up close his breath smelled of rotting flesh. “Max is staying out here, but remember, I still have the Taser.”
Jamie pulled away from him and stepped through the door into a large conference room decorated with cream colored easy chairs, potted palms and framed photographs of aspects of biological research. It was business-like and professional, clearly used for visitors to the facility, and Jamie wondered who came to this secret lab and what they were here to buy.
Mascuria made her stand to one side while he used his thumbprint to open the next door. Security was certainly tight, and Jamie was anxious to see what was inside. She kept glancing around for possible weapons, for an alternative exit but, in truth, she didn’t want to get away from Mascuria yet.
Through the next door, a long corridor stretched into the distance and on either side were windows, displaying labs within. Jamie could hear noises, animal hoots and moans, and it smelled like a zoo.
“What goes on here?” Jamie asked, staring into one lab that was almost a replica of the one she had seen at the Neville Pharmaceuticals official headquarters. But here the glass-fronted fridges contained specimens that seemed on the edge of abomination, perversions of nature. In some, the creatures’ skin was ruptured or scaly and others had limbs like animals on the bodies of human babies. Jamie saw one fetus with only blue eyes in its blank face, open in the clear liquid. With no mouth or nose, it had no way to breathe and her heart thudded with the desperate end it faced as soon as it was torn from its mother’s placenta. In the Hunterian, the specimens had been medical history, accidents of birth, but this was deliberate experimentation. What other horrors were here, and was this what Jenna Neville had discovered?
“Neville Pharma has branched out into some of the more interesting aspects of genetic splicing,” Mascuria said with pride. “We use stem cells between species. After all, it’s easier to create monsters to order than to find them by chance. We’ve also been exploring the effects of certain drugs in populations where the governments have more relaxed guidelines on testing.” He indicated a map on the wall with shaded areas in West Africa, South East Asia and even Eastern Europe. Jamie’s mind buzzed with the grotesque possibilities, the lives that even now were being experimented on.
“This research is far bigger than you could imagine,” Mascuria said, pushing Jamie onwards. “But what you’re really looking for is much deeper inside the facility.”
At the end of the corridor, another retinal scan and thumbprint opened a large metal door, this one reinforced like a bank vault with a thick outer wall. Although it was protected like a bunker from the Soviet era, inside it was just a round room, the walls lined with medical and research texts. In between the bookshelves were sculptures Jamie recognized, plastinated corpses of skillful dissection including the little boy with his spine exposed. Jamie felt a surge of pity and a rigid determination that Polly’s body would not end up like this.
A wooden lectern stood in pride of place against the very center of the back wall, spotlights shining on a large notebook filled with handwritten notes and intimate drawings in a glass case. Above it was a picture of a clean cut young man in the black and white uniform of the SS, silver skull shining on his smart helmet. Jamie recognized Mengele, vivisector and perverter of science, honored here as an inspirational role model. The spotlight also illuminated a shelf by the notebook that lay empty. Blake had seen the Anatomical Venus figurine with Mengele’s notebook in his vision, so Jenna must have been here and stolen the figurine, using it as evidence to challenge her parents.
With a grunt, Mascuria turned to a panel in the wall and entered a code. A scraping noise filled the room and the large Persian carpet in the middle of the floor slid back by some hidden mechanism. One of the flagstones sunk below and sideways, revealing a staircase down into the earth.
“The real secrets are down there,” Mascuria chuckled, with an edge of maniacal glee. Jamie had the impression that Mascuria wanted to show his treasures to someone with a pulse. He pointed at the staircase and Jamie stepped down carefully, trying to keep her balance with her hands still cuffed.
There were muted lights on the stairs so she could see a few steps ahead as they wound downwards. Jamie heard Mascuria step behind her, and then he must have closed the trapdoor because the darkness thickened and the lights at her feet were the only illumination.
“Just keep walking, Detective, it’s not too far now, and your curiosity will be satisfied.”
Jamie continued carefully down, counting nearly fifty steps until the staircase opened out into another corridor. The ceilings were carved into arches like the Hellfire Caves and down here the air was temperate, warmer than the surface. There was an earthy smell, not unpleasant.
“Welcome to the heart of the complex,” Mascuria said. “It’s connected to the Hellfire Caves in the opposite direction from the official tourist entrance. There’s a mirror image set of caves behind the public area where the Hellfire club really met. The fake caverns were created for delic
ious scandal and media interest, but Dashwood knew what he was doing.”
“And now the Nevilles continue the Hellfire tradition?” asked Jamie, still unsure as to how Jenna’s strange family fitted into the mix.
Mascuria laughed. “You’ll have to wait and see, but right now, I want to introduce you to my collection.”
He pointed at a door of ornate dark wood, carved with alchemical and fertility symbols. In the center was an ouroboros, a snake eating its own tail in a never-ending circle, representing immortality and the continuation of life.
“That is my God, Detective. Nothing we do matters, because it’s all just an endless turning. But I will leave my legacy by preserving the extraordinary in nature. I will be remembered, like Hunter, as a man who appreciated the freaks.” He paused, then pushed open the door. “Like your little girl.”
Chapter 23
Jamie’s heart thundered in her chest. She wanted to see Polly’s body but she was also terrified. She remembered her daughter as perfection but her flesh would surely be decomposed and rotting by now. Mascuria laughed, sensing her hesitation.
“Don’t worry, Detective, I’ve kept her on ice and she’s only showing a hint of decay.”
He pushed her forwards and Jamie was surprised to find that the cave was set up like a morgue, with pristine floors and white tiled walls. One side was dominated by a cooling unit and drawer freezers, presumably for bodies. Opposite the dissection gurneys were racks of open shelving containing specimen jars. Jamie stared at them in horrified recognition. They varied in size from large drums on the bottom shelves to tiny jars on the higher levels and each one contained some kind of anatomical preparation.
