They could see into the church now, or at least as far as the impenetrable blackness which filled it.
Phillipe was the first to move towards the door, urging Carl to follow him, snapping an insult when he hesitated.
The sun was still obscured by a cloud although Carl suspected the chill he felt was more the result of fear than from the absence of the warming rays. There was no turning back now. He had to enter. Enter this empty church which his parents had warned him not to go near.
Empty.
He tried to cling to the word, seeking comfort in it.
Empty.
He moved closer to the door.
Empty.
Both boys slipped inside.
It stank. Of neglect. Of decay. Of damp. As if the passing years had caused the very air itself to decay and rot so that each inhalation the boys took was rank. Carl felt as if he was swallowing some particularly vile medicine. He wanted to spit it out.
More than anything he wanted to be back out in the light again.
Shafts of sunlight pierced the gloom in places, poking through cracks in the boarding which covered the holes where the stained glass windows had been, casting enough light for the boys to see where they were going but not sufficient to illuminate the interior.
The watery shafts seemed incapable of penetrating such overwhelming blackness.
It was as if even the sunlight sought no access to this place.
The two boys moved slowly down the central aisle of the church, peering around them into the gloom.
Pews, unfrequented for years, were overturned on either side of them. Rotten. Broken. In places they had been piled up against the wall, like bonfires waiting to be lit.
As the boys walked they found that their footsteps were curiously muffled. Suffocated by the thick layer of dust and dirt which carpeted the church floor like a noxious rug. They left footprints in the dust.
They moved towards the chancel. Here, the air itself seemed to be black. It was more difficult to breathe.
Carl coughed, the sound echoing around the confines of the church before being swallowed by the silence and the gloom.
There was a doorway in the wall which separated the chancel from the nave.
The door was slightly ajar.
‘Let’s go now,’ Carl said, his voice low.
Phillipe moved towards the doorway, which was momentarily illuminated by the intrusion of a shaft of sunlight forcing its way between two boards on a nearby window.
‘The altar is through here,’ Phillipe said. ‘That’s where it happened.’
‘You go,’ Carl said, finally unashamed of his fear.
He stood watching. He didn’t care if Phillipe and all his friends called him a coward when he got back to the village.
He did not want to go through that door. Even if the church was empty.
Empty.
Perhaps just a quick look.
Empty.
Phillipe was about to push open the door.
Encouraged by his friend’s bravery and curiosity, Carl moved alongside him and they prepared to pass through together.
The door suddenly swung open, a particularly bright shaft of sunlight slicing through the darkness.
And in that moment they both saw the figure.
The figure moving towards them.
Four
He had heard the sounds inside the church and wondered who had come to disturb his work.
Now Mark Channing watched as the two small boys ran screaming from the building.
He stood still for a moment, scratching his chin, wondering why his appearance had so terrified the visitors. Hadn’t they noticed his car parked on the Western side of the church? Obviously not, he reasoned, watching as the two figures hurtled from the door and out into the sunshine beyond. The church was silent again, the way Channing liked it. He smiled to himself and turned back into the chancel, pushing the door shut behind him.
Two battery-powered lights illuminated the chancel itself, throwing out a cold white glow which cast everything into deep shadow. Channing poured himself a cup of tea from the thermos flask in his bag and stood sipping it, looking around him.
To his left the stairs which led up into the belfry thrust upwards into even more cloying darkness. To his right, supporting the two lamps, was the altar. Or what had once been an altar.
It was a piece of flat stone, marble-smooth and relatively unmarked. He had spread several of his notepads out on it. A package of sandwiches and the remains of a half-eaten pork pie he’d consumed about half an hour ago also lay there, like offerings to some culinary deity.
The windows on either side of the chancel were, like the windows in the remainder of the church, now missing. Boarded up like those in the nave.
Channing’s work on the church had revealed that the stonework around the windows had been chipped away, indicating that the windows had been removed. Actually physically taken from their place in the stone, frames and everything. Their absence was not the result of an act of vandalism but of careful, reasoned thought.
But thought which had its basis in superstition and fear.
Channing knew the church and the surrounding area well. He knew them by association. By what he’d read and what he’d written. This was the first time that he’d ever been inside the place, though.
He’d arrived in France five days earlier and he’d been working at the church for the last three. He didn’t have to seek anyone’s permission to enter the building. No one in any of the towns or villages close by seemed to care that he was going to be working there and Channing had been unable to discover who owned the land on which the old building stood. The church was one of the few remaining testaments to the fact that, at one time, this part of Brittany had been the domain of that province’s richest inhabitant.
But that had been over four hundred years ago.
Channing had sought out the church for a number of reasons. He had been owed some holiday from his post as a senior lecturer at Balliol, so he’d taken the opportunity to come to Brittany for a break as much as anything else. But his main objective had been to see the church he’d previously only read about.
Its owner, however, was more familiar to him, having been the subject of a treatise he’d written two years earlier. It had been featured in a book produced by one of the country’s top publishers. The book’s title escaped him (although he remembered it as a flippant, under-researched tome; apart from his own piece, of course). The name of his subject didn’t.
The former owner of this dank, deserted place had been Gilles de Rais.
During the fourteenth century, de Rais had been responsible for the ritual murders of over two hundred children, many of them in the church where Channing now stood. The church had merely been part of de Rais’ vast estate called Machecoul. The man had been a hero in his native country; he was made a Marshal of France for his part in the fighting against the English during the Hundred Years War and, at the height of his power, he had been rumoured to be the richest nobleman in all of Europe. But his love of expensive living and a horde of parasitic advisers, all siphoning money from de Rais’ coffers, had eventually turned him from rich man to bankrupt.
It was then that he had turned to alchemy.
Then that the killings had begun.
Channing sipped more tea and again glanced around the chancel, his attention focused on the boarded-up windows.
As he turned he saw something glinting dully; one of the rapier-like spears of sunlight, forcing its way into the gloom, bounced back off something to his left.
The historian put down his cup and crossed the chancel, careful not to obstruct the shaft of light.
Below a gap in the stone left by the removal of a window there was a tiny square of luminosity, as if something within the stone itself were burning.
Channing took a small chisel from the bag which lay beside the altar and began tapping at the area around the glowing square, gradually realizing that the sunlight was
striking glass:
Coloured glass.
He frowned.
The stonework was old and brittle but still remarkably strong and resistant to the chisel, so much so that Channing hit it with the heel of his hand.
A crack appeared in the wall, running rapidly from one part of the stonework to another for a distance of about two feet. Several small pieces of rock fell to the floor, their sound amplified by the silence within the chancel.
Channing reached for the small mallet that lay on the altar and, steadying himself, used it to strike the chisel.
Another crack appeared in the stone.
A larger lump fell away.
He was breathing heavily now as he continued to chip away at the crumbling stonework.
More rock came away, falling at his feet.
Then finally he saw what the stone had hidden.
Channing swallowed hard, his eyes widening as he peered through the gloom, the sunlight which had forced its way into the chancel now fading.
Only the light from the battery lamps illuminated what he saw.
He licked his lips, his heart thudding hard against his ribs as he stared.
Only two words escaped him, muffled by the darkness and silence within the church, but low because of his own shock. He stared on, unblinking.
‘Jesus Christ,’ he murmured.
Five
Channing’s hands were shaking as he twisted the key in the ignition.
The car roared into life at the first attempt and the historian jammed it into gear, guiding it over the gently undulating land towards the road that would lead him back to the nearby village of Machecoul. The sun was still high in the sky but more clouds were beginning to fill the heavens, some dark. Every now and then they would obscure the sun and the land would be momentarily cloaked in shadow. The wind which had been blowing all day seemed to have strengthened. As he drove, Channing saw that the trees by the roadside were swaying more violently with each gust.
He gripped the wheel tightly, aware that his palms were moist. Tiny droplets of perspiration had beaded on his forehead.
Not all of them the product of the warmth inside the car.
What he’d found in the church had surprised him. No, he corrected himself, it had shocked him. Shaken him. Not merely because he had not been expecting it but also by its nature.
The vision of what he had left behind there was still strong in his mind, seared into his consciousness like some kind of brand.
He shuddered as he drove, angry with himself for his initial reaction, but unable to shake the feeling of shock nonetheless.
He administered a swift mental rebuke, angered that his own professionalism had been tested and found wanting. His self-control had cracked just like the stonework in the church.
He turned the car swiftly along the winding road, anxious to reach the village and the small inn where he was staying. Anxious to get to a phone.
There was a call he had to make.
He slowed his speed slightly as he reached the outskirts of Machecoul, guiding the car around the stalls which occupied the market place. The residents of the village were busy going about their business. Farmers had brought produce in from local farms to sell and, as he parked the car outside the inn, Channing could hear voices filtering through the air, arguing good-naturedly, bartering, laughing.
But that scene of rural life was not for him. He had more important things on his mind.
He scuttled into the small, white-painted inn, noticing how cool it felt compared to outside. The plump woman who ran the place gave him the key to his room and was about to ask him if he was all right when he disappeared in the direction of the stairs that led up to his bedroom.
There were only about ten rooms let to guests and most of those, at the moment, were empty.
Channing let himself in, crossed straight to the phone beside his bed and picked up the receiver.
He dialled, cursing under his breath when he realized he’d forgotten the international code for England. He dialled again. The international code, then the code for London, then the number he required.
His hand was shaking slightly.
He held the receiver to his ear, listening to the assortment of pops, crackles and hisses that ran down the line as his number was connected. At the far end the phone was ringing.
And ringing.
‘Come on,’ he murmured, impatiently.
And ringing.
‘Hello,’ a feminine voice began.
‘Hello Cath,’ he said breathlessly.
The other voice continued.
‘This is Catherine Roberts. I’m afraid there’s no one here at the moment ...’
‘Shit,’ rasped Channing, slamming the phone down. Bloody answering machine. He waited a second then dialled again and waited.
The same metallic voice greeted him and he was about to replace the receiver a second time when he heard a buzz as the machine was switched off. ‘Hello,’ the voice repeated.
‘Cath, is that you?’ he said.
‘Yes, who’s that?’ the woman on the other end asked.
‘It’s Mark Channing. I didn’t want to talk to that bloody machine.’
‘I just walked through the door,’ she explained. ‘I thought you were in Brittany.’
‘I am. Listen to me, Cath. I’ve been to the church at Machecoul,’ he told her, his voice low, almost breathless. ‘There’s something there. You have to see it.’
‘What is it?’ she wanted to know.
‘When can you fly out?’
‘Mark, for God’s sake,’ she began, almost laughing. ‘I can’t just drop everything.’
‘You have to,’ he insisted, and she was aware of the anxiety in his voice. ‘This is important. It’s in your field.’
‘My field?’ she said vaguely, puzzled by his urgency.
‘You’re an art historian, for Christ’s sake,’ he snarled, as if he needed to remind her of her profession. ‘A medievalist. I need you to look at what I’ve found. I need your help.’
Six
COUNTY CORK, THE REPUBLIC OF IRELAND:
The line of cocaine seemed almost phosphorescent in the dimly-lit bedroom.
Laura Callahan, her naked body covered by a thin sheen of perspiration, swept the long brown hair from her face and knelt beside the table where the coke was waiting. Two razor-blades lay close by.
She pressed the first two fingers of her right hand against her right nostril and carefully, lovingly pushed the tip of her nose into the line, smiling broadly as she caught the first few grains of powder. Laura inhaled, sliding over the table as she drew the fine white powder into her nostril. She writhed, her eyes closed in ecstasy, feeling the coldness growing inside her nostril as she took in more and more of the coke. As she slithered over the polished wood she looked down and saw her reflection. The sight pleased her.
Her body was firm, her breasts small but the nipples hard. She paused for a moment to admire her reflection. The flat stomach, the smooth hips and the tiny triangle of dark hair between her legs. She allowed one finger to stir the tightly-curled pubic hair, teasing herself for a second before returning to the line of cocaine.
She snorted the remainder then rolled off the table, her breath coming in gasps.
As she rolled over she pressed her legs tightly together and felt moisture beading on her upper thighs. She sat up, one finger stirring the swollen outer lips of her vagina, tracing a pattern over the warm wet flesh until she reached the hardened nub of her clitoris.
She gasped as she stroked it.
Cocaine flecked her nose and her upper lip and she flicked her tongue out to remove it, feeling the same momentary numbness in her mouth as she did in her nose. She giggled, then crawled across towards the bed, towards the man who lay there waiting for her.
He too was naked, his erection throbbing against his stomach as he lay back, a drink cradled in one of his large hands.
She kissed his right foot as she pulled up onto the
bed. Then, moving higher, she kissed his shins, his knees, his thighs. Only here she paused, allowing her tongue to dart out and taste the flesh of his leg. She bit it gently then licked, leaving a trail of saliva as she moved closer to his groin.
David Callahan watched, an amused smile on his face. He reached down and slowly entwined some of her long hair around his hand, gripping it, pulling her up higher until her mouth was in line with his penis.
He grinned as she kissed the bulbous head, allowing her tongue to creep into the narrow eye of the glans, licking away a dribble of clear fluid.
As she sat up she saw the lines of coke on his body.
One ran from each of his shoulders down as far as his groin.
She looked at him and laughed, kissing his chest, careful not to disturb the precious white powder. Then, beginning with the line at his left shoulder, she snorted her way down his body until the musky smell of his pubic hair, already matted with her own secretions from earlier on, mingled with the coke.
She laid her head on his stomach this time, careful not to displace the other line with her hair. Then, slowly, she moved her head forward, her lips enveloping his penis, her tongue slithering around the shaft. With one hand she began to massage his swollen testicles, allowing her free hand to reach back between her own legs, to stir the wetness there.
She felt other fingers alongside her own and then Callahan himself was pushing first his index finger then his middle finger into her dripping cleft, his thumb rubbing- her clitoris, making her moan softly as she continued to suck his erection.
She sat up, his fingers still inside her, anxious to reach the second line of cocaine.
Laura took it into her other nostril this time, breathing it in as she slid down once more towards Callahan’s groin. This time, she took his penis into her mouth and kept it there. Sucking and kissing as he pushed his fingers into her with increasing speed, smiling as he felt the liquid pleasure covering the probing digits.
She stroked his thighs and rubbed his scrotum, aware that he, like she herself, was reaching a climax. Laura prepared herself for his ejaculation, clamping her mouth more firmly onto his throbbing organ as she felt his penis jerk, heard him grunt with pleasure.
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