Dark Legion

by John Glasby

  DARK LEGION

  John Glasby

  © 2017 by the Estate of John Glasby

  John Glasby has asserted his rights under the Copyright, Design and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as the author of this work.

  This edition published in 2017 by Venture Press, an imprint of Endeavour Press Ltd.

  Table of Contents

  Chapter One – The Grey Shade

  Chapter Two – The Coming of the Fear

  Chapter Three – The Standing Stones

  Chapter Four – The Dark God Hunters

  Chapter Five – The Haunted and the Damned

  Chapter Six – The Satanists

  Chapter Seven – The Shadow Over Tormount

  Chapter Eight – Flight from Evil

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  Chapter One – The Grey Shade

  The storm that had lain threateningly over the western horizon for most of the night finally broke over the dark countryside a little after three o’clock in the morning. There was a vivid flash of lightning, an explosion of deep-throated sound that cracked at his eardrums even above the sound of the car engine and then the battering of rain on the windscreen.

  With an effort, Terence Amberley forced his mind out of the dark, silent depths; knew he had been driving too long without a rest. Easing himself more upright in his seat, he gripped the wheel, peering through the lashing spray where the wipers strove gallantly to clear the glass, the probing headlights rising and falling hypnotically as the car bumped over the uneven road.

  He reckoned he was still fifty miles or so from his destination and eased the pressure on the accelerator a little in spite of the sensation of urgent haste that prompted him to do otherwise. In places, the road narrowed so that two cars could pass only with difficulty — not that there had been much traffic on this road at this ungodly hour of the morning.

  He had left the motorway behind half an hour before, veering eastwards along narrow, winding roads that seemed to be leading him nowhere in the all-enshrouding wet blackness. He peered at the wavering world which showed in brief, tantalising glimpses whenever the beams of the headlights touched the writhing branches of titan-armed trees or the looming barrier of a tall hedge whenever the road turned abruptly.

  At least, he reflected grimly, the weather was now in tune with his mission. Just the sort of prelude to a funeral.

  It was still hard to fully believe that his brother was dead. The message left on his telephone had been brief, had told him little, too little for him to know what he might be heading into. There had been an inquest, held two days before, which meant that Malcolm had not died an ordinary death. There were other, curiously worrying aspects that did not add up in his mind,

  He tightened his grip on the wheel, spinning it sharply as a sudden bend loomed up out of the rain and the darkness. Better not to clutter up his mind with ideas of what might have happened, better to wait until he reached Tormount, get some of the answers there if he could. Treherne, his brother’s life-long friend, who had left that urgent message, might be able to provide them for him.

  An hour later, the road dipped sharply. There was a cluster of orange sodium lights at the bottom of the hill. A sign by the side of the road confirmed that this was Tenterton. Not much further to go now.

  It had been a long drive and he had been unable to snatch even an hour’s sleep before setting out from London. Had it been possible, he would have avoided coming to the funeral. Malcolm was his only brother but they had not seen each other, nor corresponded for more than three years. But he had heard things concerning Malcolm’s activities here in this small Midland village set among the hills and far off the beaten track; strange things, which had disturbed him greatly at the time. If any of those odd rumours had been true it might explain, at least in part, some of the mysterious circumstances surrounding his brother’s death.

  He glanced at his wristwatch. Four-thirty-five. It would be around dawn when he finally arrived. Already there was a pale grey streak just showing along the wooded skyline.

  The dawn brightened swiftly as the storm abated. Into vision came the rain-dripping hedges, the slatted gates on either side, opening out into sodden fields with here and there a brief, fragmentary glimpse of a farmhouse, white-roofed, standing at the bottom of a grassy slope.

  Tormount came into view over the brow of a low hill. Many of the houses were hidden behind the tall trees with the single, main street running through the village like a pale grey scar on the landscape, climbing the steep rise on the far side beyond the more distant houses. It was almost five years since he had last visited Tormount, but little seemed to have changed much in the intervening years. An isolated backwater, with a history that stretched back for almost twelve centuries, it remained untouched by the outside world, events tending to pass it by rather than altering it.

  He drove past the high, stone gates of the manor standing tall and grim at the end of the long avenue of beeches, leaves and branches hanging limply in the still air and made his way through the deserted main street, pulling up in front of the house a hundred yards beyond the ivy-clad tower of the twelfth-century parish church. Wearily, he switched off the ignition, sat for a moment in the sudden quiet that flooded about him.

  Then he got out of the car. The nearby church clock chimed the quarter hour. Five-fifteen. It had taken him longer than he had thought. A weakening reluctance held him for a moment as he stood in front of the door, then he pulled himself together and knocked loudly.

  At length the door was opened and Ralph Treherne stood there, hair disarrayed, his face strangely unfamiliar and darkened by a stubble of beard. He motioned Amberley inside, closed the door swiftly behind him with an almost furtive motion.

  ‘I’m glad you were able to come so quickly, Terry,’ said the other, ushering him into the front parlour. ‘I didn’t mean you to travel through the night but now you’re here it takes a load off my mind. Sit down and I’ll get you a stiff drink. You look as if you need one.’

  ‘Thanks.’ Terence lowered himself gratefully into the chair near the hearth where the ashes of the previous night’s fire still made a feeble attempt at redness, giving out no warmth to his numbed body. He stretched his legs out straight in front of him. ‘I gathered from your message that the funeral was to be early this afternoon and I didn’t want to arrive in the middle of it.’

  The other came back with the drink, waited until Terence had drunk down half of the raw whisky before speaking. ‘In the circumstances, I didn’t know what to do. I found your present address and telephone number among some of Malcolm’s papers and rang you immediately after the inquest. You were out, so I left that message.’

  He gave Terence a quick glance, as if searching for encouragement. ‘I got the impression from Malcolm that you weren’t exactly close during the past few years. He mentioned you once or twice, but that was all.’

  ‘I suppose we’ve both been pretty busy with our own work and he seemed to prefer to shut himself away down here, going about those odd researches of his.’

  Terence noticed the strangely guilty way Treherne’s gaze slid away from his at the mention of his brother’s work, knew with a sudden certainty that there was more to this than he had at first believed. He was not too tired after the long night journey to know that Treherne, for all his outward appearance of calm, was a very frightened man.

  The other took a nervous turn about the room, clutching his glass tightly in his right hand. His slippered feet made little padding noises on the uncarpeted port
ions of the floor. Finally, he stopped near the window, twitched the heavy curtain aside for a moment and peered down into the street, then let the curtain fall back into place.

  ‘Would you mind telling me how my brother died?’ Terence asked, as an uneasy silence fell. ‘I presume that, since there was an inquest, something about his death was not straightforward.’

  ‘I’m afraid there were a great many things about Malcolm’s death which were far from being straightforward.’ Treherne gulped down the remainder of his drink. ‘The place where his body was discovered, the way in which he died and perhaps most of all, the very nature of the things he was investigating.’

  ‘I’m afraid I don’t understand.’ Terence sat back in his chair, feeling a little of the shock return at the other’s words.

  Treherne sat down, hands between his knees, looking at the empty glass. As he lifted his head, Terence realised how much older the other looked since he had last met him in London. The lines around his eyes and across his forehead were cut much deeper and the hair at his temples was now grey, almost white.

  ‘This is a county of superstition, Terry. It’s more deeply rooted here than perhaps anywhere else outside of Cornwall. There are mysteries here that have survived since before the Middle Ages. They’ve become an integral part of the life here, which not even the efforts of the church can eradicate, though God knows each succeeding vicar has tried. Witchcraft, the raising of the dead, ghosts, the supernatural — call it what you like. It all goes under the one name here — Black Magic.’

  ‘And you believe that Malcolm was somehow caught up in this?’ Had the other not been so serious, the idea would have seemed laughable.

  ‘I know he was. Not in the sense you mean it. His was a strictly scientific investigation of the old legends. He was trying to prove something — the continued existence of evil down the centuries.’ He paused impatiently. ‘No, don’t look at me like that. I know his death has been a shock to me, but I also know what I’m saying. This place reeks of evil. Nowhere is it more pronounced than among the standing stones on the outskirts of the village where your brother’s body was found four days ago.’

  ‘Go on,’ said Terence as the other hesitated. ‘What happened?’

  ‘He must have gone up there late at night, probably looking for something. He was convinced there were peculiar psychic forces still present there, used to spend hours wandering around, poking among those stones. When he hadn’t returned the following morning, I decided to go and look for him. There are some dangerous potholes in the area. In the dark a man could quite easily fall and break a leg.’

  Terence sensed that the other was finding it difficult to get to the point.

  ‘I found him easily enough. He was lying face-downward in the middle of the circle of stones. I thought at first he had fallen, hit his head and knocked himself out. Then I turned him over and — It was horrible. I never want to see a face like that again for the rest of my life. But it wasn’t just that. There was a knife driven into his chest, clear up to the hilt and his fingers were still clenched tightly around the haft.’

  ‘You mean he had killed himself?’ Amberley sat back, astonished, shocked.

  Treherne stared fixedly at him. ‘You knew Malcolm as well as I did. He’d never take his own life.’

  ‘Then what are you trying to say? That he was murdered?’

  ‘The coroner didn’t think so. It was mentioned briefly, as a possibility, but dismissed almost at once. There was too much evidence against it. The only prints on the knife were his own and Doctor Harmon testified that he had died almost immediately and it would have been virtually impossible for anyone to have placed his fingers around the knife as they were found. Then too, there was the question of footprints.

  ‘It had been raining early that night and the ground there was muddy, leaving clear prints. There were only Malcolm’s anywhere in the vicinity, apart from mine, of course.’

  ‘Then it seems an open and shut case,’ Terence said, pouring himself another drink. The room had brightened now as the dawn changed from a pale grey to yellow. Although Terence had warned himself to stay alert, the strain of the night was reaching him now.

  ‘I wish I could be as sure of that as the coroner was,’ retorted the other, rising. ‘But there are so many loose ends to this case which no one seems able to tie up. Apart from the fact that Malcolm was not the kind of man to commit suicide, the knife was never satisfactorily explained. I’d never seen it before and I knew your brother better than most. If he had had it in that bizarre collection of his, I would have noticed it. I’m certain of that. No, Terry, I’ve had plenty of time to think about this case and I’m more convinced than ever that your brother was murdered.’

  ‘You are surely not trying to tell me that someone could have stabbed him to death and not only left no clues, but did it so that all of the evidence pointed to suicide?’

  Treherne smiled thinly. ‘I don’t blame you for being sceptical about this entire affair. But you haven’t been as close to it as I have all these years. In a way, I suppose, I saw this coming a long time ago, but there was nothing I could do about it. I think he discovered something during his later researches, something that eventually dominated his mind, made him drive that dagger into his heart.’

  ‘Oh, come now.’ Terence walked over to the window looking out over the rain-soaked fields. He could see a narrow lane winding between tall hedges, climbing over the brow of a distant hill and on top of the smoothly-rounded crest, standing out starkly against the dawn sky, tall stone columns which lifted their incongruous bulk to the heavens as if in defiance of Man and of God. It was up there he knew, that Malcolm had met his death.

  ‘You don’t believe me.’ There was no emotion in Treherne’s voice. ‘But remember that this isn’t London. We’re a lot closer to the old things here than in the city. Those of us who are wise enough to see things as they are and not how we would like them to be, can often sense these overtones of evil. Your brother did, on many occasions before his death.’

  ‘I didn’t say that I don’t believe you, but good God man, this isn’t the Dark Ages.’

  ‘I agree.’ The other moved towards the door. ‘I hope you will be able to stay on in Tormount a few days after the funeral. I think you may change your mind about a great number of things if you do.’ He looked at Amberley searchingly for a moment. ‘Naturally, you must stay here until the funeral, at least. I’ll show you the spare room upstairs.’

  *

  Terence clenched his fingers around the handle of the car door as they entered the iron-barred gateway of the small cemetery. The beeches stood tall and dark and dripping with rain. The funeral cortège had halted in front of the ivy-clad church. He opened the door of the car, got out, his eyes on the silent rows of moss-blotched tombstones, cold and grey in the ravelling mist.

  Treherne came around the rear of the car and together they walked over the loose gravel chips. The thin, drifting mist that had risen during the early afternoon clung wraithlike around the slender trunks of the trees and seeped with a cold, clammy touch through his overcoat, embracing and muffling the whole of the churchyard.

  The coffin was lifted from the back of the hearse and carried slowly along the narrow, winding pathway, between two of the tall beeches, to the small plot of ground where the freshly-dug grave yawned in the wet, dismal earth.

  The Reverend Ventnor stood with his head lowered, scarcely glanced up as the small procession approached. Carefully, the coffin was lowered into the grave, the ropes thrown with a dull rattle on top of the polished wood and gleaming brass.

  Amberley stood with his hands clasped loosely in front of him, glancing at the other mourners out of the corner of his eye. He recognized a few of the villagers, their features inscrutable; Doctor Harmon, grey-haired, looking older than his fifty-seven years. There were other men there whose faces meant nothing, opened no doors of memory in his mind.

  They stood in an uneasy group around the edges of th
e grave. Amberley felt the mist clogging the back of his throat, suppressed the desire to cough. The vicar stepped forward to the head of the open grave, the book in his hands, a purple marker lying limply across the open page. He began to speak softly, yet with a vibrant timbre that made his words easily heard by all present.

  ‘Man that is born of woman has but a little time to stay on Earth for his days are numbered and even in the midst of life, we are in death. Yet the Lord has promised that on the Day of Judgment shall we all be raised up, the graves shall open and let forth their dead and all men shall be judged according to their works. For that which thou sowest on Earth, so shall thou reap.’

  Amberley heard the other’s words as though from a great distance. Standing there, it was as if he was an interloper here, had no part in this funereal ceremony. Dirt and stones rattled briefly and hollowly on top of the coffin. The sound cut through the mist-muffling stillness. Someone nearby coughed, shuffled their feet in the wet earth and leaves.

  Ventnor’s voice came again, as strong and monotonous as before: ‘Ashes to ashes, dust to dust. We now commend the body of this, our brother departed, to the earth from whence he came, in the sure and certain knowledge that God, in his infinite mercy, will forgive those sins of his on Earth and raise up his soul unto eternal life. Amen.’

  Amberley switched his gaze to where Treherne stood a few feet away, his head downcast, staring into the open brown gash in the earth. His eyes had the fixed, half-seeing look of a man in a daze, unaware of what was going on around him. Then, as the gravedigger moved forward, dragging his spade over the dirt, he lifted his head with an obvious effort. Amberley saw the sudden gust of expression that flashed over the other’s saturnine features, saw him flinch and struggle to steady himself.

  For a second, he thought that it was simply the knowledge that Malcolm lay down there, encased in that coffin, which had brought the look of horror to the other’s face. Then he saw, with a sudden shock, that Treherne was not looking down into the grave, but over the vicar’s stooped figure, in the direction of the mist-shrouded trees on the far edge of the graveyard. Turning his head, he followed the other’s fear-filled glance. Everything seemed suddenly deathly still.