“And that’s what you were looking for when we found you?”
“Exactly. I’d been inside for an hour or so, and I’d covered maybe half the floor area before you stopped me. I found nothing but rubble and ruined carpets. The search of the remainder of the house will go faster in daylight with more of us looking, and without the need for stealth.”
“And at least we’ll see any shite before we stand in it,” Wiggins said as they left the SUV by the roadside and walked up the slope of the driveway toward the burnt-out ruins.
*
When they reached the main doorway, Seton pointed to the left to what looked to have been the main living areas in the past.
“I went through all of that side of the house,” he said. “As I said, nothing but rubble and rotted carpets. There’s an old library, but the books were obviously mostly lost in the fire, which is a damned shame. So we go right. If I remember the floor plans correctly, there’s a kitchen through the back, and the rest is servant’s quarters in the main, with a laundry room and a couple of small bedrooms for the staff. It shouldn’t take us too long.”
“And it will go even faster if we move in pairs,” Hynd said as they moved through a long hallway. He saw what must be the kitchen at the far end.
“Sarge, you and Wiggo check all the rooms along this hall here, and Sandy and I will take the kitchen and whatever else might be though there. We’ll meet at the far end in five; shout if you find anything before then.”
He walked down the hall, then turned when he realized Seton was lagging behind. The older man looked gray around the face and wore deep black shadows under both eyes, but he waved away Banks’ concern.
“I’ve been after this thing for 50 years, Captain,” he said. “I can manage a couple of hours of pain now that we’re closing in.”
“Are we? Closing in, I mean? It feels like it’s the one that’s been dictating tactics so far. All we’ve been doing is reacting.”
“I know it seems like that to you, Captain,” Seton replied. “But trust me, I can feel it in my bones.”
“That might just be your broken ribs giving you gip,” Banks said with a smile, and pushed fully aside a heavy oak door that partially blocked the entrance to the room at the end of the hallway. He held Seton back with his free hand as he leaned inside, weapon raised, but the room was quiet and empty. He’d been right, it was a large country kitchen, or rather it had been at one time; the ravages of fire had removed any charm it might have had. There was no roof left, although the remnants of burned timber and slates lay scattered everywhere across the floor. There were marks on the tiled floor where a large range had once sat, and another that had probably been the spot for a fridge, but somebody had salvaged the appliances, possibly for scrap, some years past. Now there was only ruin and bare, tumbledown walls.
Seton kicked rubble aside with his feet in an effort to check the flooring below for a cellar hatchway, while Banks made a circle of the room, checking inside the old walk-in larders for any partially hidden traps or doors.
“It’s a hundred years since your man Crowley was here,” Banks said after five minutes of fruitless searching, tapping on walls and stamping on the floor. “We might as well be looking for one of Jimmy Page’s guitar picks…in fact, I’m pretty sure we’d have more luck in that department.”
“Nil desperandum, Captain. There’s an entrance here on the grounds somewhere, there has to be. The journals were most clear on that point.”
Banks didn’t point out that many people were known to exaggerate in their memoirs or that although he knew little of The Great Beast, what he had read of rituals and magick and Thelema had not convinced him of its veracity. He stopped looking around while Seton banged on walls he’d already banged on several minutes earlier.
Hynd and Wiggins came in a minute or so later, and a shake of the sarge’s head told Banks all he needed to know.
“Light them if you’ve got them, lads,” Banks said. “It looks like we’re up a blind alley.”
“At least it’s not shite creek,” Wiggins said as the private passed out cigarettes.
“Shite, that’s what I’ve forgotten,” Seton said after he’d had his first puff.
“You need a shite, wee man?” Wiggins said laughing. “I’ve heard that tobacco can do that to auld plumbing.”
“No, I forgot about the house’s sewage. There was an outhouse here once upon a time before modern indoor plumbing came to the Highlands. Crowley used some of the foundations and built his shed over the same spot, at least that’s what his journals say.”
“The shed where he did his experiments?”
“Exactly, and where there was an outhouse, there would have been at least a hole in the ground, maybe even a drain or a sewer. It might be a way down in any case.”
“So, we’re looking for a shithouse now, are we?” Wiggins said. “This day keeps getting better and better.”
*
Banks allowed Seton to take the lead as they went out through a hole in the rear wall of the house to what had obviously once been an extensive garden.
“I’ll ask again,” Wiggins said. “What are we looking for?”
“Shite, and plenty of it,” Hynd said. He pointed out over what had once been lawn. “And look, we’ve found it.”
“Bloody hell, Sarge,” Wiggins said. “When I called you the shite whisperer, I didn’t mean you to take it literally”
The 20 or so mounds of dung in the garden looked superficially like molehills but, like the pile they’d found previously at their night stop in the cottage, these were basketball sized and bigger. Banks wondered if bits of Corporal McCally might not be strewn around on the grass inside the piles, and pushed the thought away, angry just for thinking it.
Seton had gone quiet studying the area.
“There’s more over to the left here than anywhere else,” he said, and marched quickly away from them, picking his way among the piles.
“I never thought I’d see a grown man so excited about shite,” Wiggins said.
If Seton heard him, he didn’t show it, and the older man now stood amid a concentrated area of dung, looking down at his feet and kicking grass and dirt, and dung, aside.
“Found something,” he shouted a minute later. “It looks like foundations. Get over here. This might be what we’re looking for.”
They walked to where Seton stood in the longer grass, having to step carefully to avoid more tumbled timber. The wood was older and much more rotted than that in the kitchen and it lay surrounded by old dry brickwork at ground level that had been laid in a rough rectangle some 15 feet by 10 feet in shape.
“It’s the shed, it’s Crowley’s shed. It has to be,” Seton said, and the auld man looked 10 years younger, his excitement masking any pain he was still feeling. “If the entrance is anywhere, it’s right here, right under our feet.”
*
It only took them 10 minutes to find the entrance but they were tough minutes of shifting rock, wood, and matted grass aside to try to find the old floor. Hynd finally found a palm-sized iron ring in what remained of the flooring. A strong tug brought up a hatch, and also sent a hefty portion of rotted wood down into the hole below with a tumbling rustle and thud that told them they were above an entrance to some greater depths below.
Initially, Banks was worried that they might not get any farther; if there were wooden stairs, they were going to be as rotted as the crumbling timbers of the floor and far too dangerous. But when he switched on his rifle light and waved it down the hole, the beam shone on stone and a set of worn gray steps leading down into the blackness. Banks took a deep breath through his nose, checking for signs of corruption or noxious gases, but the air seemed clear enough, and even smelled better than the stink of dung that surrounded them up above.
“A gateway to hell you said?” Banks asked Seton.
“Not my words, but Crowley’s,” Seton replied with a grin. “But as you said yourself, that was a hundred years and more a
go—maybe it’s frozen over? Now are we going to stand around here chatting, or are we going down to find the beast?”
As before, Seton refused to consider staying up top to wait.
“If this is Crowley’s pit, then you might need my expertise, or at least my opinion. It’s my ribs that hurt, not my legs. I’ll manage stairs just fine.”
Wiggins passed Seton a pair of night vision goggles, helped him put them on and quickly explained their operation, then Banks had Hynd lead the way, with Wiggins following.
“Ladies first,” he said to Seton and ushered him forward, waiting until the old man’s head was below the level of the floor before taking his first step down into the dark.
*
The night goggles gave everything a greenish cast, and Hynd’s gun light showed almost brilliant white some 10 yards below. They descended in a narrow passage, hardly any wider than the width of their shoulders, the steps steep enough to make them move cautiously, for although the stone was dry and not slippery, none of them wanted to tumble way and down into an unknown darkness.
Hynd came on the headset after a few minutes.
“Something on the wall the auld man should see, Cap. It’s about 20 steps below your position. We’ll hold here until he gets to it. Follow Wiggo’s light. Nothing ahead yet but more steps.”
By the time Banks reached the other men’s position, Seton was already studying the wall on the left. It appeared to have been daubed with crude paintings in red and creamy-white, of both men wielding spears and animals running, mostly deer by the look of it.
“Your man Crowley’s work?” Banks asked.
Seton took long seconds to reply.
“No, Captain. These are thousands, perhaps tens of thousands of years old. It is a major archaeological find all in its own right. Done by members of an ancient hunting cult if I’m not mistaken.”
“But hunting what?” Wiggins asked. “There’s nae deer down here.”
“Maybe they were holding their initiation rituals, down here in the dark. Caves are often seen as liminal places, where the border between natural and supernatural is thin. The Greeks, for example—”
“Maybe later, Sandy, eh?” Banks said, tapping at the wall. “Interesting as this may be, we’re after bigger prey.”
Wiggins turned his light away from the wall, and that was the signal for the descent to begin again.
*
As they went deeper, the air got thicker, and Banks now smelled a definite odor of animal, and, strangely, tasted salt at his lips and tongue. At the same time, Hynd came back on the con. He was almost whispering.
“It’s opening out ahead, Cap, and there’s dim light ahead. Thirty steps down from you. I’ll provide cover for all of you, but probably best to keep things quiet on the way down.”
Banks moved forward to tap Seton on the shoulder, and, with a finger to his lips, caution the man to silence when he turned. They continued down, slowly. They could no longer see the brilliant white of the sarge’s gun light below, but the opening they were making for glowed dimly, a wavering green aurora like the faintest of Northern Lights.
They found the source of the light show when they stepped out of the stairwell, and onto a wide rocky ledge overlooking a shimmering underground lake.
- 13 -
The lake itself was the source of the luminescence, either by some quality of the rock, or by a biological agent, Banks couldn’t tell. He only knew it was strangely beautiful and was held rapt by sight of the wide, cavernous area, the size of two football fields at least. The water was 10 feet or so below his feet. The rocky roof of the cavern hung 10 yards above them, reflecting some of the lake’s shimmer back on itself. Pale and ghostly thread-like stalactites dropped down over the water like some rough upended pincushion. Banks was so enamored of the scene he almost didn’t spot that Seton had moved along the ledge to their left to study a tall stone cross that had been erected on the edge above the water.
“This isn’t thousands of years old,” Banks said as he stepped over for a look. “Is this one Crowley’s doing do you think?”
Seton had a close look at the carvings that ran the full height.
“No, this is Pictish. And it’s not thousands, but probably at least one thousand years old, maybe a tad older. We’re not the first to be dazzled by the beauty of this place. As I said, many cultures revere caves and caverns, and to them, this must have appeared a truly magical place.”
“They weren’t the last ones here before us either,” Hynd said from behind and to their left. “Have a look at this.”
A secondary, small cave, not natural but hewn out of the rock by metal tools judging by the strike marks, sat, almost hidden in shadows, where the ledge met the main cavern wall. There was nothing in it but two slightly rusted iron cages, each of them the size that might contain a large dog. The floor, both in and outside the cages, was strewn with the bones and skulls of small animals. Banks was no expert, but it looked like they might be rabbits and sheep, and possibly a few dogs and cats.
“This, on the other hand, is most probably Crowley’s doing,” Seton said. “Remember I told you that the locals were reporting missing pets?”
“What the fuck was he doing keeping animals way down here in the dark?” Wiggins asked.
“I told you that before too,” the older man said. “Alchemical experimentation, with the required result being a chimera, of some kind, and the end result being immortality for Crowley himself.”
“I’m guessing that didn’t work out too fucking well for him? He’s been dead a while now, hasn’t he? I’m glad the fucker didn’t succeed. Cruel wanker.”
*
They had been speaking in whispers since arriving on the ledge, but Banks’ wasn’t sure it was necessary. When he went back to look over the lake, he could see that nothing disturbed the water, not even a ripple; it looked like a sheet of smoky green glass with only a thin film of liquid on top. The sides of the cavern ran smooth and sheer into the water around the edges, and there was no sign of any other ledge, or any cave entrances that he could see.
“It’s here, somewhere,” Seton said at his side, still whispering. “Can’t you smell it?”
“Aye. I smelled the stench most of the way down yon steps. That, and salt water. I’m guessing there might be something to yon theory about an underground channel to the sea?”
“I think it’s more than likely the passage in and out to the firth is here somewhere,” Seton replied. “But as I said, it hasn’t taken flight, maybe because you injured it in the fight at the castle. Whatever the case, it’s still here. And if we can smell it so clearly, it’s close and hiding, suddenly cautious. I doubt it has ever encountered a gun before.”
“Aye, about that,” Banks said. “Do you have any idea why our shots to the body had so little effect?”
“Fat, probably,” Seton replied. “Otters, and indeed most aquatic mammals, have a very thick fatty layer. It would be like firing into a big lump of solid lard trying to get to the actual meat, bone, and sinew on the other side of it.”
That made sense of what Banks had seen at the castle site. A direct shot to the head had been the only thing to give the beast pause. He turned to Wiggins.
“Here that, Wiggo? Headshots only.”
“Aye, Cap. Either that or a couple up the jacksie should get the job done.”
Banks looked around for Hynd.
The sergeant was at the far end of the ledge from the tall Pictish cross, looking down over the edge toward the lake surface.
“We’ve got more steps here, Cap,” he said. He had spoken softly but his voice echoed and carried clearly in the cavern. Banks looked up, wondering if they might dislodge some roosting bats, but there didn’t appear to be any life apart from the four men in the whole glimmering cavern. Banks went over to join Hynd and looked down into the lake.
A set of similarly worn stone steps ran down from his feet to the waters’ edge and continued beyond the loch’s surface, deep into
the shimmering green depths. Seton spoke at his shoulder.
“A site for ritual, a baptism of some sort I shouldn’t wonder,” he said. “Another thing Christianity has in common with older, more esoteric ways.”
It took Wiggins to get to the heart of the matter at hand.
“Aye, this is all very nice I’m sure,” he said. “But where’s that fucking monster got to? I’m done with chasing it up and down this bloody loch. It killed my pal, and it’s payback time.”
*
Seton turned to Banks. The old man was looking tired and wan again. The green cast of the luminescence emphasized the shadows under his eyes and the hollows in his cheeks. But his voice was strong enough.
“Let me try. My voice is all I’ll need,” Seton said. “Let me stand at the cross and try the call again. You’ve all seen it work, you know that even wounded, it should respond, here in the place where it was trained. Let me bring it here.”
“And then we shoot the fucker’s head off?” Wiggins said.
Seton looked pained at the thought.
“I was hoping to try to calm it,” he said.
“Aye, that didn’t do Cally any good, did it? And even if I did let you try to keep it under control, and even if you managed it, then what do we do? We can’t exactly get a fucking huge cage down here to cart it off to Edinburgh Zoo, can we?” Banks replied.
“Surely with the Army’s resources at your disposal…”
Banks stopped him with a laugh that echoed across the lake and whispered around them on its return trip.
Operation Loch Ness Page 11
