THE DEMONIC
LEE MOUNTFORD
For my wife, Michelle.
CONTENTS
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Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
The Brass Farm Murders
Also by Lee Mountford
The Demon of Dunton Farm
Short Story Contributions
The Muse
The Haunting of Elderfield Hall
About the Author
Acknowledgments
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1
‘DEATH IS A PART OF LIFE,’ Jon said. ‘And, unfortunately, it comes to us all.’
While a true enough statement, the topic of discussion—of life and death—wasn’t one Danni Morgan wanted to be having right now.
Not now.
The family was packed into the large SUV, along with provisions for the weekend, and heading towards her hometown of Bishops Hill.
A place she hadn’t been back to in a long time. Not since that fateful night.
A place she never thought she would return to.
And yet, here she was, making the two hundred-and-fifty-mile trip, all so she could lay to rest a father she hadn’t spoken to in twenty years.
‘Very profound, Dad,’ said Danni’s teenage daughter, Leah, from the back seat. Most of the girl’s attention was focused on her smart phone. ‘I can already tell this trip is going to be fun.’
‘Funerals aren’t supposed to be fun,’ said her younger brother, Alex, from the seat beside her.
‘And what about car trips?’ Leah asked. ‘Can those be fun?’
‘I only asked what happened to him,’ Alex said.
‘And you were told,’ she replied. ‘Can we change the subject now?’
‘Yeah, that’s not a bad idea,’ Danni said. She and Leah were a lot alike in many respects, and being uncomfortable around the topic of death was just one of many traits they shared. Her husband Jon, and their son Alex, were different; more open to its discussion but, dare she say, a little more cold in how they approached it. Alex’s line of thinking, she knew, was very much moulded and shaped by his father’s.
The boy adored him.
As well he should.
Normally after the loss of a parent, a child would be in mourning. But with Danni, it was different; there was a fucking good reason they hadn’t spoken for such a long time.
Even so, she was feeling something, but she just couldn’t put her finger on what that something was. Things felt somehow… unfinished. And now, it seemed, nothing would ever be resolved. Maybe that wasn’t such a bad thing.
She didn’t want these scars to heal.
She didn’t want that man finding any kind of forgiveness, or peace, before death.
And maybe this was its own kind of closure. The last thing anchoring Danni to her old life was now gone.
Though that wasn’t strictly true, was it? There was still one thing that existed linking her back to Bishops Hill.
Her family home.
The one she grew up in, and had just inherited. She felt her husband’s hand fall gently to her knee. It gave a reassuring squeeze.
‘Sorry, hun,’ he said, letting his gaze drift from the road for a moment to meet her eyes. ‘It was an insensitive thing to be talking about.’
‘It’s okay,’ she replied, putting her hand on his. ‘I would just prefer if things were a little lighter. Our car trips used to be fun. What happened to things like I-Spy?’
Leah let out a laugh. ‘I think we outgrew it, Mom.’
‘Nonsense,’ Jon cut in. ‘You never outgrow I-Spy.’
‘Then you start,’ Danni said, happy to redirect the conversation.
‘And don’t make it anything stupid, Dad,’ Alex said. ‘I remember the whole Honda Civic fiasco.’
‘Honda begins with the letter H,’ Jon said, a slight smile creeping across his lips. ‘So it didn’t break any rules.’
‘But we passed it before we had a chance to guess,’ Leah cut in. ‘It was so unfair.’
‘Then you need to be more observant and quicker with your answers,’ he said. ‘Now, I spy with my little eye…’
THE GAME HAD BEEN fun and kept them occupied for about an hour until their first service stop. They had been travelling for just under two hours when they pulled off the motorway and were a little under halfway through the journey. It was good to get out of the car, breathe in the fresh air, and stretch their legs.
The SUV was a great vehicle for the family: brand new, very spacious, and packed with the latest gadgets and technology—though Jon had insisted on stopping short of getting television sets in the back of the headrests—but no matter how comfortable it was, being stuck in the same seated position and enclosed space for too long would always seize the joints and numb the mind.
Jon topped up the tank at the pump, then pulled the vehicle into a free space close to the large service facility. The building had high glazed facades and white steel sections—its design reminded Danni more of an airport than a motorway service station. Jon pulled into one of the disabled bays and, before they all disembarked, put the parking badge on the dashboard. Leah was the first to help her brother with his crutches.
‘I don’t think I need them,’ he said. ‘It’s not far.’
‘Just take them for now,’ Leah said, ‘and if you can go without, I’ll carry them.’
Another trait Danni shared with her daughter: being fiercely protective of the ones she loved. As the eldest of the two, Leah had taken the role of protector, and though they bickered occasionally, nothing could deter her in that role. And, to Alex’s credit, he didn’t seem to mind having a girl look out for him. Whilst independent of mind, he knew that sometimes he needed physical help and seemed comfortable accepting it from his sister. Of all the things Danni had to offer the world, none made her as proud as her children. Watching these two grow into strong, caring, considerate people filled her heart with happiness.
It was also a relief to know that, at least so far, both her and Jon had succeeded as parents.
And she would be damned if she was going to fail as drastically as her own father had.
Though, in truth, she had felt like a failure once before. Not long after Alex was born, he was diagnosed with cerebral palsy—a condition he had since lived with his entire life, not knowing anything different. Danni and Jon were told that it was likely caused by brain development damage during pregnancy. As the one who had carried Alex, Danni had judged
herself a failure and the person solely responsible. She felt like she had snatched her son’s life away from him before it had even started. No amount of logic, put forward by Jon and the doctors, could change her mind on that.
They hadn’t been the one carrying the boy.
It wasn’t their job to keep him safe.
They just didn’t know.
But as he grew, he adapted, and he coped with the situation. It was never easy: even now Danni would, at times, watch him struggle on without a complaint and her heart would break a little. But as he grew older his personality developed, and it became clear he wouldn’t accept much in the way of sympathy.
In fact, he developed a saying: ‘It is what it is.’ Something he would say with a shrug and a smile.
Even at such a young age, he knew life could sometimes be unfair, and often there was nothing that could be done about it. But he got on with it. Always with a smile.
Alex’s condition primarily affected his legs, making walking difficult. He could manage short distances without crutches, but it took effort and wore him down quickly. The crutches helped with greater distance as well as balance. When taking a step, he had to swing his legs, with knees bent inwards, giving the impression that he was wading through waist-high water. People would stare a little, and that always bugged Danni, as it did Leah, but Alex paid it no mind. ‘They just aren’t used to it,’ he would say.
It is what it is.
As much as Danni and Leah shared a lot of traits, there was no doubt that Alex took after his father. They were both measured thinkers and thought before they leapt. Strong-willed, but extremely patient. And Alex had developed his father’s thirst for knowledge and desire to learn. His condition meant he couldn’t be as active as most boys his age, so to compensate he constantly keep his mind active. Where his sister was always on her smartphone, checking on social media, Alex always had his head in a book—both paper, and his prized e-reader—learning new things.
Jon hoped Alex would follow him into physics and lecturing, but Danni knew Alex had his sights set much higher.
Quite literally.
Many things interested the boy, but nothing engaged his imagination like the mysteries that lay outside of the planet.
Where did we come from?
How do solar systems work?
How close are we to settling on other worlds?
Whenever Danni engaged him with similar questions, she would see an excited light burn in his eyes, and the pitch in his voice jumped up a few levels as he spoke quicker and with more enthusiasm.
‘Can't we just grab a burger?’ Leah asked as they made their way to the entrance, snapping Danni back from her thoughts.
‘No,’ Jon said. ‘I’m sure we can find something a little healthier than that.’
‘We probably can,’ she replied, ‘but sometimes it’s nice to be a little indulgent.’
They walked through the automatic sliding door, and as they did Danni felt a blast of cold air hit her from the cooling unit in the ceiling above. The air danced over her face and she pulled her purple hiking coat tighter around her. It was autumn, not her favourite season, but it seemed the farther north they drove, the colder things got.
Once through the lobby, the interior of the building opened up into a huge, open space that allowed light to spill in from the front wall of glazing. Different store fronts—mainly fast-food chains—hugged the back wall, serving throngs of people, but the bulk of the floor was a sprawling seating area. The smells inside were an odd mix of junk-food grease and the aroma of coffee.
‘Okay,’ Danni said, taking charge. ‘First, toilet break, then we meet back here and decide what we do for food.’
‘Agreed,’ Jon said, and put a hand onto Alex’s shoulder. ‘Come on, champ, let’s go.’
Danni heard the gentle click, click, click of Alex’s crutches as he moved. It disappeared as he entered the toilet area with his dad. Given the length of time Alex had been using his crutches, she had grown to associate that fragile sound with him. She knew he would be mad about that if he ever found out—associating him with fragility—but she couldn’t help it. It was instinctual.
She wanted to protect him, she wanted to protect all of her family, and the thought of bringing them back to a place that had damaged her felt like a betrayal of that.
But her father was gone now. Danni needed to remember that.
Gone forever.
So why did she have this troubling feeling deep in her gut? Like this was a bad idea. Like she was, somehow, putting her family in danger.
Danni hadn’t even wanted to make the trip in the first place. She had hoped to sort everything that needed sorting over the phone, but Jon had pushed her into it.
‘Hello? Mom?’ Leah said, yet again pulling Danni back from her thoughts. ‘Are you still with us?’
‘Yeah, sorry,’ Danni said, giving her head a shake. ‘Was just lost in my own little world for a minute there.’
‘Well now that you’re back, let’s go pee,’ Leah said. She linked her arm through Danni’s and led her to the toilet.
Still, Danni couldn’t shake that feeling of foreboding that weighed on her, and Jon’s words from earlier played over in her mind.
Death comes to us all.
2
DANNI FELT her chest tighten a little as they closed in on their destination. The drive had been relatively uneventful, with only one service stop to break up the monotony. Now, however, they were less than ten minutes out according to the onboard satellite navigation, and Jon had already phoned the local solicitors they were dealing with to confirm their imminent arrival.
The representative would meet with them at the house, go over some paperwork, and hand over the keys to Danni’s newly inherited property.
One that she did not want.
The knot forming in Danni’s gut grew tighter.
She didn’t want to deal with what lay ahead, and would have preferred if she could have ignored the whole thing, stayed in London, and have somebody else resolve everything. Let the banks have her family home, for all she cared.
Let it rot.
Anything so she could just carry on with her life as it was now, uninterrupted, and not get dragged back into the past.
After finding out about her father’s death—from a heart attack, she was told—Danni had discussed the idea of not going back with Jon. He said that, ultimately, the choice was hers to make, but pushed for her to return.
Jon knew about Danni’s rough childhood, or most of it. He was about the only person she had ever opened up to regarding it, and he thought this might be a good way for her to get some kind of closure. She had run from her past long enough, he had said, and this was a way to finally face up to those old ghosts that haunted her.
Danni wasn’t convinced.
But, in the end, she had conceded and agreed to return home so she could drop her father’s body into the dirt.
The SatNav ordered them to take the next exit from the motorway, and Jon eased the SUV over into the inside lane, ready for the turnoff. This stretch of the motorway was familiar to Danni, and that familiarity was not pleasant. It meant she was close. She knew that just up ahead the slip road would lead them off the motorway, where they would take a left at the roundabout, then carry on for a short while before making a sharp right. This would lead them along Church Lane—a long, winding country road—down a gentle decline. If things were as she remembered them, that road would be flanked on both sides by rolling fields that used to be dotted with sheep, cows, and even goats. It was one of only two roads that led directly into Bishops Hill.
‘You okay, hun?’ Jon asked, looking over to her.
Danni realised she was holding her breath. She let it out, as gently as she could. ‘Yeah, I’m fine. Just strange going back, you know?’
Jon smiled and nodded. ‘Yeah,’ he said, ‘I can imagine. You want to stop somewhere first, give yourself a little time before going to the house?’
Yes,
she thought to herself. That’s exactly what she wanted. To go somewhere, anywhere, and get a drink she didn’t want to drink, or get some food she didn’t want to eat, and maybe reconsider this whole trip. Or, better yet, turn the car around right then and just go home.
Her real home, the one she had made for herself.
Not this fading echo of one.
But she knew, deep down, Jon was right about trying to find some kind of closure. Things may now be forever unfinished between Danni and her father, but this would be the closest she would get.
‘No,’ she eventually said, ‘let’s keep going.’
And so they did; off the stretch of motorway, left at the roundabout, then a sharp right and down the small, winding road known as Church Lane.
About halfway down the country road, they saw it—all bent and twisted and suffering.
A goat, on the verge of death.
The tarmac beneath it was stained red, and blood pumped from open wounds as the animal tried, and failed, to pull itself upright on its broken limbs.
Jon brought the car to a slow stop and flicked on his hazard lights.
‘Oh, God,’ Leah said from the back seat.
Not that the girl was religious, none of the family were, but Danni had almost said the same thing, before Leah had beaten her to it. Part of Danni wanted to look away, but she continued to peer through the windshield at the poor animal.
‘What is it?’ Alex asked, then drew in a sharp intake of breath. ‘Is that a goat? Oh, the poor thing.’
‘It is,’ Jon said. ‘It must have come from the fields, gotten through the fence and onto the road. Looks like it was hit by a car or something.’
It seemed these fields were still used for grazing, as Danni remembered, and were littered with the same breed of animals they always had been, though the numbers seemed greatly reduced.
‘So someone hit it and then just drove off?’ Alex asked, the disgust prevalent in his voice.
‘Looks that way,’ Jon said.
The goat let out a faint, desperate bleat, and kicked out a leg.
‘It’s in pain, Dad,’ Leah said. ‘What do we do? We can’t just leave it.’
The Demonic: A Supernatural Horror Novel Page 1
