Chambers thought so. “I’m almost certain of it, just as I’m almost certain that the documents we’ve just been looking at were created to warn us.”
“Warn us of what?” Dr. Cruttenden started to tremble again. “Armageddon? Ragnarok? Some kind of impending apocalypse?”
“I don’t know.” And I don’t really want to find out, Chambers thought. “Was there anything in the two pages you were able to translate to suggest where it might be?”
Dr. Cruttenden frowned, trying to concentrate.
“Here.” Karen lit one of the lecturer’s cigarettes and passed it over to her. “This might help.”
“Oh, thank you.” She took a deep drag and angled the exhaled smoke away from her two companions. “As well as the description of major world events that convinced me the document was a fake—I apologize about that, by the way—”
“No need,” said Karen with a friendly smile.
“—apart from those there were several paragraphs describing fairly minor events, but all in the same place, an area called Blackheath.” She looked at them. “I don’t suppose either of you know anywhere with that name?”
“There’s a Blackheath in London,” said Karen.
“South London, I think.” Chambers was tapping his chin. “And I’ll bet there’s at least one church there with a history of weird goings-on.”
“There’s bound to be.” Dr. Cruttenden was up and searching her shelves. “It’s not my field of course, but I’m sure that’s the area where Nicholas Hawksmoor must have had some influence on church design. Or if not him then his acolyte, Thomas Moreby.”
She found a heavy volume, took it down, and began to leaf through the pages. “The 1700s was one of the periods I studied for my undergraduate degree, many years ago now. If I hadn’t settled on the medieval period that’s probably what I would have gone for, although—” and here she chuckled to herself, “—I have to say that most periods in history have their appeal to me, except perhaps the twentieth century.”
Karen and Chambers waited until she found the right page.
“Here we are,” she said finally, pointing to a picture that caused all three of them to shudder. “It does rather look like the place, doesn’t it?”
The black-and-white photograph that took up the top left-hand quarter of the page was old. A caption identified it as having been taken in 1901. The surrounding area was different—instead of a desolate plain there were buildings and crowded streets. But there was no mistaking the building, standing on the hill of Blackheath like some demented overlord watching those over whom it had power. Dark, silent, deadly.
“All Hallows Church, Blackheath.” Karen read the words aloud but they still sounded like a whisper to Chambers.
“All Hallows.” Dr. Cruttenden suppressed another shudder. “And there we are,” she said, reading on, “I was almost right. It wasn’t designed by Hawksmoor but by Thomas Moreby, his apprentice, in Hawksmoor’s late Baroque style. The original building was destroyed by fire in 1850, but Moreby’s undercroft and crypt designs remain, apparently. The rest of it was rebuilt in Portland stone with flying buttresses—presumably to help keep the thing propped up.”
Karen was frowning. “The church I saw looked like that one.”
“I think the church we all saw looked like that one,” said Chambers.
“But that doesn’t make any sense. If it was built in Victorian times, all those streets and buildings were probably already there. What I saw was much older.”
“Or much newer,” Chambers said, and suddenly wished he hadn’t. “Much more in the future, if you like.”
“‘The Soothsayer’s Tale,’” Dr. Cruttenden breathed as she closed the book.
Chambers took it from her and laid it on her desk. “You mean Chaucer wrote it to warn us?”
The woman shrugged. “Who knows? Wrote it, imbued it with some special power, and then hid it?”
“But why?” Karen was shaking her head. “Why hide it if he wanted to warn the world?”
“Maybe he didn’t hide it,” said Chambers. “Maybe someone else hid it. And him.”
Dr. Cruttenden was nodding. “Despite every academic fiber of my being telling me I’m being ridiculous for harboring the notion, the same thought had occurred to me.”
“What?” Karen asked, finally sufficiently recovered that her journalistic instincts were having her reach for her notebook. “Are you saying that what those boys found is an undiscovered story by Geoffrey Chaucer and that it was buried with his bones?”
“Either him,” said Chambers, “or someone who lived and died during his lifetime.”
“Or was murdered,” Dr. Cruttenden added.
“Whatever,” said Karen, “it’s going to make the most brilliant story.”
The others stared at her in disbelief.
“You can’t be serious,” said Chambers.
“I am serious.” She was defensive now. “This is the most amazing story I’ve ever come into contact with, and it’s mine. Surely you can’t possibly think I’m not going to write about it?”
“But the danger!” spluttered Dr. Cruttenden. “We have to warn Professor Chambers’s friend at the British Museum! Get him to lock those things away!”
“Or get them properly studied so that whatever apocalypse we are being warned about is averted.” Karen was shaking her head. “Either way the public has a right to know, and no one can stop me telling them.”
“I can.” It was time to tell her. To tell both of them. Chambers reached into his pocket for his wallet. He took out his Human Protection League identification card and showed it to both her and Dr. Cruttenden. “By the power invested in me by the FBI I am asking you to not make this information public.”
Karen peered at the badge and snorted. “Human Protection League? What the hell is that supposed to be?”
Chambers could tell this was going to be difficult. “I know you’re going to have trouble swallowing this. Some people call us ‘The Lovecraft Squad,’ and the simplest way to explain it is that Hell is exactly what my department was created to protect the world from.”
Now it was Dr. Cruttenden’s turn to give a splutter of disbelief. “Dr. Chambers, what on earth are you going on about?”
He had both their full attention now, and he knew the next few minutes would be vital if he was to get them on his side. “There have been incidents like this before. Many of them, all over the world. Occasions when dark powers have tried to break through, evil forces that exist just on the other side of our reality and want to make this world their own.” It wasn’t working. “We could all be in grave danger!”
“Dark powers?” Dr. Cruttenden was shaking her head. “Evil forces?” Now she was turning away.
Karen wasn’t, but if anything the look on her face was even worse. “I think you need to have a long lie down in a darkened room. And after that you should probably get on a plane back to where you came from. You may be able to fool your fellow Americans with this bullshit, but it won’t work here.”
“It’s true.” Chambers didn’t know what else to say. “You can call Washington. They can tell you what kind of things we’ve been fighting against for almost the past sixty years!”
Karen raised a hand as if to slap him across the face, then seemed to think better of it. As she was making for the door, Chambers grabbed her wrist. “Think about it, Karen! Even if you haven’t believed a word I’ve said, think about what just happened in this room, what might happen if you make all this public knowledge. Panic, mayhem, anything!”
“Or just possibly a nine-day wonder that sells a lot of papers before dying down. Papers with my name on every single article.” She yanked her arm away. “No, I can’t pass up this opportunity. It’s too good. No one but the most eminent, sane, British experts deserve to examine those scrolls, and because of me they will get to examine them, rather than let them molder in some dusty old cupboard in Holborn.” She glared at him. “I take it you don’t want a lift to London?”
Chambers was shaking his head. “I think I’ll make my own way back.”
He didn’t need to say it twice. Karen turned on her heel and was closing the door behind her when Chambers called after her.
“What if we were meant to find those scrolls? What if that was part of someone’s plan?”
But Karen had already gone.
SIX
Monday, October 31, 1994
THE STORY BROKE ON Halloween.
To give her due credit, Karen had moved fast, faster than the bureaucrats in both Washington and Whitehall who might have been able to put a stop to it all. Chambers leafed through the morning paper, the News of Britain, going straight to the FULL STORY that had been promised on PAGES 3, 4, AND 5! by the headline. The front page had been enough to make him wince, with its screaming white on black of IS THIS THE REAL GEOFFREY CHAUCER? above one of the photographs Karen had taken when they had first met in the museum. Along with several million Britons that day, he had purchased a copy and thereby ensured that there would be more news about the find over the next week, and perhaps even longer than that.
Inside were more of the snapshots she had taken on that first day. Thankfully he wasn’t featured in any of them. Neither were there any shots of the text of the scrolls, possibly because Karen had more sense, but more likely because the paper wanted to keep its readers in suspense. Instead there were tantalizing glimpses of the parchment, the silk threads that had bound them still intact.
Chambers rubbed his eyes and wished the seals had never been broken.
Perhaps he didn’t wish it as much as Malcolm Turner, though. The phone call had come through to Chambers’s hotel room at just after ten o’clock that morning. On the other end had been an angry director of the British Museum demanding to know how on earth “that bloody journalist” had been able to conjure up such a collection of conjecture and hearsay. In no mood to be shouted at by someone who was at least partly, if not wholly responsible for the whole mess, Chambers had answered calmly that the “bloody journalist” in question had been put in touch with Chambers by Turner himself, and that conjecture, hearsay, and outright lies were pretty much that newspaper’s stock in trade.
“I had no idea she was going to be writing for . . . that!” had come the outraged response.
“I suspect she didn’t either until it dawned on her that this was something she could sell to the tabloids.” Chambers was trying hard to remember what the broadsheets had been carrying as their headlines and couldn’t, which said it all, really. “I think she got lucky with a quiet news day. If I were you, I’d forget about causing a fuss and it should all blow over in a few days.” He certainly hoped so.
Turner refused to be quelled. “And what if it doesn’t? My secretary is already being inundated by demands to know what those scrolls show. If we get many more inquiries I may be forced to tell them.”
Chambers gripped the receiver so tightly he heard it crack in his grasp. “Don’t do that,” he said, more strongly than he intended. It wasn’t the best approach.
“Why ever not? Although I have to confess I don’t really know what else to do. I’ll have to show them sometime—there’s really not going to be any way around it.”
“You mustn’t.” Chambers had to convince Malcolm somehow. “Those scrolls need to be kept safe until I can get a team of experts to analyze them.” Although heaven knew when that would be.
There was a pause. “My dear fellow, what on earth are you talking about?”
Chambers sensed cross purposes at work here, but he pressed on anyway. “The scrolls,” he said. “I think it’s best to keep them covered and sealed away until an appropriate team of experts can be assembled to decide what to do with them.”
There was a hint of tired laughter in what Turner said next. “But that’s my whole point! We don’t have them anymore! At least not in any readable form. Something happened to them three days ago.”
Chambers had to repeat that in order to process it. “Three days . . .”
“Yes, when you were on that little jaunt of yours to Oxford with Miss Shepworth in tow. One of my technicians was transferring the first scroll to an airtight container when, according to her, it crumbled in her hands. When we checked the others, the same thing had happened to them as well.”
Chambers didn’t know whether to feel relieved or horrified. He ended up feeling a mixture of both.
“And that’s not the worst.”
“What was?” Chambers was already wishing he hadn’t asked, but he had to know. Was the technician lying in a hospital bed somewhere now—dying of some hideous rotting disease and all the while mouthing apocalyptic predictions?
“The bones are gone too. Or rather, they’re nothing more than dust. Can you believe that? All that time in the mud and it must have been acting as some sort of preservative. The air must have done for the bones in the same way it dissolved the scrolls.”
That sounded ridiculous but Chambers wasn’t tempted to tell him that.
“Mind you, neither I nor anyone I’ve discussed this with has ever heard anything like it, so I’d appreciate it if you’d keep it under your hat for the moment. I’m sure you now realize the problem I have.”
Chambers knew only too well. The British Museum (and its potentially historically significant discovery) had made front-page news. And now they had nothing to back the story up with.
And, of course, neither did Karen.
Almost right away, the realization hit him that when she, and her paper, found out that Turner had nothing to show them, Karen would cite Chambers himself as the only one who could corroborate her story. Dr. Cruttenden had seen slides, but she hadn’t seen the real thing, or the bones.
Media attention would swing very swiftly from Malcolm (who would claim not to have anything tangible to show) to Chambers himself, who would then find himself in the unenviable position of having to make a public statement on behalf of the Human Protection League. There was no way he was going to go public with what had happened to them in Oxford, much as Karen might want him to. Scenes of late-night talk shows filled his head, programs where he and Malcolm were pitched against each other—the British Museum director who didn’t know how to look after relics and the American forensic pathologist who had seen crazy things after handling the items now apparently lost. It would all make fabulous trash television and any chance of it happening had to be stopped.
At least, he thought, the scrolls were gone. He had put the lack of nightmares over the last three nights down to his experiences in Dr. Cruttenden’s study. Perhaps it was because the scrolls themselves were destroyed that he was being allowed to rest more easily.
Perhaps it was all over.
Or it might be just beginning.
Chambers started going through his pockets, hoping that he still had Karen’s business card.
It was the first thing he found. Trying his best to ignore the idea that unseen forces had placed it in his hand, he dialed her number.
“I have to admit you’re the last person I expected to hear from.” Karen sounded confident, if a little shaken by the sound of Chambers’s voice.
“I’m surprised you’re at home.” Chambers couldn’t resist that. “I had assumed you’d be with the rest of them, trying to get Malcolm to show you the scrolls.”
“I’ve the rest of this week’s articles to get finished. I haven’t time to bother with that right now,” she said. “I think I managed to get quite enough to write about in Oxford that the British Museum can wait a while. I don’t see him releasing them anytime soon, anyway.”
“Or ever.” Chambers told her what had happened. “I’m actually beginning to think that’s why the nightmares have stopped.”
“You too? I was hoping it was because I’d found something to keep myself busy. Nothing like working twenty hours a day to give you a really good night’s sleep for the other four.” She sighed. “I must admit I was hoping to get another look at them, something to round off the series of fea
tures the paper will be publishing over the next week. Now I’ll have to try and find another angle.”
“That’s kind of why I was calling,” Chambers licked his lips. “I was wondering if you might consider making whatever other angle you choose nothing to do with me.”
Karen sounded amused. “I had no idea you were so scared of the Press, Professor!”
“To be honest with you, I don’t know if it’s the Press I’m scared of or just the events of the past few days. Either way I’d be grateful if you’d keep me out of it.”
“Sure,” she said, surprising him no end. “I promise I won’t involve you again unless I really need to, but only on one condition.”
“Which is?”
“Was all that stuff you told me true? About you being the member of some kind of crazy religious group that thinks it’s defending the world against demons and other nonsense?”
Chambers couldn’t resist smiling. Perhaps it would be better to let her believe that. But he couldn’t. “We’re not crazy, and we’re not even religious, at least not in the way you mean. Our organization was created in the mid-1930s by J. Edgar Hoover himself to combat otherworldly invaders.”
“This isn’t convincing me. Why haven’t I heard about any of this before?”
Chambers took a deep breath. “You will have, if you’re a fan of weird fiction.”
“I don’t follow.”
“Have you ever read H. P. Lovecraft?”
There was a giggle from Karen. “There used to be a shop near Leicester Square called that. I had one ex-boyfriend who wanted to buy me all sorts of pervy stuff from it. I told him I drew the line at the handcuffs and those weird leather mask things.”
“Not Lovecraft as in a sex shop, I mean H. P. Lovecraft, the fantasy author.”
“Fantasy author as in books?”
“Yes.”
“Meaning fiction? As in stuff that’s made up?”
This wasn’t going the way he intended. “You know those four hours a night you’ve reserved for sleeping? Spend a bit of them reading his story ‘The Call of Cthulhu’ . . .”
“The call of whatahullu?”
The Lovecraft Squad Page 6
