Table of Contents
Table of Contents
Title Page
Copyright
Terror in the Night
About the Author
TERROR
IN THE
NIGHT
BLOOD HOUND: VOLUME ONE
BY
J.M. ROBINSON
Terror in the Night
Copyright © 2018 by J.M. Robinson
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The rights of J.M. Robinson to be identified as the Author of the Work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright Designs and Patents Act 1988
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that which it is published and without a similar condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.
All characters in this publication are ficticious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
CHAPTER 1
SHE CLIMBED TO THE TOP OF STOKERS HILL, where the nettles grew wild and she knew what to look for; a tiny yellow bud hidden amongst the piles of hateful stingers. Her hands were old and dry, withered and cracked, an intricate map of blue veins stood in stark contrast to the pale flesh. Sometimes they didn’t work so well but they knew the secrets of the earth and she could reach into a crown of nettles without being stung.
She pulled out her hand and looked at the delicate jaundice bulb, no bigger than her pinky nail, clasped between her shaking thumb and forefinger. It held the promise of spring.
A bird shrieked and she looked up. Across the field a murder of crows took to the sky. She could hear their heavy wings flapping in the morning air. Something had disturbed them but she couldn’t see what.
Quickly now, she felt suddenly vulnerable on the hilltop, she put the yellow bud in her right breast pocket and stood up. Her legs creaked like ageing wood that needed to be oiled, her head swam a little at the sudden panic and alarm that she felt.
Her cherry red moccasins brushed the long grass, collecting the morning dew that would soak through the skin into her socks. She didn’t look behind but she was certain there was something there.
The village lay ahead of her, spread out like a relief map. In the chilly morning light she could see shapes moving like ghosts. She rushed towards it, picking up speed as she hurried (no, fled) down the hill.
There was no time. Her blood had turned to ice and she knew enough to know she couldn’t run forever. She just needed a moment to catch her breath and another to set it all down on the page. Once she was gone it would change, things would start to happen and she wouldn’t be able to help them. The little girl, that sweet baby girl, they needed to know about her, they needed to know what she was.
The ground was slippery at the bottom of the slope. Her heart convulsed as she reached out to grab hold of something but found nothing there. She rocked backwards, her back clicking into a new unnatural shape. Her neck went with it and she saw behind her that there was nothing on the hill.
She caught herself in time to avoid falling over. She stood there and caught her breath while waiting for her muscles to relax from the shock. Perhaps she had been too hasty. The birds were unreliable witnesses. There might still be time if she kept her head and didn’t let panic become her master.
A wolf howled and automatically she glanced at the moon. A thin crescent barely visible beside the rising sun. That didn’t mean anything now though, times had changed.
She pulled her long coat around her and started walking again. She was too warm and then too cold. The village didn’t want her anymore but that was a ridiculous thought. She was the village as sure as the bee was the flower, you couldn’t have one without the other. She shook her head, it was a thought not to give voice too. If she thought too long on the topic she would falter and the stakes were too high for that.
On her right was the village green where the boys played cricket and the girls made secrets. She had enjoyed watching them and she would miss hearing them laugh and shout. She didn’t stop because that would be worse than the thought. There wasn’t much time left now and affairs needed to be put in order.
She passed the Church. She wouldn’t have been welcome there even if she had wanted their brand of self-righteous sanctuary. It was a beautiful building but it reminded her too much of the past. Now she needed to concentrate on the future, however little of it there might be.
The blacksmiths forge, the marketplace, the public house, all full of memories that she couldn’t pause to enjoy. She would miss them all but there was no time for sentiment, the past would damn her not save her.
Her cottage lay on the far west of the village. Nestled in the first trees of the Wiling Wood she had lived there more than half her life. The structure moaned as she hurried towards it, for what was to come or because she hadn’t been able to maintain it at all in the last few years.
The thatch had started to brown and was as patchy as her own hair. It let in water when it rained, which wasn’t often, but the cold was. The wood, which had last been painted twenty years ago, was rotten and turning green. The slightest breeze made the whole thing shake. When she was gone they would tear it down, or else leave it to rot and never go near it. She knew what they thought of her, what they said about her to their friends. But they still came to her when the baby wouldn’t stop crying or when the husband had lost his lustre in the marital bed.
The bells and wind chimes rang as she approached but the air was still. She hobbled towards the low door, feeling every one of her years. She no longer knew how many but the reflection she saw in her glass suggested it was many. Too many, she sometimes thought, but she wouldn’t be adding another.
Inside it was colder than out. She closed the door and pushed a chair against the handle. It wouldn’t keep them away but it might buy her an extra minute or two while they debated between breaking the door or the window.
There was a little bureau against the wall opposite the fire. She took the yellow bud from her pocket and placed it on top. There wouldn’t be time to use it now, the butchers wife would have to learn to live with her warts. She opened the cabinet and took out paper and ink. She carried them through to the kitchen and filled the kettle from her bucket. She refused to go without a cup of tea inside her.
When they came they found her sitting at the kitchen table. The teapot was empty and the letter had been written. It was hidden where they wouldn’t find it but a man of the law might. Might was as much as she could hope for now. She had put away her paper and ink and scrubbed her hands until they were raw.
They were three men but that was to be expected. You always sent three to kill a witch. One of them would be armed with the holy book, another with blessed water. The third would carry the knife which a dozen priests must have blessed.
She smiled at them. They had given her enough time to do what must be done and for that she was thankful. She might have offered them tea if she hadn’t been struck with the idea of filling herself to the brim and giving them a nasty surprise when they cut her open.
The man with the book began reciting verse in Latin. His hand rested on the cover as if drawing strength from it. The man with the water drew a circle around her so that her spirit couldn’t escape and seek revenge. The man with the knife kissed the blade and drove it into her heart.
She continued to smile while her mouth filled with blood. It dribbled out the corners of her mouth and down her chin. She closed her eyes and remained still while her heart beat and then beat its last.
CHAPTER 2
; HE WAS WOKEN BY SOMETHING BANGING. WHEN HE opened his eyes in the dark room and saw Agnes still sleeping beside him he thought it must have been a dream. He put his head back on the pillow and closed his eyes only to open them a moment later when he heard the bedroom door creak open. He sat up, Bridget was standing at the open door, still wearing her night gown.
“Daddy?”
He rubbed his stubbly jaw. “What is it?”
“There’s a man at the door.”
They had tried, without success, to stop Bridget answering the door. But the child never seemed to sleep and in the middle of the night she must have heard the banging. “Who is it?” he said.
She shook her head. His daughter was not one to waste words and he might have heard his quota for the day.
He climbed out of bed and picked up his trousers.
“What is it Graham?” said Agnes. She hadn’t moved and he suspected that come the morning she would have no recollection of waking up.
“Someone at the door,” he said as he pulled on his shirt. He supposed Bridget had inherited his language skills.
The house was still warm from the fire but when he passed the window in the dining room he could feel the outside cold leaching in. The house would be an icebox come morning.
He found Michael West sitting at his kitchen table which, no doubt, Bridget had asked him to do. The boy showed the common sense to stand up when he walked in.
“This had better be important,” he said.
The boy looked startled, wide eyed and ready to run for the hills. When he spoke he stuttered so badly that Graham couldn’t understand a word of what he said.
”Slow down boy. Tell me what’s happened.”
Michael nodded, closed his eyes and exhaled a single long breath. When he opened his eyes again he still looked frightened but he managed to get his words into the form of a coherent sentence. “There’s a fire.”
Graham reached for his coat. “Where is it?”
“The old witch’s...” he stopped and seemed to think better about his choice of words. “Miss Nighthorn’s house.”
Graham grabbed his coat and ran out the door, he had no idea whether the boy followed him or not.
A column of smoke turned on the gentle breeze towards the forest. That was bad. Worse was that he could see the orange flames licking the sky coming from a house that was a half a mile away. He was a big man but he started to run, shouting “Fire!” as loudly as he could.
A bell started to ring and like the fire he knew that his warning had caught. He kept running and before he was close he felt the heat from the fire and heard the first tree crack and fall. Cinders flew up into the air on an updraft of smoke and ashes. He could hear voices shouting “Keep back” and a woman screaming.
The fire had spread to the trees immediately behind the house. He could smell ashy wood laced with the scent of herbs and spices. Of course people called her a witch, he thought. She had never married and lived by herself on the edge of the village. She sold folk remedies and potions and people were superstitious. Maybe she even believed she was a witch. But he knew better, there was no such thing as witches.
He arrived to find a group of men standing over a woman who had collapsed on the floor. It was a young woman in a cream dress which was now covered in a layer of black soot, her face appeared red but that may have been the glow from the fire or the gin he could smell as he knelt down to examine her. She had a pulse, she would live.
A sticky film of sweat had broken out on his face. He wiped it away with the sleeve of his jacket and squinted into the fire. All that remained of the old house was a pile of timber that might have been soaked in oil it burned so fiercely.
He rounded on the three men and saw that further back a small crowd had gathered to watch the spectacle. The fire fighters should have been there already but until they arrived he wasn’t going to stand around and wait for the whole forest to be set alight.
“You men,” he said and the trio turned to look at him with wobbly booze soaked eyes. He wouldn’t be surprised at the end of the day to find out they were responsible for the fire, a drunken prank gone horribly wrong. But that was a problem to deal with later, firstly he had to get things under control. “Take her to the group of people there. Then bring three more strong men back to me.”
They nodded so enthusiastically that he thought their heads might nod right off but they picked up the girl and he watched them go. Another tree cracked but didn’t fall. The wind was picking up and carrying the fire deeper into the forest. There wasn’t much time, possibly not enough.
He edged towards the fire as the six men joined him. He considered telling the three who had taken the girl and stunk of gin to back off but he didn’t. If they went up in flames because they couldn’t control their liquor that was their look out. It might even make his life easier if they did turn out to be responsible for the fire.
They couldn’t get close. He held his jacket in front of his face but it didn’t make much difference. It was still twenty-feet from the fire.
“What are we going to do?” said one of the new men who at least sounded sober. He had to shout to be heard over the roar of the flames as they searched for new material to consume.
“We need water,” he shouted back but he thought it was too late for buckets. If the fire service didn’t get there soon the whole forest would go up and if the wind changed direction the village would burn just as quickly. And all the while the crowd was growing as people came out of their houses to see what was happening but probably wouldn’t do a thing to help because the old woman was a ‘witch’ and it was ‘bad luck’ to lift a finger.
If the old woman had been in there when the fire started she was certainly dead by now. Unless she really was a witch but that was ridiculous. He wasn’t going to start thinking like that and end up just another superstitious country joke.
The smoke was getting thicker, the noise of cracking wood more constant. Embers floated on the breeze, they were still hot enough to burn by the time they reached him and he lifted a hand to swat them away. It seemed as if there was nothing he could do, the source of the fire was too far away to get close but if it got much bigger nothing would stop it.
He reached a decision. He could stand there all morning watching the forest burn, wishing for the chance to do something heroic, or he could get what he needed and do something less showy but no less heroic.
When he turned to the person who had spoken to him he saw a boy who didn’t look long out of short trousers. A scar ran down his left cheek ending below the neck of his shirt. It looked as if he had been torn apart and then stitched back together and, for a moment, Graham reconsidered his belief in ghosts.
“Detective?” said the boy with the scar.
He glanced at the other people the drunks had brought with them and none seemed as sober as the boy. If he left it to them, he thought, he would come back and find them roasting chestnuts and calling for rum. The boy didn’t look much physically but he was all Graham had. “Keep these people back,” he said.
The boy nodded. His scar was lumpy and slick as if it was still healing. If there had been an accident recently Graham hadn’t heard about it, if there had been a crime then he really should have been told. Another problem to file away until he’d sorted out the one threatening to burn down the village while his back was turned. “Where are you going sir?” said the boy.
“Just keep them back,” he said.
He pushed his way through the crowd which had grown to more than a hundred people. He growled “get out of my way” as he pushed them aside. A bunch of lousy serfs, he thought, they would watch the world burn unless someone ordered them to grab a bucket. Unfortunately the time for buckets was over, he needed the heavy duty kit now and while he was about it he would find out where Nicholas Sutcliffe had got to.
The bells had been silenced. The whole village felt eerily still and quiet just a few hundred yards from the biggest fire they’d had in living memory.
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Graham slowed to a walk and clutched his heaving side. A stitch that felt as long and deep as the boys scar had been. He passed the iron mungers and St. Crispen’s Church, unaware that he was tracing the old woman’s last journey in reverse. The village green was covered with a thick blanket of mist that made it impossible for him to see the foothills on the other side.
“Detective?”
He spun around at once and saw Mr Carter waving at him from the other side of the street, his dog Humphrey sitting obediently at his feet.
“Good morning detective,” he said. “You’re up bright and early.”
“There’s a fire,” said Graham. “Didn’t you hear the bells?”
The mans face was blank and he shook his head. “No bells detective,” he said.
There had been, Graham had heard them himself but there was no time to argue about it now. “Have you seen Sutcliffe?” he said.
“No sir, do you need him for something?”
‘There’s a fire’ he almost repeated but what was the point. Peter Carter would have been up there roasting chestnuts with the rest of them. The stitch in his chest had gone now and he started to run again.
“A pleasure as always Detective Kable,” called Peter behind him. He did not return the sentiment.
When he found Sutcliffe he knew that something was terribly wrong. The fire fighting equipment was kept in a shed next to the town hall. The double doors were open and a horse was harnessed to the carriage.
Except for the shuffling of hooves there was no sound and no movement coming from the shed. He approached slowly and cautiously and didn’t call out to the men who should be inside, or, better yet, already gone to fight the fire.
Graham had known Nicholas Sutcliffe for years. They had both live in the village since they were boys. They had gotten in trouble together all those years ago for lighting fireworks beneath Mr Parson’s window when they were trying to impress his pretty daughter Agnes. They had taken dinner at each other’s houses and their wives were friends. As much as he trusted anyone Graham trusted Nicholas.
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