Church of Sin (The Ether Book 1)

by James Costall

  “My name is Alix, Azrael. I’m a psychologist and I’m here to talk to you. Do you know why you’re here?”

  Anwick tilted his head purposefully to the side, as if he wanted to appraise his interviewer from a different angle. “Is Megan alive?” he asked.

  “Yes. Megan’s alive. But Katelyn’s dead.”

  It had been a week since Anwick had been found weeping softly over the broken body of little Katelyn Laicey in a barn eight miles south of Bristol. Her nine year old twin sister, Megan, had been hidden away from the media in a safe house in Lincolnshire. Anwick would be tried for Katelyn’s murder in the New Year.

  “He’ll come for her,” said Anwick.

  “Who’ll come for who?”

  “Megan. The Harbinger will come for Megan.”

  “Who’s the Harbinger, Azrael?”

  “He is the Bringer of Death, the one who will release untold evil into this World. But these things are beyond your comprehension, child.”

  “No one will come for Megan, Azrael. She’s safe.”

  “She’s not safe! We are not safe. This World is not safe.” Anwick shook his head mournfully, bowing low and groaning with pain. “We’re not safe.”

  “Azrael,” said Alix carefully. “Can I speak to the Professor?”

  “No. The Professor is a broken man, no longer capable of controlling us. I cannot fix him. He is beyond redemption. I don’t know how this has happened.”

  “Can you remember anything at all?”

  “Very little. But it’s of no consequence what I can remember. Anwick’s mind is deteriorating fast, as am I. I have precious little time. Do you have the key to this cell?”

  Alix didn’t think her heart was capable of beating faster than it already was but something about the way he asked her so casually about the cell key forced her into overdrive.

  “No. I don’t have the key.”

  “Is he there? Outside, I mean?”

  “Is who there?”

  “Satan’s lapdog, of course. The Russian.”

  Jesus, did he mean Ned? “If you mean-”

  She never finished her sentence. She was cut off. Indeed, what happened next was something that Alix would never forget. Anwick’s movements were as agile as a leopard, willowy and graceful. He cut down the distance between them before she had time to react, sweeping across the ground like a violent tempest surging through a valley until his propulsion was cut short as suddenly as it had started and he jolted to a halt two feet in front of her but not before his arms – not restrained in the straightjacket as she had assumed but merely tucked behind his back – reached for her. Hands clasped themselves around her neck and she found herself being hauled towards him and over the line.

  She was helpless in his grasp. His extraordinarily powerful body wrapped itself around her, his arm moved around neck. The force was enough to take the wind out of her.

  “Fuck!”

  She was choking, facing the door she had come through, Anwick behind her, breathing down her neck, barking at the camera.

  “Russian! Untie these chains or I’ll break her neck!” There seemed to be more to his voice now, a low rumble underneath the higher pitch, as if his voice was no longer one but a chorus of atonal harmonies.

  “Jesus, what the fuck!?”

  She struggled helplessly but she was completely overpowered. She was able to take hold of the arm under her chin but it wouldn’t budge. It was as if she was caught in the unmovable embrace of a concrete statue.

  “Hello?” Alix yelled at the camera. “Some assistance?” A thought struck her. What if the camera was fake? Mercifully, the thought evaporated quickly as the door opened and Omotoso appeared in front of them, arms outstretched like a hostage negotiator, the fear and concern evident from his face.

  “Now Professor,” he said slowly. “Let’s just calm down, shall we. Neck broken or otherwise, you’re not getting out of here and she’s done nothing to upset you.”

  “I mean it, Edwin. Keys.” There was no trace of anxiety, no hint of concern in the way Anwick spoke. Just the same velvety, girl-like voice but underpinned now by something deeper and more urgent.

  “I can’t do that, Professor. You know I can’t.”

  He lifted his arm upwards and for a second her feet rose from the ground beneath and she was choking for air.

  “I’ll kill her, Edwin. You know I... wait.”

  He dropped his hold a little and she gasped for breath. Then his hands were pressing down on hers. His skin was cold and clammy, like wet leather. What the Hell was he doing? Then suddenly she was free of him, staggering forward, collapsing into Omotoso’s arms. She had no idea what made him release her but she felt a relief like no other. She turned to look. Anwick had retreated back against the wall and was adjusting the cord tied around his waist. She hadn’t seen it before but it must bind him to the wall, allowing him to move as far as the yellow line. She would have been safe if his hands had actually been restrained in the straightjacket.

  “I apologise.” He looked at her directly and there was genuine sorrow in the way he spoke. “I did not know you were a Host. I will trouble you no more.”

  Chapter

  7

  Parkview Abbey had seen many a storm in its illustrious history but rarely one so violent as that which now raged over its dual towers. Rain pelted down on old, opaque windows and the thunder – that mighty demon of nature – rumbled dangerously in the background.

  Underneath the shelter of a small porch the sound of the water falling from the overflowing gutters was deafening and the two people that stood at the door – an extraordinarily tall and stern looking woman and an older, and considerably shorter, gentleman wearing a tweed three piece suit – had to shout to be heard. Standing just inside the entranceway watching the exchange was a young girl of nine. She had a delicate, freckly face framed by long, straggly golden hair. The look she bore was hard to place. At first glance, it was nothing more than the look of vacancy that all children sometimes display when they are lost in their own thoughts. But a second look revealed something more complex. An acute feeling of sadness hung over her; as if her entire life all she had known was a deep, unrelenting unhappiness.

  “Has she spoken since the incident?” called out the old man. He had a slight German accent.

  “Not a word,” replied the tall woman. Somehow, her ability to talk above the clatter of the rainfall seemed effortless. “But then that’s hardly surprising. Your role is to look after her and keep her safe until we can apprehend the Harbinger.”

  “I can but try, Mrs Harker.”

  “I’ve told you before not to call me that.”

  “My apologies. A slip of the tongue. When did she last eat, Lilith?”

  “She hasn’t.”

  “You should have at least tried to give her something, Lilith.”

  “This child is lost in a world caught between the living and the dead. She is neither. A solid ghost. Food is hardly relevant to her.”

  “Perhaps.”

  The tall woman thought for a while before saying, “I must travel back to London tonight. It’s late already. You do appreciate the importance of keeping the girl safe, Ephraim? You are of course aware of what’s at stake?”

  “Of course I do, Lilith,” the old man said angrily.

  The tall woman nodded, and then, seemingly satisfied, turned back to the car across the courtyard.

  The old man hung his head sadly and watched the car spin out of the courtyard and ride away into the night through the storm. With a sigh, he shut the mighty door and turned to the young girl that now occupied his hallway and who looked very wet and very out-of-place.

  “You’re safe now, Megan,” he said and she looked up at him and into his eyes. He took a step back as he gazed at her. He rubbed his face gravely as he studied her forlorn figure. Caught between the world of the living and the world of the dead.

  A solid ghost.

  Chapter 8

  By 7.00 am Ash Field
ing had run two and a half miles from the comfort of his own living room. If he wanted to, he could have monitored his heart rate and blood pressure, designed his own course with inclines and descents and seen a graphical representation of his progress across the electronic terrain, but he had no idea how to do any of these things. An enigmatic array of buttons and dials flashed and beeped in front of him. He imagined this was the sort of control panel US astronauts used on the Apollo missions.

  One of the buttons on the display slowed the tread to an eventual stop to allow him to dismount safely. He had no idea which button this was so his morning training exercises were usually brought to an end by jumping off the moving tread and falling into a pile of dirty washing. Sensing the sudden loss of weight, Apollo 19 would then bring the tread to an automatic stop. On his dismount today, Ash managed to maintain his balance and, after turning to look at the contraption with a bitter degree of distrust, made his way into the kitchen where he poured himself coffee from a percolator.

  After a shower he dressed: plain white shirt, waistcoat, suit trousers, no tie. The colour of the suit was awkward to describe. A sort of soft blue, Italian cut; the sort of thing an older man might wear with a garish handkerchief protruding out of the breast pocket to match the tie. There is a fine line between stylish and complete wardrobe malfunction. Ash’s suit was on the line.

  He didn’t shave. He didn’t trust his stubble. He was 35, one of the youngest DIs in the South West, and he didn’t trust his stubble. Beard growth didn’t interest him – beards were the talisman of philosophers, hippies, leprechauns and serial killers. But he had the feeling that, if he wanted to grow a beard, his stubble would let him down and he would end up with facial hair that looked like it was pulled out of a clogged up Dyson.

  But aside from his youthful complexion, Ash wasn’t an ugly man. His cheekbones were strong and defined, jutting down from a mop of mousy brown hair that fell across his eyes when he moved his head too quickly and which he frequently had to sweep back to see anything. He was less fit than his morning routine would suggest and much less fit than he would like but the move from DS to DI last year had meant more paperwork and less running around Bristol catching bad guys. Not that he minded much.

  After he was ready, he picked up a load of washing of assorted colours and threw them into the machine. He was vaguely aware that clothes came with tags that contained directions for washing which ought to be considered but he took the view that life was too short to spend it trying to decipher small Chinese images of baskets with numbers in them. In any event, he had no idea how to change the temperature on his washing machine. So in they all went. As varied a topography of garments as was ever conceived.

  As he threw the clothes in, something fell to the floor. He picked up the small piece of pink paper and opened it. I love you, it said. The word love was replaced with a badly drawn heart. Frowning, he screwed it up and threw it in the bin.

  In the freezer he found three sausages which he covered in oil and pan-fried. When they were suitably coated in carbon, he sat down and ate them with bread and grated cheese.

  Breakfast was a quiet time. Thinking time. And Ash had a lot to think about.

  And the Innsmouth Institute was only part of the story.

  Ash had met Alix Franchot ten years ago and since then she had flittered in and out of his life in much the same way that cigarettes had: an enjoyable distraction while they were around and something that was vaguely missed when they weren’t. She had trained as a psychologist but he wasn’t sure whether or not she’d actually ever practised. They had studied together at Bristol University for a Masters Degree in criminology although for different reasons. Ash had done it because it represented one of the criteria for a fast track through CID. Alix had done it because she was bored and didn’t really know what to do with herself. Ash had applied himself, attended every seminar, absorbed every text, stayed behind and discussed topics with tutors and invested every spare waking hour to his studies. Alix had approached everything half-heartedly and swotted up for exams the week before. He had passed with merit. She had passed with distinction.

  Since then they had worked together on a few occasions. Perhaps most notably, two years ago Ash was investigating the disappearance of a young boy of twelve from a house outside the city. The boy’s name was Martin Falson, a name that Ash would never forget. The case had attracted some media attention for the usual reasons. The boy came from a middle class family of professionals – white, of course. The sort of Keeping-Up-With-the-Jones’ folk who people loved to link to scandal and corruption. The parents were quickly demonised as too emotionally detached and a number of family members were in the frame for a kidnap. Baron – the DSI – had led the case. Ash had been DS although his involvement had almost certainly kick-started his promotion to DI.

  The case was complex enough to warrant the involvement of a profiler. Ash had put forward Alix’s name and it took a degree of persuasion for her to be appointed considering her lack of track record. Fortunately for Ash, she applied herself considerably more diligently than her academic studies; sitting in on interviews, reading reams of evidence, producing psychological breakdowns of each family member. It was through her work that the boy’s uncle had been identified as a potential suspect. He was a complex man of many layers. Professional and above board on the surface, perverted and psychotic underneath.

  A nine week operation but little Martin was found, alive, strapped to a table in the Uncle’s basement. He had been systematically abused, starved and, at the end, abandoned. But in police terms, it had been a result.

  More recently, Ash found himself once again acting as Alix’s ambassador when a job came up with the Major Incident Unit for a profiler. Someone who wasn’t already integrated in the police system. An external. And someone cheap. To say that Ash manipulated the interviews would be being unfair. But he didn’t try particularly hard to find any other candidates with calibre either.

  That was last month. Today, Alix started her new job working in Ash’s team. Thus, she had become a permanent fixture in his world.

  He looked carefully at his half eaten sausage. They were supposed to be a bit pink in the middle, weren’t they?

  He scooped one and a half sausages in the bin and headed for the door. He had a mind to drop by to see Alix before she started. It was a push in at the deep end. A meeting with the CPS about Eugene Anwick. Something big. Something unusual. He should be pleased, excited even, he thought. But he wasn’t. He was nervous as Hell. A sucker for a pretty face, Baron had told him. But he hadn’t fought Alix’s corner so hard because she was pretty. He’d fought her corner because she was the best person for the job. Absolutely. But if it went wrong he would undoubtedly look like a complete pillock.

  He’d check in on her before she started. Just to make sure everything was ok. That was all.

  Chapter 9

  The darkness of the space around her wasn’t the darkness of night. It was a darkness that seeped from invisible cracks in the walls, consuming everything absolutely as it poured down and through the air.

  Alix took a step forward, feeling tentatively for solid floor and hearing the satisfying crunch of grit and soil. She was cold, although she did not feel it. The blackness was so oppressive that it was difficult to feel anything at all. She wore a dress that flowed around her like a river through a gauge. Blue satin to match the sparkle in her eyes.

  Vaughn sat in his chair like he always did. She could see him perfectly although there was no light source to illuminate him. He rocked gently; the creak of the wood was like the cawing of the morning crows. Occasionally, he inhaled the smoke from his pipe; let it swirl in his mouth before puffing it out and watching it coil around his head before it dissipated into the gloom.

  “Hello Father,” she said. He looked up. Another deep breath, another cloud of gas rose like the vapour from the river at sunrise.

  “Hello Alix.” His words were slow and heavy, crushed by the smoke.

&
nbsp; Now she saw doors. Four at first, set opposite to each other at an angle. Then six, eight, and then a ninth facing her square on. Wooden frames stood upright, seemingly unattached to a wall or support. Each door was labelled from one to nine.

  She had been here before.

  “Nine doors, Alix,” he said. “Nine doors. Nine Great Worlds.”

  She swallowed hard, tried to speak, but emitted no sound other than her beating heart. “Nine Great Worlds.” He took another puff and let the smoke disperse before continuing. “Seven of the doors take you back to the beginning, if you can find the way. Behind one door: redemption. Bring back to me the child you lost. Behind another: a Demon to devour you.”

  She hesitated, tried to suppress the urge to cry out. Salty tears stung her eyes, the doors were blurry. He looked at her expectantly, one hand gently caressing the beard which was cut so finely to a pointed tip underneath his chin. His hair was streaked with silver, swept back, cascading down his back. He was and always had been a terrifying man. This was not the dishevelled and broken man Alix visited in the home. It was the man of her childhood; an echo from the past.

  From nowhere, a breeze whipped up around her ankles and the dress momentarily billowed and flapped; the river raging to the precipice before the fall to the lagoon below.

  “Why must I choose?” she asked. Then, when he did not answer her, “I don’t understand any of this.”

  He looked at her and there was the disappointment in his eyes she had seen so many times before. Whatever she did, she could never live up to his expectations.

  “You wish it was me, don’t you,” she challenged him, the resentment and the bitterness tumbling out of her like rats from a burning ship. “You wish Zara was here and I had been taken.”

  He looked up at her sharply, turned his head slowly to one side so that is drooped slightly before he spoke, appearing to hang as if half severed by an invisible blade.

  “Like Eve, spawned was Sin of sacred flesh. Like Eve, thine equal was conceived. But thou art a fool brother; an ephemeral thing, this hollow prison and time be the servant of that which broods for thine own. Soon I will awaken from ancient slumber and I will rejoice in the fire that follows me.”