by Jon Mackley
Will nodded. ‘It sounds like our poet,’ he said with a bitter smile. ‘Always trying to be the mysterious man with the riddles. The clues hidden in lel lettres loken – locked in letters.’
Lara shook her head. ‘This wasn’t the poet at all. I think he knew about the inscriptions, but they weren’t his words. He was a man of few words. Ƿe sprynges calle. Ƿe trauayles biginez was one of his. Quaere lapidem in stella was another. In Holywell, he didn’t say anything at all. He believed in understating everything.’
‘What happened after that?’ Will asked.
‘They came back and sealed the crypt. I came down from the pulpit once they’d left and tried to find the cracks, but I couldn’t see them. But I don’t think it was them. I think the woman, reaching out with her mind, she opened the door. When she left, it closed by itself.’
‘Why her?’ Will wondered. ‘I don’t deny she was very psychic, from what you said, but why couldn’t it have been you who opened the door?’
‘Not me,’ Lara said. ‘The oppression was gone when she left. I didn’t feel I was being dragged anywhere. Whatever was in the crypt was like a magnet when I was standing at the top of the stairs, but once the door was shut, there was no way it could hurt me.’
‘But you never went into the church again?’
‘Can you blame me? I didn’t realise what it was at the time. I don’t think I do now. I don’t believe in higher powers or anything beyond the sphere of normality …’
Will nodded. ‘… But there was something in there that challenged your thoughts on “Other Worlds”.’
‘That’s pretty much it. Of course, I went home and dragged my father to bed and all those thoughts were gone by the morning. But I knew I didn’t want to go back into the church again.’
‘How did your father react to that if he was one of the church-wardens?’
‘Sometimes he beat me and called me a heretical bitch. Sometimes he told me how much I disappointed him. And there were times when he was just too drunk to notice. That’s the mercy of drink.’
Will peered apprehensively at the high arches. ‘If you go in, you might be dealing with the same thing again.’
‘Don’t patronise me,’ Lara glowered. ‘I can deal with whatever’s in there.’
‘All right,’ he said, holding his hands up in submission. ‘This place is making me a bit nervous as well,’ he admitted.
They stepped inside and Lara led the way along the aisle, towards the vestry door, to where she had seen the supernatural investigators open the door to the tomb.
Will switched on his torch and directed the beam at where Lara was pointing. Now the lines of the crypt door were more prominent. ‘Looks like our friends didn’t do such a good job of concealing this thing after all.’
Lara shook her head. ‘You wouldn’t have known it was there when they left.’
Malaise was growing inside her, or seeping through the stones. She stepped back to let Will get closer.
He handed her the torch and pulled a Swiss army knife from his pocket. ‘If that bloke could get through with a Stanley knife, then I’m sure this will do the job.’
He flicked open the blade and inserted it between the stones. ‘It’s like going through wax with a hot knife,’ Will said, as flecks of paint, plaster and stone fell to the ground. ‘Problem is people will know we’ve been here. I wish you’d told me about the supernatural investigators before we came. We could have been prepared.’ He cut at the shape of one of the stones, then stopped, thinking about what he was doing. ‘I don’t like this. They had permission to vandalise the church. What we’re doing here is just short of sacrilege.’
‘Scared for your immortal soul?’ Lara asked acerbically.
Will looked at her coldly. ‘More than you’d ever realise.’
Lara turned on him. ‘And what’s the difference between this and selling me out to those people. If you had really cared about me why didn’t you give me some hint something was amiss?’
‘And what would that have achieved? This has been going on for more than a decade. If I hadn’t followed you then it would have been someone else.’
‘Is that the only reason? You wanted to be the one to betray me?’
‘That’s not all, but that’s all you’re going to believe, isn’t it?’
‘Try me.’
Will shook his head. ‘This can wait. This isn’t the time or the place. At the moment I have another fish to fry.’ He positioned his blade in the small cracks, but simply touching the stones made the hidden door click.
There was a hiss as the tomb gases escaped as the door opened. Will stepped back, holding a hand over his mouth. A graveolent stench filled the church. Lara felt her stomach churning. ‘You can see why they use incense in churches,’ she said miserably. Her head was spinning. She glanced at the entrance nervously.
Will waited for the invisible noxious cloud to dissipate, then pulled the door open. The effluvium passed into a stale nausea. Lara shuddered; whatever evil lay beyond, that source of her fears, would be free.
When she heard the door grinding, she also heard the thundering of her heart. Then Will was shining his torch into the darkness. She knew this was not an irrational fear; it was not the confrontation of a nightmare she had had when she was younger. This was a very real presence that was overpowering her.
In the same moment that she wanted to leave her memories well alone, she realised she could not leave Will alone with whatever lay at the bottom of the stairs. He’d betrayed her once, why shouldn’t he do it again now?
She couldn’t read his expression when he turned back to her. His features had been swamped by the shadows. He turned back again and stepped on to the first of the stairs. The torch light flashed across one of the walls. She saw places where the obscure, profane symbols had once stood, tainting the church with their foul occult corruption. Beyond that was the Seal of Solomon. It seemed etched deeper into the stones, as though her first visit to the tomb had been no more than an invitation to understand the secrets contained within the crypt.
Now it was a demand.
She braced herself against the loathsome putrescence and stepped down.
17
The spiral steps coiled into the darkness like a twisted snake from a terrible legend no one dared tell any longer. The air was cold and musty, a putrid emanation from the darkness. Small eddies of dust circled around, wisps of the Devil woken by her intrusion. Lara started to step forward, then stopped, startled at a sound behind her. She held her breath until she realised it was the echo of her own footsteps. She stepped forward again. The stairs were narrow, winding tighter and tighter and the dank air squeezed around her heart and lungs. This time when she stopped, it was the realisation, the horror, of her actions. It was the same fear that had prevented her from going any further years before. She could not take her eyes from the Seal of Solomon.
‘What’s the matter?’ Will asked. He turned, pointed his torch down the stairs. The beam cut through the darkness. It created more shadows in which evil could hide.
‘We’re going into someone’s tomb,’ she whispered. It was a lie. The glowing lines beguiled her. Tiny currents of electricity passed between the points.
Will nodded seriously. ‘You’re right. It’s a family crypt. But we’re going to be the first people to go in there for centuries. The world doesn’t know that this place exists. If that supernatural investigator is still alive I doubt he’d have gone further; he’s probably tried to erase Beaded from his mind.’ He smiled comfortingly at her, seeming to understand her fear. ‘But there are no ghosts or demons down here. This is a shrine to the memory of those long gone.’
‘Then what right do we have to desecrate it?’ Still those lines, as if passing by them would break the five-pointed star and suck away the energy from her body.
‘Because we were invited. The poet left a long series of clues how to find this place, even if it was a round-about route.’
‘Why would he ha
ve gone to such lengths?’
‘He needed to be sure whoever was looking for him was dedicated to their quest. In the fourteenth century, such a journey would have taken a very long time.’ He saw her looking fearfully into the shadows again. ‘I know. You’ve probably seen a thousand horror films where something nasty is waiting at the bottom. To be honest, this place gives me the screaming heebie-jeebies. I’m terrified of going down there, not because I think there’s a malevolent force at the bottom, but because I don’t want to fall over in the dark.’ He seemed embarrassed. ‘And because I read about the curse of King Tutankhamen, where the curse pretty much wiped out everyone who went looking for the tomb’ He shook his head and his face seemed to steel with resolution. ‘Death will slay with his wings whoever disturbs the peace of the Pharaoh.’ He laughed. ‘But I realised the curse was fake: in Egyptian mythology Anubis, the god of the Dead, was a jackal. Death doesn’t have wings, except in Christianity – avenging angels and all that.’
‘But this isn’t King Tut,’ Lara said nervously. ‘Surely English people didn’t have enough occult power to create a curse that exists six hundred years later.’
‘Don’t you believe it,’ Will said gravely. ‘I’m not trying to scare you. This was a time of superstition. They believed in curses and sometimes belief was just as powerful.’
Lara shuddered. She couldn’t tell him the true source of her fears: the Seal of Solomon unnerved her – she didn’t know why it was there. But even that was not what truly terrified her. She was afraid of him, afraid of his betrayal. How did she know their freedom was not just another attempt to regain her trust, and to lead her on to another dark path and to who-knew-what danger?
But all of this was wrong. She saw he was as frightened as she was. She had to trust him. They could work together and overcome their fears.
She stepped back. ‘I can’t do this,’ she admitted. ‘Can you go first?’ She tried not to let her eyes stray back to the Seal.
He hesitated, but then nodded. He stood at the top of the steps, trying to peer into the darkness. She realised Will was attempting to summon his resources, his inner strength, to overcome his fears. Taking a deep breath, he stepped down. Lara glanced back at the heavy stone door. It was firmly wedged open. There was no chance of it being blown shut by the wind. She wondered if Narnia might have been a completely different story if the kids had been trapped inside the wardrobe and starved to death, rather than making their way to another world.
He took another step forwards. His shadow fell across the wall. It eclipsed the Seal. She watched the lines breaking, the light failing. Then it was like it had never been there.
‘Will?’ Trepidation filled her voice.
Will turned once, but she found no words to explain what she had seen. He continued into the darkness.
Taking a deep breath, she stepped after him.
The cold hit her immediately as she passed the place that the Seal had been. It seemed to devour her very core. Then she had passed it, stepping on the centuries of dust that had gathered on the steps. Will was a few steps further down. He reached into his pocket and pulled out a handkerchief to cover his nose and mouth. She wished she had one as well.
Silence enfolded them. Lara paused, wishing to hear a sound from above, footsteps outside the church, a passing car, even an aeroplane flying overhead, but there was nothing. These stairs could have been a portal between one realm and the next, a limbo where none of the senses functioned. Will was no more than a half dozen steps in front of her, but he had been swallowed by the spiral, so all that remained of him was his flickering shadow against the walls. She dared not linger any longer. If she waited, those shadows would also vanish, and Will would be swallowed by the darkness.
She held her breath, reached out to the wall. The stone beneath her was worn and uneven: the dust and bones made the steps precarious. The wall appeared to crumble as she touched it, but squinting in the failing light she saw she had dislodged more dust.
She stumbled, tried to steady herself as she fell. She heard herself calling Will’s name. She was blinded as he turned to her and the torch shone in her eyes. ‘Sorry,’ he muttered. ‘Are you all right?’
She said nothing, but he must have seen the terror in her face. His own mask of fear melted. He reached out to her. ‘Come on, Lara. We’re nearly there. Take my hand.’
She wanted to refuse, as if accepting his help would be an admission of the trust he demanded of her. Adrenalin pumped through her. She didn’t move.
Will climbed back up two steps and reached out to her again. ‘Lara,’ he said in a gentle voice. ‘No one is forcing you to come down here. Whatever it is, I want to share with you. I want you to be a part of it.’
Share death? Lara wondered. Be a part of the decay down here? Slowly, she reached out for him. It was like calling for the help her father had never offered, knowing she would never call on him to fulfil the father’s role that he had failed so much. Even now, his bitter comments, that she had failed the family and dishonoured their name, rang in her ears. Surely, this was more madness, weaving herself deeper into a pattern of insanity that would further incur her father’s wrath.
‘What’s the matter?’ Will asked. His hand closed over hers.
Tears trickled down her cheeks. Will took a step closer to her. His face was level with hers. ‘Pearl?’ he said softly. ‘You don’t have to go on if you don’t want to.’
Lara shook her head, wiping the tears away. How could she explain she wanted to be away from Beaded and never to return? How could she explain that her feelings were only enhanced by the darkness, not created by them? How could she explain that her mother had been buried in the graveyard and somehow she felt her presence? How could she explain any of it to Will when she couldn’t explain it to herself?
Will reached up to her; took her in his arms. She flinched at his touch, not knowing whether to pull away, or allow herself to be engulfed; to accept the likelihood he would betray her again, or to continue listening to his lies. She didn’t know which one she had the strength to face.
Suddenly she tensed again, recoiling from his touch, retreating a couple of stairs. Will did not move. She was unable to read his expression; his face was a shadow.
‘Lara,’ he spoke softly. ‘No one’s going to make you go anywhere you don’t want to go, but I have to go on.’
She said nothing. The brutal silence froze her heart. She heard a bell ringing, like a warning of distant memories. She squinted down the stairs at him. The coils were becoming narrower and narrower. The deathlike stillness chilled her blood. ‘I can’t,’ she said, squeezing her eyes shut. Her voice sounded hollow and warped. It seemed to hang in the air. ‘I can’t trust you, Will. I can’t go on.’
Will bowed his head gravely. ‘I thought you’d say that,’ he said and his voice plumbed the depths of sorrow. ‘I can’t change what I did. I didn’t know I’d fall in love with you. I didn’t want it to happen, but we can’t help the way our feelings change, can we? I realised things could never be the same between us afterwards. We live with the consequences of our actions, however hard it might be.’
Lara peered back up the stairs, her escape to salvation. ‘I don’t think we were supposed to find this place. Not us. Someone better.’
‘Do you really think that? Why would the Gawain-poet have left such a clear map if it wasn’t going to lead us here?’ He gave a long sigh. ‘Problem is we can’t always control who finds our hidden secrets.’ He turned away from her. ‘I would have given anything to not have betrayed you, Lara. I wish there was some way of changing what’s been done, but it seems the serum didn’t lead to what I was promised.’
‘If it had worked, you wouldn’t have been with me. If I’d changed the past, you’d have stayed with Janet and your son. You’d have never met me.’
Will nodded. ‘If you could change one thing in the past, what would it be? Seeing if there was a way of bringing your mother back? Seeing if there was a way to keep y
our family together? If you can change one mistake then you’re rich!’
Lara shook her head. ‘We learn from our mistakes. I may have made some serious mistakes in my life but I’ve come through it. I got away from Michael. I can get by on my own. Who said, “what doesn’t kill us makes us stronger”? I’d hate to think I’d spent my entire life in a protective bubble and learned nothing in my time on this earth.’
Will had screwed up his fist, emphasising his resolution. ‘But if you could change one mistake from history – warn Archduke Ferdinand that Sarajevo was dangerous? Tell Abraham Lincoln to stay in and read a book rather than going to the theatre? Or warn the Soviets they needed to spend more money on Chernobyl? Wouldn’t you do it?’
‘They wouldn’t have listened,’ she said eventually. ‘Time can’t change. History can’t change, it’ll find a way to get back on course again.’ She sighed unhappily. ‘And even if it won’t, maybe I did sort something out. Maybe I’ve already done it. Nothing to do with Lincoln or World War Two or Chernobyl, because we know that those happened, but something that was worse than JFK’s assassination and Hiroshima or 9/11. But who’d know, because time has gone on from the point I changed it?’
He did not answer. She watched him walking down the steps. The torchlight became hidden by the spiral staircase. She stepped out into the darkness; it was a leap of faith. Just one false step would break her ankle and Will might not be there to catch her when she fell. It was the cloud of unknowing that shrouded her and she was clawing desperately to free herself from the miasma.
Behind her, above her, she heard a sound. It was strange, unidentifiable, like a footfall in a forest, or the cackling of the wind. She was hyperventilating. She pulled her damp collar away from her neck. She stepped again, stumbling on loose fragments of the stone and steadying herself against the cold stone. She saw the light in front of her again, a beguiling shadow of a will-o-wisp.
She continued onwards, steadying herself against the wall. Will stopped. Lara almost ran into him and he turned and looked at her coolly.
