‘Yes, but few. We are only four.’
‘Hence you sought to revive interest at the party, drawing in dreamers for initiation?’
‘Yes. Was it not wonderful? Every woman there felt his call, and the men responded to the women’s lust in turn.’
‘The lust, then, derived from Sigodin-Yth, from Txcalin?’
‘Yes, but it was stronger than before, and had far greater effect. People seemed more open, more receptive. I think, maybe, Christianity is weakening, dying even.’
‘It is. Look, let’s walk. You never know, they might search the beach.’
Thomazina rose, taking his hand, which he accepted. Memories came back to her, of walking the same beach, hand in hand with other young men, but never one in whom she felt she could confide in such depth.
‘The last time it was not so,’ she told him. ‘We tried, but the girls were staid, closed in on themselves, the men little better. There was a dreamer, a pretty girl called Rose, but the police came and took her and spoiled it.’
‘Rose? Rosemary Evans?’
‘That was her name. She went away afterwards. You know a great deal.’
‘I know Rosemary Evans was arrested after a party at the Wythman in 1957.’
‘She was. She was fine, in a way, but we could never quite break through to her. Even Juliana could not seduce her.’
‘Juliana was there, but… The man Hobbers, he called you Thomazina Keeley when he left. I know of her. She was a dreamer, or so it seems, and used to visit the barrow by night. Was she a cult member? Have you taken her name in her honour? Do the same names pass down between members?’
Thomazina shrugged, unsure if he could see the gesture and uncertain how to answer his question. Nich continued. ‘She vanished on Midsummer’s Night 1853, when the temple stood open. The Reverend Wilmot had opened it.’
‘Wilmot? The Reverend Clerebold Wilmot. Now there was a man who might have taught poor old Mr Hobbers how to fulfil his dirty needs.’
‘You know of him, then, and doubtless more. Tell me, please, you won’t find my mind closed.’
‘I will tell. You may believe, you may not.’
‘I will believe.’
‘So you say. So where should I start? There are many beginnings, but mine was a still night in summer when I woke from a nightmare. There was a bright moon, and from my bed I could see up to the hill through the trees, with the barrow bathed silver in the light. I’d been there in my dream, and I was scared, but confused, too. What I had dreamed had been awful, or it seemed to be at the time, but it had also made me feel protected, and at the time I needed protection more than anything.’
‘From who?’
‘Wilmot, the wonderful, godly —’
‘Wilmot? He’s been dead over a hundred years!’
‘I said you wouldn’t believe.’
‘No, continue. I confess scepticism, but my mind is not shut. Wilmot was molesting you?’
‘He intended to. Yes, the Reverend Clerebold Wilmot, who everybody said was so kind and so, so fatherly. To me he was the Devil. Each Sunday he held classes, teaching reading and studying of the Bible to the local girls and boys. He said that I was slow and stupid, also stubborn, and offered to help, keeping me for extra lessons when the others had gone. My parents thought this was wonderful, him, a learned gentleman, making time for their silly daughter.’
‘The abuse of priestly power. It is a common wrong.’
‘Men of the church seemed very high to us, beyond reproach.’
‘Such is innocence, and without innocence there would be little abuse.’
‘Oh, I was innocent in my way, but not like that. There was nothing I liked better than to go down to the woods with a boy and trade a suck for a lick of my cunny. If Wilmot had wanted to feel my titties or have me touch his man I’d have charged him sixpence and been laughing as I walked home. No, he was far worse, a true monster, a torturer.’
‘How so?’
‘He wanted pain. Not pain that comes with pleasure, but pure pain, both in my head and my body. From the start he said that if I didn’t learn well I would be punished. I thought he meant he’d smack my bottom, and only felt bad because I knew I’d get a wet cunny and thought he would see. That wasn’t what he meant.’
‘No?’
‘No. His trick was to tell me I was to be punished, but that it would happen the next week. He had this horrible machine, with a handle he could turn and bits of wire sticking out of it. He made me touch it and it stung me, then he told me he would tie my hand to it, the next Sunday.’
‘Some sort of electrical device?’
‘I suppose so. I didn’t even know the word electricity. All week I was terrified, but when the time came he said it was not enough. The punishment was to be postponed, and made worse, with wires fixed to both hands.’
‘Didn’t you tell your parents?’
‘How could I? It would have been my word against his, and he was the vicar. I didn’t dare.’
‘I understand, I think.’
‘It was awful, and I knew he would do it in the end. I began to dream about him and his machine. First it was just that, then about being rescued, by something I could never see, and with that came a compulsion to go up to the barrow. That scared me too. Mother had told us the barrow was a bad place, that pixies lived there. If I went at night they would drag me down under the earth. It had happened before, she said, long before, to a girl who had lived in the same house. When I told her she was scared for me, and of course she went straight to Wilmot, to ask his advice.
‘He said it showed wilfulness in me and that he would give me more time each Sunday. When I went, he said that the next week he would put the wires across my stomach, and it would make me lose control of my bowels. That night the dream came again, stronger, and when I called out for help he was dragged away by a huge tentacle. That’s when I woke and saw a figure standing on the mound, against the moonlight.’
‘And you went to her?’
‘She came to me, the prettiest little thing, so funny and so playful. It was impossible to imagine her doing harm. She said I should go with her, to the mound, and then I would be safe. I didn’t dare. The mound was open, then, and I’d seen the hole, a gaping black mouth into the earth. I was so scared, but each night she came back, and she was sweet and kind, and Sunday was getting closer.
‘I began to go with her, slipping out of the house and up the hill. She would touch me and stroke my hair, and it excited me like nothing else I had ever done. On the Friday I let her make love to me, on the barrow in the moonlight. When I came back I was caught by Mother.
‘They were worried for me, and I told them I’d been sleepwalking, so once again they sent me to talk to Wilmot. He told them about the machine. He said I needed what he called electrotherapy. They agreed. They didn’t know any better. It was to happen the next week, and when he had me alone he said what would happen, and that there would be no more delays. I was to be fixed to a table, my hands, feet and belly bound with straps. I was to be naked. He would put the wires to my head, to my stomach, to my arms and legs. When he wound the handle it would cleanse me in mind and body. My bowels would open and I might faint from the pain, but it would be for my own good, and it would stop the dreams. While he spoke he tried to be serious, but I could feel his lust and his pleasure in my fear.’
‘So you went with the girl?’
‘Yes, on Midsummer’s Night.’
‘What happened?’
‘That I cannot tell you.’
‘I understand. The girl was Linnet?’
‘Her name is Elune. Do you know how Wilmot died?’
‘He was an old man, I have seen a photograph from1879.’
‘Old and spry, and still teaching Sunday classes. In 1881 he decided my sister Emily’s eldest girl needed extra class. They found him wired to his electrotherapy machine, I won’t say how.’
‘You did that?’
‘Oh, no, I would never have the he
art. Juliana did.’
‘Who I made love to earlier?’
‘The very same. Do you believe?’
‘I do. At least I will try. What of Linnet… Elune that is, and the others?’
‘Elune is old, older than she knows herself. She was the priestess here when the Celts came. At first they left the temple be, treating it as a sacred place. Later they grew bolder and destroyed it, setting fire to it while she was still inside. She went down into the earth.
‘Alice’s true name is Aileve. She was the girl my mother knew about, although she didn’t know when, or why. The story had lasted nearly six hundred years by then and even the names were forgotten. Aileve was the daughter of the reeve who kept Abbotscombe manor for the monastery at Buckfast. She is clever and sensitive and was a dreamer from a young age. The monks came to open the barrow, looking for treasure, and she tried to stop them. They said she was a witch and would have burned her, but she ran and Elune took her down.’
‘Juliana is older?’
‘She is Roman, a settler’s daughter. The villa was on land down by the estuary. The barrow was still a sacred place then, and the slab could be lifted. When men pulled it open she began to dream, and to worship. Christianity was rising, but she refused to convert. They tried to force her but she just laughed at their cruelties. At last some soldiers threw her on a midden by the Exe and threatened to bury her alive if she wouldn’t deny her faith. He came for her, and took the soldiers down under the water.’
‘The god, then, has corporeal form?’
‘How could it be otherwise?’
Ten
Lily awoke to bright sunlight and the pleasant cool of a summer dawn. She felt stiff and still tired, after a night of fevered dreams, of the party on the barrow, of marrying Ed, of the embrace of octopus tentacles and more. Her anus hurt, too, and her vulva was sore. Ed had buggered her, beaten her and buggered her. The strapping had been for wanting to go to the solstice party, so he had said. She had put on a peephole bra and crotchless panties, in scarlet, lewd, tarty garments that had filled her with shame. He had tied her hands to the bedstead and put her in a leg spreader he had bought in a sex shop, leaving her helpless. He had whacked her with his thick leather belt, over and over until her bottom was a mass of scarlet and purple weals and the juice from her sex was trickling down her thighs. He had spat on her anus and opened her with a finger, then rubbed her own juice into the mushy hole. He had buggered her, sticking his cock to the hilt in her anus and rubbing her off to make it clench on his shaft. He had come in her rectum and made her suck his penis afterwards.
She climbed from the bed, walking to the window. Ed made no move, but slept on, snoring gently. Outside the sky was pure blue, the sea calm. With quick motions she pushed off the tawdry panty-and-bra set and pulled his dressing-gown around herself. Leaning forward, she turned to see Ness Head and Aldon Hill beyond, the barrow outlined against the sky. A few shapes could be seen, and a single, dark figure against the light, renewing the regret she felt at not having been there. The girls had wanted her to go, badly, and especially Alice Chaswell. She had wanted to go herself, yet as usual she had let Ed rule her, breaking her will.
He had even insulted her intended profession, and as she remembered his words she wondered if he would let her attend the opening of the barrow. The answer was almost certain to be no. It was Saturday and he was off duty. He would probably want her to himself, to make his lunch and clean his house, things she was sure he would consider more important than her being with the archaeologists. It was too much, yet she was trembling even as she tiptoed quietly across the room, thinking of his threats to hit her and how he would undoubtedly take out his anger up her bottom.
She dressed, willing herself despite her fear and the feeling that she was betraying her man. He would own her, she knew, but the barrow opening meant too much to her, and minutes later she was slipping quietly from the house, feeling bad, and disobedient, but also triumphant.Taw mouth was quiet, the streets empty but for a police car and two milk floats. Only at the beach did she realise that the river ferry would not start running for several hours, and with mixed feelings she sat down on the sand.
Violet stretched and yawned, happy despite herself as she waved the desk sergeant a cheerful farewell through the glass doors of Tawmouth police station. She had been cautioned, as had Juliana, who was waiting for her at the bottom of the steps, clad in an ill-fitting print dress. Yasmin and Joe were still inside, having been taken actually in the middle of sex and with cannabis on them.
After losing Nich she had not run, realising that her purple hair and body jewellery made her an easy target. Nor had she wanted to stumble about on the dark cliff top when she was both drunk and high. Instead she had dressed and done as she was told, behaving as sweetly as possible in the hope of avoiding charges relating to stripping off and having sex in public. It had worked, with the police reluctant to do more than give cautions when so many had been naked. If they had seen her having sex, then none had mentioned it.
Juliana had been unlucky, dashing blindly for cover only to run full tilt into a policeman. She had fallen and hit her head on a bottle and been taken before her senses recovered, ending up sitting with Violet in a van. Yasmin and Joe had been caught hopelessly intertwined in each other. Topher Knight had vanished, but eventually been found, at dawn, sitting quite casually on the grass near the cliff edge. There had been no sign of Nich, Tammy, Alice or Linnet, all of whom she now hoped had got away.
‘Cautioned?’ Violet asked.
Juliana nodded and held out her hand, which Violet took.
‘You can borrow some decent clothes if you like,’ she offered, ‘and have some decent coffee — that stuff tastes like dirt. Nich might be back, if he’s managed to get some clothes.’
‘Thank you. Nich is your boyfriend?’
‘Yes, sort of. He understands me. He lets me be myself.’
‘You are very calm for a dreamer. What threatens you?’
‘Nothing, now. I always hated the church, because my parents wanted me to be a good little Christian girl, to have a white wedding and all that. I’m free of it now, but in my dreams it’s always some workmen and an old priest, Wilmot, the guy who opened the barrow in the nineteenth century.’
‘Wilmot is dead.’
‘Sure. I suppose he just represents the Christian church to me, while the workmen are in response to my fear of rape.’
‘I imagine it is so. And he comes for you?’
‘The god? Yes.’
‘You have seen him?’
‘Yes. Nich based his image for last night on my dreams, the green man with the head of an octopus.’
‘That is the Celtic image, and you called out the Celtic name. It is strange. You are a Celt perhaps, by origin?’
‘No, I don’t think so. My mum and dad are both from Colchester. I don’t know of any Celtic ancestors. Nich explained the image to me: it’s the same image that inspired the Cthulu stories, and he says the god was worshipped in Egypt, too, under some other name, but in the same image.’
‘The image then, does not come from your dreams?’
‘Yes, no, not really, the other way around if anything.’
‘We will speak to Linnet. For now, clothes and coffee and, if you would be kind, honey and ice cream on those sugary pieces of wheat they make.’
The barrow stood open, the mouth an uneven rectangle of blackness leading into the earth, the greying wood of Wilmot’s props visible within. Professor Cobb stood to one side, watching as photographs were taken and sketches made. Others waited behind him, ready with modern shoring to support the roof when the time came to enter. They had arrived early, after hearing of the police raid, determined to take advantage of their excavation permits before any officers could decide that the site needed to be closed off for their investigations.
‘The Victorian construction appears remarkably solid,’ he remarked. ‘Still, it is best not to take chances.’
�
��There seems to be a faint breeze coming from the opening,’ Lily remarked, leaning forward. ‘Do you feel the cool air?’
‘Alice Chaswell has speculated that a subterranean passage may exist,’ Cobb answered. ‘Wilmot does not mention one, but he does remark that the air in the excavation remained fresher than he had expected.’
‘How far in does this passage go?’
‘Nearly to the far end. It finishes at a slab with a symbol similar to the one in Brittany carved on it. A starlike emblem with octagonal symmetry, supposedly meant to represent an octopus, although that is not certain.’
‘I’ve seen drawings of it. Is it not supposed to be the god, Sigodin-Yth?’
‘Again, largely speculation. Without written records it is hard to be sure. Alice is more confident, and feels there may well be more carvings. Speaking of Alice, it is unlike her to be late, most unlike her.’
He turned back to the sketch, remarking on the symmetry of the mound. Lily moved back, glancing nervously towards the path, half expecting to see an angry Ed Gardner striding towards her. Nobody was there, and she turned back to watch the first shorings put into place. The archaeologists worked fast, with practised ease, adjusting the equipment and scanning the floor and walls for objects of interest as they went. Lily stayed back, fascinated, yet troubled by thoughts of Ed and a sexual feeling that refused to be pushed down. Her nipples were stiff, embarrassingly so, and the crotch of her panties was wet, while the wild fantasies she had created, of sex with octopus, kept intruding on her thoughts.
Two other members of the team were female. One was helping with the shoring, and facing away. The other was standing, sketching, and, although she appeared deep in study of the barrow, it was impossible not to notice the straining points of her nipples showing through her light summer frock.
A voice called out her name, a male voice, and Lily’s heart jumped. She turned, expecting to see Ed. Relief washed over her at the sight of Nich, striding briskly towards her, Violet beside him, Tammy and Juliana close behind. Nich was dressed as usual, in black, as were Violet and Juliana, Tammy making an odd contrast in brightly coloured beach shorts, an overtight halter top and sandals.
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