The Loney

by Andrew Michael Hurley

  ***

  I’ve left this part until last, but it must be set down as well as everything else. When they come asking questions, as they surely will, I need to have things straight, no matter the horror.

  Doctor Baxter says I ought to worry less about the minutiae of life and look at the bigger picture, but I have no choice and the details are important now. Details are truth. And in any case, I don’t care what Baxter says. I saw what he scrawled on my notes. It was only a few words that I glimpsed before he closed the file, but it was enough. Some improvement, but continues to exhibit childlike worldview. Classic fantasist. What the hell does he know anyway? He wouldn’t understand. He doesn’t know what it means to protect someone.

  ***

  I’ve walked down those cellar steps again and again for the last thirty years, in bad dreams and small-hours insomnia. I know every footfall, every creak of wood. I can feel the damp plaster under my hand as I did on that foggy afternoon as Clement and I inched down in the dark, holding the wall, holding Hanny.

  He had lost consciousness by the time we reached the bottom and we had to drag his full weight to a mattress in the middle of the floor that had been freshly stained around the buttons. He slithered from our grip and fell heavily. Clement knelt down and placed a grubby pillow under his head.

  There was a smell of burning. A table by the mattress was covered in a black cloth, and the bunches of mistletoe hanging from the ceiling were turning in the heat from the candles. The air was thick and stagnant and the walls glistened with condensation. Here and there, thin stalactites had formed and roots of weeds sprigged through where the mortar had dissolved. It was nothing more than a cave clad with white bricks. It was the place Alice Percy had taken all those sea-weary sailors to be bludgeoned and eaten.

  By the mattress was a heap of dirty towels and an enamel bowl of instruments coated in blood that had turned dark and resinous: a scalpel, scissors, a pair of forceps. Else had given birth down here. The child had never seen the daylight.

  At the end of the room was a wicker basket, which shook as the baby kicked and screamed itself hoarse. Clement put his hands over his ears. In the low room, the noise was terrible. Parkinson and Collier stood against the wall. The dog lay with its chin on its paws, its frightened eyes looking up for some comfort. It whimpered once and was silent.

  Under the screaming there was another sound, a soft thudding coming from somewhere, something like thunder heard from a distance. It rolled and scattered and returned. And I realised that it was the sea pounding the rocks under Thessaly.

  ‘You can go back upstairs now,’ Leonard said to me as he went over to the basket and took out the baby which was wrapped in a white sheet.

  ‘No,’ I said. ‘I want to be with Hanny.’

  I bent down and squeezed Hanny’s hand, but he couldn’t open his eyes. He had been sick down his new white shirt. His whole body was shaking as his leg seeped blood. He was dying moment by moment.

  ‘Clement,’ said Leonard.

  Clement put his hand gently on my shoulder.

  ‘Come on,’ he said. ‘Tha’d better do as they say. There’s nothing tha can do for him now.’

  ‘I want to stay.’

  ‘Nay,’ said Clement, his voice almost at a whisper now. ‘Tha doesn’t. Believe me.’

  I knew Clement was right and that I had to go with him, but I didn’t want to leave Hanny alone with them.

  Leonard came past me with the bundle. The baby was still screaming in a ferocious way, terrified and violent, like a trapped animal. It was so strong that Leonard had to hold it close to his chest.

  ‘Go on,’ said Leonard, raising his voice. ‘You can’t stay.’

  I felt myself being pulled out of the room as Clement dragged me up the stairs and out into the hallway, where he stood against the door so that I couldn’t go back down.

  ‘They’ll tell you when it’s been done,’ he said.

  ‘When what’s been done?’

  ‘When he’s better.’

  ‘What will they do to him?’

  ‘Them?’ said Clement. ‘They don’t do anything.’

  ‘I don’t understand.’

  Clement looked at me in a way that suggested he didn’t either.

  How long I waited there, I don’t know. An hour, two maybe. The fog pressed close to the house and the hallway was filled with a pallid light. All the while Clement stood with his back to the door, eyeing me nervously, until finally we heard Leonard calling us down.

  Clement stood aside as I went down the steps two at a time into the darkness. The main bulb had been turned off and the cellar was lit only by the candles that had been placed around the rim of a chalk circle that had been drawn on the floor. Leonard, Parkinson and Collier were standing inside the circle. Collier’s dog lay by his feet shivering.

  Outside the ring, Hanny was lying on the mattress, the baby next to him. Both of them were motionless—Hanny curled up with his hands around his knees as he had been when I left him, the baby half wrapped in a sheet.

  The swaddling clothes had come apart, and although Leonard quickly stepped out of the ring to draw the sheets back over the child, he wasn’t quick enough. I saw the baby’s blind grey eyes. Its shrivelled yellow face. The grotesque swellings on its neck. The mangled claw of a hand.

  I say baby. I’m not sure that it was human.

  Leonard knelt down by Hanny and shook him gently by the shoulder. Hanny woke blearily. He rubbed his face with the backs of his hands and sat up. After a moment he seemed to recognise me, though his eyes were still half-closed and drooping, and Leonard helped him to his feet. The bleeding had stopped and he came to me without a limp.

  ‘Now what dost tha think?’ said Parkinson from the gloom beyond the candlelight.

  I felt Hanny put his hand into mine. It was warm and heavy.

  Parkinson laughed quietly to himself. Seeing my expression of disbelief, Collier laughed too. The dog barked once and shook its collar.

  Still the baby didn’t stir. It lay there with its eyes half open staring at the ceiling.

  The sea thumped against the rocks and faded and returned but more faintly now than it had been before.

  ‘The tide’s going out,’ said Leonard.

  ‘The sands will be clear by two,’ said Parkinson.

  ‘The fog won’t lift though,’ said Collier.

  ‘No?’ said Leonard.

  ‘It’s cold as you like out there,’ said Collier. ‘Especially with allt flood water. They’ll sit well inland all afternoon wilt frets.’

  ‘Good,’ said Leonard. ‘Then there should be fewer people on the roads.’

  He looked past me at Clement, who had come down the steps without me noticing.

  ‘Is everything ready?’ he said.

  ‘Aye,’ replied Clement.

  ‘Well then,’ said Leonard. ‘I think we ought to conclude our business here.’

  ‘Gladly,’ said Parkinson and he took a candle to the end of the room, returning with the palm leaves Mummer had used on Easter Sunday. He had evidently stolen them from the kitchen when he’d come to Moorings with the Pace Eggers.

  Setting the candle down, he pushed the leaves into his fist and offered the first draw to Leonard.

  ‘Oh no,’ said Leonard with a quiet laugh. ‘You know full well I was never part of the disposal, Parkinson. We agreed that from the start.’

  Parkinson looked at him and then moved on to Collier, who took a leaf and glanced sidelong at Clement.

  ‘Go on,’ said Parkinson.

  Clement shook his head and Parkinson smiled and drew one for him anyway, placing it into his hand and closing his fingers around it.

  Clement began to cry, and I was so taken aback to hear him sobbing like a child that I didn’t realise that Hanny and I had been given a leaf each until Parkinson was ready to draw the lot.

  ‘Let’s see then,’ he said and everyone showed their leaves.

  Parkinson smiled and Collier let out a breat
h of relief.

  ‘The best result eh, Parkinson?’ said Leonard.

  ‘Aye,’ he said, grinning at me. ‘Couldn’t’ve been better.’

  Clement sniffed and wiped his nose on his arm.

  ‘You can’t do this,’ he said, holding Hanny by the shoulder. ‘He’s only a lad.’

  ‘Nay,’ said Parkinson, holding out the rifle for Hanny to hold. ‘Fair’s fair. He drewt shortest straw.’

  ‘Come on,’ said Clement. ‘Tha knows tha tricked him.’

  ‘You sawt straws, Clement. There was nowt amiss.’

  Still dazed, Hanny took the rifle and looked at it curiously before he slipped his hand around the small of the butt and placed his finger lightly on the trigger.

  ‘Draw it again then,’ said Clement, turning to Leonard, thinking that out of the three of them he might have some pity.

  ‘Fuck that,’ said Collier anxiously. ‘It’s been done. It’s not right to do it again.’

  ‘Don’t worry,’ said Parkinson, reaching into his jacket and taking out one of his butcher’s knives—a cleaver that looked as though it could split a pig in one blow. ‘The lad’s not going anywhere until everything’s been cleared away.’

  ‘Leave him alone,’ said Clement. ‘Look at him. He’s still out of it. He dunt understand what tha wants him to do.’

  ‘Oh, he will,’ said Parkinson.

  Clement swallowed hard and after hesitating for a moment, he took the rifle out of Hanny’s hands.

  ‘Go home,’ he said. ‘Go on.’

  Collier looked at Parkinson again. Parkinson dismissed his worries with a little shake of his head and put the knife away.

  ‘Such nobility, Clement,’ he said. ‘I never knew tha had it in thee.’

  ‘It can be something of a false victory, though, nobility,’ said Leonard, who came out of the gloom wiping his brow with a handkerchief. ‘Wouldn’t you say?’

  He slowly folded the handkerchief and put it back in his pocket as he looked down at the baby on the mattress.

  ‘I mean it might seem as though Clement’s relieved your brother of an awful task, but I’m afraid it doesn’t really matter who drew the short straw. And I’d hate you to think that his graciousness has somehow taken the pair of you out of the equation. You’re down here with us like it or not. We could lay the blame at your door whenever we wanted to. But I think you know that.’

  ‘And they wouldn’t like prison much, would they Clement?’ said Parkinson.

  Clement looked down at his feet and Leonard went over to him and held him by the shoulder.

  ‘No one’s going to prison,’ he said, looking from one person to the next. ‘Not if everything that’s happened here is buried away for good. Right, Clement?’

  Clement looked at Leonard and then extracted himself from his hand and took Hanny and I by the arms towards the stairs.

  ‘Don’t listen to them,’ he said. ‘None of this has owt to do with you. You don’t belong down here.’

  He gave me and Hanny a shove.

  ‘Go on,’ he said, fretful that we were taking so long to leave. ‘You’ll be able to cross now. Go home.’

  He nodded up the stairs and then went back over to Leonard who was waiting for him by the mattress. Leonard clapped him on the shoulder and Parkinson gripped him playfully round the back of the head.

  ‘Don’t worry, Clement,’ he said. ‘Dog’ll eat whatever’s left.’

  Clement closed his eyes and began to pray and his voice followed us up the stairs as he begged God for mercy and forgiveness.

  But there was no one listening.

  Chapter Twenty-nine

  Coldbarrow is still all over the television.

  I saw yesterday morning that they had erected a tent on the sands close to where I almost drowned all those years ago. They were working quickly to collect as much forensic evidence as possible before the tide turned, though there can’t have been much left. Not now.

  The reporter was standing on the mainland, shouting over the driving gales and sleet. The police had now launched a murder inquiry, he said. Two elderly local men had been taken in for questioning, and they were searching for a third.

  Things were gathering apace. But I was prepared. All those evenings I’d spent writing everything down hadn’t been wasted. Everything was clear now. Everything was straight. Hanny was safe. It didn’t matter what anyone said to the contrary. Leonard, Parkinson and Collier wouldn’t have had the wit to plan as I had. They had been too reliant on each other’s silence and hadn’t reckoned on The Loney revealing everything they’d done.

  I waited for as long as I possibly could before I had to leave for work, with one eye on the news and the other on the weather outside. A blizzard had been raging since the dark of the early morning and the street outside was becoming lost under heavy drifts of snow. It was starting to come light but only just. A grey colour spilled across the sky, pale as dishwater.

  Walking down to the station I outpaced the cars that were waiting to get onto the North Circular in a long line of exhaust fumes and brake lights. People stood huddled at bus stops or in shop doorways which were still shuttered and dark. Even the Christmas lights they had strewn along the high street were out. The city was grinding to a standstill, it seemed, and the crib outside the church on the corner was the only thing of brightness.

  They set it up every year—a kind of garden shed crammed with life-sized shepherds and wise men and Mary and Joseph kneeling before the plump little Christ in the hay. Music plays on a loop all day and night, and as I paused to cross the road, I caught the tinny trickle of Joy to the World before the lights changed.

  The tube was packed, of course. Everyone steamed and sneezed. Coldbarrow was headline news on most of the papers. Each had the same syndicated photograph of Thessaly tumbled to ruins on the beach. Some had grainy images of people in white boiler suits stooped over the rubble. I wondered how long it would be before I saw Parkinson or Collier or even Clement blazoned across the front page. They would be in their seventies now, perhaps their eighties. About to be jolted out of the complacency of old age.

  At the museum, I let myself in through the back door. It was so quiet that I wondered if there was anyone else there, but going through the staff kitchen there were a few others standing around in their coats drinking tea, in a kind of holiday mood, thinking that it was very likely the museum would be closed for the day. And they were probably right. I mean, who was going to risk life and limb or a bout of the flu to come and see an exhibition of pewter or Edwardian millinery?

  ‘Hey, I wouldn’t get settled,’ said Helen jovially, as I gave them all a cursory good morning nod and headed to the basement.

  I know they think me rather odd and talk about me when I’m not there. But I don’t really care. I know who I am and I’ve worked out all my failings by myself a long time ago. If they think I’m fastidious or reclusive then they’d be right. I am. And so where do we go from there? You’ve worked me out. Well done. Have a prize.

  Helen gave me a frowned smile as I undid the security grill. She looked as though she was going to come over and speak to me but she didn’t and I pulled the shutters aside and went down the stairs, unlocking the door at the bottom that once closed behind me meant that no one was likely to bother me for the rest of the day. There is a phone but if I get any correspondence it’s through email. They understand that I need quiet to work. They’ve learnt that much about me at least.

  A waft of warm air met me. It’s always warm in the basement. A dry heat to stop the damp getting to the books. It can be a bit oppressive in the summer but that morning I was more than thankful for it.

  I switched on the strip lights and they pinked and flickered and lit up the long rows of bookshelves and cabinets. The homes of many old friends. Ones I’ve got to know intimately over the last two decades.

  When I have a moment, which is becoming rarer these days, I like to visit Vertot’s History of the Knights of Malta or Barrett’s Theorike and
Practike of Moderne Warres. There’s no better way to spend an hour or two once the museum has closed than reading these volumes as they were written—in quiet reflection and study. Any other way is worthless. Having them spread open in a display case upstairs for people to glace in passing is an insult if you ask me.

  I generally work at the far end of the basement where there’s a computer I use for research and a wide desk where I can keep all the bookbinding equipment and still have plenty of elbow room.

  I don’t know why I felt the urge to do it, and it makes me feel like someone out of a Dickens novel, one of Scrooge’s clerks perhaps, but a while ago I moved the desk under one of those glass grids they have at street level where I could look up and watch the shadows of feet going past. I suppose there was something comforting about it. I was down there warm and dry and they were out in the rain with people and places to hurry to and be late for.

  But today the glass was opaque with snow, making the basement even gloomier. The strip lights don’t do much apart from create shadows, if I’m honest, and so I switched on the angle poise lamp and sat down.

  For the past few weeks, I had been working on a set of Victorian wildlife books that had been donated from the sale of some laird’s estate up in Scotland. Encyclopaedias of flora and fauna. Manuals of veterinary science. Copious volumes about badgers and foxes and eagles and other reprehensible predators. Their habits and breeding patterns and the many ways to cull them. They were in a reasonable condition, given that they had been languishing in a gillie’s hut for years, but the leather covers would have to be replaced and the pages re-sewn if anyone was ever going to read them again. Someone would. There was always someone who would find such things fascinating. Academics might take pains to go through all the details, but what was of interest to the museum, the bit of social history they could sell to the public, was the handwritten marginalia. The little insights of the anonymous gamekeeper who had stalked the moors of the estate and kept his master’s animals safe for nigh on fifty years.

  Notes about the weather and nesting sites were strewn around the sketches he had made of the things he had had to kill in order to protect the deer and the grouse. A fox caught in a snare. An osprey spread-eagled by shotgun pellets. They seemed at first glance, gruesome, boastful things, no better than hanging trophy heads along a hallway, or rats along a fence, but the detail of feathers and fur and eyes that he had taken time to render with his fine pencil made it clear that he loved them dearly.