Black Cathedral (department 18)

by L. H. Maynard

  Watkins suggested these straight tracks or ley lines might be the remnants of prehistoric trading routes. The fact that many of the tracks went up extremely steep hills he left to conjecture and over the years many explanations for these direct lines were examined, until Leys took on a mystical element.

  Ley lines seemed to be alignments of ancient sites or holy places that are situated in a straight line and can range to several miles in length. They can be identified by the placed marker sites, or by the remnants of an old track.

  Watkins said in his book, ‘…visualize a mound, circular earthwork, or clump of trees, planted on these high points, and in low points in the valley other mounds ringed with water to be seen from a distance. Then great standing stones brought to mark the way at intervals…’

  Carter learned that Watkins told his son, ‘The whole thing came to me in a flash.’ Carter guessed this was a simple way of saying his thoughts and ideas coalesced simultaneously in a moment of inspiration but over the years the ‘flash’ began to be interpreted as having a magical meaning. Watkins believed the lines dated back to pre-Roman times.

  From the Internet Carter found earlier references to Leys. In 1870, again in Herefordshire, William Henry Black gave a talk called Boundaries and Landmarks to the British Archaeological Association where he suggested, ‘Monuments exist marking grand geometrical lines which cover the whole of Western Europe.’ Of course this might have been where the idea first embedded in Watkins’s mind, as he was a keen archaeologist, but for Carter the idea that ley lines might span the whole of Europe was fascinating.

  He lit another cigarette and looked out over the treetops to the expanse of lake. Rods of sunlight cut through the thin gray cloud bouncing from the surface of the water as if smiles in a mirror.

  Scrolling through related pages he found references to later ideas about Leys. Two British dowsers from the British Museum linked ley lines with underground streams and magnetic currents. Claims were that crossings of negative water lines and positive magnetic lines made a site holy, with many of these double lines on sacred sites.

  Two German Nazi researchers, Wilhelm Tuedt and Josef Heinsch also claimed Teutonic peoples added to the construction of a network of astronomical Holy lines or Heilige Linien, which could be mapped against sacred sites throughout Europe. One example given was the rock formation in central Germany called Die Externsteine.

  Later writers mentioned China and the whole landscape being in touch with the earth due to the laws of feng shui. It is thought that ancient civilizations believed the harmony of their people was dependent upon the harmony of the earth. To preserve this union they built their structures and monuments according to ley lines. Apart from China there was evidence in Greece, the civilizations of the Aztecs, the Mayans, the Incas, and even close to home in England and Scotland. Most schoolchildren knew about Stonehenge, though most were less familiar with the larger Avebury.

  He stubbed out his cigarette and walked back to his cottage to brew some fresh coffee and make a sandwich.

  Seated at the battered pine table he listened to the coffee machine performing its magic. It was the only sound in the house. He lived alone, and always had. There were plenty of women he shared his life with from time to time but none that stayed around long enough to move in. None that he wanted to open up to, with whom to share his innermost thoughts. Given his psychic ability he knew that if he ever did find someone to share his life with they would have to be special.

  He poured out the coffee. There had been a woman, once, one that might have been special. He had let her go. She was married and he didn’t want any relationship they might have to end with pain. That was what he told himself.

  Back at the garden table he bit into his toasted cheese and tomato sandwich. The research about ley lines had a point. He was agonizing over Sian. He was looking for links between the house they had investigated and recent similar occurrences.

  Ley lines were one part of the possible link but what he had been pondering was what similarities there might be between the actual places. He had his files on the other chair. The house he was familiar with was the most recent, and not one he needed any notes to recall. The others were spaced out a few months apart. One was a small factory outlet in an industrial park; another was a multistory car park; and then there was a small retreat that consisted of a number of terraced houses knocked through into one dwelling.

  There was no instantly recognizable link, so Carter went back to the first file and started again. What did the factory do? Did it make things, assemble things, what? After wading through reams of paper Carter found the answer: religious artifacts. Okay, that was a start. How did that link to the car park? There was no obvious clue in its purpose so he looked at the location on a map. It was in a residential area, houses all around, a row of local shops, and a church.

  The next file was the ordinary house from a few days ago. Again there was nothing about the house itself to provide any clues. The location was as ordinary as the house; nothing there seemed liable to produce a link. The Flemings were ordinary in every way so far as he could tell; hardworking, clean living, even churchgoers. He checked again, though he knew the answer. Sian was a regular churchgoer as well, a strict Catholic girl.

  With mounting anticipation Carter pulled over the last file: the retreat. The file indicated it had originally been a row of terraced houses built for the workers at a mill that produced cotton at the turn of the twentieth century. In the 1990s it had been cleverly converted into a single dwelling, long and narrow though it was organized to accommodate up to fifteen priests. The retreat was a house for Jesuit priests to stay in and meditate.

  CHAPTER NINE

  Michael Bennett reached the top of the incline and stopped running. A stitch was creasing his side, and his legs felt like lead. The run yesterday morning had exhausted him and he had very little left. The plan to drive the Land Rover to the jetty had foundered at the first hurdle. Three of them had tried to get it to start and all had failed. The engine wasn’t even turning over. Going by foot was the only option. And now it was late in the day and the light was beginning to leach from the sky. Another couple of hours and it would be dark, and that would be a disaster. He had to find the jetty in daylight; he’d have no chance come nightfall.

  Leaning forward to catch his breath he looked about him and groaned. He’d climbed the hill in the hope it would give him a view across the island, but now he was at the top he realized it wasn’t high enough — nowhere near high enough. He took the compass from the side pocket of his backpack, flipped open its waterproof cap and held it out in front of him.

  That couldn’t be right!

  The compass needle was swinging backwards and forwards, unable to decide which way was north. Slowly it started to spin in lazy revolutions, which confounded him further.

  It was hours since he’d left the others and set off, and he was no closer to finding the jetty and the boat. He didn’t want to let them down. As he’d left the Manse he’d looked at their faces and seen a host of emotions painted on them, ranging from derision to hope, from hope to abject terror. The women, Sheila and Casey, seemed to have a kind of blind faith in him, believing that he would somehow find a way back to safety. He remembered Scart’s words on the boat on the crossing over. Group Leader. That was a joke. Before coming to this godforsaken island he had never actually led anything in his entire life. And with that arbitrary decision had come a responsibility, and the fact that he didn’t want such an onus on him was neither here nor there.

  He moved his weight to the left, intending to carry on — what other course was left to him? — but as his foot came down it hit a half-buried, moss-covered rock and twisted over on itself. The pain lanced up his leg as far as his groin; white-hot, excruciating. He cried out and crashed to the ground, lying there panting from his exertions, humiliated by his ineptitude and very frightened.

  He thought he could hear movement through the trees and undergrowth behind him,
and he could imagine a pursuer closing the gap between them. When he looked back he could see nothing, no sign of anyone or anything. But the panic had taken hold of him now, and with a groan of resignation he made himself stand.

  The pain, when he put weight on his twisted ankle, brought tears to his eyes. Oh God, if only he’d listened to his wife. Diane had told him bluntly — and quite cruelly — that this management exercise was beyond his physical capabilities. ‘Michael, you’re forty-eight; too old and too out of condition for a week gallivanting around some remote Scottish island.’ And he’d argued with her, trying to make her see that he had no option. If he wanted to survive against the junior managers, the young Turks, the predators regarding his senior position with hungry eyes, then he had to compete with them on equal terms. Only, where were they now? Cowering in the shadows of the Manse, sending him out to seek help from…from God knew where. The island was deserted. The only hope left to him was to reach the jetty and the launch that had brought them across from the mainland. With any luck he’d be able to get the radio working and be able to summon help. And then he wouldn’t have to test his seafaring skills on the choppy waters of the North Sea.

  He limped on, keeping an eye on the fading light. Five minutes later it started to rain; a thin sleety drizzle that blew into his eyes.

  This was hopeless. He’d never find the jetty now.

  And then he saw it; not more than four hundred yards away. The boat was still there, tied to one of the stanchions, rising and falling on the swell. His heart leapt and he started at a hobbling run, trying to ignore the pain from his injured ankle that knifed up his leg with each stride, until the separate shafts of agony converged, becoming one long, scintillating scream.

  He was so focused on the speck of hope in the distance that he didn’t notice the gully. Only when his foot hit empty air and he found himself pitching forward did he realize he’d made a terrible mistake. The ground fell away and he rolled and bumped down the incline, sharp stones and clumps of thistles raking his skin, drawing blood, creating new hotspots of pain on his already pain-wracked body. As he rolled to the bottom of the gully the deep undergrowth of bracken and heather swallowed him.

  Shaken and disoriented he tried to push himself upright, but a new pain surged through him. It was ten times worse than anything he had experienced so far, and so intense he blacked out for a few seconds. When he came to and shook his head to clear his thoughts he realized with numb surprise that he’d broken his leg.

  With a sob he shrugged off his backpack and tried to pull himself upright, but the pain was too much. He collapsed back onto the springy, moist ground and started to cry; fat, wet tears pushing out from his tightly closed eyelids. Tears of pain, frustration and utter hopelessness. For the first time in many years he found himself praying to a God he hoped still had Kulsay on the radar.

  There was movement in the bracken beside him. He opened his eyes, seeing the white, flaccid skin of the hand that was holding back the undergrowth, exposing him. He looked from the hand to the white, dead eyes staring impassively down at him, and started to scream. And kept on screaming until the hand reached into his mouth and ripped out his tongue.

  In the cellar, Eddie Farrant listened. The noise of the helicopter was increasing, becoming more like a roar of thunder, and the noise brought him with relief back to reality. He didn’t want to think about Jo Madley; her disappearance and horrific reappearance. He didn’t want to think about what had happened to Andrew, Sheila and Casey. To relive those memories would only bring him closer to the madness that was lurking in the shadows of his mind. He didn’t want to think about what might have happened to Bennett after he’d left them all in the bar.

  Instead he burrowed still deeper into the sacks so that anyone — or anything — that entered the cellar would not find him.

  And then something grabbed hold of his leg.

  He cried out and threw off the sacks. A pale-skinned hand was jutting out from the floor and long bony fingers curled themselves around his ankle. He watched with disbelief as his foot was dragged into the hard earth floor of the cellar.

  ‘Get off me!’ he yelled, but as the words left his lips another hand burst from the floor and grabbed his other leg. He started to struggle, twisting his body, trying to pull his legs away, but they had already sunk into the floor to his knees.

  ‘Oh Christ!’ he whispered as another hand emerged and caught hold of his arm and more fingers wrapped themselves around his throat. Kicking and screaming he was being pulled into the ground. His breath was forced from his lungs as the earth closed around him. It hurts, he thought numbly. Jesus Christ it hurts!

  Within seconds the only evidence of Eddie Farrant ever being in the cellar were a few urine-sodden sacks and an empty Mars wrapper.

  The cold hit John Harrison like a physical blow as he jumped from the doors of the helicopter to the ground. The north wind cut through his thick denim jacket like an ice spear, making him shiver and turn up his collar. He thought for a moment about the group and the conditions they must have suffered. Soft office types whose ideas of hardship were defined by the coffee machine packing up or the failure to find a parking space. He imagined them thrust into this pitiless, almost alien world and having to give up the comforts and order of their daily existence. It was small wonder they’d got themselves into trouble.

  From the ground the Manse looked even more impressive, and even more forbidding. The granite walls were pitted and eroded by years of buffeting by salt-laden winds and the windows, whilst freshly painted and in a good state of repair, looked like nothing more than black, sightless eyes, staring out unseeing over the wind-scorched shrubs and inadequate grasses that comprised the garden.

  Still no one had come to greet him and the feeling of abandonment that hung over the place like a wet cloth unsettled him. He tried the handle of an oak door set into the granite wall.

  Locked.

  He swore softly. He looked through one of the windows at what was obviously the dining room, a long refectory table, set for a meal with white china and bone-handled cutlery on a pristine white tablecloth. But there was no sign of any diners.

  He made his way around to the front of the house. Had he bothered to look back at the helicopter he would have seen the wheels slowly sinking, inch by inch into the solid earth. By the time he reached the polished oak front door of the Manse, only an inch of rubber was visible above the surface. Minutes later the tires disappeared completely from view and the body of the machine started to be eaten by the ground.

  The front door was wide open. Harrison hesitated before entering. ‘Hello! Is anyone there?’ He waited just outside the door for a response, but the house was silent. He reached into his jacket and pulled out a Browning automatic, comforted by the weight of the gun in his hand. Then he took a tentative step inside, listening carefully, alert to any sign of danger. Still the feeling persisted that this was a bad place to be. His instincts were screaming at him to get back to the helicopter and get the hell off the island. But he’d been paid to do a job and he’d do that job to the best of his ability.

  He checked the downstairs rooms quickly. All empty. No signs of life; a long smear of dried blood on the floor in the doorway of the dining room confirming his belief that there was something seriously wrong here.

  He pulled his cell phone from his pocket and checked the screen. No network. Damn! He was on his own. As he moved to the bottom of the stairs he thought he heard something. He froze. There it was again, coming from one of the upper floors. A soft whimpering sound. A child crying? But there were no children on the island. He knew that much from the dossier given to him by the KDC. ‘Hello!’ he called again. ‘Is there anyone up there?’ The whimpering stopped for a moment, as if in response, then started again, slightly louder, slightly more desperate.

  He took a breath and started to climb the stairs, the gun stuck out in front of him like a talisman. As he climbed he heard the whimpering grow louder, until he reached the
landing on the first floor, when it stopped completely.

  ‘Where are you?’ he called. ‘I’m here to help.’

  ‘Thank God. I thought you’d never get here.’ A female voice, quiet and alone.

  Harrison spun round at the sound of the voice. Two paces away stood a young woman. Dark haired, pretty, dressed in sweatpants and tee shirt. ‘Are you going to shoot me?’ she said, staring at the gun pointing at her face. Harrison looked from her to the barrel of the Browning, and slowly lowered it; but not completely. His instincts were yelling at him again. There was something about her that didn’t hang right, but he couldn’t tell yet what it was.

  ‘I thought the place was empty,’ he said.

  ‘It is…apart from me.’ She smiled.

  ‘And you are?’

  ‘All alone,’ she said dreamily.

  ‘No. Your name. What’s your name?’

  ‘Casey,’ she said. ‘Casey Faraday.’

  ‘Ah.’ He remembered her from the dossier. She was one of the Waincraft group. Casey Faraday. Twenty-nine. Married. Degree in computing from Loughborough University. ‘What happened to the others?’ he said.

  ‘They left me here. They went to get help.’ She was speaking as if her voice was a recording being played back at slightly the wrong speed.

  ‘Help? From where? I’ve just flown over the island. There’s nothing here…apart from a few sheep, and I doubt they’d be much good for anything.’

  She smiled at him. ‘Why are you here?’ she said.

  ‘I told you. I’m here to help. A rescue mission. The KDC sent me to airlift you off the island.’

  She continued to smile but there was vacancy in her eyes. Nothing behind the smile; nothing much of anything at all. ‘What happened here, Casey?’ he said.