The Caretakers (2011)

by Adrian Chamberlin

  You have made your choice. For that I thank you…but hurry. Andraste’s triumph is at hand…

  Andy turned to Jen and Rob. In the stormy crimson light spilling from the Great Hall, Jen’s hair was a whipping mass of red snakes, but her eyes shone clear and blue. Glistening with tears of sorrow and love. She walked forwards, the borrowed fleece billowing in the gale. She put her hands on his cheeks and pulled him close. Her palms were dry and hot, and the congealed blood from her missing fingers had dried to a hardened crust. Her lips were dry and cracked, but they were the most wonderful things he had ever felt.

  He closed his eyes, overwhelmed by the passion of their final kiss. For a brief, shining moment, the pain racking his body disappeared as she pressed hers closer to him. Nothing else mattered. Everything was forgotten. The horror of what he had experienced and fought against; the disgust he had felt at her treatment by the caretakers; and the soul crushing awareness of what he had to do now, the task that would ensure her survival - but would also ensure he would never see her again. All forgotten, for an all too brief moment.

  The triumphant roar of Andraste put an end to that, a bellowing shriek that sounded like nothing on Earth.

  Something that just shouldn’t fucking be here, Andy thought. He raised his head and stared in hatred at the creature being formed from the six elements. He pressed Jen’s head to his chest, thankful that she was spared the horrific sight. He felt her tremble against him, felt her sobbing, felt her tears evaporating on his sweatshirt.

  “You know, then.” Andy said. “I’m sorry, Jen. It has to be this way.”

  He glanced to Rob, frozen rigid at the sight of the transformation of the Great Hall and the Luton van. Beside him, Jasper was calmly sat, his impossible eyes staring thoughtfully at the cab of the Transit. Eyes that had a shimmer of green within them.

  “Rob!” Andy had to call the name twice before his friend dragged his horrified eyes away. Even then he didn’t look at Andy. Now he was staring at the Green Man. His jaw dropped even lower.

  “Take Jen. Get yourselves out of here, now!”

  Andy took himself away from Jen and gently pushed her in Rob’s direction. Her hand reached out to his lips as they parted.

  It was the last time he ever felt her touch. Her fingertips left his dry lips and she and Rob ran from Old Court, to the archway by the porter’s lodge. Through the archway and out onto Trinity Street, heading for safety. Away from the nightmare, gone forever.

  Gone from me. Stay beautiful, Jen. I love you.

  The last sight he had of her was as she looked back in his direction, her lips forming the words I love you before his own tears blurred the image. He lowered his head and squeezed the rapidly drying tears from his burning eyes. He took deep, shuddering breaths, fighting to control the anguish. The loss.

  The anger. The black rage.

  Do not suppress it. Channel it…you know the strength of your fury, the potential of your rage. It is a weapon available only to those who are born of the bloodline of the Fellowship. Harness this rage…and then unleash it.

  Andy Hughes felt the words of The Elder pound into his battered mind. A harsh goad, a spur to perform the task he had been appointed to.

  The one I’ve been born for, he thought bitterly. He turned and stared at The Elder.

  “Now I know how Jason felt,” he said. He didn’t hear the words he spoke over the roar of the storm, but he knew they were heard. “Did either of us ever have a chance? Was this all we were born for?”

  The eyes of the Green Man softened sympathetically.

  I do not know. All of this has been ordained by a higher power. There are rules that even I must follow, that even I do not understand.

  “Higher power,” Andy muttered as he twisted the key in the ignition. He couldn’t hear the engine roar into life. He pressed on the accelerator, watching the rev counter needle jerk spasmodically. The air conditioning was on full blast and he gratefully gulped in the ice cold air blasting from the vents.

  It was pointless looking at the Green Man now. The Elder didn’t have any more answers.

  In a way Andy Hughes was relieved to have that carving behind him. Now all he had to gaze upon was the immediate task at hand.

  Through the smeared windscreen of Rob Benson’s Transit, the final transporter of the Divine Judgement, Andy Hughes stared impassively at the thing that called itself Andraste. Through a shifting, liquid curtain of crimson fire, the entity took shape.

  The Luton was no longer recognisable as a van. The white heat had melted the steel bodywork of the box conversion. The paint and the primer beneath had gone, scorched away by the heat of the unearthly fire. The steel had blackened and the van folded in on itself, becoming a huge, spherical object that pulsated organically behind the still-transforming cab.

  The headlights of the van were still active, but no halogen bulbs powered the light that blazed from the twin housings. No earthly force was capable of producing the light that glared at the slowly approaching Transit.

  Light that blazed a darker, more malevolent crimson than the light surrounding the Great Hall. Now the very stones of the hall glowed. Blackened clunch suddenly afire with a heat source so intense the lead panes of the empty window frames melted; thick pools of molten liquid dribbling down the scorching stones like black snakes, writhing and twisting in the heat.

  They weren’t the only things moving. With a grinding sound like something slithering over shingle, loud enough to overcome the gale that howled through the open window of Andy’s van, he saw the stones themselves were moving. Each one pulsated, making the walls of the Hall sway like a Crusader castle seen through a desert mirage. He blinked.

  The walls of the Great Hall buckled and writhed, each piece of masonry alive with an unearthly life-force. The thing that was once a vehicle reared upwards, the twin orbs of its eyes adding brilliant flashes of crimson to the white glow of the stones. A roar of crashing masonry followed.

  There was no fear in Andy Hughes now. Jen was gone. She was safe. All he had to do now was make sure she stayed that way.

  And the only way to do that is to send this bitch packing, he snarled to himself. Let the genie come out to play…

  He felt the black rage course through him, allowed the raw power of pure, unadulterated fury to possess him once more.

  This time there was purity in it, a sense of righteousness that had not been there previously. It had not been there fifteen years ago when he had killed the two students in the college bar. It had not been there when he had kicked the rapist to near-death in the nightclub in Didcot the night before last.

  It was here now. He thought he heard a sigh of relief from the Green Man carving behind him, but couldn’t be certain. He engaged first gear with a hand that no longer felt pain; released the handbrake. Let in the clutch and stomped on the accelerator.

  The Transit bucked and swayed, rocking violently on its springs as it shot across the broken, ravaged wasteland of Old Court. He knew he wasn’t going to be able to build up as much as speed as he wanted…

  Certainly not as much speed as the meteorite had when it first visited All Souls, he thought wryly. But it should be enough to bring it back home…

  The tyres were beginning to melt. He could smell the stench of melting rubber, almost as powerful as the smell of burning earth and baking hot stone. But something else overpowered them all.

  A stench of death and decay, one that transcended mere putrefying flesh and boiling blood. An ancient stench, one his primitive ancestors would have huddled in their cave from, terrified in the knowledge that this was the foul perfume of the thing that called itself Andraste.

  He felt the steering wheel judder violently in his right hand as the speed increased and the wheels protested. The sickly black underbelly of the creature rearing up to embrace the living stones of the Hall filled the windscreen. Thin traces of green and red had appeared, shot through the membranous surface of the beast. Alien blood vessels, reminding him of the
tracery of minerals contained within the stone of the Green Man.

  Blood and stone. Hell of a mix. was the last thought that went through Andy Hughes’ mind as the Transit came to a shuddering collision with the thing called Andraste.

  Explosive sounds filled the cab. The sound of twisting metal, of shattering windscreen…

  The cry of a human being in agony, his broken ribcage damaged even further, crushed between the steering column and the bulkhead that tore through the padded seat…

  The explosion of a piece of stone that tore itself free from the moulded plastic that had imprisoned it, smashing though the thin glass barrier of the windscreen…

  The unearthly cry of an ancient, otherworldly being that felt itself penetrated by a fragment of rock even older than itself. A rock that tore through the rapidly-forming, diamond-hard matter of Andraste’s physical presence as though it were tissue paper, no barrier to its final destination…

  And lastly, the scream of triumph that emanated from the lips of the stone carving as it sliced through Andraste and struck its severed partner, the meteorite mounted on the smouldering, blood-encrusted High Table, knocking it cleanly through the mounting of the table. It hit the smouldering floor, rolling like a cannonball over the now-welded face of The Elder.

  Even as fresh waves of agony coursed through Andy Hughes’ dying body his eyes were riveted to the sight of the Divine Judgement being made whole at last. The merging of the two pieces of rock was a blinding, incandescent explosion of all shades of green. The lime green of freshly unfurling shoots in the spring to the deeper emerald of tropical rainforests. The darker, earth-hued green of pine needles buried in winter snow. The bright green of moss freshly dug from tree bark. The majestic green of tropical oceans.

  The Elder, the spiritual embodiment of the planet and its fearless defender, had finally merged with the power of the heavens, embodied within the rock that fell from the skies over two hundred years ago.

  Andy suddenly realised he felt cold. That shouldn’t be - Andraste’s return had turned this patch of ground to a fiery wasteland, a fitting Hell on Earth. Should feel hot, not cold…

  Then he saw the blood, gushing from a wound just above the steering wheel that had pinned him to the bulkhead. He tried to swallow, but instead only choked on the blood spouting from a rent in his jugular vein, a rent caused by a fragment of stained glass that had somehow not been fused to the stone by the heat of Andraste’s return. He lifted his shaking right hand to the glass and pulled it free. The blood spurted even more powerfully, painting the crumpled bonnet of the van in a scarlet fluid that bubbled and boiled away on the hot metal.

  He stared at the glittering fragment of coloured glass in his cut, bleeding fingers. The pigments sparkled like jewels in the light cast from the merging pieces of the Divine Judgement, imparting a perfect clarity to the Old Testament image of a tearful, bearded old man holding a sacrificial knife over the bound body of a younger man. Behind him, a bolt of lightning had set fire to a bush, revealing the horned face of what looked like a ram.

  The image had some sort of significance, but Andy wasn’t sure what it was. He wished he had the fire that was burning the bush, though, looked nice and warm.

  He shuddered, frowning at the wheezing sound coming from below his chin. Felt dry, too. No fluid…

  The smell of putrefaction was fading, he noted. Smelled like gas now…

  He allowed himself a smile. Above the furious screeching cry of a defeated Andraste he heard the noise of groaning timber. The rafters of the Great Hall were falling, wrenched from their joists by the living stone. Timber rafters, coated in flame.

  The green light from the Divine Judgement flared once more, before fading to nothing more than a soft glow. He could see the last of his rapidly drying and congealing blood trickling towards it.

  Blood offered by him and him alone: the cement that would ensure the fusion of the two pieces and banish Andraste forever.

  What Charles Harvey had attempted in February 1799 had now finally been accomplished by a distant relation, a descendant who had been blessed - or cursed - with the power of the bloodline of the Fellowship. As his eyes glazed and his sight faded to darkness Andy Hughes thought he saw a final image within the meteorite. The face of The Elder: a smile of thanks on his lips and tears of gratitude in his eyes. Eyes that were no longer green, but a warm shade of brown. Human eyes.

  You’re welcome, Charles, Andy said. His sight failed just as the LPG ignited, followed by the unleaded petrol. He heard the roar of the explosion, felt his body tear itself to thousands of pieces. Melting, burning. Vaporising.

  He hoped his smile of satisfaction was the last thing that Andraste saw before her corporeal presence was destroyed and her evil spirit banished to the end of the universe where it belonged.

  And as the stones finally settled on the grave of Andy Hughes, as the sirens of the emergency services replaced the howls of supernatural fury and destruction, the winter heavens opened once more. This time, there was no snow.

  Now it rained.

  EPILOGUE

  “Looks like we’ll not be having a white Christmas after all,” the tall figure said. Standing with his back towards her hospital bed he pulled the blind back and shook his head sadly at the scene before them. A sunless, grey sky. Heavy rain soaking the overfilled car park of Addenbrooke’s Hospital three storeys below, rain which had not ceased since the explosion that tore the college of All Souls apart three days ago.

  “Strange to think…”

  Jennifer Callaby blinked and raised her head from the pillow. She pushed her hair back from her eyes and winced at the fresh pain from the bandaged stumps of her fingers. She let out a cry. The man turned suddenly and let the blind slide back.

  It was a cry of anguish rather than agony. The physical pain was a reminder not just of her mutilation, but also her loss. Five nights ago she had been in her two-bedroomed house in the Ladygrove Estate in Didcot, ready to leave Andy.

  Now he was gone. Instead, the man who had summoned her boyfriend to Cambridge - and was therefore, in her eyes, responsible for his death - was her first Christmas visitor.

  Her parents had been allowed to see her the morning after the incident but only after the police investigators were satisfied she had no more information to impart. The police would be back, she knew it. As soon as she was discharged, they’d be waiting for her - either at her Didcot home or at St Neots. Too many questions were left unanswered for their liking.

  Too many for mine, as well. Like: what the fuck are you doing here, Pearce?

  She took a deep breath and stared balefully at him. He smiled weakly and dropped his eyes. It may have been from guilt, but she suspected otherwise.

  “I’m sorry to arrive unannounced, Jennifer. And I hope you’ll allow me to explain a few matters.”

  She looked at the white ceiling. The cracks were growing, she was certain. The painkillers and the sedatives she’d been given had at first made them move violently, twisting like snakes on dirty snow. That had made her scream even more, making them give her more liquid oblivion. She had been in no fit state to explain that they reminded her of the appendages that had burst from the abomination forming from the combined burning Luton and ruins of the Great Hall.

  The last thing she had seen before the explosion knocked both her and Rob Benson off their feet was the multitude of writhing, snake-like tentacles that had burst from the belly…the belly that Andy Hughes had driven the Transit straight into.

  Gone now. This thing called Andraste that psycho bastard porter Franklin had so lovingly described. Never to return, thanks to Andy…

  Pearce raised his eyebrows at her snarl of anger. He sighed.

  “You blame me for Andy’s death. That’s understandable, I supp -‘

  “Of course I fucking blame you!” The venom in her reply surprised even her. It made her echoed words bounce around the special, private ward like ricocheting bullets. “That fucking shotgun I found in my home? Y
ours!”

  “Belonged to an associate, actually, but I take your point.”

  She knew her teeth were still bared. She knew she was holding Pearce to account for all of the events. Although Andy had taken his own life, and had done so for a reason, that didn’t stop her hating the man standing apologetically in his dripping black raincoat in front of her. The man who had brought her world crashing down in ruins.

  Listening to what Rob Benson had told her in the ambulance on the way to A&E had kept her from slipping into unconsciousness. The surreal, nightmarish occurrences, the unrelenting horror of the chain of events that had began the moment Andy Hughes had stepped off the train in Cambridge station - she’d listened to it all with no response.

  In her mind, she knew she needed a target. A human, recognisable one at that. Andraste - an otherworldly presence from beyond the stars that pretended to be a Celtic goddess? A secret Fellowship of a Cambridge College, ritual murderers sworn to appease that deity by a yearly sacrifice?

  No, she’d slurred as the gurney rushed her down brightly lit, surgically clean corridors.

  Pearce, she’d whispered as uniformed officers handcuffed Rob Benson and dragged him away from her.

  It had to be Graham Pearce. If he hadn’t supplied the shotgun to Andy to “look after”, she knew she wouldn’t have been freaked out so much by the phone call from Didcot police station the night Andy had gone berserk in the night club. She wouldn’t have left to go to her parents - and he would not have followed her.

  Because that was the reason Andy had accepted Pearce’s mission. The only, reason, surely?

  “He wouldn’t have come to Cambridge if it hadn’t been for you, Pearce,” she spat. “He’s dead because of it.”

  “No, Jennifer.” There was steel in his voice, a hard look in the grey eyes that rose from the polished tiles of the floor to bore into hers.

  “He died because he chose to. And if he hadn’t, we wouldn’t be speaking now. We wouldn’t even be breathing.” His eyes flicked past her, to the closed door.