The Feast of All Souls

by Simon Bestwick

  “Subconsciously, maybe – something you read years ago and forgot about?”

  “Then what about this?” She dug out the little package of folded paper, opened it out to show the tatters of red cloth. “I woke up clutching these.”

  John stared down, wiping a hand across his mouth.

  “If it had just been a dream,” she said, “then... well, it’d just be a dream. Wouldn’t be any surprise if I had a nightmare or two after everything. But this?”

  “And there was nothing else red in the room?”

  “No. Just makes me wonder if moving out’s going to do any good.”

  “Still got to be safer than here.”

  “But if it tries, you could be in danger too.”

  “Get your stuff. Alice?”

  “What?”

  John’s manner had changed; he seemed almost shy. “Should we, uh, book two rooms or one?”

  “One,” she said. “Safety in numbers.”

  “Twin room?” he said. He didn’t say or double? but the question was there, hovering between them.

  Her answer right then would probably have been that they’d decide on the way, but she never got to speak as in that moment an alarm shrilled.

  “The hell –” said John, clutching his ears.

  “That one of yours?” she shouted.

  He shook his head. Then she smelt it: smoke.

  “Fire alarm!” John bolted out into the hallway, Alice a moment behind. The fire was in the kitchen, she could see the flames dancing. And there was someone there, silhouetted against them.

  Alice ran down the hallway, John’s voice raised in a shout behind her. She skidded to a halt at the kitchen door.

  The fire was on the kitchen table. At its hot, brilliant heart, its outlines already beginning to shiver and crumble, was the box-file. The silhouetted figure seemed to be wearing a dress, or a long coat. It turned to face her, and Alice saw a white mask with black holes for eyes and mouth cupped in a red cowl.

  “Who the fuck?” said John. “Who the fuck?”

  The alarm screeched higher and the flames roared and swelled as the Red Man stepped towards them.

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  The Combat

  31st October 2016

  THE RED MAN advanced. Alice took a step back; John stood his ground.

  “John,” she hissed. He wavered but stayed where he was. For Christ’s sake, no, not this, not now – the last thing she needed was John Revell trying to play the hero to impress her.

  She looked from him to the Red Man. An ambiguous figure, Sixsmythe had told them: sometimes an ordinary man, sometimes a warrior, a knight; sometimes a hero, sometimes a demon. Closer too, the mask was clearly visible, and the glow of the flames, reflecting off the kitchen walls, glowed among its contours. He looked more the demon now – but at the same time, he’d saved her from the children. Had that been part of guarding the long-buried spring? But if so, was this now some part of it too?

  The Red Man began to take another step towards them, then stopped, drew back his pale foot. He swivelled and stared at the table.

  What was it he saw? There seemed to be something about the box-file, or the blurred dark shape of it in the fire. But then a cold breeze was gusting down the hall, and Alice found herself turning towards it.

  The children stood there. They were barefoot, the boys in ragged trousers, shirts, waistcoats and caps, the girls in torn, stained shifts. They weren’t grinning this time; their faces were set and hard and their pale eyes glared. Alice fumbled in her pocket for the bony outline of the rowan cross and pulled it free, but they weren’t glaring at her. No, they were looking past her and John, through the kitchen door at the Red Man.

  “The fuck?” John said again. And then the wind began to rise.

  ‘Began’, in fact, was hardly the word. One moment Alice had an intimation that it was lifting above the soft strength of a breeze and the next it was driving past her with hurricane force. But it was tightly focused, a single narrow stream directed at the Red Man. The camera John had set up was flung down the hall, smashed into the wall and fell in pieces to the ground. Something slammed into Alice and threw her back against the wall. Across the hallway from her she saw John driven similarly against the plasterboard and wallpaper.

  It was a hard, bruising impact that knocked the wind out of her, but it was mild compared to the wind’s effect on the Red Man. He reeled, almost falling back into the fire he’d – presumably – started, then halted, steadied himself, and crouched as if to resist. But the wind’s force was too much for him to stand against for more than a moment; a second later he flew backwards, shooting across the table and knocking the box-file aside before crashing headlong into the sink. He collapsed to the floor and lay still.

  The fire had gone out. It seemed to Alice that it had been extinguished in the moment the Red Man struck the box-file. What really caught her eye, however, was the condition of the file itself. Smoke still rose in wisps from it and parts of it looked slightly singed, but other than that the raging fire seemed to have left it unmarked.

  The pressure pinning her to the wall had stopped. She sagged, swaying and dizzy, and looked up the hallway. The children were still there, but thankfully she still wasn’t the subject of their gaze. They continued to stare at the prone body of the Red Man – who, seconds later, stirred and rose to his feet, then turned to face them.

  With a sweep of his arm, he knocked the table aside; Alice felt a wave of pressure pass through the open door; the children rocked and stumbled as it reached them.

  The Red Man came forward, ready for battle. Little gusts of wind eddied back and forth in the hall. The children, silent, bared their teeth.

  Alice heard no sound but the wind’s movement and her own and John’s ragged breath. Her scalp, the hair of her arms, prickled; the air was alive with static.

  The swirls and gusts of air grew stronger. John clung onto the wall and Alice was almost dragged from it, her shoes slipping on the carpet. A whirlwind was building, where the opponents’ strengths met. She was pulled this way, shoved that. But the trial of strength was just starting, she knew, and at its height she and John would be ripped to pieces.

  That was when the roar came.

  It shook the house; Alice felt the vibration of it through the wall, even as the wind and the air’s static prickle died. Then it came again, and she realised it was from the street outside. Except that of course the street mightn’t be a street at all, not any more.

  The children and the Red Man stared at one another. Was the wind about to rise again? Did she and John have a chance to get clear before the battle recommenced, and if so, where to?

  And then the children stepped aside, parting to leave a path clear. John stepped away from the wall to run through it, but Alice pushed him back. As he turned to glare at her, the Red Man stepped between them. He turned and stared at John, and Alice saw John shrink back. Then he turned and looked down at her.

  “Do not trust the children,” he said, in that strange, fluting voice that was four voices at once. “They want to destroy you.”

  And then he strode between the ranks of the children to the front door. He opened it, and outside was only a hillside lit by moonlight – that and a vast, vaguely man-like shape, bristling with fur, running towards the house.

  The ogre – or, to give it its proper name, Old Harry, the Beast of Browton.

  Its feet thundered on the ground and the house shook. The Red Man stepped over the threshold, hesitated for a moment, and then ran to meet the looming shape. In that moment, wind flurried down the hallway, the front door slammed shut, and the children vanished.

  John stumbled away from the wall, swaying. “What?” he said. “What?”

  “Welcome to my world,” said Alice.

  From outside came another roar. “What the hell do we do now?” he said.

  “Before,” said Alice. “The other time I ran into the Beast – the Red Man saved me. He drove it back, drov
e it away, or something. Said – after the last time he drove the children off, he said ‘I have to keep him at bay.’”

  “You think he meant... meant the Beast?” John stumbled over saying it, still struggling to process what he’d seen.

  “I hope so. Otherwise it was something even worse.” Alice went into the kitchen and prodded at the box-file, refusing to look out of the windows. It was warm to the touch, but that was all; when she opened it, the contents seemed intact.

  “Fuck.” John had made the mistake of looking out of the windows. Now he was staring. “Alice. Fuck.”

  “John. John.” She pulled on his arm. He blinked and looked away. “Come on.”

  “Where to?”

  She tried to think. “Upstairs,” she said at last. “My room.” It probably wasn’t safer than any other, but at least it would give the best view of events. Although she doubted that forewarned was forearmed in this case.

  She ran up the stairs, taking the box-file; John panted behind her. At last they were at the top floor. Her bedroom door stood ajar a crack, inviting her to wonder what might be waiting inside.

  Alice kicked it open. The room was empty. She breathed out, then slammed the door behind John. She doubted the actual lock on it still worked – even if she’d had a key for it – but there was a sliding catch you could push across, so she used that. It wouldn’t hold the children back if they attacked with all the force they could summon, but little would – maybe not even the Red Man.

  “Jesus Christ,” she heard John say. “Alice. Alice. You’ve got to see this.”

  He was kneeling on the bed, staring out of the window. Alice went over to him, put down the box-file and looked.

  The moon was full and bloated in a cloudless night sky, white and round, picking out their surroundings in stark detail. Below the window, below the house, the bare hillside reached down. The moonlight glittered on a ribbon of water winding down its flanks to join a curve of river that Alice assumed was the Irwell. Or had been. Or would be.

  All that spread around them was heath and moor – that, and thick stretches of woodland. There were no houses that she could see, other than her own, precariously balanced somehow on Collarmill Height.

  Except – wait. She saw lights gleaming on the plain below. Dim fire and candle-light, but now she saw it she could make out a huddle of low, rectangular buildings. And, gathered by them, a group of tiny stick figures.

  “Look.” John was pointing at the hillside. A body lay there – cloaked and hooded. As she watched, it stirred and knelt up, swaying slightly.

  A deep, rattling growl sounded, shivering the window in its frame.

  The Red Man shook himself, and rose to his feet.

  The black woods stirred and shifted. Their perimeter swelled, gave birth to a dark shape that shook itself like a dog flinging water from its pelt and lumbered on all fours towards the hill.

  “Jesus Christ,” said John.

  “Old Harry,” said Alice.

  The Beast approached the foot of the hill, slinking like a cat. It was an oddly graceful movement for something so crudely-shaped, especially when Alice remembered the stink of it and its caked, matted hide. The slitted blue eyes gleamed in the black silhouette of its body, gazing up, narrowed with hatred, at the Red Man.

  Old Harry roared. The house shuddered; Alice was sure she heard things crack and shiver, heard loose dust fall and trickle. And then it bounded forward, charging up the hill towards them.

  The Red Man crouched, ready to meet it. His hands rose – for what? Was he going to try and grapple with the thing? But whatever he’d planned, he had no chance to try it. The Beast snatched him up like a rag doll, whirled him round its head by one leg and smashed him into the ground once, twice, three times, before flinging him away and trudging the last yards up the hillside towards them.

  378 Collarmill Road, Alice found herself thinking; 378 Collarmill Road. Because that was such a normal name, because it conjured up – it demanded – a row of other houses like it, a street in place of bare ground, and all the twenty-first century trappings that went with that. Old Harry was heading towards 378 Collarmill Road, and that meant it couldn’t be there, because it didn’t belong in that world.

  But they weren’t in that world.

  The Beast glared up at them, bared yellow fangs – knives and chisels, crammed to bursting in the stretch of its maw – and roared.

  It made for the door – and behind it, the Red Man stood up.

  Stood? It seemed to Alice that he didn’t so much stand as flow – flow back to his feet with ease and grace, brushing flecks of dirt from the undamaged red robes with his long white hands, as if there was no panic, no threat. As if he wasn’t even bruised, never mind anything else – and by rights, after all, his bones should be shattered, skull crushed, ribs stoved in and driven through lungs and heart. But now he simply dusted his hands together and thrust them out after the Beast, as if lunging after it to grab its pelt, before closing them into tight fists.

  Then there was a sound – that sound again that Alice had heard down on Browton Vale and in the lost garden, that sound that was between a chant and a song, a horn and a gong. It came as the Red Man pulled his hands violently towards his body, as if trying to haul something in. In the same moment he pivoted on one heel to face down the hillside, drove outwards with his fists and opened them again, releasing his hold on the air.

  And the Beast, its own fists raised to pound on the house’s door, flew backwards.

  It hurtled past the Red Man, so fast it was a blur. The watching stick figures scattered with cries and vanished into their dwellings, and a moment later Old Harry smashed into the ground at the foot of the hill with an impact that shook the whole house. A thin hissing noise made Alice look up, and she saw plaster dust trickle from the ceiling, where the paint and paper had split.

  “Jesus,” she heard John say again.

  She looked down and saw that where the Beast had landed there was only a hole in the ground. Perhaps it was dead? But no – something stirred in the dark and heavy, thick-fingered paws groped over the edges of the hole. Blue eyes blinked and flickered and shone in the dark and the low-browed shaggy head that bore them rose into the moonlight, teeth bared in a snarl.

  The ogre – the Beast, Old Harry – pried itself from the ground and took a swaying step forward. The Red Man planted both feet square on the ground, facing it down the slope, and drew his hands back until they were level with his shoulders, palms spread.

  Old Harry hesitated, lips flaring back from its teeth, and snarled. The two studied each other, waiting.

  For a time it seemed as though the impasse might go on indefinitely, and Alice was about to suggest to John that they turn their attention to the box-file, but then Old Harry moved, leaping, and the Red Man thrust out both hands as far as they would go.

  In the same moment, the sound came again, and the Beast was smacked out of the air and smashed into the ground once more. This time it didn’t make a crater, but gouged a hell-deep furrow in the earth as it tore through the ground like a knife, hurtling towards the edge of the woods. When it hit, there was an almighty splintering crash Alice could hear even through the double-glazing. One tree crashed to the ground; two others lurched crazily askew and another flew through the air, uprooted wholly, before coming to earth in a thrashing and splintering of limbs.

  The Red Man sagged and swayed for a moment before drawing himself erect, watching the woods. Alice watched too, with John beside her. Seconds, then minutes, ticked by, but the woods stayed still.

  “Think it’s dead?” John asked.

  “Maybe. Wouldn’t bet on it, though.” Alice’s voice sounded rough and croaky to her own ears, as though she’d left it disused for days. She nodded at the landscape outside. “That’s still there.”

  “Then while we’re waiting,” said John, and scrambled off the bed to grab up the box-file, “we might as well take a look at this.” He nodded at the window. “Looked like the
Red Man was trying damn hard to stop us seeing it, didn’t it?”

  “Yeah, it did.” Alice helped him get the file open. His hands were shaking, she saw, but that was hardly a surprise: so were hers. It was too dark to read, but there was a clockwork torch in her bedside drawer; she switched it on and shone it on the file.

  “Where do we start, though?”

  “W,” she said, and sorted through the file’s sections till she found that letter.

  “Why W?”

  “Wynne-Jones, remember?”

  “Who?”

  “The woman Arodias Thorne left the place to?” Alice looked up; John was frowning. “Remember? Springcross House? He left it to a Mrs Wynne-Jones. Sixsmythe said she couldn’t get rid of the place fast enough. Shit.”

  “What?”

  “Nothing there,” said Alice.

  “Try J, for Jones?”

  Alice nodded. “Her family didn’t want these papers, so they went to the Church instead. Sixsmythe made it sound as if they – fuck. Nothing here either.”

  John was frowning, looking down into the W section again. “Wait a minute.”

  “What?”

  “Where was she from? This Wynne-Jones woman?”

  “Why?”

  “Was it Liverpool?”

  “Could have been. Maybe. Yeah. I think. Why?”

  John slipped a sheaf of documents free of the file. “Something from a solicitor’s firm in Liverpool here. Got their letterhead on it. Look at this.”

  John handed over the document: a letter, typed on the stationery of J. Hughes, Garvey and Brandon, of James Street, Liverpool. “Addressed to the Dean of Manchester Diocese,” he said.

  Dear Sir,

  Regarding: Spring Cross House, Higher Crawbeck, in the City of Salford.

  The enclosed document was dictated to my secretary by our late client, Mrs Wynne-Jones of New Brighton, in my presence, shortly before her death, with instructions that it be entrusted to the care of her family or to any relevant authority with whom the responsibility might rest.