House of Bones

by Graham Masterton

  Then the main bolt of lightning hit the pole and it was almost like the end of the world. Two hundred thousand volts, blinding all of them before tearing down the length of the pole and into the earth beneath. There was an ear-splitting crack of superheated air – hotter for one hundredth of a second than the surface of the sun.

  The lightning must have scored a direct hit on the ley line, because a line of bright fire rushed off in both directions, north and south. Where it went north, it set fire to trees and bushes and blew up one garden fence after another. They could hear greenhouses exploding. They could hear walls collapsing. Where it went south, it scorched its way across the lawn and made the earth ripple and rumble like an earthquake. There was a terrible bursting noise, and Mr Cleat’s body was flung right out of the ground and into the air, smoking and burned and hideously disjointed. The plank burst out, too, and was thrown blazing into the next door neighbours’ garden.

  The lightning tore towards the house but when it reached the outside walls it seemed to disappear.

  They waited and waited and nothing happened. “Maybe that’s it,” said Courtney. “Maybe that’s all it needed to do.” Lucy took hold of John’s hand. She was shivering with shock. She turned and caught sight of Mr Cleat’s smoking body lying in the rain and quickly turned her face away. Although it was so dark, it was still possible to make out a horribly twisted grimace.

  Courtney laid his hand on John’s shoulder, and it was then that 66 Mountjoy Avenue blew up.

  “Get down!” Courtney shouted, and the four of them dropped to the ground as the windows shattered and they were caught in a blizzard of broken glass. The entire roof was blasted up into the air – tiles and timbers scattered everywhere, and a huge ball of orange fire rolled up into the clouds. The chimney stacks collapsed, the side walls dropped outwards into the garden, the scaffolding fell, and the staircase tumbled sideways.

  After that, the whole house burned with a grim ferocity, as if it were determined to consume itself before anybody else could have it. Tiles came crashing from the sky, burning curtains flew through the rain like vampires. The house crackled and spat as it burned itself up. Floors fell through, beds blazed, doors and walls were lost to the greedy flames.

  “Mr Vane’s still in there,” said Lucy.

  “So what are you going to do?” said Courtney. “Rush in and save him? After what he’s done?”

  John said, “We don’t need to save him. He can live for ever.”

  “Not if his body’s burned,” Uncle Robin put in. “Even immortals can be destroyed by fire. Fire or impaling – that’s what kills them. Why do you think they used to drive stakes into vampires’ bodies and burn their coffins?”

  “We have to go and look,” said Lucy. “We can’t just leave him to burn. That’s murder.”

  “And what he did, that wasn’t murder?”

  “Of course it was. But that doesn’t mean that we’ve got to behave as badly as him, does it? I mean, it’s not up to us to try him and execute him, is it?”

  “I don’t think it’s up to us to save him, either.”

  All the same, they made their way around to the front of the blazing house. It was only when they reached the front garden that they realized how devastating the damage was. 66 Mountjoy Avenue was nothing more than a few partially upright walls and a criss-cross collection of blazing timbers. Flames and sparks whirled up into the thundery sky, and the fire was so hot that the rain did nothing at all to damp it down.

  Surprisingly, all that was left was the porch – inviting you to walk in between the stone lions, up the steps, and open the front door right into hell.

  “He can’t be alive,” said Lucy. “There isn’t a hope.”

  They were still standing outside the house when neighbours and bystanders started to gather. The sky was beginning to clear, and in the distance the sun was shining on the wet rooftops of Tooting.

  “I’ve called the emergency services,” said an elderly man with a golf umbrella, and they could already hear the whooping of sirens in the distance.

  “What happened?” asked a grey-haired woman in a spotted rain hat. “Was it gas?”

  “Unexploded bomb, that’s what I reckon it was,” said a postman. “There was dozens of ’em round here, during the war.”

  Flames leaped up from the inside of 66 Mountjoy Avenue, nearly twenty metres high. A big woman in a hat came up to them and said, “Anybody hurt? I’m a first-aider.”

  John didn’t know what to tell her. Mr Vane and Mr Cleat were both far beyond first-aid – as were all the hundreds of people who had bought houses from them over the years. First-aid? How can you give first-aid to a reliquary of human bones? No amount of bandages and liniment could ever heal what the Druid spirits had done.

  John suddenly felt very tired.

  The fire engines arrived, and the police, and the paramedics. John and the others were pushed to the sidelines while the flames were put out and the bodies taken away.

  Courtney took hold of John’s hand and grinned at him. “You did it, man. I didn’t think you could. But you did it. I don’t think anybody’s going to be hearing from those Druids again, do you?”

  19

  Detective Inspector Carter said, “Cases like this, they get right up my nose.”

  John didn’t know what to say. He had been answering Carter’s questions for over half an hour now, and he had tried to be as truthful as possible. On the other hand, he hadn’t told him anything about the Druids and the ley lines. He and the others had agreed not to. They knew that the police wouldn’t believe them. And, more importantly, they still had to go round to each of Mr Vane’s houses and close the gateway to the world beneath the ground.

  The police might not believe in Druid spirits from the Iron Age, but once they realized that all of the houses were somehow connected, John and his friends wouldn’t have a chance of getting into them and doing what they had to do.

  Detective Inspector Carter swallowed a mouthful of cold coffee from a styrofoam cup, and pulled a face. “Cases like this, they start out simply baffling, you know what I mean? Police are baffled by bricked-up bones mystery. But instead of getting less baffling, they get even more baffling, until they’re so baffling that you’ve forgotten what it is that you were baffled by.”

  John said, “I’ve told you everything that happened.”

  “I know you told me everything that happened. But what happened doesn’t make any sense. I’ve got a blown-up house, I’ve got a dead man lying in the garden, and the more you explain it to me the less I understand it.”

  He pulled out a chair and sat down. “Let’s go over this one more time. Mr Vane told you to meet him yesterday afternoon at 66 Mountjoy Avenue?”

  “He said that he was going to be showing some clients around, and he wanted me to see how a professional did it.”

  “But when you got there, there were no clients, only him?”

  “That’s right, yes.”

  “And then your friends from the office arrived because they were worried about you?”

  “That’s right.”

  “Why were they so worried? They didn’t have any reason to think that Mr Vane was going to hurt you, did they? Or did they?”

  “They were just worried. Mr Rogers had disappeared when he went to see 66 Mountjoy Avenue and I suppose they didn’t want anything like that to happen to me.”

  “So then what? You and your friends left the house, went out into the garden, and stuck a scaffolding pole in the flowerbed?”

  “That’s right.”

  “And you did that as a kind of makeshift lightning conductor?”

  “We didn’t want the house to be struck by lightning.”

  Inspector Carter blew out his cheeks in exasperation. “Your friends are saying the same thing. But this is where I lose you, John. What on earth made you think that the house was going to be struck by lightning? I mean, what are the odds on that? And why should you care so much anyway?”

 
; “The house was on our books. We had a duty to protect it.”

  “Whenever there’s a thunderstorm, do you go round to all of the houses on your books and stick scaffolding poles in the garden?”

  “Well, no, we don’t. It would take too long.”

  Carter covered his eyes with his hands. He was a man trying very, very hard to understand. “You didn’t want the house to be struck by lightning, but as a consequence of your sticking a scaffolding pole in the flowerbed, your colleague Mr David Cleat was killed and the whole place was blown to smithereens.”

  “We didn’t realize that would happen.”

  “No, well. Our scene-of-crimes officer can’t work out how it happened, either. Normally, a lightning strike would have gone right into the ground, and caused nothing more than limited burns. In this case, however, it looks as if it travelled horizontally along a straight line, three or four miles north and three or four miles south. Apart from killing Mr Cleat and destroying 66 Mountjoy Avenue it caused about £150,000 worth of damage. Sheds, conservatories, that kind of thing.”

  “I know. We’re sorry about that.”

  “Sorry? Yes, so am I. But I can’t exactly charge you for sticking a scaffolding pole in the ground, can I?”

  “I don’t know. I don’t know the law that well.”

  Inspector Carter gave him a sharp sideways look to make sure that he wasn’t taking the mickey. Then he said, “What I can’t work out is what happened to Mr Vane. His car was still outside, so he didn’t drive away from the house. I can’t see him walking away in a thunderstorm like that, can you? So far as we know, he wasn’t in the house when it blew up. At least, we haven’t yet found his remains.”

  At that moment there was a knock at the door and Sergeant Bynoe came in. “Have a word, guv?”

  He bent over and murmured something in Carter’s ear. John could see the Inspector’s eyes widen.

  Carter waited until Bynoe had left the room, and then he stood up and paced around the table. “We have discovered some remains, as it happens. The fire brigade were demolishing an unsafe wall at the back of the house when they came across a room full of human skeletons. Seventy or eighty people, by the looks of it. Completely bricked up, completely inaccessible. And yet at least one of the skeletons looks as if it’s only a few days old.”

  He leaned over John and breathed peppermint breath-freshener all over him. “You wouldn’t happen to know anything about that, would you?”

  John shook his head violently.

  Inspector Carter kept on staring at him for almost half a minute. Then he stood up straight and walked back around the table. “I hope you’re not hiding something from me, John. Because if you are, you could be in a lot of trouble.”

  John said nothing. He could just imagine how Carter would react if he told him the truth. And besides, he was growing impatient to join Lucy and the others.

  They had business to attend to.

  He met them at The Feathers and they had cheese rolls and crisps for lunch. They were all looking tired and bruised, and they got a few funny looks from the other people in the pub.

  Lucy said, “We’ve all had a pretty hard morning, so let’s just start with a couple of houses, shall we? How about Abingdon Gardens and Greyhound Road? Abingdon Gardens first, that’s the nearest. Then tomorrow we can work out a plan to go round the country and sort out all the rest of them.”

  She lifted the bunch of duplicate keys from her handbag. “One down and twenty-six to go.”

  Courtney said, “I’ve got a mallet and a pickaxe in the car. I just hope the police don’t pick me up for going equipped.”

  They left the pub and drove in Courtney’s BMW to Abingdon Gardens. After yesterday’s storm the air was much clearer, and the sun was shining. John sat in the back of the car with Lucy and she reached over and held his hand.

  “You realize that now Mr Vane’s gone we’re out of a job?” said Lucy.

  “They haven’t found his body yet.”

  “It probably burned to ashes. You saw how hot that fire was.”

  “Even if he did manage to get out, he certainly wouldn’t keep us lot on, would he?”

  “It’s Cleaty I feel sorry for.”

  “Yes, but he knew what Mr Vane was doing and all he did was look the other way.”

  They reached the house at the end of Abingdon Gardens. As Lucy climbed out of the car she said, “This place still gives me the creeps.”

  Even though the sun was shining, the house looked damp and dingy and neglected. Its windows were like empty eyes. The three of them approached it with trepidation and climbed the front steps. Lucy was first and opened the door. Courtney followed her with his mallet and his pickaxe.

  The house was chilly inside. They paused for a moment in the hallway and listened, but all they could hear was the persistent warbling of a pigeon sitting on one of the chimneys.

  “Come on,” said Lucy, and led the way into the living-room.

  The fireplace here wasn’t as large as 66 Mountjoy Avenue, and it was tiled in green mottled ceramic. All the same, it shared one essential feature – a rough-hewn block of stone about the size of a housebrick, in the centre just above the grate. There were five twig-shaped characters hewn on the stone – runes.

  “Right,” said John. “The sooner we get that stone out, the better.”

  Courtney took off his smart yellow coat, rolled up his sleeves, and lifted the pickaxe. “Stand clear, everybody. Man at work.”

  He hit the stone with his first blow, chipping some of it away. He hit it again, and this time he managed to crack the mortar which held it in place. He hit it a third time, and it dropped out of the fireplace and on to the floor.

  “There, easy. Now all we have to do is smash it to bits.”

  “It’s like Bath stone, it’s pretty soft.”

  Courtney raised his mallet and gave the stone a blow which broke it in half. He was about to swing again when the door to the dining-room suddenly and silently swung open. Lucy jumped in shock, and Courtney lowered his mallet.

  “Don’t worry,” said John, stepping across to close it. “It’s only the wi—”

  The door swung open wider and into the room limped Mr Vane. His eyes were wide and wild and the side of his face was caked with dark dried blood. Both of his hands were heavily bandaged with torn strips of sheet. He stood staring at them, saying nothing, his face engraved with bitterness and hatred.

  “We thought you were dead,” said Lucy, at last. “Do you need to see a doctor?”

  Mr Vane limped into the middle of the room and looked down at the broken stone. Then he stared at each of them in turn. “Have you any idea what you’ve done?”

  “I hope we’ve managed to stop you sacrificing any more people,” said Lucy.

  “People!” spat Mr Vane. “You don’t know the half of what this world of ours is all about. You don’t have any conception! You speak to me of people! I speak to you of gods! I speak to you of men with magic that could move the hills! I speak of their surviving spirits, who could one day rise up again and work their sorcery so that – people – like you would have to kneel down and worship them!”

  “Whatever you think, you didn’t have any right to kill” said John.

  Mr Vane ignored him and slowly circled the room, his right foot dragging. “I managed to get out of the house before you sent that lightning-bolt along the ley line.” His mouth worked in anguish and he was so furious that he could barely speak. “That lightning-bolt evaporated hundreds of Druid spirits. Some of the greatest names from our Druidic past. You could hear a scream running along the ley lines from one side of the country to the other. A whole magical heritage has been lost. A whole civilization. It was history itself that died yesterday.”

  Lucy said, “People are history, not ghosts.”

  Mr Vane touched the broken Druidic stone with his foot. “And now what are you planning to do? Close all of the gateways between the real world and the magical world? What practical, prag
matic, unimaginative young creatures you are! You don’t want anything dangerous in your lives, do you? You don’t want anything which you can’t explain.”

  He took a deep, quivering breath. “I’ve got news for you youngsters. You’re not going to succeed. Those gateways are going to stay open. There are still some Druid spirits left; and when today’s Druids die, their spirits will live on, too. I may have wearied of giving them sacrifices, and I may not have been able to persuade you to do it, John. But I will find somebody who will. There is always somebody who can be tempted by the idea of immortality. The Druids will still survive in this country long after you have been forgotten.”

  “I don’t think so,” said Courtney.

  “You don’t think so?”

  “That’s right. For the simple reason that we’re going to stop you.”

  Mr Vane smiled at them, and then he actually laughed.

  “What’s so funny?” John challenged him.

  “You are,” said Mr Vane. “You really don’t know just how much you amuse me with all of your misdirected bravado.” He lifted his head and called out, “Aedd! Aedd Mawr!”

  Behind them, they heard a soft dragging noise. The door was slammed back against the wall, and the statue walked in. But it didn’t look like the statue they had first discovered. It was black and charred all over and part of one of its arms was missing, leaving a pointed stump. Its ivory face had been crudely nailed back into place, but it was badly burned on one side, so that it no longer looked calm and serene. It had a terrible injured snarl that made all of them step back apprehensively.

  Mr Vane said, “I managed to drag him out of the flames. I burned both of my hands doing it. Look.” He gripped one of the torn sheets in his teeth and unwrapped his left hand. It was nothing but a raw, blackened mitt, with no fingers at all. He waved it under Lucy’s nose and Lucy recoiled in horror.

  “I saved Aedd Mawr and I shall have my just reward for that, don’t you worry! While you – you will get your just reward for what you have done.”