Skendleby

by Nick Brown

  The crowd had turned and was running for the site gate to escape the storm. Above, the air was swarming with great black birds circling high up cawing and watching as the diggers tried to hold down and secure flying evidence and equipment. The vortex of the storm circled the chamber driving the stinging freezing hail the gale had summoned. Steve was helped into one of the site huts with the blinded cameraman leaving Jim, Jan and four or five others standing anxiously watching the entrance.

  He wanted to help Giles but was afraid to cross the possessed woman guarding the entrance to Hell’s mouth. Then, after a few moments, which felt like ages, Lisa appeared, being pushed from behind by Giles carrying a flash lamp. Giles was dazed but Lisa was laughing, reluctant to leave the chamber, she was more animated than Jim had ever seen her.

  For a moment she and the woman stood face to face, locked in an intense stare, then Jim took her by the arm and half led half dragged her away to the car, surprised at her strength.

  The site was rapidly emptying; he could hear Giles shouting orders to cover up the entrance and secure the evidence. Jim called in to the site hut to check on Steve. He seemed uninjured and whatever had been afflicting his eyes seemed better; he was talking to Jan, smoking and sipping a coffee. He waved to Jim, who carried on pulling Lisa towards the car. At the site gate he turned to look back towards the chamber. Standing in front of it were Giles and the woman in the wind and freezing hail. They seemed impervious to the elements, locked in an intense conversation in which she gesticulated constantly whilst Giles appeared to stand motionless, head bowed, arms dangling at his sides. Above them the birds, battered by the storm, wheeled and shrieked.

  Although barely three o’clock it was dark when Jim unlocked the Shogun, pushed Lisa into the front seat and strapped her in. As he steered the car back down the track to the road he was aware she was shaking. He turned, thinking she was crying, and saw she was silently laughing to herself, shoulders heaving.

  “Lisa, are you OK?”

  “Yeah, really safe innit.”

  The strange reply surprised Jim; he expected her to be upset not amused. They drove on in silence; once away from the site the wind dropped and Lisa started to sing to herself quietly. It was better than conversation he supposed but when he tried to listen all he could pick up was the cadence of a repetitive chant, without words he understood or any discernible tune. So he drove on with something like an ancient dirge sung backwards filling the car.

  It was not until he had almost reached her flat to drop her off that he asked.

  “Lisa, what happened back there? What did you see inside?”

  CHAPTER 9

  INSIDE: LISA, STEVE, GILES

  Steve settled expertly into opening the chamber but he still felt distracted. Why had Leonie slapped him like that? Their scene had been over ages ago and was never more than a bit of fun, she must have known that. There shouldn’t be any problems and all he’d been doing was trying to calm her down and stop her making a fool of herself. Leonie was always up for it, which was what he liked, but grounded and easy going. He thought that Jan, who was more emotional, would be more likely to over react. True, everyone was getting a bit crazy on this dig but once the chamber was excavated they could shut the dig down and move to the Unit to plan publication. He realised he very much wanted to shut this dig down and move on. His emotional, or more precisely, sex life, was getting too complicated and he was beginning to feel that soon everything would go pear shaped again.

  He didn’t like this site, they were being watched and someone was fooling around with the site at night so his job as site director was more complicated. He resented being phoned up by Giles and told to go and clear up after the sick vandals: it made him feel uncomfortable and exposed. Why would someone bother to travel out here to break into the huts and disturb the diggings and sections? The stuff with the dead crow in the desk had been the last straw; it freaked Leonie so much she even believed someone followed her home at night and, although she’d not said it, he knew she thought it was the stalker who watched from the trees.

  Despite his scepticism he was uneasy, but, ever the true professional, he continued meticulously with his work. It wasn’t as easy to open the chamber as he’d thought. The problem was the passage behind the entrance which was half filled with rubble. Giles’s planning and preparatory work hadn’t allowed for that. Typical. Giles had been chivvying him for the last fifteen minutes to hurry up and at last he snapped back at him,

  “I’m not Howard Carter opening the tomb of Tutan fucking Khamen for Lord Carnarvon; I’m on my hands and knees trying to unblock a poxy little passage in the freezing cold. So give me some space and shut the fuck up.”

  The thought of Tutankhamen and the associated curse was unfortunate bringing back Leonie’s premonitions. He worked on thinking this was really crap archaeology. They shouldn’t be digging like this; they should be going much slower leaving time to record the process. Everything was too quick; Giles was usually so methodical, too methodical: yet here they were putting on a show for the local media, digging an unknown feature at breakneck speed. This was show business not archaeology.

  Without warning the crudely fashioned stone he was handling suddenly shifted and dropped down away from him as if pulled from the inside. There was nothing beyond it just ancient space. He was in!

  He never understood what happened next. He saw a faint light on the floor and something moving in the dark space beyond the gap. He heard a soft, voluptuous moan ahead of him and was hit in the face by a fierce stinging blast of grit-laden stale air. He was blinded. The rough wall he was crouching against began to crumble. He felt something push him and he stumbled frantically out holding his eyes. The world seemed to have changed. It was as if the blinding wind from the chamber had followed. What had he let loose? He started to scream, then felt two hands grasp him and Giles’s voice in his ear.

  ***

  Now Lisa’s time had come: she saw Steve stagger out holding his eyes and behind him the open passageway. She was impatient, the fool had messed around too long checking he wasn’t missing or destroying evidence, as if that mattered. Now he was out of the way and the entrance to the chamber was hers. She’d felt a growing compulsion as they argued stupidly about whether to open the chamber and she burnt with frustration. Hanging around while Steve wasted time messing about slowly over the poxy evidence she’d lusted to kill him, taste his blood, but that would have to wait.

  He was gone and the chamber called to her. The smell of damp earth at the entrance was replaced by odours of dust, age and decay as she crawled down the short cramped passage. By the light of Steve’s flash lamp abandoned at the entrance she saw the crude stone walls. Before her was a low opening, a doorway supported by a crude, stone lintel. Through the haze of disturbed dust and sediment in the passageway and by the light of the lamp she crawled and stumbled through the opening. Inside there was an uneven, flag stone floor and the roof narrowed to a point about five feet above. In the centre of the chamber were two large rocks covering stick-like debris and she was about to direct the light at this when she heard the noise. It was like a distorted form of singing or chanting, high pitched, foreign, as if it were running backwards. It hit her with a jolt like lightening and she felt dizzy. Without knowing how, she found herself sitting slumped against the chamber wall.

  The noise had gone now but the feeling of light headedness was growing, she was going to faint. She thought she’d passed out yet she could still feel the chill cold of the stone floor penetrating her buttocks and thighs through the thin denim of her jeans. Then there came a sensation of ecstatic merging with the chamber which seemed to expand and contract in the light of the flickering lamp now flashing like a strobe.

  Then: she was flying - a dark sky lit by the crimson of a great fire. Beneath her, figures composed of light and shade moving round the flames in a jerky circular dance passed in a swirl of colour as she swooped over and into the heart of oak woodland. She sucked greedily at the
smell of early summer and blossom and fresh new leaf, the smells of release and freedom. Drank in the colours of young green shoots and white petal. In a clearing below she could see a smaller fire with figures, some crouched and tied, lit clearly by the blaze, a woman in a long white robe, bare arms, long dark hair, and eyes ablaze. She held a stone knife and all around was the the sound of soft sibilant chanting. Then the sensations of power, magic and pleasure. The feeling of release like the moment before wetting the bed in a childhood dream or the wonderful first seconds on the cusp of orgasm, the firelight on the wild pack laughing as the sing song chant grew in intensity to a paroxysm of ecstasy. In the frenzy of the dance she saw her dark haired summoner approaching. They danced towards each other, danced into each other: merged, became one

  “Lisa, Lisa are you OK? Lisa, speak to me.”

  The sensations receded: a pedestrian, peevish voice penetrated her consciousness. The feeling, colours and sounds were gone, replaced by Giles shining the light in her eyes, an expression of anxiety on his stupid face as he half carried and half dragged her from the chamber. Outside, there was the wild ecstatic wind spreading mayhem and poor dull Jim standing next to the witch. A glimpse of that vain fool Steve in the hut unaware of what he’d set in motion: the new order that the ancient chanting carried by the storm was spreading. The slow languorous return of warmth cradled in the soft leather seats of the Shogun. Then sensation: the sensual glow of heat, after millennia of cold, of looking through fresh eyes, the feel of new flesh with its suppleness and texture, the languorous comfort. But, best of all, freedom and power with the rapture of vengeance still to come.

  ***

  Giles stumbled into the chamber, Claire’s words ringing in his ears, and crawled along the passage towards the beam of light. Where was Lisa? She had obviously broken through into the tomb. Despite his concern the archaeologist in him took over. This was a unique feature: a type of Neolithic barrow or cairn like the Five Wells cairn but much smaller, this was special. He entered the chamber with a frisson of excitement observing the crazy paving effect of the laid stone floor covered by a ridge shaped cairn of local stone. In the centre of the floor directly facing him was the final confirmation of his speculation.

  The crouched skeleton of an adult, partly visible, weighed down and crushed by two huge stones. It was only then he noticed Lisa slumped against the right hand wall with her mouth agape and her legs twitching as if suffering a type of seizure. It took about a minute to revive her, during which Giles became increasingly uncomfortable with the chamber. He felt an urge to get out but forced himself to stay with Lisa.

  When she finally came to, she showed neither signs of recognising Giles nor of having suffered any discomfort. She looked like she resented him, hated him even. He manoeuvred her to the entrance and turned to retrieve the flash lamp. By its light he noticed some fragments of pot by the skeletal feet, and, glinting in the lamp’s light, a well constructed and sharp, flint knife.

  Once he’d dragged Lisa out he was surprised she was able to walk unaided. She walked off without a word pausing only to exchange brief but intense eye contact with Claire. By the time Giles was fully out of the entrance Jim was bundling her off to the car park. He was excited by the find but reluctant to re-enter the chamber. Claire seemed not to have moved since he entered the chamber but now turned to him eyes blazing.

  “You fool; do you know what you’ve done?”

  CHAPTER 10

  INSIDE: CLAIRE AND GILES

  Claire had intended to arrive earlier in a final attempt to persuade Giles to stop the excavation. Despite their previous two difficult conversations she felt the type of connection with him that occasionally happened with strangers for no logical reason; she knew he was troubled. Last night her sleep had been disturbed by a recurring dream in which a frightened child or young woman was contained in a dark space whimpering, but every time Claire tried to help her she was prevented by a feeling of dread which woke her with a start. These constant disruptions to her sleep pattern lasted until the early hours of the morning and she slept through the alarm clock.

  She had a consultation with a client in Nantwich that morning who claimed she was suffering from a psychic disturbance in the garden, claiming to see a dark figure in evening dress emerging from the shrubbery at odd hours of the day and night. Claire’s diagnosis was that the woman was bonkers but clearly distressed and having arrived late for the consultation she found herself leaving even later. The sun was shining on Nantwich as Claire climbed into her car after a final discussion on the etiquette required for dealing with a formally attired apparition with a penchant for lurking in shrubbery

  She drove rapidly towards the motorway consoling herself that it paid well and financed the expensive pair of boots she’d bought the previous day and decided to wear for the consultation. The drive was prolonged by road works near the airport and by the time she was clear of these she was far later than she’d expected. Between the road and the motorway clouds obscured the sun, by Lindow the day was sombre, chill and bleak. When she eventually reached the dig the pall of the weather was matched by her rising sense of anxiety, which the massed crows in the tree tops did nothing to diminish.

  She parked in the lane, walked rapidly to the site thinking, as she hit the mud of the excavation, how impractical her outfit must look. She saw the spectators crowded around the mound at the far end of the dig. Now she knew what was happening and began to scream at Giles to stop. Before she reached the crowd she knew she was too late.

  She didn’t see Steve stagger blindly towards Giles, or the entrance to the chamber open but she felt the effects: the rush of dark malignant air bursting from the entrance, scattering and blinding the crowd. Something had escaped: she felt its malice as well as the bite of the gale as it reached her, pushing her back towards the car park. She sensed that something unnatural in the vortex of the storm recognised her and cursed her.

  Pushing through the crowd she saw the slim form of the photographer slip into the passageway. Forcing herself through the gale she ran to where Giles was supporting Steve in his arms. Now she could see the passageway to the chamber gaping open and recognised the source of evil, and destruction.

  She screamed to Giles to get Lisa out and then stood in terror with her back to the entrance to prevent anyone else following. No one tried and she noticed almost all the onlookers, disturbed by driving hail and wind, were rushing to disperse. As the gale reached a pitch of intensity she felt, as much as heard, a wild delighted ululation that seemed to come from the clouds above her head and disappear towards the woods at the estate boundary.

  She turned and saw Giles emerging from the chamber leading a girl. The girl shoved him off and walked quite confidently towards her. As she passed Claire she stopped and stood for a moment staring fixedly, the trace of a malicious and knowing smile on her lips. But it was the eyes that held Claire paralysed: they were triumphant but ancient and unspeakably evil. They were the only eyes that truly saw and understood what had happened here. In that stare Claire felt the jolt of pure hate, like a blow that turned her bowels to liquid.

  She was terrified and defeated by the presence of something so powerful that any of her skills were no more use than a baby’s toys. The creature released her from its gaze, smiled and walked off. Claire staggered back to her car feeling sick and hadn’t driven far when she had to stop and throw up at the side of the road. She’d always believed in the power of goodness and thought that absolute unconditional evil was rarely seen in the world. Now she’d seen it and her world had changed.

  Giles and Jan supervised the closing down of the site. The wind and hail subsided and the afternoon brightened but they felt disinclined to work on. Neither of them felt the urge to explore the inside of the chamber. That could wait until tomorrow but they had to close it up to secure it for the night. Giles was the one who reluctantly crawled again down the passage to temporarily reseal the burial chamber. He shone his light through the opening and its bea
m played across the broken pile of bones under the rocks and then a camera lying on the floor by the wall where Lisa dropped it. He quickly recorded and bagged the flint knife and some sherds of pot and carried these and the camera, which he noticed was turned on, outside and handed them to Jan. He sealed the entrance and returned to the site hut.

  There was no one there, even the birds had deserted the trees, and he was alone. The site felt empty. There was a genuine change of atmosphere but in his present state of mind Giles couldn’t tell if this was an improvement or not. He closed the shed, left the site, padlocking the gate behind him, and walked to his car. On the drive back to the Unit his mind was blank and he was scarcely aware of the journey. It was only when he was parking up the car in the darkening university quad that the flicker of unease that had been his constant companion these last couple of weeks began to trickle back into his consciousness.

  In the Unit Steve and Jan sat drinking coffee liberally laced from the bottle of rum in Steve’s desk drawer. Steve, hollow faced and gaunt, turned to Giles.

  “I don’t know what happened today but that was the worst archaeology I’ve ever seen. We broke every rule in the book. It was treasure hunting not excavation and I’m finished with that site. What you made me do has ruined my reputation.”

  Giles patted him on his shoulder wanting to ask him what he’d seen when the tomb fell open but knew Steve wouldn’t tell him and that he didn’t want the answer anyway.