by Nick Brown
He decided to take the minor road that cut across the fields at the back of ‘The Hanged Man’. Despite the poor quality of the rapidly dwindling light, he noticed the flapping shredded fragments of black plastic rubbish bags spiked on the thorn of the hedgerows. Hedgerows badly trimmed by the council, which meant fangs of splintered, badly pollarded saplings, reached out towards the road like grasping fingers. His headlights lit up the gaunt skeleton of a stag-headed oak choking on ivy.
Since his experience beneath the Davenport Chapel, most things struck Ed as sinister. In fact, it had taken a great deal of mental strength to convince himself he wasn’t mutating into a crow. This phenomenon, amongst the many problems in his life, was one he hadn’t anticipated. But of all the horrors circling his mind there was one particular recent memory he found most perturbing; the visit of that creature Gifford: the criminal who had assaulted him by the Skendleby mound.
To Ed’s horror, the previous evening, Gifford had called in at the rectory. The doorbell had rung and Ed had opened the door to find him standing there, arms hanging at his sides, dishevelled in stained and weather-beaten clothes. He’d looked ravaged and disturbed, but also, strangely like a frightened child. It was this last detail that had stopped Ed being afraid. In fact, he’d felt a sudden surge of pity for Gifford wash over him.
He’d been asking Gifford to come in and dry off and have a warm drink when he’d noticed the man begin to shuffle backwards, a look of absolute horror spreading across his face. Ed had reached out his hand in a gesture of reassurance at which Gifford, emitting a choked-off squeal, had turned his back and ran. It had been something he’d seen in Ed that had done it, something Gifford hadn’t been expecting.
So total was this outbreak of terror that it had frozen Ed to the spot. For a moment he’d touched his own face to check he hadn’t in fact metamorphosed into a giant crow. Gifford disappeared into the gloom so he’d slouched back into the rectory, closing the door in perplexity.
To slough these memories off, he switched on the car radio, but after a few dispiriting seconds listening to the news reader’s summary of the increasingly violent anarchy in Athens, he switched it off and spent the rest of the journey signing The Day Thou Gavest, Lord, Is Ended at the top of his voice.
The relief of entering into the warmth of the rectory and Mary’s welcome didn’t last long.
“I’ve left the post in the study for you, most of it’s junk but there’s one handwritten envelope. Do you want a cuppa?”
He grunted assent and sloped into the study. As soon as he saw the envelope he had a presentiment and hesitated a moment before opening it. A short epistle, seconds to read, hours to digest. Some time later, looking up, he saw the mug of cooling tea in front of him. He hadn’t noticed Mary bring it in. He returned his scrutiny to the crumpled page with its scrawled message.
Dear Joyce,
The exorcism on Skendleby didn’t work, I think we were used. This is beyond us, beyond our dimension. We meddled in things we don’t understand.
I fear something’s coming for me. Be careful.
Marcus Fox.
P.S. Find Gwen, save her if you can.
But Ed already knew this: the crows had told him. He also knew that if he didn’t manage to get a grip on himself he’d descend into one of his episodic bouts of depression. So for about forty minutes he struggled to turn his attention towards preparing for his numerous Christmas activities. He made no progress, couldn’t put his mind to it, so the details kept slipping away. Slipping down into the chamber of terrors beneath the Davenport chapel. He needed to speak to someone; he had to share some of the hideous detail. But who to share it with?
Davenport was too unwell, Giles too weak, Steve missing. There was only one person, but he hesitated to call her. Part of his existence, his salvation, was based on Claire, based on her strength and goodness, so why did he hesitate to call her?
He knew the answer, something about her, something in her had begun to unnerve him, frighten him. He knew there was no logic in this. He pushed it from his mind and decided on Olga. He had to speak to her anyway so, suppressing his guilt over the mixture of motives that inclined him towards her, he reached for the phone.
As his hand grasped the handset there was a bleep from the cell phone on the desk. He glanced towards it and saw that Claire was calling. Perhaps the Lord was deciding for him. He answered and heard Claire’s sparkling voice.
“Ed, darling, you’ll never guess what I’ve been watching on the Moss?”
He knew, despite her tone of voice, that this wasn’t going to be happy news. He was right.
“The police have cordoned it off, there’s flashing blue lights blocking all the tracks.”
“Why Claire, what is it?”
“A body. Ed, they’ve found a body. A dog walker stumbled over it early morning, bet she wishes she’d taken another route.”
He felt his heart sinking; he knew this was connected to his fear.
“Do you know anything more? Like who it was?”
“That’s a strange question to be asking. Ed, are you feeling guilty?”
“No, no, of course not.”
“All I know is that Giles will get a call about this, he reckons that there are a lot more ancient bodies preserved in the Moss. Anyway, that’s not the reason I called you, Ed. I’m worried about you, have been for some time now. I’ve a feeling there’s something you need to get off your chest. Am I right?”
So the Lord had decided for him, he should have rung her earlier.
“Claire, I’ve had a strange experience, I can’t understand it, can’t get it out of my mind.”
“I knew there was something, Ed, tell me all about it.”
“You know the chamber, deep under the Davenport Chapel, that Giles found?”
“Of course, he wouldn’t shut up about it for ages.”
“Well, I’ve been down there.”
“Silly of you.”
“More than silly. Claire, something terrible happened to me under there, something I don’t think I understand yet. Something I need to understand.”
Claire’s manner changed and he felt her true sensitive nature, her sympathy, reaching out across to him.
“Tell me, Ed, tell me everything, I can help you.”
He needed to tell, needed to share this burden, he could feel tears stinging his eyes.
“They trapped me in there, Claire, they talked to me.”
“Who Ed? Who trapped you?”
He could feel her sympathy now, it was surrounding him, protecting him. Thank God she’d rung him.
“The crows, the crows, you remember? The ones who I thought were helping me last year.”
“Share it, Ed, pass your burden over to me.”
He couldn’t resist, it all came out, and he tripped over his words in his haste.
“They surrounded me, all of them, all their ancestors spoke to me, told me things, terrible things. Something drives them, a necklace of bone almost complete that will pave the way for a terrible birth. I didn’t understand but I felt their terror. Then they piled on me, dragged me down, drowned me in their stench and rot. All the time speaking things, things no one is meant to hear.”
“Ok, Ed, it’s all right, you’ve got me with you now. Calmly now, slow and calm, Ed, there’s no need to be afraid any more. Take some deep breaths then tell me what they said, exactly what they said.”
“As I sank down through the layers of time they murmured to me. At one point I swear, swear I heard Homeric verse, iambic metre, dactyls and spondee. How can that be? Then deeper down below that they spoke in tongues long since dead, yet I understood them. And below that, meaning without words, before words, meaning from mouldering earth and rock, long before humanity. Then layers before the earth, from other places, and I think other universes. Claire, how can this be, am I mad?”
“No, Ed, you’re not mad, trust me and tell me all of it.”
“They showed me what happened at Skendleby,
not just us and what we did last year; there were others before us: Heatly Smythe, one of Olga’s relatives, a series of Davenports, even Dr John Dee. Corrupted and searching for missing bones amongst the shambling restless dead. Bones of evil purpose whose power extends beyond what we understand. Like us they all meddled and failed. Like us they made things worse.”
He paused, gasping for air, fighting to keep control. Claire said nothing, waited for him to continue but he could feel her caring for him, feel her protecting him across the airwaves.
“All the way back to the first, long dead stars, they gave me experience, experience we should never have. I’m marked, marked for some dread purpose. But worse, I’m haunted, haunted by stars.”
There was worse, much worse, but even to Claire he couldn’t make himself tell it. Maybe she understood this, for she said:
“Well done, Ed, you’ve been very brave and you’ve done the right thing in telling me.”
“But what must I do now? What do they expect?”
“Nothing, Ed, you’ve played your part, your role has ended, this message was for me. You were merely the messenger and the message has been delivered.”
Even wound up as he was, something didn’t feel right about this. The crow’s connection had always been with him. He was about to make the point but Claire spoke across him.
“Ed, like before, you must trust me. I know what’s happening, your part is over. Now listen carefully to what you have to do. Nothing.”
He felt he should protest but the possibility of passing his responsibility on was too attractive so he kept silent.
“You go to the church, pray to your God then prepare for Christmas. That’s your role now, leave everything to me, I know what to do. And Ed?”
“Yes.”
“Above all, say nothing of this to anyone else. Absolutely nothing, or you will put those you care for in danger. Say nothing, understand?”
He thought he did, he could feel relief like warmth beginning to spread through his body. She was about to ring off but he remembered one more thing, one detail she’d need to know.
“Claire, there’s something else. I just opened a letter from Marcus Fox. He was warning me, he seemed terrified, he said something was coming for us, especially for Gwen. Gwen knows something. He asked me to find her and save her. Gwen’s your friend, perhaps…?”
“Of course, Ed, as you say, Gwen’s my friend. You were right to pass that over too and don’t worry, Ed. I’ll take good care of Gwen.”
Claire rang off and Ed sat back in his chair trying to breathe deeply and evenly, but relieved as he was he couldn’t feel easy. He didn’t have long to ponder the matter. His cell phone bleeped again. This time Olga.
He kept most of his promise and told her almost nothing of his conversation with Claire. Partly because Olga was distressed and urgently needed to see him, he agreed a time and place to meet with her, and then, almost in an attempt to reassure her (he was now glad he’d not distressed her further by unburdening his fears), he said:
“And Olga, I think you’ve misjudged Claire. I’ve just poured out my fears and feel much improved. I think she can help us.”
There was a pause before Olga said in a stuttering whisper:
“Ed, I think you’ve made a terrible mistake.”
Then the phone went dead.
Chapter 33: Past Imperfect
Leonie took him by surprise. He’d wanted something to shock him out of his mood: the black dog that always followed him into the unit, but not this.
Behind him Sophie was putting up the meagre Christmas decorations. For this year she’d bought a new tree, the old fibre optic one that had witnessed fifteen Christmases carried too many bad memories and been consigned to the bin. Its replacement was a small live one complete with roots. On top of it she placed a soft toy hedgehog with a Christmas hat.
A strange choice but it probably wouldn’t have mattered what she’d done because the decorations brought back memories, and the memories haunted the unit. Since storing the Skendleby bones, the place hadn’t felt right and the death of Tim Thomson, who they’d all laughed at secretly, compounded the guilt. So when Leonie tentatively approached Giles’s desk it was almost a relief.
“They’ve sent us back the analysis on the bones.”
She sounded edgy, but then she always did these days.
“What bones? Can’t remember sending any.”
“The Skendleby bones.”
He almost jumped out of his seat.
“We put them back, we put them all back.”
“Not all of them, it would appear.”
“But there’s no way we’d…”
She cut him off.
“We didn’t but it seems Tim did. Must have been carrying out his own investigations.”
“How could he? I never...”
She finished the sentence for him.
“Told him.”
There was silence. Leonie pushed her hair back, tried and failed to smile then finally broke the silence.
“You never told anyone apart from Steve, did you? Maybe if you had, Tim would still be alive.”
He could see her lower lip trembling, she was going to cry. There was no answer he could give; the same thoughts had been troubling his conscience. Perhaps Leonie recognised this, regaining control of herself, she said in a softer tone:
“Do you want to hear what the analysis says?”
He didn’t, but knew he had to.
“Ok.”
“But not here, Giles, I don’t want to talk about it in here.”
So they went out and found a couple of seats in one of the many identical student bars and cafes that fringed the University. In a few days most of the students would go home for Christmas and the identical bars would emptily mourn them. Over a couple of weak lattes, Leonie told him the things he didn’t want to hear.
“Three bones in all, I don’t know how he got hold of them but he chose well. One from the tomb, one from the sacrifice in the pit and one much, much older, from the ritual deposits beneath. It’s this last one that scares me the most. According to the lab reports, it’s older than is possible.”
Giles was about to interrupt but she didn’t let him.
“No, don’t speak, let me finish. It’s older than seems possible and what’s even worse is that they can’t find its origin from the analysis of its chemical composition. It has no source location. How can that be, Giles?”
“They probably got the samples mixed up.”
“There was only one small piece, Giles, and you know how rigorous and up themselves these chemical analysts are now. There’s no match for it anywhere and if they can’t find where it came from then it didn’t originate anywhere on Earth. Try explaining that?”
Since his trip to Samos, this apparent oxymoron didn’t surprise Giles as much as it might once have done. He didn’t comment. She hadn’t finished.
“The fragment from the sacrificial pit seems straightforward enough. It originated somewhere in the southern Cotswolds in the mid-Neolithic. But the piece from inside the tomb, the last section of the right little finger.”
She paused as one of the bar staff walked over to administer a cursory wipe to the sticky table top, before adding:
“Well, that finger joint originated somewhere between the Tigris and Euphrates, and it’s pre-Neolithic. So tell me what…”
She got no further. Giles’s phone bleeped and he answered.
“Giles, where the hell are you? No one in the unit could tell me.”
He recognised not only the voice but also the graceless manner of his local authority boss.
“The police have got a situation on their hands in Lindow Moss. Drop what you’re doing and get across there now.”
*******
He had plenty of time to reflect stuck in the traffic on the M60. He’d tried this route as an alternative to the long crawl down the A34, but it had been a bad choice. A series of Highways Agency posters informed him that the
M60 was now a ‘Smart Motorway’. He didn’t know what this meant but assumed it was a motorway choked with cones restricting progress, with no sign of either construction work or workers. If this was what a ‘Smart Motorway’ was like, he promised himself he’d never venture onto a genuinely clever one.
The other problem with ‘Smart Motorways’ was that they gave you plenty of time sitting stationary in which to think. Giles didn’t want to reflect but couldn’t stop himself. The bones forced themselves into his mind; their provenance made no sense; how could two people who’d lived a couple of thousand years apart have met in Skendleby? But then again, it wasn’t the first time he’d confronted this. If the bones were real then the past wasn’t.
Eventually he managed to inch his way off the Smart M60 onto the sluggish M56, and from there he skirted the airport to arrive at the track into the Moss. He pulled up by the flashing blue lights of the parked police vehicles. It had started to snow.
He picked his way across the part frozen bog to the huddle of people surrounding whatever horror it was they’d uncovered. He could make out the forms of Anderson and the bitch who’d tried to pin the murders on him. By the time he reached them his shoes were soaked through. And he was shivering.
Up close he could see that she, DI Campbell, wasn’t in great shape; she looked queasy and unsteady on her feet. Anderson was supporting her with a hand under her left elbow, which he was pretty sure was a level of familiarity that wasn’t encouraged in the force.
Anderson saw him first.
“Dr Glover, thanks for getting here so quickly, we need you to confirm a couple of things for us if you would.”
Even as tightly wound as he was, Giles wondered at the strained formality of this. He nodded and moved through the huddle of police to look towards where Anderson was pointing. Everything assumed a dreamlike quality.
Maybe it was this that prevented him from seeing what he was looking at. The harder he looked, the less he saw; there was something with a blackened tongue resembling an old bonfire night Guy Fawkes, with its raggedy limbs mixed up in what looked like a thickish stew laced with bones. He realised Anderson was still speaking.
