by Tom Becker
For Jacob
“…suddenly, he saw
a joyless woods leaning over
turbid and bloody water”
Beowulf
Contents
Cover
Half Title Page
About the Author
Title Page
Dedication
Epigraph
Prologue: The Resurrection Men
Part One: Digging
Chapter One: Removals
Chapter Two: The Moss
Chapter Three: Cobwebs
Chapter Four: The Watch House
Chapter Five: Local History
Chapter Six : Sleeping Dogs
Chapter Seven: In Memoriam
Chapter Eight: Treasure Hunters
Chapter Nine: The Witching Hour
Chapter Ten: Post Mortem
Part Two: Hel Blár
Chapter Eleven: The Snow
Chapter Twelve: Black Maggie
Chapter Thirteen: The Pals
Chapter Fourteen: Earth and Moss
Chapter Fifteen: Lark Farm
Chapter Sixteen: Cortege
Chapter Seventeen: The Devil's Descent
Chapter Eighteen: Rain of Stones
Chapter Nineteen: The Spider
Chapter Twenty: Beyond the Fence
Chapter Twenty-One: Draugr
Chapter Twenty-Two: The Barrow
Chapter Twenty-Three: The Man Upstairs
Chapter Twenty-Four: Mr Redgrave
Chapter Twenty-Five: The Hole
Chapter Twenty-Six: Firelight
Part Three: Thaw
Chapter Twenty-Seven: Scars
Chapter Twenty-Eight: Over
Chapter Twenty-Nine: The Afterwalker
Copyright
On a bright and bitter winter morning in 1821, the village of Alderston came together to bury an angel. The mourners gathered on the sloping hillside behind the church, a flock of blackbirds fluttering in and around the gravestones. The women wore crepe dresses, black veils and jewellery fashioned from jet; the men sober mourning suits and top hats adorned with midnight-coloured ribbons. They were present to witness the burial of sixteen-year-old Kitty Hawkins, whose body had been found, bloated and blue-lipped, at the bottom of the pond in the woods nearby.
Tom McNally stood on the edge of the crowd, hat in hand, his large fingers toying nervously with the brim. He had known Kitty since childhood, had sat near her during lessons in the schoolhouse. Yet at that moment he felt awkward and uncomfortable, as though he was trespassing on other people’s grief. Six feet tall and flame-haired, with shoulders broadened by hours working with shovel and pick on the family farm, Tom found it hard to blend into the background. When he was little his mother used to tell him that Viking blood ran through his veins – hot and bright, like molten iron. But today called for veins of ice, not fire.
News of Kitty’s death had plunged Alderston into a cold pool of grief. Kitty had always been a kind girl with a ready smile, without a trace of malice or poison in her soul. All the families felt, to some degree, that they had lost a child. Now, as her coffin was lowered into the ground, the silence was pockmarked with choked sobs, rustling crepe and the flutter of ribbons in the wind. Kitty’s father, John Hawkins, stood motionless by the graveside like a pale statue. Barely a year had passed since his wife, Laura, had died of consumption, and now he was sending his daughter to lie by her side. There were uncharitable whispers that he was cursed. As if he was not suffering enough without gossip rubbing salt in the wound.
When the gravedigger shuffled forward to fill the grave, Tom whispered a quick prayer under his breath. As shovelfuls of soil thudded down on to the coffin lid, the mourners began to melt away, keen to escape the cruel cold. Leaning upon one another, they headed for somewhere they could thaw their frozen hands and warm the chill from their bones.
Tom was turning to follow when he saw something that stopped him in his tracks. At the bottom of the hillside, beyond the graveyard wall, a man was leaning over the front gate of his house, coolly watching the proceedings. Even at this distance, Tom could sense malice and disdain rising off the man like steam. The rest of Alderston may have turned out for Kitty’s funeral, but George Rathbone would not have been welcome. George Rathbone wasn’t welcome anywhere.
“Cold day for it.”
Startled, Tom looked round to find Kitty’s father standing by his side. Although John Hawkins’s face was haggard, his eyes were dry and his voice was steady. A proud, strong man, he would not allow himself to cry in public.
“That it is,” Tom agreed. “Only going to get colder, too.”
“In more ways than one. I need your help with something, Tom.”
“Name it.”
“I need you to protect my little girl.”
Tom looked over towards the grave, which was now almost filled with fresh earth. “Kitty’s dead, John,” he said softly.
“Aye, I know. I watched them put her in the ground. And that’s where I want her to stay.” He was looking beyond Tom, his gaze fixed on the house at the bottom of the hill. “You’ve heard the same rumours I have. About the Resurrection Men.”
Everyone had heard the rumours: wicked men stealing forth in the dead of night, cloaked in gin and armed with wooden shovels. They crept into cemeteries and dug up the coffins, stealing the bodies within to sell to medical schools desperate for fresh cadavers to work on. A fortnight ago a tailor’s grave in nearby Caxton had been dug up, its occupant vanishing into thin air. It was whispered that a gang of grave robbers had started work in the area. The Resurrection Men, some called them – and when they were abroad, not even the dead were safe.
Tom followed Hawkins’s gaze down the hillside. “You must be joking!” he exclaimed. “Rathbone’s a bad seed all right, but even he wouldn’t stoop to grave-robbing.”
“Nothing is beyond that man,” Hawkins said grimly. “He is the devil in human form. I have urgent business with my lawyer in Manchester today – if I wait even one day, then I risk losing my home on top of my daughter. I will return tomorrow evening, but tonight I cannot watch over Kitty’s grave. Will you stand in my place?”
Tom nodded. “Of course. No harm will come to Kitty whilst I have breath in my body. I promise.”
“God bless you.”
John Hawkins’s voice cracked, threatening to betray him. He shook Tom’s hand firmly and quickly walked away. An hour later a carriage rattled out of Alderston, a grim-faced Hawkins sitting in the back. Tom returned to his farm, where he spent the rest of the day pacing along the boundary of his family’s land, restless for nightfall. Unwittingly his footsteps led him to the wood on the edge of the Moss. The skeletal trees were thronged with crows, who studied him with beady eyes as he strode along the hard, rutted earth. A bad odour hung in the air inside that wood – especially around the pond, with its dark history. Which made it all the more strange that Kitty had decided to walk there that Friday past, leaving her house and heading across the fields towards the dark blur of trees.
Later that night, when she still hadn’t returned home, Tom had been part of the search party who had traced Kitty’s footprints through the wood. The muddy ground at the pond’s edge had preserved the terrible moment Kitty had slipped and fallen into the water, the smeared tracks of her stumbling pirouette. The icy pond would have ripped the breath from her chest, the tangle of her dress amongst the weeds wickedly pulling her down. No one would have been there to rescue her; nothing but shadows and timid animals to hear her splashes and cries for help. Such a dark, lonely place to die.
Tom shook his head. The vast sky above him was turning a deepening shade of blue. It was time to go. Leaving the wood behind him, he returned to the farmhouse and washed and changed his clothes, slipping a heavy cudgel inside his waistband before wishing his mother goodnight and leaving for town.
He headed for the Royal Oak first, wanting a drink before his long night’s vigil. The pub sign creaked in the wind as he entered the crowded back bar. Kitty’s death had lent the atmosphere a feverish edge – judging by the red faces and the spilled beer, some of the mourners had been drinking since the funeral. Tom plotted an awkward path through the throng towards the bar.
It was then, through the smoky fog, that he saw them.
George Rathbone, Lucas Forshaw and Silas Porter: a trio of villains with dirty fingernails and scabbed knuckles, who spent their days drinking and cursing, thieving and fighting. The three men sat apart from the others, as always, their heads bowed together as they supped on their bitter and spoke in low, conspiratorial tones. As Tom watched, George Rathbone looked up and caught his eye. He was a good-looking man, local girls admitted with a slight tremble in their voices, even if he was bad to the bone. There had only been one girl in Alderston with the nerve or naivety to smile at George Rathbone in the street, and brightly wish him a good day – but then Kitty Hawkins had slipped and fallen into the pond, and wouldn’t be smiling at anyone any more.
Breaking away from Rathbone’s steady gaze, Tom bought himself a half of beer and joined in conversation with the butcher and his lad. They chatted about the cold winter in prospect, and Tom allowed the butcher to buy him another half. It was tempting to stay in the drowsy warm, but the clock on the wall had ticked past nine and Tom knew it was time to go. He put his empty glass down on the bar.
“Leaving already?” George Rathbone’s voice. He had cut silently through the crowded room like an icy draught and was leaning against the bar beside Tom, a pint glass gripped in his hand.
“Aye.”
“It’s blacker than tar and colder than a grave out,” said Rathbone. “Why don’t you stay in here, in the warm? I’ll buy you another beer to keep your whistle wet.”
“I don’t need your money, George Rathbone,” said Tom, careful to keep his voice steady. “Or your words of advice.”
“That so?” Rathbone looked down at his hand, thoughtfully examining a scar on the back of his knuckle. “I saw you talking all hush-hush with John Hawkins after the funeral today. Felt my ears burning a mile off.”
“Nothing to do with you. John just wanted to make sure his girl stayed safe, that’s all.”
“Ever the protective father,” said Rathbone, with bitter amusement. “Hawkins damn near exploded any time I raised my hat to Kitty in the street. Now she’s dead it’s the same. I’m not even allowed to come to the funeral and pay my respects.”
“You made your own reputation,” Tom said firmly. “No use blaming anyone else.”
To Tom’s surprise, Rathbone nodded. “Aye, perhaps you’re right.” He lifted his pint to his mouth and took a deep swig. “I heard it was you who found her in the pond. No way for a young girl to die. No way at all.”
“It’s a tragedy, all right,” agreed Tom. “So the family don’t need anything else upsetting them, George Rathbone. You stay out of that churchyard.”
“Perhaps I will and perhaps I won’t,” said Rathbone. “Who knows where the night might lead me? John Hawkins might not think me fit to be around his girl, but then again, John Hawkins isn’t here tonight, is he?”
Tom’s cheeks flushed with anger. He could feel the molten iron in his veins begin to bubble.
“You listen to me,” he said hotly. “Stay away from Kitty’s grave, or so help me God… !”
Rathbone eyed him with cool amusement. “God won’t help you. Not here. Take my advice: stay indoors tonight.”
Tom strode out of the pub without a backwards glance, heading off into the night as the door closed behind him, sealing the warmth and the light and the laughter inside the building. He took several deep breaths before setting out up the hill towards the vast shadow of Alderston Church. The walk in the cold air soothed his boiling blood, and by the time he had reached the churchyard Tom was feeling calmer. He cut a path through the solemn forest of gravestones until he came to Kitty’s. Her headstone was gleaming in the moonlight, her name freshly etched into the smooth marble.
As he looked down towards the road at the bottom of the hill, Tom heard a dog barking in the village. He found the noise strangely comforting. It had been easy to sound brave in the middle of a busy pub, surrounded by familiar faces. It was a different story out here, alone among the huddled gravestones and the whip and whistle of the wind. Something about Kitty’s death was bothering Tom; an unsettling detail he had kept from her father. It had been Tom who had pulled Kitty’s lifeless body from the pond and laid her down upon the bank. As the rest of the search party had gathered around them, the glow from their lanterns had played mischievously upon a silver band around the dead girl’s finger. It was common knowledge that several men had been vying for Kitty’s affections, though as far as Tom knew she had politely rejected all proposals of marriage. Except one, it now appeared. At the thought of another man holding Kitty in his arms, Tom was overcome by a guilty flush of jealousy. They had known each other since they were knee-high, and besides, everybody in Alderston loved Kitty Hawkins…
The distant barking stopped, the dog falling into an abrupt silence. Tom glanced around the cemetery. Lost in thought, he had strayed from Kitty’s grave. The headstones around him were crumbling and covered in moss, reminders of long-forgotten townsfolk who had met their end centuries earlier. Above one grave a stone angel clasped his hands together in prayer, his eyes closed in rapturous bliss.
Somewhere in the darkness, a twig snapped.
“Who’s there?” Tom called out. “Show yourself !”
He pulled the cudgel out from his belt, reassured by its hefty weight in his hand. There would be three of them creeping through the graveyard, he knew – George Rathbone wouldn’t work alone. Tom didn’t care that he was outnumbered. No matter how many Resurrection Men came, they wouldn’t get past him. He had promised John Hawkins.
Backing up the slope in the direction of Kitty’s grave, Tom scanned the shadows for danger. The silence enveloped him so completely that he began to wonder whether he had imagined the twig snapping. A few nerves were understandable, given that he was surrounded by the dead. Stumbling backwards into something, Tom whirled round and raised his cudgel, only to find himself staring at another headstone. Tom’s shoulders sagged with relief. He smiled.
It was then that a heavy weight smashed into the back of his head. Tom collapsed to his knees, the cudgel flying from his grasp as his world turned sickening cartwheels. Touching the back of his head, he saw through blurred eyes that his fingers were dark and sticky with blood. Dimly he realized that he had been hit with something flat and heavy. A shovel?
Footsteps padded up behind him; a pair of strong hands fastened around his neck like an iron collar and began to squeeze. Even as he fought for breath, Tom was consumed by the bitter realization that he was not going to be able to keep his promise to John Hawkins, and that Kitty would not rest easily that night – or ever again. Looking up towards the heavens as his assailant’s fingers mercilessly wrenched the life from his lungs, Tom McNally saw the stars began to dim and fade before his eyes, and silently he cursed the name of George Rathbone as he died.
Jamie awoke from a bad dream to find the world washing away before his eyes. Through the rain-smeared windscreen he could see a grey dawn unfolding ahead of him, the tail lights of the other vehicles dancing in and out of the gloom like red will-o’-the-wisps as they flew along the empty motorway. Jamie knew he had just escaped from a nightmare, even if he couldn’t remember the exact contents of the dream; the taste of fear lingered on his tongue l
ike sour mouthwash. He shivered.
“What’s the matter, son? Someone stepped on your grave?”
A firm hand clapped Jamie’s shoulder, and a bark of laughter rang around the front seat of the removal van. Sarge was in the driver’s seat, tapping the steering wheel with his fingerless gloves as he guided the van along the slow lane. In the dawn’s half-darkness Jamie’s dad was little more than a silhouette with a shaven head and sandpaper cheeks. His bright blue eyes were always on the move, flicking up towards the rear-view mirror to check the motorway behind them. Sarge was a short man, barely taller than Jamie, but wiry and strong – like a lock pick, or a garrote.
Rain drummed impatient fingers on the van’s roof as Jamie unfolded his limbs from their cramped sleeping position and sat up. As he stretched and rubbed his eyes, his elder brother Liam nudged him and offered him a half-empty can of Coke. Liam was sitting to Jamie’s left, clad in a light blue tracksuit and trainers with a grey woollen hat pulled down over his head. He watched with amusement as Jamie thirstily drained his can.
“No, go on, finish it,” Liam said. “I didn’t want any more anyway.”
“Thanks,” said Jamie, wiping his mouth and handing his brother back the empty can.
A lorry thundered past them in the middle lane, giant wheels churning through the spray. The removal van hiccuped over a bump in the road, bringing a rattle of protest from the goods in the back. The family had been up late working; Sarge must have driven through the night. Jamie had wanted to stay awake with him, but all the carrying and loading had worn him out and his eyelids had quickly become too heavy to keep open. He liked the motorway best at night, when the lanes were quiet and the streetlamps flooded the van with regular bands of orange light. It was just them, long-distance truckers and deliverymen, horsemen with humming engines galloping through the darkness.
Jamie looked up at Liam. “Did you get any sleep?”
“What, with you snoring away like a chainsaw?” Liam grinned. “No chance.”
