The last image in his mind was of a slimy black limb, lined with needle-like spikes, snapping out and into his eyes, and then he fell. He was blind before he hit the rocks beneath the cliff. There was a brief burst of agony as ribs crumpled and his lungs collapsed, and then nothing.
Chapter 12
Anifail Island, North Wales, 26 May last year.
John Willems had spent most of the morning cleaning out the chicken run and hen house, and the afternoon fruitlessly trying to back-track the predators that had wiped out his chickens back to their lair. It was late in the day before he had a chance to check on the goats up in the top field. There would not be enough daylight to do much more than check and renew salt-licks, and assess the integrity of the fencing, but it would be a couple of jobs he would not need to do in the morning. So he put half a dozen salt blocks into a reusable plastic shopping bag and trudged up the hill in the direction of the north cliffs.
John walked the perimeter of the top field first. The field was surrounded by a simple smooth wire fence, this being a cheap and effective way of keeping his animals from wandering. The island had no resident predators that might call for wire mesh or barbed wire to keep them out. Checking the fence line was just a matter of making sure there were no breaks, and that the wires remained tensioned.
The one exception was along the north side of the field, where it paralleled the public footpath. The tourist board had put up a wooden post-and-rail fence between the footpath and the cliff edge, and had subsidised John to edge his property with the same. When he walked the north edge, John looked out for breaks, of course, but also for tourists' litter and lost property that could be harmful to his goats. On this occasion, John spotted a backpack on the cliff side of the footpath, and a rope tied to a fence post. He climbed over both fences and carefully approached the cliff edge. Leaning over, he looked to see if he could see the owner of bag and rope, but could see nothing but the rope disappearing into the mist that seemed to cling to the cliff every day just lately. He gave the rope an experimental tug, and found that the other end was unsecured, and nothing - or no-one - was there.
He called out, "Anyone there? Hello?" There was no answer. John felt uneasy. The rope was at the point where the cliff face had crumbled away the other week, and he wondered if someone had tried to climb down but had fallen. He could think of no good reason why that should be, but the abandoned back pack and rope were suggestive. He resolved to call the police and let them know, as soon as he got back home this evening. He opened the backpack to see if there was any identification, but the pack was empty but for a flashlight, an empty plastic water bottle and some scrunched up sandwich wrappers. He shrugged to himself, and moved on.
After the best part of an hour, John had completed the circuit around the fence line, and had not seen any sign of the walker who had left his gear behind on the path. As he pushed through his gate into the field, it suddenly occurred to him that he had not seen much of the goats either. Normally they would come over to greet him, curious to see if had brought anything for them, and follow him around for a while. But this evening, they had remained in a clump near the centre of the field. That was unusual. The sense of unease he had experienced on the clifftop came back to him, as he gazed across the field in the dimming light at his goats.
He strode across the field towards the animals. As he came closer, it looked as if most of the goats were lying down. That was not right. He quickened his pace. "No, no, no," he moaned aloud, and started running. The dark coats of the prone animals were stained even darker, and on some of them he could even see exposed bone. He sank to his knees next to the first goat he came to, but it was already clear that the animal was dead. Something had been eating his livestock.
"Bastards! Bastards!" he shouted. "Damn you, you bastards!"
He ran his hands over the dead goat, trying to work out what kind of animal could have killed it. He stood, tears running down his cheeks and surveyed the ruin of his flock.
"What the hell did this?" he asked aloud, as if the surviving animals would know.
The half dozen animals still on their feet made their way to him, but he could see they were struggling. They had wounds across their bellies, and one of them, trying to reach him, kept stumbling over its own intestines. He dropped to his knees once more and ran his hands comfortingly over the goat's ears and muzzle. He stopped and looked down at his hand, uncomprehending. It was bloodstained. The goat had no visible wounds around its head, yet its muzzle…
The goat lunged forward and bit his shoulder.
"What the hell?" John jumped to his feet and rubbed his shoulder. "You bit me, you daft beast! That was sore! What …!"
The goat pounced again, knocking him to the ground. As he tried to stand, two more goats loomed over him. One of them darted forward to seize the skin of his stomach between its teeth, and shook its head vigorously, wrenching out a mouthful of John's flesh and clothing. It began chewing and John began screaming. The other two joined in, biting at him.
"This isn't happening…!"
The first goat leaned over him, and vomited. His face was covered in stinking stomach contents and bile, running into eyes and nose. He gasped for air and something squirmed into his open mouth. His eyes bulged as whatever it was wormed its way into his airways. He felt it tear open the back of his throat, and penetrate upwards. Unable to breath, he gagged and choked and struggled - but only briefly. He sank into merciful unconsciousness as something burrowed upwards, into his brain, and started to feed.
Some hours later, what used to be John Willems clumsily rose to its feet and experimentally took a few awkward steps, then fell down. It tried again. And again. And then set off, stumbling, down the hill.
Chapter 13
Arwensmouth, North Wales, 27 May last year.
A pair of camper vans threaded their way through the twisting lanes into Arwensmouth, and stopped side by side opposite the Arwensmouth Inn. Maxwell climbed down from the passenger side of the leading vehicle and stretched. Tori stayed where she was, behind the wheel, gazing at the front of the Inn. A bench seat to one side of the Inn's front door was occupied by a stocky man with a shoulder-length white hair and a bushy white beard. But Tori was not looking at him. Her attention had been caught by the large dog that sat between his feet. She looked at the dog with outright astonishment, and then the dog looked up at her and fixed its gaze on her eyes. It looked at her for a minute, then it glanced back at the white bearded man to make sure his attention was elsewhere. It faced her again, and twitched one eye in what was unmistakably a wink.
"I know you," Tori muttered to herself.
A voice in her head, almost too faint to be perceived, said, "I should hope so, Helene."
Tori stiffened. Then Maxwell's boyish smile filled her field of vision. "Want to stretch your legs?" he asked. "You've been driving this beast for hours now."
She shook her head. Maxwell moved over to talk with Owain and Gilda. The man and the dog were gone.
The van Tori had been driving was a rented VW T4 Transporter with a retro green and cream paint job reminiscent of the classic VW Camper of the 1950s. Behind it, Gilda and Owain were climbing down from a white Aero Plus, a more spacious vehicle that they had to share with most of the little expedition's gear.
"Right," said Maxwell. "There are shops down the road there, so let's stock up on necessities like food."
"And beer," and Owain.
"Necessities unlike beer," said Maxwell, firmly. "Meantime, I'll see if I can find out how we get across to the island."
"Excuse me, sirs, madam," came a voice from behind them. They looked round to see a policeman walking towards them. "I have to ask you to move your vehicles. We have a couple of emergency vehicles on the way that'll be held up otherwise."
The three historians looked, as one, back along the lane they had followed into the village.
"What? Where…?" started Gilda.
"Any minute now, they'll be needing to get by," the po
liceman said. "If you carry on the way your vans are facing, you'll find parking down by the chain ferry."
"Gilda, why don't you and Tori move and park, and we'll follow," Maxwell said. Turning to the policeman, he tucked his hair behind one ear and smiled his boyish smile. "Officer, you mentioned a ferry, and that's what we were just going to ask about. We want to get across to the island."
The policeman stepped carefully out of the way of the vans as they started moving. "Well now, sir," he said. "The chain ferry normally runs through daylight hours. But just now, see, it's reserved for emergency services only. If you wait down by the port, there, you'll be able to cross later in the day."
"What's happened?" asked Owain. "Has there been an accident?"
"An unfortunate gentleman is being fished out of the water, I'm afraid. He's washed up island side, see. So we'll be needing to get over there - ah, mind your backs, now."
They stepped well into the side of the road as a little procession of ambulance, fire engine and two unmarked police cars passed by.
"The ferry only takes the one vehicle, you see," the policeman continued. "So there's four trips already. Were you to ask, I'd have to say you won't get over until mid-afternoon."
"Thank you," said Maxwell. "I take it you know the island, officer?"
"Passable well. Not there's very much of it, mind."
"I've been told there's a tiny chapel in the middle of the island. Do you know it?"
"A chapel," the policeman chuckled. "There's no more than two dozen people over there. Not enough to warrant a chapel."
"It's very old," said Maxwell. "It might well be nothing but a ruin, a pile of overgrown rubble."
"There's not even a ruin, see, as far as I know. Tell you what, though. Inside the door of the Inn, across the street there, they have the Ordnance map of the area hanging in a frame on the wall. You take a look at that, and if you find a chapel on it, well, I'll owe you both an apology. But you won't." He started walking away, laughing.
Maxwell and Owain looked, and had to agree that the policeman did not owe them an apology. There was no place of worship marked on the Inn's map.
A few minutes later, the four of them sat in the Aero van comparing maps. The chapel had vanished from the Ordnance Survey maps between the 1935 edition that Amanda had copied, and the digitisation of the geographical data in the 1990s.
"Why would it have been removed from the map?" Owain wondered.
"I'd guess the most likely reason is that it just didn't exist any more when they included revisions and corrections," said Maxwell. "Anyway we can see where it was quite clearly." He pointed. "This here is a farm. What does that say? Clifftop? Yes, Clifftop Farm. If I were to make a guess, at some time in the last seventy years or so, the owner of that farm just appropriated the church for his own use and pretended it wasn't there. I mean, who wants something that might end up being a protected building on his land if he can avoid it? We'll probably find he has pigs living in it, or something."
"So what's the plan?" asked Gilda.
"When we get across on the ferry, we head up to Clifftop Farm and ask for permission to have a poke around," said Owain.
"Not quite," said Maxwell. "We head up to this picnic site by the cliffs, and we stroll back down and do some reconnaissance. No point worrying the poor farmer unless we must. Let's see what's there first. We may need Amanda's company to pitch some cash in to sweeten the farmer, but that could take time."
He broke off, and looked out through the van's windscreen. "Aha! I think we may be able to get across, now. Come on, let's get organised. We have a dragon to find!"
Chapter 14
Anifail Island, North Wales May 27 Last Year.
"I think it must be over that way, where those trees are," said Maxwell.
They had driven the length of the island before leaving the two camper vans parked in the picnic area at the north side of the island, and setting off down Harbour Way. To the left of the road was a large open field, with some goats in the distance standing apparently watching them. There was a cluster of buildings south of the field, just off Harbour Way, which according to the map must be Clifftop Farm. Maxwell was pointing diagonally off to the right, on the opposite side of the road from the farm, where the view was obscured by a copse.
"I think you're right," Gilda agreed, after scrutinising the map she carried. "It looks like it should be just beyond the trees."
"Come on, then," said Maxwell. "Tori, sweetie? Are you with us?"
"Ah, yes, Maxwell," was her reply. "Go on, I've got something in my shoe. I'll catch up."
Maxwell strode on, closely followed by Owain and Gilda.
Tori took off one shoe for the sake of appearances, and leaned on the fence by the side of the road, facing across the fields towards the goats. But she was not paying them any attention; in fact, her eyes were closed. Her focus was on the energy pervading the area. Life's energy. Its strongest source was underground, beneath her feet, and it carried ominous overtones of hunger and anger. Something very big was down there, and it wanted out. She smiled as she spoke aloud, adapting Uli's words. "I am the midwife of chaos, darling monster, and I will see you delivered into this world." Her mind conjured images of freedom, of light and air, of feasting to the point of repletion; she pushed these into the energy field of the creature's savage thoughts, and felt the anger that surrounded her shift towards gratitude and encouragement. She had been noticed, and the creature understood her purpose. She had detected the life energy from the underground creature's clones as soon as she had stepped out of the camper. Now, she could sense the flow shifting as the creature directed them away from the road, clear of the way to the chapel, and the entrance beneath it. She opened her eyes, and now that she knew where to look, she could see the grass and shrubs twitch and sway as things moved. She saw that the goats were still there, watching, and sensed the parasites within them. She laughed aloud. "Be patient and wait, monster, and I will open your door," she murmured.
"Tori?" Maxwell's voice, from far away, aroused her from her contemplation. "Are you coming? It's this way, we think." She saw that he was a hundred yards off, his arm indicating a path into the copse of trees.
"Here I come," she shouted, and began jogging to catch up. Jogging made her ample bosom jiggle attractively, which caught Maxwell's attention and held him in place, his arm outstretched to indicate the path, an idiotic grin on his face and a growing bulge at his crotch. Tori smiled, thinking, men are such fools. Owain was pushing through an overgrown path, with Gilda close behind. Tori followed, with Maxwell bringing up the rear, his eyes fixed on her rear.
There was a dilapidated fence to the left of the path. Owain led them through a gap in the fence, and forward between birch trees to emerge in a clearing surrounding a grey stone building.
"This must be it," said Owain.
They walked slowly around the building, studying the stonework. Maxwell squatted to look more closely at the bottom of the walls. "This looks like Roman era brickwork to me," he said, parting the long grass and indicating the bottom of the wall. "Red clay mud, low profile, fire dried. Just what you'd expect to come out of a Roman army portable kiln."
"Most of the walls are much later, I think," said Gilda. "Stone blocks, roughly shaped. Gaps filled in with mud and straw. A few patches here and there look like repurposed Roman brick."
"Mm, yes, I think so," Owain contributed. Modern cement patches higher up, do you see? And the roof is corrugated sheeting."
"So, folks, what does that add up to?" asked Maxwell. "Gilda, what's your take?"
"Right," she said. "Without seeing what it looks like on the inside, I'd say we have an original structure built between the first and fifth centuries using Roman brick. It may have collapsed, or been pulled down, and rebuilt, almost certainly after the fifth century and before - say - the eleventh or twelfth century using stone blocks. If it had been rebuilt much later than that, then it's likely that they'd use more bricks. Oh - and there aren't an
y windows in the walls, which suggests an earlier date rather than a later one, because glass was such a luxury."
"Owain, do you want to add anything?" asked Maxwell.
"Just that the last major refurbishment of the walls was probably post world war two," he said. He pointed upward at a patch of red bricks. "Those look like flettons, which were not available in this part of the world until the 1930s, but were pretty much ubiquitous in the whole country by the fifties."
Maxwell clapped his hands. "Well done, both of you," he said. "That sounds pretty good to me. The tin roof is the most recent addition. That sheeting is box-profile, and was obviously put in to replace an older corrugated iron roof."
"How do you know that?" asked Gilda, staring intently at the edge of the roof.
"The old roof is quietly rusting away about twenty feet behind you," answered Maxwell with a laugh.
Tori was leaning against the wall beside the door. "You don't honestly study bricks at your Uni, do you?" she asked.
"Indeed we do!" said Maxwell enthusiastically. "If you have an appreciation of bricks and building techniques over the years, you can get a quick and dirty chronology for your ruins, or in this case, for your little chapel. Not as accurate as carbon dating, of course, but a damned sight cheaper and faster. Now, let's see if the door is open so we can look inside."
"It's open," she said.
Maxwell noticed she had a padlock in her hand. "Was it open before we got here?" he asked.
"I couldn't say," she said with a grin.
"I hope you didn't just bust the lock," he said with a slight frown.
"Course not!" she exclaimed in mock outrage. "That's what lock-picks are for! We can put it back, good as new."
"You resourceful little fox!" laughed Maxwell.
"Well, I want to see what's down there!"
"Well, come on then!" said Maxwell, and he pulled the door open and stepped through.
Island of Fog and Death: A sci-fi horror adventure Page 7
