The Burning Altar

by Sarah Rayne

  However, the cat-headed man seemed unaware of her presence. He was no longer carrying the boy and he came down the steps, walking quickly and lightly and went into the green darkness of the tunnels. Elinor heard him lift the hinged grille and go along the upper tunnel. There was the sound of the cellar door closing.

  She came thankfully out of her makeshift hiding place. Almost safe now. But I’ll hurry: through the half-window, fold the grille back into place – yes, good, cover your tracks, Elinor – and now along the tunnel and up to the cellar door. She was nearly but not quite running and her mind was racing ahead, to getting back to her own flat, to ringing the police – this time there would be no sinister whispery voice on the other end – and unbolting the old stage door to let them in.

  In a very few minutes she would be doing all that . . .

  As she turned the cellar door handle she felt the resistance at once. She frowned and tried again, twisting the handle up and down. Jammed? She moved the handle from side to side, but panic was beginning to slick the palms of her hands with sweat, and cold fear was welling up. It was perfectly clear what had happened.

  The man, whoever he was, whatever he was, had a key to the main cellar door. And as he went out he had locked it.

  He had locked her in the cellars. And on the other side of the cellar door, Chance House was deserted. Everyone had left for the weekend.

  It was important to remain calm. It was very important indeed to work out what time it was and to think when people would be coming to the centre.

  It was half-past seven – barely an hour since she had come down to lock the side door. No one would be coming to the centre tonight – they had had one or two open evenings and talks by people from organisations like Relate and Shelter, but there was nothing on tonight. The Lifeline phone had been switched through to whoever was on night duty. No one would be coming back.

  Lewis would certainly not be returning because the conference would not end until Sunday afternoon, when there was a service at Wells Cathedral, and then a buffet lunch. He would not return before Sunday afternoon, or even Sunday evening.

  What about the security man – the real one: what was his name – Raffael? Would he return to Chance House tonight? But even if he did, he would simply see that the cellar door was locked as normal. If she banged and shouted would he hear? More to the point, would she hear him come in and know when to bang and shout?

  There remained Ginevra’s weekend visit. Once Ginevra got here she would almost certainly institute a search; Elinor could easily visualise her telephoning Lewis at the Bath hotel, demanding that he come home, even summoning the police. But the trouble was that between trains and buses and lifts that might not have materialised, Ginevra would perhaps not get here until tomorrow morning. Elinor glanced uneasily into the tunnels again. Supposing the cat-headed creature returned? And what about the boy? He might be lying helpless somewhere; it would be dreadful to find that he had died all alone because Elinor was too spineless to do anything other than crouch up here shivering, waiting for someone to come and find her.

  She stood up and began to retrace her steps along the tunnel.

  It was important to keep to the main tunnel and to go to the intersection with the chalk cross. She absolutely must not get lost down here where she might easily wander about in the dark for hours, going round in circles without knowing. Mad ideas of marking the turn-offs by scratching the brick like ramblers or gypsies, or unrolling a ball of twine like Ariadne tracking the Minotaur to its grisly lair through the labyrinth, scuttered across her mind but she dismissed them. This was not the time to start exploring, and nor was it the time to begin hunting about for pencils or reels of cotton. She reminded herself that the Minotaur with its human body and bull’s head was only a legend. The business about seven maidens and seven youths being fed to it each year was a legend as well. Anyway, the cat-headed thing had only been carrying one boy. Yes, but he couldn’t carry seven altogether, he’d have to bring them down one at a time . . . Stop it, Elinor!

  The sensible thing would be to go to the marked tunnel and find out if there was another exit there. Probably there was. Probably there were any number. She would get out without any difficulty and she would go to the nearest police station or a phone box, and in a very short time she would be back in her flat and explaining all this to some nice sympathetic police officer.

  She reached the top of the stone steps. The trap door was above her head, as if it might be sunk into the floor of a room directly above. It was easily reachable, and Elinor levered it up a cautious inch so that she had a thin line of vision without making her presence too apparent. There would not be any bull-headed (or cat-headed) things on the other side, and there would not be seven maidens and seven men queuing for ritual slaughter. But it was better to be wary.

  Beyond the trap door was a long wide room with what looked like corrugated-sheet walls and a vaulted roof, criss-crossed with girders. And there’s gas lighting, she thought, disbelievingly. Is it? Yes, those are the brackets. I can hear it spitting and I can see it flickering. Does that mean there’s someone there? Dare I go up? Well, I’ve got to do something. She pushed back the trap door and stepped up into the huge room.

  The gas jets flickered in the current of air from the opening of the hatch, and shadows leaped across the walls, making Elinor’s heart miss several more beats. She looked about her. An old warehouse? Packing cases and boxes were stacked at one end, and in the middle was an untidy heap of discarded furniture: old wardrobes and ancient desks with scarred surfaces; chaise longues with the fabric torn and dirty; a couple of oval cheval mirrors, the glass dim and spotted. Thrust against one wall were a dozen or so elaborate straight-backed chairs.

  It was a warehouse or it might even be a disused wharf. How near to the river was it? There was a stench of something too sweet and pulpy somewhere that made you think of over-ripe fruit leaking decay through its skin, but she might still have the smell of those appalling tunnels in her nostrils.

  She moved towards the jumble of old furniture, scanning the shadowy corners, trying to see if the cat-head man’s victim was lying helplessly in one of the corners. There was a bad moment when her face swam into eerie reflection in the dim drowned depths of one of the mirrors, the eyes huge and terrified, so that for a moment she thought someone was peering at her through the thick smeary gloom.

  Elinor gasped involuntarily and stepped back, and it was then that she heard the whispering.

  Chapter Eleven

  Her heart came up into her throat and she whipped round at once, scanning the room frenziedly. Someone in here with me.

  The whispering came again, echoing about her head, glancing off the walls and shivering through the far-off roof girders.

  ‘A pretty little one for the sacrifice . . . A plump juicy one, fair-skinned and wide-eyed . . .’

  It was the most terrifyingly menacing thing Elinor had ever heard but she summoned up her last shred of courage and said loudly, ‘Who’s there? Who is that?’ Her voice came out shrill with fear, and for answer there was a slurry chuckle, the kind of chuckle that made you think of repulsive words like phlegm and mucus.

  ‘I smell the blood of an English girl . . . Come into my parlour, little English girl . . . Come inside and let me stroke you . . . Let me part your white thighs and stand between them while I peel back your skin.’

  ‘Who are you?’ shouted Elinor, and the echoes came back at her: ARE YOU . . . are you . . . are you . . . She began to retreat to the trap door again. A quick dive down and back through the tunnels. But the tunnels were a dead end; the cellar door was locked. And supposing the owner of the voice followed her? She had a brief vivid image of herself running frantically through the darkness, becoming hopelessly lost, with something pursuing her greedilyall the time.

  ‘I’m not alone, you know!’ she cried defiantly. ‘There are people waiting for me upstairs!’ This sounded, even to her own ears, so much like defiant whistling in the dark tha
t for good measure she added, ‘They’ll be here any minute!’

  For answer there was a volley of laughter. ‘We’re alone, my dear,’ said the voice. ‘We’re all alone – you and me and the dead men—’ It lingered on the word dead, and Elinor shuddered.

  ‘I don’t believe you!’ she shouted. ‘I don’t believe any of what you’re saying!’

  ‘We’re down among the dead men,’ said the dreadful voice. ‘And you’re shut in with me, my dear – isn’t that a beautiful thought? Tamerlane’s people brought you for me, just as they’ve brought all the others.’ It paused, and Elinor thought: oh dear heaven, I was right! It really is the Minotaur at the centre of the labyrinth, being fed sacrifices. And I’m its next sacrifice . . .

  The voice said, ‘I’m going to stalk you through the darkness. And no matter how fast you run I shall catch you, and no matter how you try to hide I shall find you.’ There was a sudden gloating inhalation of breath. ‘And the longer it takes to catch you,’ said the voice, ‘the hungrier I shall be.’

  It was the cat-headed man. It absolutely had to be. There was some kind of vent somewhere – an old-fashioned speaking tube, the kind once used in Victorian houses for the master to summon the servants from below . . . Who on earth would fit a speaking tube from sewers into a storehouse?

  Elinor said, ‘Only cowards hide and shout threats in the dark! Why don’t you come out into the open!’ And thought: I don’t believe I’ve actually said that. What do I do if he does come out in the open? Is it better to see the enemy, even if it proves to be a slavering maniac or a half-human Greek fable?

  She scanned the room again and then began to advance cautiously to the jumble of furniture at the centre because if she could arm herself with a weapon she might have a fighting chance. The brass candlestick? Yes, good enough. Her hand closed about it; it felt comfortingly heavy and strong.

  The voice had stopped, and the only sound now was the soft hissing of the gaslights. But he’s waiting, thought Elinor. He’s listening and maybe even watching – I can feel him watching! – and he’s rubbing his hands together in anticipation because he can smell the blood of an English girl . . .

  ‘Shall we play hide and seek in the tunnels?’ whispered the voice, and Elinor jumped. ‘Would you play that with me, little white-skinned, soft-fleshed one?’

  ‘You’re mad!’ shouted Elinor. ‘Whoever you are, you’re mad!’ The echoes came back at her. You’re MAD . . . mad . . . mad . . .

  There was the sound of movement from behind the cartons and packing cases – someone climbing down from the stacked-up boxes – and a figure walked towards her.

  In the moment when it was still in the deep shadow cast by the packing cases, Elinor’s heart lurched. She took a firmer grip on the brass candlestick. She had no idea what she was going to see, but she was prepared for anything by this time. The cat-headed man again; one of the centre’s down-and-outs, roaringly high on meths or drugs; the Minotaur growling for its yearly sacrifice – even the ghost of the recluse.

  But as the figure came into one of the blurred circles of light, her senses spun in disbelief. A ghost after all, but a ghost from the future. I’m either looking at a splinter of the past or something yet to come, thought Elinor in confusion.

  Her first shocked response, that this was Lewis Chance, vanished as quickly as it had come. This was not Lewis: this was a boy of twenty-three or -four, darker-haired and lighter-skinned. But apart from that the resemblance was astonishing; this was Lewis as he might have looked nearly thirty years ago, in the days before the whiplash created by his father’s scandal had made him don that courteous impenetrable armour. The same silver eyes and thin fastidious lips and narrow sensitive hands. The unmistakable damn-your-eyes arrogance of the portrait that hung over the desk and that occasionally showed in Lewis. Lewis’s son? Was that possible?

  The young man smiled and said in a perfectly ordinary voice, ‘How do you do? Did I frighten you just now?’

  ‘I – well, yes.’ Elinor’s voice came out tinny with fear.

  ‘I wasn’t sure who you were. And I know all the things that frighten people. I save them up and use them.’

  ‘To – frighten people?’

  ‘Yes.’ He smiled, and for a second his eyes glinted redly. Elinor braced herself for a sudden attack, but then he said, ‘You weren’t brought by Tamerlane’s people, were you.’ He said this also in a perfectly ordinary voice, and not as a question but as someone suddenly making a discovery.

  Elinor stared at him. ‘No. No, I wasn’t. I’m Elinor Craven. But I – don’t know who you are.’

  ‘My name is Grendel.’ There was no trace of the thick evil whispering now: he spoke with careful politeness, like a child remembering its manners. Elinor, feeling reality spinning away again, said, ‘Who is Tamerlane?’

  ‘His people serve Touaris,’ said Grendel. ‘I serve Touaris as well. They bring me the sacrifices. They’ve done so for a long time now – lots and lots of sacrifices.’ He nodded to himself like a child hugging a secret, and suddenly beckoned to Elinor. ‘Come here and I’ll show you.’

  The classic line. Come over here, my dear, and let me show you something . . . I could run back into the tunnels, but he’d surely come after me. And I’ve got the candlestick: if he springs I’ll smash it down on his head. Only I hadn’t bargained for his looking so like Lewis.

  Grendel had walked back to the corner where he had first appeared, and was pointing. Elinor followed the line of his finger and said, ‘I can’t see—’

  ‘There!’ There was a sudden imperiousness in his tone and Elinor’s stomach lurched with panic. ‘All in there!’ cried Grendel, and bent down, crouching over the floor. Elinor, keeping a tight hold of the candlestick and resolving to use it if she had to, took a step nearer and for the first time saw round the corner of the stacked boxes. Horror reared up and slammed into her mind.

  The old storeroom was not completely underground but it was plainly a little below ground level, more or less level with parts of the disused sewer culverts like the one she had come through earlier. Directly behind Grendel, near to the floor and barely eight feet long, was another of the grilled half-windows with the same black vertical bars and the same dank green waterlight seeping through. But beyond the grille—

  It was one of those moments when your brain does not immediately make sense of the images conveyed by your eyes. Elinor’s brain received a confused impression of meaty carcases pressing against the grille: butchered animals that had been forced into the tunnel and heaped against the bars in a macabre bonfire pile of bloodied torsos and gaping wounds livid with dried blood, and chewed-off hands and legs . . . Chewed-off . . . Elinor gasped and took an involuntary step backwards and the monstrous jigsaw kaleidoscoped into an understandable shape.

  Human bodies. They were human bodies. Corpses. Because we’re down among the dead men, Elinor. Yes, that’s what he meant. Dead men, at least six or eight of them, all flung into a messy heap, flopping over one another like Bonfire Night guys. I can see the eyes and they’re glazed and open like dead fish, but they’re unmistakably human eyes. Whoever they were, they died screaming, because I can see their mouths as well, and they’re stretched wide. They died in screaming agony, thought Elinor, appalled. Or they died pleading for mercy, perhaps. And then rigor mortis set in and they stayed screaming and pleading . . .

  The boy brought here by the cat-headed man lay against the wall, his head lolling back, his eyes rolled upwards. Elinor noted with detached irrelevance that he was wearing a velvet jacket of the kind that very young people without much money bought, and that looked good for about two weeks before the thin cheapness showed. He looked as if he were dead.

  Grendel was reaching down to the grille as if he were going to open it, and Elinor cried, ‘No, don’t! Leave them! Please leave them there!’

  The thick bubbling chuckle welled up from Grendel’s throat and Elinor felt the sudden fearsome otherness, the dark persona of the creature who ha
d whispered through the darkness, surfacing again.

  She fought for calm because there must be a perfectly sane solution to all this. The bodies might not be human after all: the warehouse might be the outlet to a slaughterhouse or a butchery. Or, conceivably, she might be going mad. This seemed the likeliest solution of all, because outside of the grimmer stories of Grimm nobody stored chewed-up human beings in a drain and crouched crooningly over them, caressing the dead flesh through iron bars.

  Nobody but a madman. Understanding broke then. He is a madman, maybe schizophrenic. Split personality. Whatever medical label you give it he’s that creature the papers have been writing about – the Canning Town Butcher or the Ripper reincarnation or something. Gay Jack – yes, they called him that as well, because most of the disappearances were male prostitutes. Was the boy in the fake velvet jacket a male prostitute? And all those poor things in the culvert as well? And there are people feeding his madness – Tamerlane’s people he called them. It’s some kind of cult, involving sacrifice and murder and he’s at the head of it.

  Grendel stood up in a single fluid movement and turned to look at her. Madness, glaring and unmistakable, blazed from his eyes and Elinor took a firmer grip on the candlestick.

  ‘You see what I’ve done,’ said Grendel, his voice thick and slurry. This was the whispering voice again – funny, I never thought a maniac killer would have an attractive voice, but he has. ‘I’ve done everything,’ said Grendel softly. ‘All the sacrifices – and I enjoyed the sacrifices.’ To Elinor’s horror he began to salivate, slavering mouth fluids spilling out and running down his jaw. His tongue came out to lick the running wetness and his lips drew back from his teeth in a snarl. His hands were opening and closing hungrily, and there was a moment when the planes of his face seemed almost to shift and become leaner, the upper lip lengthening, the nose flattening, Dr Jekyll becoming Mr Hyde . . . No, more like the metamorphosis of the poor cursed werewolf.