They emerged into a clear space in front of the pool, its surface gently distorted by water rising from deep below. That wasn’t what grabbed McLean’s attention and held it though. That would have been the low stone altar on the far side, a single slab left behind when the rest of the cavern had been carved out of the rock. The light from the torches dotted around the room made it a focal point, casting everything else into writhing, sinister shadow. He hesitated, quite sure he wanted nothing to do with this place. Where the hell was Harrison?
‘Kneel, sinner.’ Sergeant Donaldson’s voice sounded different in the cavern, cruel and on edge. Something heavy slammed into the back of his legs and McLean fell to the floor. Unable to steady himself, his knees cracked on the hard stone and he slumped sideways to avoid smashing his head against the altar, a bright flash of pain as his shoulder took the brunt instead. Dazed and winded, he stared up at the stone ceiling high overhead, until his vision cleared. Then closer in, at the faces of the sergeant and Sandy Bayne as they peered down at him like giants.
‘Calm yourself, brother.’ The old man put a hand on Donaldson’s arm. ‘This one is no threat to us. Quite the opposite. He seeks the same blessing as we all do.’
‘I know his type. He’s beyond redemption.’ Donaldson turned away, as if he might spit on the floor to rid himself of a bad taste. ‘He wants to deny us what is rightfully ours. We’ve waited years.’
‘You know as well as I do that it is the spring which calls, Andrew. And when it does, those who answer are welcome. Those who are not welcome cannot enter. This one has been lost a long while, it’s true. But that only means that his need for salvation is greater than ours. He will join us willingly. You’ll see.’
‘At least let me restrain him.’ Donaldson sneered at McLean as if he was some wet behind the ears constable. Bayne considered the request for a second or two, then nodded his assent. Before McLean could do anything, the burly police sergeant grabbed him by the arm, dragged him away from the altar towards the back wall of the cavern. Hidden in the shadows, a heavy iron ring had been set into the stone, a length of chain dangling from it. In a swift move, Donaldson smacked McLean across the head, and while he was still reeling, bent to the cuffs holding his hands together. There was the briefest moment when he might have been free, but before he could react, his arms had been wrenched around in front of him, and the cuffs replaced, this time looped through the last link in the chain. Finally, the sergeant shoved McLean hard in the chest. He fell to the floor again, winded, his vision darkening in pain as he banged his shoulder again.
‘Stay there.’
Chained to the wall and his head still ringing with the blow, McLean could only comply. He dragged himself into a slightly less uncomfortable position, back to the cavern wall, and stared past the edge of the altar towards the gathered people. Donaldson took up position beside Bayne, both with their backs to him. The older man opened his arms in welcome to the congregation, his voice commanding.
‘Brothers, sisters. Are there any besides the inspector who are newly called?’
A shuffling of feet, and then a man stepped forward, hands on the shoulders of a teenage boy, steering him past the font and into the space between it and the altar. Judging by the shape of their faces, they were father and son, and McLean recognised the man from Ritchie’s surveillance files. Gordon McTavish, the Penicuik lad who’d moved to Silicon Valley and made several fortunes. Rich, powerful, he had the ear of many a head of state. And, it would appear, a taste for human flesh. He stopped a few paces from Bayne, then bowed his head. After a moment, the boy did the same, but not before McLean saw the fear in his eyes, the tremble in his lips.
‘My son. Alexander,’ McTavish said. ‘He turned sixteen a week ago.’
Bayne lowered his hands, held them out for the boy to take. ‘Welcome, Alexander. We share a name, you and I. Today we will share much more besides.’
Something clicked in McLean’s head as he listened. Sandy Bayne. Alexander Bayne. Alexander Bean. Sawney to those who wrote about him. A family line and a grisly tradition then. And maybe there was something to Norman Bale’s obsession after all. He managed to choke back the bark of mirthless laughter that rose up in his throat. There was nothing remotely funny about any of this.
‘You shall bear witness, Alexander.’ Bayne embraced the boy, kissed him once on each cheek, then led him to the altar. McLean shifted his weight, meaning to get to his feet, but Donaldson stepped forward and kicked him in the ribs hard enough to drive all the breath out of him. Followed it up with a second blow to the head which had him sprawling on the ground.
‘Stay down. Your turn will come.’
McLean rolled over, felt blood in his mouth and spat it out onto the floor. By the time he’d gathered himself enough to shuffle onto his knees and look up, Bayne had produced a knife he must have stolen from the film set for a Hammer horror movie. Long, pointed and obviously very sharp, it gleamed strangely white in the reflected torchlight, sparkles running down its cutting edges as he turned it gently around and presented the handle to the boy.
‘Take it, Alexander. This blade is blessed by God. Passed down the generations since the time of the Druids.’
The boy hesitated, but Bayne took his hand, pressed the handle into it and folded his fingers closed. From his position on the floor, all McLean could see was the startled, frightened expression on young Alexander’s face. Then Bayne turned him around so that they both faced the congregation. All eyes were on the old man as he lifted his hands towards the ceiling and began to chant words that had no obvious meaning. It reminded McLean of those few unfortunate times he’d been forced to attend Catholic mass, the Latin no more than gibberish even if the sing-song voice and rhythm of the intonation might have had meaning for some.
It went on for as interminably long as those dull canticles, but a heartbeat after Bayne fell silent, a tremor ran through the floor, a great cracking noise, and the door at the far end of the cavern inched open. For a moment McLean thought it was the cavalry finally arrived to save the day, but it wasn’t Harrison and an armed-response team who entered.
She was mostly obscured by the congregation, slowly parting to let her through. Even so, McLean knew who it was without a doubt. At first he thought she was alone, and he couldn’t understand why she didn’t turn and flee. Then he noticed the short figure behind her, one hand firmly gripped around an elbow. Morag Bayne gently piloted Anya Renfrew through the crowd, past the spring and up to the altar. The closer she came, the more McLean could see of her, and the deeper his shock.
They had shaved her head, even her eyebrows gone. Tiny cuts and abrasions dotted her scalp, her face, her shoulders. She stood naked, but it was her eyes that drew his focus. Black holes, they stared at nothing, lifeless. She must have been drugged to be so compliant, but she might simply have been too weak to fight. McLean’s memory of her was of a thin woman, but not so thin as you might comment on it. Now her cheeks were sunken hollows, her arms like flesh-bound sticks. Her collarbones strained through her skin as if she’d been in a concentration camp for years, not locked up in a cell for almost a fortnight.
‘Welcome, blessed one. Vessel of our Lord.’ Bayne’s voice boomed out in the cavern, and the congregation took up the chant like good cult members.
‘Vessel of our Lord. Vessel of our Lord.’
The sound was almost hypnotic, drilling deep into his head. McLean struggled to keep his mouth shut, not to join in as the voices rose in unison. The shape of the cavern echoed the noise, reflecting and building, louder and louder until it was painful, the words themselves lost in a jumbled roar. He tensed against the chain, focused on the pain in his shoulder. Leaning it hard against the wall brought a sharp stab to his senses and he clung to that like driftwood in a storm.
‘Vessel of our Lord. Vessel of our Lord.’
The congregation were more of a mob now, chanting as one, caught up in t
he ritual. Only McLean held on, and Renfrew. She stood motionless, oblivious to the cacophony, staring at nothing. Almost as if she was waiting for something to happen.
It began as more of the noise, a low rumble that might have been made by a combination of human voice and cavern acoustics, except that McLean felt it rise up from the floor and into his bones. The ground shook beneath him, a long, low rumble that grew in intensity until it was louder than the chanting. For a moment he feared that the roof would cave in and bury them all, but with a clap that left him deafened it ended. The crowd fell silent, and in that same instant Renfrew’s eyes swivelled upwards. She began to crumple like a puppet whose strings have been cut, but before she could hit the ground or even smack her head on the altar, Bayne caught her up as if she weighed nothing.
‘Vessel of our Lord,’ he said, so quiet that McLean could barely make it out over the ringing in his ears. He watched as the old man carried Renfrew across to the font, partially obscured by the altar. Without another word, he bent down and gently lowered the unconscious woman into the water.
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‘The grace of God be with us. Come forward, my brothers and sisters. Be witness as this empty vessel becomes the body and blood of Christ.’
McLean struggled to his feet, the better to see what was going on. Across the altar he could make out the stone font, and Renfrew floating on the surface of the water, held by the current that bubbled up from deep in the earth. Bayne had his back turned, and beckoned the congregation forward. One by one they came. Each bowed their head, and the old man dipped his hand in the font before touching wet fingers to their brow. Thus blessed, they took it in turns to push Renfrew’s unresisting body beneath the surface, some no deeper than their hand, but others rolling up a sleeve and immersing an entire arm. A few pushed her down with both, and it was as one emerged, dripping, that McLean finally noticed the red glow that suffused the water.
Once he’d seen it, he couldn’t understand how he’d missed it before. The only reason he could make out any detail of what the crazy people were doing was because of the light that played over their faces and arms. It painted the ceiling high overhead, a whirling mess of shadows and shapes formed by the bubbling water and Renfrew’s body. Looking back, McLean could see marks on the foreheads of the people Bayne had touched, etched a darker red in their flesh as if the water burned like acid. Arms dipped in the water had that hue too, and the congregation moved differently. Those yet to be blessed shuffled and shifted, nervousness or excitement in the way they held themselves. After contact with the spring, they were more like Renfrew, compliant and placid.
Sergeant Donaldson lumbered up to the font, bending low so that Bayne could splash water on him. It came as no surprise to McLean when the big man pulled off his shirt, splayed both hands wide and pressed Renfrew’s motionless form deep. He held her far longer than the others, and when he released her there was a red gleam in his eyes far deeper set than the reflected glow from the spring, as if an oily fire burned in his soul. In contrast, Morag Bayne approached with ill-disguised reluctance. She accepted her husband’s benediction, but only laid a hand lightly across Renfrew’s chest, and then for less than a heartbeat.
McLean searched the crowd for the boy, Alexander, saw him at the back of the group who had already undergone their strange initiation, clutching the knife in a nervous hand. It was clear he’d not been anywhere near the font, so maybe there was some hope for him after all. Bayne seemed too caught up in his job as high priest to notice, and everyone else had that drugged look about them. He had to hope that they’d forgotten about him too. If there was something in the water making all these people act like sheep, he wanted nothing to do with it.
The whisper in his ear almost made him scream. Only the pudgy fingers clamped across his mouth stopped him.
‘Say nothing. Not yet.’
The hand over his mouth slid away, and he was able to look around to see his unlikely saviour. Not that he needed to. He’d recognised the hissed whisper of a voice, so wasn’t at all surprised when Norman Bale slumped down beside him.
‘Do you think it will work? I think it will work.’
Bale’s eyes were wide with an excitement that bordered on intoxication, but it wasn’t madness. More the wild enthusiasm McLean remembered from their childhood friendship. Hair thinned almost to nothing, face chubbed up with too much institutional food and not enough exercise, Bale even looked more like the six-year-old boy he remembered. The six-year-old boy who had fallen out of a tree they had both been climbing. The six-year-old boy whose cut knee never seemed to stop bleeding. Leukaemia, they’d called it. A word that had scared McLean all his childhood. A disease that couldn’t be cured.
‘You died,’ he said.
‘True. Can’t say I recommend it.’ Bale tilted his head as if to concede the fact.
‘What are you doing here?’
‘Keep up, Tony. This is my salvation. You know the legend. The spring turns red and any who bathe in it become one with the Lord. No, it’s more than that. They become the Lord. I fell so low, but you showed me I’d strayed. And this is how I get back onto the true path. I owe you a great debt.’
Bale laid a hand briefly on McLean’s shoulder, then ducked away into the shadows. In moments he was gone, more competently camouflaged than any jungle predator. McLean tried to follow his progress, but he was distracted by the sight of the congregation still clustered around the font. The red glow seemed brighter now, although that might have been down to his having looked away. Renfrew’s body floated, face up, glistening and wet. All eyes were on her naked flesh. Hungry eyes.
‘God has blessed us all this day.’ Bayne’s deep voice echoed in the sudden silence. As he spoke, so he stepped forward and lowered his hands into the water, up to the elbows as he bent to lift Renfrew out. She flopped like a rag doll, head tilted back, eyes still closed. No sign of life in her, but as Bayne turned, McLean saw that her skin had been stained red by the water, like all the others. The old man’s arms were tinted too, although not to the same extent as Renfrew. As he carried the inert body back to the altar, the congregation followed, shuffling like some B-movie zombie horde. The old man lifted Renfrew high as if in offering to some unseen god, then laid her gently down on the cold stone.
‘Christ is in her. Christ is her.’ He laid a hand over Renfrew’s sternum, closed his eyes and murmured something incomprehensible. McLean thought he might have caught snatches of that same cod Latin he had heard before, but it might have been nonsense for all he cared.
‘Come, Alexander. It is time.’ With his free hand, Bayne waved the young boy forward. He came, reluctantly, as if something beyond his control was moving his legs, lifting his hand that gripped the knife so tight McLean could see the whiteness of his knuckles. Unlike the others, he held his head up, eyes darting from side to side, struggling against some invisible bond as he came closer and closer to the woman lying on the altar. The bare skin of his hands was pale, and no mark scarred his forehead like the others.
‘When the spring runs red with the blood of the earth, then is the Lord with us. Then is He inside us. Then must we eat of his flesh and drink of his blood, so that he might cleanse us of all our sins.’ Bayne reached out, gently took the boy by the elbow and steered him close. The gathered congregation still held their heads low, but their chanting began to rise again, words like those the old man had mouthed, meaningless and yet painful to hear.
‘The wisdom of the divine be with you, Alexander.’ Bayne lifted the boy’s hand up high, that blade of bone jutting from it in lethal fashion. If she wasn’t already drowned, Renfrew would soon be bled.
‘You don’t want to do this, Alexander.’ McLean heaved at the chains around his wrist, pulled at the ring set into the wall. One last desperate attempt to free himself, to do something rather than witness this needless murder. There was no way they were going to let him go after they were done with Renfr
ew, but he’d take a few of them with him if he could.
‘Do not give in to temptation, my son.’ Bayne wrapped his free hand around the boy’s, and McLean could see the tension build in his muscles as he readied himself to guide the knife down to its target. Alexander’s eyes widened in shock and fear. He struggled against that pull, not yet ready to commit to the same madness that gripped everyone else here.
Then with a crack like thunder, the iron loop came out of the wall. At the same moment, McLean saw movement in the shadows, a running figure. The stupefied congregation barely reacted, but Bayne turned, as did Donaldson, anger burning like hellfire in their eyes.
‘Christ is not in her. He is in me. I am the one who will be sanctified this day.’
Norman Bale stood on the stone edge, naked as the day he was born. Even at this distance McLean saw the old madness in his face once more. No longer the boy who had been his friend, but the impostor, the man who had killed so many and blamed it all on his faith. The light from the font grew stronger, the red turning a paler pink as the water began to roil and foam. Those of the celebrants closest began to shake off their stupor, move towards him. But they were too slow, too late.
With a smile and a wave, Bale stepped off the edge and into the spring.
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He might have expected a splash. Perhaps something more apocalyptic. As it was, Bale disappeared into the font with barely an extra ripple on the surface. If anything, McLean imagined the water climbed up him in a manner water had no right to do. Almost as if a million tiny hands reached out and grabbed the intruder, dragging him down into the depths.
In moments Bale had disappeared completely. The water continued to bubble and roil. Even the light shining from it barely changed, as if whatever was causing it was no single point that might cast shadow. McLean counted long seconds, waiting for the man to resurface. Everyone else in the chamber was the same, frozen in place, expectant.
Bury Them Deep Page 38
