Under a Ghostly Moon (Jerry Moon Supernatural Thrillers Book 1)

by William Moore

  "That's odd," said Sonia. "Whatley was certain that it'd be more intense today."

  "So was I," said Moon. "I wonder what's going on."

  "I didn't want to mention this," vibed Anna, "but something huge has been making waves in the Spiritual for the last couple of days. Perhaps this Rurik has accumulated enough power not to need any more killings."

  "Could be…" replied Moon. "Or perhaps the police want to avoid a mass panic and have stopped the media from reporting any more assaults. I think I'd better phone Detective Inspector Whatley and ask him about this as soon as possible. I wonder if he'll be working on Sunday."

  "We need to get going if we're going to walk it to Uri's," said Sonia. “It's on the other side of the Downs, isn't it?"

  "Yes, you're right," answered Moon, grabbing his jacket. "Sorry, Anna, we're going to have to love you and leave you, I'm afraid."

  "That's all right, Jerry. I've enjoyed the company. This is more people than I've had a chance to talk to in nearly a century." She placed a phantom kiss on Moon's cheek then ran over to Sonia and did the same.

  "We'll have to do it again sometime under less difficult circumstances," promised Sonia. "Thanks for the teaching session; I'm sure it'll be useful against Rurik."

  "If I wasn't tied to this place I'd help you myself," replied the little ghost pugnaciously.

  Uri

  They left the house and made their way up through the middle class neighbourhoods of Cotham and Whiteladies Road to the Downs. The Bristol Downs are a large area of parkland on the northeast side of the city. On their southern side they border onto the prosperous areas of Westbury, Redland and Clifton. Uri lived in the even more exclusive housing on the other side of the Downs near the Avon Gorge, where Brunel's famous suspension bridge spans the river. It was a forty minute walk from where Moon lived, but both he and Sonia were reasonably fit and it was less trouble to walk there than to try to cross an outlying part of the city by bus. When they got to Uri's home it turned out to be an impressive looking, three-storey, detached Georgian town house with a large and immaculately tended front garden.

  "It's a bit of a far cry from a crumbling gothic castle, isn't it?" commented Sonia with a hint of disappointment.

  "Well, what did you expect? Gloomy turrets and a sign saying 'beware of the bat'?"

  "I'm not sure what I expected but this isn't it," replied Sonia, ringing the doorbell.

  A tall, elegantly dressed woman, who looked to be in her mid-fifties, answered the door. "Good evening," she said with a smile. "I take it that you are the guests that Uri is expecting."

  "Yes, that's us; I'm Moon and this is Sonia."

  "Nice to meet you… My name is Karen Maddocks. I assume Uri has told you about his long standing relationship with our family."

  "He has indeed," replied Moon, stepping through the door into a spacious hallway, which was well lit by the multicoloured beams of light that poured through the stained glass windows that surrounded the ornate oak and wrought iron front door.

  "He would have liked to have greeted you himself but he has a problem with the intensity of the evening sunlight at this time of the year."

  "I suppose he would," commented Sonia. "Pardon my curiosity but just how big a problem does he have with the sun? I'm a bit of a gothic horror junkie and it's one thing a lot of the stories don't agree on."

  "Well, it's like extremely bad sunburn so it's not as pyrotechnically dramatic as Hollywood sometimes makes it out to be, but an hour or so exposed to direct sunlight would probably kill them. Uri says that exposure to full sunlight is like standing in front of an open furnace."

  "Exactly," said Uri's rich baritone as he pulled open a door at the end of the hallway, which lay beyond the reach of the sun's penetrating beams. "Here, in the shadows or at twilight, it is actually pleasant but full daylight is quite deadly. Welcome, my friends, to our home. If you would come through here to the dining room, dinner is almost ready."

  Uri ushered them into an impressive room, which had at its centre a long, dark oak dining table of Moroccan design with ornate metal fixtures at the top of the legs and a complex marquetry mosaic of various woods inlaid in the centre. Matching chairs surrounded it and the accessories and wall decorations continued the Moorish theme into the rest of the room. "This is beautiful," said Sonia, running her fingers over the ornately carved back of a chair.

  "Yes, Karen is a wonder when it comes to home design."

  "Well, Charli helped me out," said Karen Maddocks modestly. "She comes originally from Andalusia, you know, and the Moorish influence was much stronger when she lived there in the fifteen hundreds." Moon noticed that the room had a northeast facing window that would allow the vampires to dine here in the evenings in relative comfort for most of the year.

  Karen took their coats and Uri motioned for them to take their seats, drawing back Sonia's chair for her. "The rest of the family will be down shortly," he said. "They're waiting for the dinner gong."

  "Getting back to our earlier subject," said Sonia. "Why don't you use sun block?"

  "It doesn't work," said Roanne, who had entered the room like a ghost. "It isn't ultra violet that's the problem - it's the mystical influence of the sun. It's been a potent symbol of the power of Light for millennia and, whatever else we might be, we are creatures of Darkness. It is a part of our supernatural existence that we ignore at our peril." She took a seat beside Moon. "Fortunately, Darkness isn't necessarily evil any more than Light is necessarily good. They both have their place in the balance of things, which is one thing my people have never forgotten, despite the incursions of Christianity on our spirituality."

  "By your people you mean the Welsh?" asked Moon.

  "By my people I mean the British Celts," replied Roanne proudly. "'Welsh' is a name that was forced on us in cruel jest by the Saxons. It means 'foreigners' and in the Saxon mindset it was synonymous with ‘slaves’. Memories of older wisdom and older truths linger on in all the Celtic fringes of Britain, where wave after wave of invaders have failed to stamp them out."

  "Roanne, don't preach," admonished Uri. "You must forgive Roanne, my friends. She was born in a time when the animosity between the Welsh and the English was much stronger than it is now."

  Moon smiled. "From what I've heard of those times I can understand your feelings, Roanne. I hate to think what it must have been like to be Welsh in the fifteen hundreds."

  Roanne smiled gently and nodded in acknowledgement of Moon’s attempt to be understanding. "Far from pleasant, I can tell you."

  Uri leaned forward in his chair. "You had an important question for Karen, Moon, didn't you?" he prompted with a nod. "I think it's best to ask her now, before the children come down."

  "What?" said Moon. Then he remembered their discussion of a few days ago. "Oh that." He paused trying to think how to phrase the delicate question then decided the best he could do was ask bluntly. "Mrs Maddocks, are you free to live your lives the way you choose or are you and your family somehow enslaved by Uri, Charli and Roanne?"

  "Call me 'Karen', please, Moon," replied Karen with a laugh. "And it's a good thing Uri warned me you might ask this or it would have been insulting enough for me to insist that you leave. Am I a slave, labouring under the power of evil vampires? You'll have to judge for yourself whether I'm telling the truth or doing my masters' bidding, but no, I am not a slave. Am I 'free'? That is a harder question. I would have to answer no. My family is not free and nor are Uri and the girls for we are all bound by ties of love and family loyalty that go back generations. Does that answer your question?"

  "Very well," replied Moon. "I'm sorry if I caused any offence, I just had to be sure. Choosing whether or not to trust a vampire is a big decision."

  "I understand," replied Karen. "Uri is honest, trustworthy and honourable. Over twenty generations of Maddocks' and Llewellyn's can testify to that."

  "I'm glad to hear it. Sonia and I may well be staking our lives on Uri's reliability very soon."

&
nbsp; "Ah, yes. Uri has told us about this villain, Rurik, and the situation sounds like it could get very dangerous indeed. All I can say is that, while life holds no certainties, Uri has been our families' protector for nearly five centuries and he hasn't failed us yet, even against supernatural threats like the one you're facing now. And there have been a few even in my lifetime."

  "I'd like to hear about those threats sometime," commented Moon.

  "I'm sure we could arrange that if you'd like. You wouldn't be disappointed. Some of our family legends are quite spectacular," replied Karen, smiling and raising her eyebrows.

  At that moment Charli poked her head around the door to the kitchen and said, "It's ready, could someone bang the gong."

  Roanne got up from her seat and beat a rapid summons on a small silver gong that hung on an ornate oriental style stand on an occasional table by the door. Within seconds members of the Maddocks clan began to appear, starting with a small boy who entered at full pelt and jumped into Uri's lap with a joyful cry of: "Hello Unkie Uri! Mam got me a Hahyie Pott, look!" he waved the stuffed Harry Potter toy under Uri's nose.

  "Isn't that wonderful, Corwin?" replied Uri, taking the proffered toy and making him swoop through the air on his broomstick.

  "Yes, and Mam says I can have a Hag'id if I'm a good boy."

  "Well, you'd better be very good then, hadn't you," said Uri, handing the toy back to the child.

  "Yes, ve'y good," said Corwin seriously, taking the doll and running off to find his mother.

  There were five generations of Maddocks living in the house. They ranged in age from Karen's ninety-three year old mother-in-law, Sarah, who could easily have passed for someone two decades younger, to Karen's great grandson, Corwin, who was three. The Maddocks men were represented by Karen's husband, Bedyw, the patriarch of the family, and their youngest son, Owen, who at twenty was studying law at Bristol University. In addition to Corwin two other children were present: Bridget, Corwin's aunt, who was fourteen, and his big sister Poppy, who was eight.

  Corwin's mother, Gwynneth was in her late twenties and was taking time off from her job as administrator for the family's jewellery business to be a stay at home mother. Her husband, Griffin, was away on business in London. Moon was forced to change his estimate of Karen's age. He doubted teenage pregnancies were common in this family so she must be in her early to mid sixties. Uri's comment about the vampires' bites keeping the family young must be true.

  "This is just part of the clan," said Karen, who had been explaining who was who to Moon and Sonia. "There are nearly two hundred of us now, including the Llewellyns and the few Maddocks who stayed in Wales. Most of us live in the South West and Wales but there's quite an enclave in London because of the stores we opened there in the thirties. But we're not all involved in the jewellery trade any more. There are Maddocks and Llewellyns in most of the professions."

  With the help of the older children Charli brought in the serving dishes. These were handmade terracotta with a glazed Moorish design. The meal was very Andalusian, starting with gazpacho soup, followed by Madhûna chicken with spiced couscous and sultanas, accompanied with a salad of endives, tomato, chopped boiled egg, tuna and tarragon. For sweet they had khushkananaj - bread-like rolls filled with a sugar and almond paste, a bit like small Danish pastries. Charli broke tradition with these by serving them with custard.

  "Is all this authentic medieval Spanish," asked Sonia, after tasting the chicken with approval.

  "With a modern twist," affirmed Charli, waving a hand to indicate the table. "Some of the old ingredients are hard to find now and I've changed a few of them for convenience sake. For instance we used to use a fermented barley sauce called murri naqî in just

  about everything. It was horrible to make and when I discovered that soy sauce tasted virtually the same I gave up having bowls of rotting barley cakes in the pantry for good."

  "Yuck!" Sonia grimaced with disgust. "How on earth does someone decide to try something like that for the first time?"

  "I'm not sure," replied Charli. "Perhaps they were trying to make a new kind of beer."

  "Sounds feasible," chipped in Moon. "But then you have to answer the question of why they first made beer. I don't think it's an obvious thing to do to ferment grains and drink the results. Hearing about this sort of thing always gives me visions of some prehistoric pioneer who went around sampling various disgusting concoctions to see what they did to him and making a list of the results that tasted good."

  "Yeah," joked Uri, "and the last one he tried killed him." They all laughed.

  After the younger children had been taken up to bed, Uri looked outside into the deepening twilight and said, "Well, my friends, I think it's time we got down to business. Karen, Bedyw, we must take our leave of you and the rest of the family." He rose from his chair and addressed Moon and Sonia. "We need to go outside to practise our fighting skills. There's a place not far from here where we should be safe from prying eyes and, if we’re lucky, we may also find a suitable subject for our practice."

  "A subject?" asked Moon, surprised. "But I thought we would be practising on each other."

  "Some things can only be learnt in action," replied Uri. "Besides, this way we can - what is the expression? - kill two birds with one stone. I've heard rumours that there's a rather annoying little goblin haunting part of Leigh Woods. I've been meaning to do something about it for a while."

  Moon's blood ran cold. The memories of his recent encounter with the Shadow Beast were still very fresh in his mind. "Is it safe?" he asked.

  "Safe? Of course it's not safe," Roanne sneered. "What's the point of hunting something if it's safe?"

  "Gently, Roanne," interjected Uri, "remember, Moon was attacked by a particularly nasty graveyard haunt earlier on in the week."

  "Oh, sorry, Moon, I'd forgotten," Roanne apologised. "That's enough to make anyone wary of rushing headfirst into another supernatural battle."

  Uri placed a long fingered hand on Moon's shoulder. "Moon, the thing in Leigh Woods is a frightener. By which I mean a goblin that lives off fear. The greatest danger it poses is that it might scare someone to death and it can’t do that if we are prepared. It's nowhere near as powerful as the shadow creature we encountered but it will fight when it's cornered so prepare yourself for a few scary noises and visions and remember there are five of us and three of us are vampires. It has much more reason to be afraid of us than we of it.”

  "Well, if you say so…" Moon wasn’t too reassured. The prospect that they would be fighting any kind of supernatural beastie had not even occurred to him when he had considered tonight's possible activities. "Let's go then."

  Chapter 19

  It was nearly an hour's walk from the vampires' home to Leigh Woods. Moon had declined the offer of a lift from Uri and the girls. While it would have been quicker to fly, the thought of traversing the Avon Gorge at nearly three hundred feet supported only by someone else's arms, no matter how supernaturally strong they were, was enough to put him off flying for life. However, when he was the prospect of crossing the Clifton Suspension Bridge in the dark he almost considered changing his mind. Over a thousand people had committed suicide by jumping off the bridge between its completion in 1864 and the late 1980s, when the installation of a safety net had served to discourage all but the most determined jumpers. The spiritual atmosphere surrounding the bridge resonated with generations of anger and despair.

  "What's wrong with this place, Jerry?" whispered Sonia, gripping his arm as they walked past the toll booth. "It feels horrible.”

  "It’s the echoes of suicides," answered Moon, "hundreds of them." He put his arm around her for comfort. "It's just the memory of all that negative emotion retained in the psychic ambience, love. Most suicides pass on just like anyone else. From previous experience there aren't too many ghosts here. I don't think I've ever met the spirit of anyone here who had actually taken their own life."

  "Jerry Moon," said Sonia reproachfully, "w
hat have you let me in for? Am I going to spend the rest of my life experiencing horrible things like this?"

  "You get used to it," replied Moon consolingly. "And it's really not too bad as long as you steer clear of places where people die regularly, like hospital casualty departments. And, of course, places like this, where people have killed themselves."

  "I didn't kill meself," whispered a malicious ghost voice in Moon's inner ear. "Good place fer dumpin' bodies, this. Not so many questions asked when they fishes them from the drink."

  The voice's owner - a hulking brute in shabby Victorian workman's clothes - materialised beside them and continued chattily. "'Course I fell off one day, didn't I, gettin' rid of this old bird I robbed. Weighed a ton she did... I 'ad an awful time gettin' 'er over the railings, then I got tangled up in 'er skirts an' she dragged me down like the proverbial millstone. So now I 'aunts this place. It's not too bad, decent view like, but there ain't too many people to chat wif, if yer know what I mean."

  The oppressive atmosphere on the bridge had already set Sonia’s nerves on edge and this fresh intrusion was the last straw. "Bugger off!" she said sharply, snapping out a line of ghost energy, she caught the over-friendly murderer across the face with an edge of blue fire.

  "'Old 'ard, darlin’, there's no call for that kind o' thing. I was only tryin' to be friendly like."

  "I'm no friend of yours so piss off, you murdering scum! I’m warning you… there's more where that came from!"

  The footpad's ghost dematerialised with an air of injured virtue muttering, "Bloody Livin', just 'cause I wanted to pass the time of day. I'd give yer wot for if I was alive…"

  "So... you seem to have already learnt a little about how to use your spiritual powers," observed Uri with surprise.

  "Anna's given Sonia and me some lessons."

  "Anna? Ah, your little ghost friend. I wouldn't have thought she'd be that capable."