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

by William Moore

  "There's more to her than meets the eye," replied Moon. "She's bound on Earth to help work out someone else's unfinished business, not her own, so she's more aware of the world of the living than most ghosts."

  "Interesting, her contribution should make this night's work much easier."

  As they neared the end of the bridge they felt a sense of relief, like they had just run an emotional gauntlet. "Who's the guy in the topper?" asked Sonia pointing to a lone figure that she sensed was standing in the mist rising from the River Severn as it swirled around the entrance to the bridge.

  "It's old Izzy himself," whispered Moon, "Isambard Kingdom Brunel, no less. I've seen him a few times around Bristol. He often visits his past triumphs like the railway station and the Great Western but he's supposed to like it here the best. You could say it's his 'unfinished business' because he died five years before it was completed."

  "Evening, Mr Brunel," said Sonia with a wave. "Nice bridge."

  "Most gratified," replied the great engineer, removing a half-smoked cigar from his mouth with one hand while doffing his famous stovepipe hat with the other. "And a very good evening to you too."

  "Now, for safety’s sake we must assume that the creature we're here to hunt is ancient and very cunning," warned Uri, as they walked towards the A369 and the entrance to the Ashton Court Estate. "So we must be alert for tricks. It'll probably try to either frighten or lure us into danger so it's very important that we stay together and keep a close rein on our instinct to run either away from apparent danger or towards our quarry. I don't want any legs or necks broken tonight.

  “It’s possible that our quarry could be connected to Stonleigh Camp, which is the name of the old hill fort that's situated on the ridge over there to our right. It may even have been psychically tethered here by the local tribe to prevent their enemies from attacking by the lower slope to the west. The old Celts were quite well versed in the art of sorcery and it wouldn’t be first time we’ve encountered a dark spirit they’ve used as a guard dog. If it is bound here by Celtic magic it’s likely that they could have planted one or two more spooky surprises in reserve against the possibility of their guard dog being muzzled. So we should be prepared for the worst. If it looks like things are getting nasty I'll yell: 'To Me!'. If I do this I want you two to close in behind us." He indicated Charli and Roanne. "As for you and Sonia, we have the experience in dealing with the big supernatural nasties, so your job is to stay out of trouble and let us handle it, okay?"

  "Okay." Moon and Sonia nodded in unison.

  They took a right turn up a side road. The street sign read 'Church Road' and Moon recognised the neighbourhood. He and his friends had parked their cars up here on their visits to the Ashton Court music festival in previous years. As they walked past the high value properties on either side of the narrow tree-lined road Uri briefed them further.

  "Your friend Anna seems to have given you a good basis in how to reach out with your spirit and deal minor damage to supernatural beings but I need to teach you how to take that a step further so you are able to do real harm. To do this you don't just strike at the surface. You have to reach deep inside your target, seizing the very heart of its being, and literally tear its life out. That way you can neutralise a supernatural foe like our goblin. You won't be able to kill it but you can deplete it enough to prevent it from doing harm for a very long time."

  "So, how do we do that?" asked Sonia.

  They had now reached the junction of Church Road and North Road, which ran along the southern edge of the woods. "The entrance to the woods is just a few yards down on the right," replied Uri. "We'll stop when we get there and I'll show you what to do. It is much easier to demonstrate than to explain."

  It was only a couple of minutes walk before they reached a gateway that allowed access to the main footpath through the woods. "I don't fancy going into that," commented Moon, regarding the thick darkness under the trees with suspicion. It reminded him all too clearly of the darkness that had shrouded the Shadow Beast on Bird Cage Walk.

  "None of us do," Uri answered grimly, "but nevertheless we will enter. Now, let us get to business." He looked around and then gestured to a small pile of rocks at the side of the path. "These should do."

  "What're they for? Are we going to throw them at the goblin?" asked Sonia, incredulously.

  "No, we will use them for target practice. Let me explain… everything has its own spiritual field or aura, even things which aren't actually alive like these rocks. A thing's aura provides a sort of framework that maintains its presence in the material world, which makes it physically vulnerable to psychic attack. Watch..."

  Moon saw a faint line of blue fire thrust forward from Uri's forehead and strike the topmost rock. The rock seemed to glow slightly for an instant and then the line snapped away to one side, dragging something faint and vaguely rock-shaped with it. The rock itself vanished in a puff of dust. "Jesus!" whispered Moon in awe.

  "Did he just do what I think I saw him do?" asked Sonia, gazing at the slightly diminished pile of rocks with a shocked expression.

  "What I did was remove the rock's spiritual substance," explained Uri. "Without which it could no longer exist. Well, not as a rock, anyway."

  "Could you do that to a person?" asked Moon, horrified at the possibility.

  "Theoretically, yes you could, but it would require more energy than is usually available to a human or even a vampire. However, just by using a moderate amount of power one could affect another person’s internal organs, which would hurt them or even possibly kill them if the attacker were to focus upon their heart, for example."

  "I feel like you've just thrust a loaded gun into my hands and I need to be extremely careful where I point it." Moon shook his head.

  "Power and responsibility are old bedfellows, my friend." Uri nodded at the rocks. "Now it is your turn."

  Moon concentrated on a smallish stone near the top of the pile and snapped out at it with a psychic tendril like Anna had taught them. The stone wobbled slightly but was otherwise unharmed. "That was pretty pathetic, wasn't it?" he commented, crestfallen.

  "Not bad for a start but you need to build upon what your little poltergeist friend has shown you. You need to reach out with your spirit inside of the rock and grasp its very essence, then you take a firm hold and yank it out."

  "Like this?" asked Sonia. A strand of glowing blue leapt from between her brows into the centre of a medium sized rock in the pile then snapped back like the tip of a bullwhip. The rock seemed to hang there undecided for an instant and then it crumbled into a small pile of sand and gravel.

  "Yay!" said Roanne, slapping Sonia on the back. "Chalk one up for the girls, Charli."

  Moon's confidence went down another notch. "Ignore them, Moon. I know you have it in you," encouraged Uri. "Give it another go. Try that big one on the top."

  "Are you sure?" asked Moon, eyeing the five kilogram rock with trepidation.

  "Sure, I'm sure," Uri grinned at Moon. "It's not a matter of size, just application. You could do it to one of the rocks from Stonehenge if you wanted to."

  "Okay," said Moon uncertainly. "Here goes." He reached out with his ghost sense, feeling the size and weight and density of the rock and sensing the faint, gently pulsing energy that was its life force. Grabbing that luminous core with all his spiritual might, he wrenched it out of the rock itself and watched in astonishment as the rock collapsed in on itself and vanished entirely.

  He suddenly felt utterly wretched... what he had done was wrong. It may have been only a rock but he knew somehow that he had just abused the entire matrix of life by leaving it missing a small but irreplaceable piece. "That was horrible," he muttered, covering his face with both hands.

  "I'm sorry, Moon. I should have warned you but I was worried that if I did you wouldn't want to practise. This is the only way I know that does such little damage."

  "What's up?" asked Sonia, staring at Moon with concern.

  "You on
ly took part of the life force from your rock, Sonia,” explained Uri, “so most of it still exists as sand and debris. Moon, however, wrenched his completely out of existence so he has to cope with the emotional backlash from having altered the whole web of nature. Such destruction, no matter how small or insignificant it seems, harms Gaia, the great Spirit of the Earth, to whom we're all connected."

  "Will it be like this when we take on the goblin?" asked Moon. "If it does I don't think I can go ahead with it."

  "No, it won't." Uri's white-blond hair whirled around his head as he shook it emphatically. "You can't destroy a spirit the way you destroyed the rock. All you can do is injure it enough to prevent it from doing more harm. Don't be fearful on that count my friend."

  Sonia insisted on trying another rock to make sure she could ‘do it properly’, despite Moon's protestations. When she succeeded in eradicating the small boulder that she had chosen, she really wished that she hadn't when the inevitable impact hit her psyche. "Ooh, that's bad!" she complained.

  "I did warn you," commented Moon, shaking his head in sympathy.

  “Right," said Uri, "I think we're as ready as we'll ever be, so let's get going. We need to take the path to the right. It goes along the rim of the valley, there, and then on up to the ridge of the old hill fort. It shouldn't take us long to find what we're looking for. Now, whatever happens, stick together. This thing will try to separate us so it can attack each of us on their own."

  The path was easy to make out in the moonlight, distinct and quite well worn. Nightingale Valley, as the stretch of woodland below the hill fort is called, was a favourite haunt of mountain bikers during the day and the earth of the pathways through the woods was criss-crossed with their tracks. This created a difficult and uneven surface to negotiate in the dark. They were roughly a third of the way to the top, when Moon stumbled over one very deep tyre ridge. Sonia caught him, just in time to prevent him tumbling over the side of the path into the steep fall to the valley below. Charli and Roanne rushed to help. They quickly got Moon onto safer ground and, as Sonia was helping him dust mud off the bottom of his coat, they heard Uri say, "Charli and Roanne, I think you two should scout ahead, I'll stay with the humans and make sure they're safe."

  As the girls floated off into the darkness of the woods Sonia turned to Uri. "What happened to sticking together?" she asked.

  "They can look after themselves and I wish to take you by a safer route," he replied, leading them off along a less well-trodden path that branched away from the main one.

  A few minutes later, Moon could hardly see his hand in front of his face. "Are you sure this is the right path?" he asked Uri, who was walking as silently as ever at his left.

  "Oh, yesss!" hissed the vampire, turning a face of hideously distorted evil on Moon. His yellow eyes were glowing slits of malevolence under heavy serrated brows, which met over a dripping hole where the nose should be. Underneath this grinned a mouth full of far too many sharp and uneven teeth.

  Moon recoiled with shock and, as he stepped backwards, he found himself plunging feet first down a hidden shaft. "Jerry!" screamed Sonia, and made a futile lunge to catch him.

  Moon was certain that he was plummeting to his death, but suddenly all the wind was knocked from his lungs as another body cannonballed into him and thrust him to safety. It was Uri, the real Uri, who cradled Moon gently onto the ground. The vampire paused for an instant to check that his friend was unhurt before he leapt forth to battle with his own doppelganger.

  "It's not me!" he cried to Sonia. "It's the goblin pretending to be me!"

  Sonia, who had already decided to act against their attacker, whether it was Uri or not, struck out with her ghost sense and ripped a chunk of insubstantial flesh from one side of the creature's face. "Damn!" she spat when she realised that she hadn't managed to disable it.

  Turning what was left of its ruined countenance towards them, its remaining eye shimmering with furious malice, the goblin snarled and swiftly doubled in size. As it did so it transformed, shape-shifting into the form of an ogre with long apelike arms, each of which ended in three scythe-like, metallic looking claws. "Don't be fooled," said Uri, "it can't harm us, it's all bluff." Then he launched his own attack on the creature. The shining whip of his spirit leapt forth from his forehead and left a gaping hole in its chest, which leaked reddish ectoplasm like a mist of blood.

  "Mine!" shouted Moon, who had finally regained his breath. He climbed purposefully to his feet and adopted a defiant posture with his feet planted well apart, he raised his arms and a lance of pure light poured out of him into the body of the wounded beast, ripping away what remained of its substance. Very quickly, nothing was left but a single tiny red pinpoint that sped away into the darkness of the trees. "Bloody thing damn near killed me!" he growled as the fury slowly died from his eyes.

  "Well, you really gave it what for, darling," Sonia commented a smirk of amusement playing around her lips.

  "We all did," said Uri with a grin.

  "What happened to you?" asked Moon.

  "It was wilier and more powerful than I expected." Uri shook his head at his own lack of vigilance. "It waited until everyone else was distracted then trapped me with a tangling spell. It took me nearly ten minutes to break out of it and stop wandering in circles..." Uri was on the verge of explaining further when a frantic ululating cry pierced the woods from the direction of the hill fort. "That's Charli!" He pointed up the hill. "There is more complex evil at work in these woods. Come on, they need our help."

  They followed the path to a wider clearing in the woods near the top of the hill fort, where Roanne and Charli were battling fiercely in the darkness. Moon couldn't quite make out the figures of their opponents in the tricky monotone half-light cast by the sickle moon.

  "Bugger!" swore Uri, whose vampiric senses were more acute than a human's. Skeletons, lots of them! We're in real trouble now!"

  "Why?" asked Moon naively. "I've fought hundreds of those things in computer games. They just fly apart if you hit them hard enough."

  Uri looked at Moon with a mixture of incredulity and exasperation. Then he shrugged and shook his head. "That may be true for your games, Moon, but in real life they just fly back together again." He looked around. "Such revenants are usually animated by some kind of magical power source, which should be somewhere nearby. We need to find that quickly and destroy it."

  One of the ancient warriors approached at a steady run. It held a rusty iron-tipped spear in a thrusting hold and a chilling, bird-like screech issued from its lipless mouth. Uri swiftly side-stepped the spear and, in the same movement, punched the shrieking skull into the trees. He followed through with a sweeping, kung-fu like kick to its thorax, which scattered ribs and vertebrae over a wide distance. "Moon… I'll keep them at bay while you and Sonia look for their power source. It should be quite obvious to someone with your talents."

  The pieces of the shattered warrior were quickly reuniting. His body was already almost complete and, as he and Sonia cast around for the source of their opponents’ power, Moon caught fleeting glimpses of the skull rushing through the undergrowth. The frantic snapping of its cracked yellow teeth bore an obscene similarity to an angry Yorkshire terrier.

  "To me!" cried Uri as he ripped a branch from a nearby tree to use as a weapon.

  The two vampire girls flew through the air and landed on either side of him. "Where the hell did you get to?" asked Roanne angrily.

  "I'll explain later," replied Uri, swiping at the almost fully reassembled skeleton with his makeshift club. "There's no time now. We need to protect Moon and Sonia while they look for whatever's controlling these things."

  The vampires formed a protective triangle around the two humans, who huddled together in the centre and tried to ignore the battle going on around them as they concentrated on pinpointing the skeleton warriors' power source.

  They were confronted by nearly twenty skeletons advancing from the direction of the hill fort. All of th
em wore the tattered remnants of Iron Age armour and carried ancient but very sharp looking weapons. The occasional piece of jewellery, like a ring or torc glinted in the moonlight as they advanced upon the small huddle of vampires and humans. Moon was momentarily distracted from his search when he noticed that the armour and items of jewellery seemed to hover over the bones as if supported by invisible flesh. Probably just another characteristic of the spell that animated them he realised. He seriously doubted that there had been twenty complete skeletons lying under the soil of the mound, the magic must have somehow gathered these creatures together from dust and fragments of bone.

  "Jerry," whispered Sonia, who had been concentrating more on the task Uri had given them. "I may be wrong but there seem to be sort of ‘strings’ attached to each of the skeletons. Do you see them?"

  Moon looked towards their attackers and quickly ducked an axe that was flying with deadly accuracy from that direction. He took a few deep breaths to regain his composure then focused his concentration on the bony cohort that rattled before them. "I see what you mean," he said with surprise. It was very faint but each skeleton had a misty tendril trailing from it and they all seemed to converge on the centre of the hill fort. "Uri, I think we've found what we're looking for."

  Uri turned to Moon. He held a skeletal arm in each hand. They continued to claw at him with their sharp, bony talons, despite being separated from their owner. "Where?" he asked, flinging his grisly burdens far into the forest.

  "Over there," Moon pointed.

  "Right, Charli, Roanne!" Uri yelled to his embattled lovers. "We need to head for the centre of the fort, over there."

  "But that means we have to go straight through the middle of them," complained Charli.

  "Then that is what we must do," replied Uri firmly. "We can't allow these things to continue to guard this place or the woods won't be safe night or day."

  Trying to maintain their protective formation, the five of them, started to edge slowly towards the centre of what would have been the old fort's main enclosure. It was dangerous work. Their ancient foes were armed with solid weapons and centuries in the ground didn’t seem to have blunted their skill in using them. The vampires were in less peril than the humans, as long as they kept their heads on their shoulders and didn’t allow any of their opponents' wooden shafts to pierce their hearts, but they were struggling to protect their more vulnerable friends from harm.