* * *
Sheltering in some bushes on the edge of the churchyard, Kinelm and Everard observed the proceedings in appalled silence, shielding their horror at witnessing Stan’s transformation with mental powers that in no way matched Val’s own. If they let down their guard even slightly, she would sense their presence.
Only when Stan disappeared, followed by Val after she locked the shop, did the pair emerge from their hiding place.
‘He changed,’ whispered Kinelm, aghast at the implications.
‘I saw. It can only mean that poor unfortunate young man has himself been slain.’
‘How many other prisoners do ye suppose they have?’
Everard shrugged. ‘There be no way o’ knowing, but they probably be trapped in Val’s cellar.’
‘Should us risk rescuing them?’
‘No. Val has no need t’ kill t’ maintain her appearance, so whilst Stan be away, any prisoners will be safe.’
‘What if the others o’ their kind be awakened?’
‘Us cannot risk discovery, Kinelm.’
‘You be right, o’ course, Everard. Us cannot draw attention t’ the fact that us be not subjugated t’ Val’s will, or that us can shield our minds from hers.’
‘As two o’ her trusted disciples, us must maintain the pretence until the Night of Madness. I feel us t’ be close t’ discovering the Key t’ Gehenna. The woman, Dolores, be pivotal.’
‘Indeed, Everard. Gaining the trust o’ the foolish old woman were a stroke o’ genius. She be almost certain t’ tell Rob where be the Key. Us must hope that Stan don’t locate them before she reveals the information.’
‘When us has the Key t’ Gehenna, us can use it t’ discredit Val and Stan, and ingratiate ourselves with the Great Lord Apollyon, and He will grant us dominion over the new order.’
Everard lapsed into silence and touched Kinelm’s arm gently. ‘Beware, Val reaches out with her mind. Shield yer thoughts afore they betray us. Us cannot risk discovery when us be so close. Come, let us travel t’ Exeter. Us can prevent Stan from ruining our own plans.’
* * *
Down in the cellar beneath the shop, Lilly paused, wiping the dripping sweat from her brow. The plan with the solid loaf of bread had worked. Using a large shard of glass from the broken window, Jonathan had spent several long hours sawing at the rope that securely bound Lilly’s wrists, trying hard not to accidentally slash her wrists, whilst at he same time also trying hard not to let the sharp shard cut into his own hand. When he had finally severed the rope enough to allow Lilly to get free, Jonathan had passed the glass to Lilly, who set about cutting through his bonds.
It was hard work and Lilly had to keep stopping for a break, and in those moments of rest, Jonathan started cutting at the bonds that secured her feet.
‘Come on, Lilly, we’re almost there,’ he whispered, straining to pull apart the remaining strands of rope. ‘A few more minutes and I’ll be free.’
Lilly took a deep breath and launched into a final onslaught against the rope, and less than a minute later, Jonathan’s straining paid off and the severed rope came apart.
He rubbed his bleeding wrists to try and alleviate some of the pain, and then set about struggling to untie the rope around his ankles. Now that his hands were free it was much easier, and within a few minutes both he and Lilly stood slowly and shakily, wincing when pins and needles engulfed them as their circulation was restored. Neither of them commented on the excrement as it trickled slowly down their legs.
‘How do we get out of here?’ Jonathan whispered.
Lilly pointed to the stairs with a sigh. ‘I’m afraid that’s our only way out of here.’
Jonathan groaned. ‘It would be. Well, we’ve no choice but to risk it and hope that we don’t bump into Val… or that other thing!’
The pair made their way cautiously up the stairs, but halfway up, Jonathan paused. ‘Where will we go if we do make it out of here?’
‘Your car must still be around here somewhere. We’ll go to my mother’s house in Exeter.’
Lilly’s low whisper trailed off as footsteps approached the door, but they died away into the distance as the owner walked past the door.
They climbed the rest of the stairs and Jonathan pressed his ear to the door. ‘I can’t hear anything,’ he whispered. ‘I think it’s all clear.’
The door was locked, and it took a few minutes of throwing themselves against it to force it open, all the time praying that no one was close by to hear the noise.
Since it was evening the hallway was in shadow, and Lilly led the way to the door that led into a small rear courtyard shared by the shop and Val’s house.
Neither mentioned it to the other, but they were both secretly convinced that their escape was a little too easy and that they were walking into a trap.
Both hoped desperately that they were wrong.
‘Come on,’ whispered Lilly, ‘let’s find your car and get out of here!’
Seven
Revelations
Dolores Hawthorne’s home was a cramped little cottage at the end of a leafy lane on the outskirts of Exeter. Small it might have been, but it was homely and quite comfortable, packed with welcoming pictures and ornaments, stuffed to the gills with old furniture and rugs, overflowing with charm, and overrun with cats.
The front garden was an overgrown jungle of weeds and Rob momentarily thought that she could use the help of Stan O’Nass, but the stray thought passed as quickly as it entered his head. Overhanging branches from the trees that lined the lane blotted out much of the orange glow from the street lamps, which made the overcrowded living room at the front of the cottage even more dingy.
As Dolores bustled around lighting candles in wall sconces and candles in an elaborate ceiling candelabra, and even more pillar candles on saucers perched precariously on shelves, Rob became aware of how much interest he was taking in his surroundings. As welcoming and homely as the cottage was, he felt that the candles were not a particularly good idea with all the cats – of which he had so far counted eight. He admired the exquisitely framed paintings that saturated each wall of the living room, having noted on the way into the cottage that the stairs were equally adorned with framed prints. Every shelf that was not filled with books or housing candles was instead crammed with china trinkets and glass ornaments, and both of the threadbare sofas that dominated the small room were adorned with colourful throws and swamped with plumped up cushions covered in cat hair.
Rob allowed himself a brief smile. The décor and ambience of the old-world charm of Dolores’s home brought to mind long dormant childhood memories; visits to the homes of numerous family friends when he would go through drawers and cupboards to see what unusual belongings they possessed.
‘This really is a delightful home, Dolores,’ he murmured with a contented sigh as his hostess finished the task of lighting all the candles.
Its brevity tempered the smile that twitched at the corners of Dolores’s mouth. ‘Thank you, Rob, that’s very kind of you to say so. However, we’re not here for mere pleasantries. Would you like some tea before we settle down?’
Rob nodded. ‘Please, I’m parched.’
‘Sit yourself down. I’ll be a few minutes.’
Whilst Dolores disappeared into the kitchen, Rob scooped one of the cats into his lap from one of the sofas and sat down on the vacated spot. He absentmindedly stroked the still contentedly purring black and white cat, which rewarded him with a gentle nuzzle against his shoulder. He smiled sadly, remembering the way Satan used to nuzzle him.
Poor Satan. Someone would pay dearly for his death.
Rob still remained uncertain what had made Gerry’s car explode. Could it have been by sheer force of the doctor’s will? The strength of the woman’s mind unhinged Rob’s sanity; what he had been thinking was not possible.
But what other explanation could there be? The doctor always seemed to be nearby whenever something odd happened in Dorstville, and even wh
en she was not, there was always that same peculiar odour of honeysuckle, so sickly sweet and powerful that Rob wanted to vomit whenever he caught a whiff of it.
The smell constantly accompanied Val, and Rob initially put it down to being her choice of perfume. Now he was not so certain. Dolores had commented upon the scent herself, which meant something – though Rob was not sure what. He felt certain the old librarian was going to be most informative in her enlightenment.
She returned from the kitchen carrying a tray laden with bone china cups and saucers, a matching teapot and various other paraphernalia for making tea. Rob set down the cat and rose to his feet. ‘Here, let me,’ he muttered, taking the tray from Dolores and placing it on the low coffee table in the centre of the room.
Dolores smiled. ‘A perfect gentleman. Thank you, Rob.’
‘As you yourself are a perfect hostess,’ Rob murmured, eyeing the buttered scones. He lapsed into silence for a while whilst Dolores poured the tea.
‘When you say that my home is delightful, what you really mean is small, don’t you? Small and cluttered.’
Rob took the cup and saucer with a wry smile. ‘I can’t keep anything from you, can I, Dolores? Is that a general assumption on your part, or are you as adept at reaching into my thoughts as Val?’
The steely gaze Dolores afforded him forced Rob into further silence. ‘It seems that little escapes your own attention, Rob. On this occasion, though, your tone of voice gave away your true thoughts. I am well used to comments about the size of my home, and the amount of knick-knacks I have accumulated over the years. Even my own daughter keeps telling me I should get a computer and sell some of my things on ebay!’
Rob chuckled. ‘Somehow I don’t think that suggestion went down very well with you!’
Dolores peered at Rob over her spectacles. ‘Quite. I will have none of that modern technology here. I don’t even have electricity connected!’
‘I guess your home is adequate for your needs.’
Dolores nodded. ‘Indeed it is. I have everything I need. My daughter comes to visit me a little more often since her marriage crumbled.’ She reached behind her and plucked a framed photo from the shelves behind the sofa on which they were seated. ‘This is her on her wedding day a few years ago.’
Rob took the photo and immediately felt the hairs stand upon the back of his neck as he recognised the bride and groom. ‘It’s Lilly and Stan!’
Dolores arched an eyebrow. ‘You are acquainted with my daughter and her ex?’
‘Yes. Your daughter is a receptionist at the apartment building where my… my editor lives.’ Even now, after the truth about his sexuality had been in the public domain for so long, Rob found it difficult to broach the subject to strangers. ‘Your daughter doesn’t like me.’
Dolores sighed. ‘Lilly finds it difficult to like any man, and after what she has endured during her brief marriage to Stan, I think I can understand her reticence. I have to admit that her lack of faith in herself worries me at times.’ She took a sip of tea, and bit into one of the buttered scones. She was not particularly hungry. The tale she had to impart left her devoid of any appetite. ‘Would you like to hear about Lilly’s marriage to Stan O’Nass?’
The steely, penetrating stare with which Dolores fixed Rob reminded him instantly of Val. ‘Is it relevant to what’s going on? Will it help me understand what’s been happening? Will it answer any of the questions I’ve been asking myself since my arrival in Dorstville?’
Dolores nodded emphatically. ‘Oh yes, Rob, it’s very relevant, and it will provide some of the answers you seek. Sadly, it will also open up a whole new set of questions, especially if you don’t accept and understand what I have to tell you.’
‘Like who Stan really is? I have a vague idea, but I don’t like what it implies.’
‘Understanding depends solely on your frame of mind, Rob. I think perhaps you might be open minded enough, especially if you have worked out who Stan really is.’
Rob set down his tea. ‘In that case, Dolores, you have my undivided attention.’
‘Then let us first start with your own family.’
* * *
Before evil, there is always good; sadly, the worm always eats into the apple, just as the serpent always enters the Garden of Eden to persuade Eve to eat from the apple.
Before Rob Tyler, there was his father; before Malcolm Tyler there were his own mother and father, William and Elinor; before evil times there was an age of innocence.
William Tyler and Elinor Mortimer were sixteen when they first met in their home town of Exeter, two innocent youngsters whose only sin was their love for one another.
Unbeknownst to either one of them, they shared the same father; not even their mothers were aware of the fact. Elinor’s mother had died in childbirth and the girl had been raised by an aunt. The aunt did not know the identity of the errant father, who had done a moonlight flit.
William’s mother knew her husband had embarked upon the odd extra-marital affair or two, but she loved him and he always came back to her, so she turned a blind eye and forgave him – until one day he disappeared without trace and was never heard from again.
William and Elinor were innocents, knowing naught of their paternal relationship, and their one terrible guilty mistake was to fall in love.
The pair were impetuous and impatient, willful and headstrong. Their guardians were concerned that the children were proceeding too fast down an unknown avenue of sin, and not wanting their children to become tarnished as sinful and shameful, they forbade further contact, aware that undoubtedly their children would disobey.
To be fair, Elinor tried hard to live up to her aunt’s high expectations. She tried to forget William, but she was eventually forced to concede that she could not; her feelings for her truelove just grew stronger with each passing day of absence.
William never did particularly care much what others thought and said about him behind his back. He was thick skinned enough to realise that words mattered not; it was actions that counted, and his course of action was to ensure that he and Elinor were together.
He saw through his mother’s lies, knowing she was merely worried about what another scandal would do to her standing in the local community – bad enough having a husband who had affairs and ran off, but to have her son living in sin with a slip of a girl was too much. William knew his mother did not give a damn for his happiness and no amount of protestations on her part that she had only his best interests at heart would convince him otherwise.
William ran away from home shortly before his seventeenth birthday, vowing never to return: like father like son. He collected Elinor from her home and the pair left Exeter behind them, along with Elinor’s aunt’s condemnations, warning of the dangers of sin, of the shame Elinor would heap upon her poor deceased mother’s memory.
The old woman’s parting words were that if Elinor went with William then she would never again be welcome in the family home, and that if any of the family ever set eyes upon William again then he would be horsewhipped to within an inch of his life.
The young lovers knew these to be no idle threats, but it did nothing to deter them from their destiny.
William and Elinor were innocents, outcasts from their families; their only crime was falling in love.
Ironically, until that fateful day, their love for one another had been merely platonic. No physical act of love had yet occurred. Their love for one another was so strong that they vowed a pact of chastity until marriage. It would have been so much easier on them both to reveal this to their families, but they knew they would not have been believed and so they let everyone believe whatever they wanted.
William drove Elinor to a beautiful but desolate place deep in the wild heart of Dartmoor. The day was hot, and as the pair made their way up to the top of a low hill, on top of which they discovered a pile of rocks and stone, they shed their inhibitions and shed their clothes. As they finally succumbed to the inevitable, surrenderin
g to their ever growing, desperate desire for one another by finally consummating their love, they also shed their innocence – and that was their greatest sin, their biggest mistake… their ultimate crime.
As they unknowingly committed their sin, the moon danced lazily across the sun, blotting out all daylight for a brief moment, until the act was done.
As they abandoned their childhood innocence and took a bite from the apple of adult knowledge, so the serpent slithered into their personal Eden.
The small hill on which they made love was known locally as Devill’s Tor, and the stones piled in a clearly defined formation indicated to the locals that this was in fact a burial mound; a barrow of immense age which none of the locals would approach.
To fornicate upon its summit was foolhardy in the extreme.
Local legend had it that the burial mound predated all recorded history, local or otherwise, by several million years, and that the Devill’s Tor marked the final resting place of one of Apollyon’s five children. Since the children of the Destroyer were as impossible to kill as the Horned Beast Himself, they were entombed within the dimension of the netherworld, each tomb marked by a tor, each of those five tors a gateway to the netherworld, and each opened in a different manner to the others.
The key to opening the prison of the Maleficent Man, spiritual son of Apollyon, was for a man and woman of the same paternal bloodline to indulge their illicit passion atop that gateway at the moment it was bathed in the darkness of a total solar eclipse.
William and Elinor were innocents, and their innocence was their downfall. They chose that particular moment of that particular day on that particular tor. Their son was conceived in a cataclysmic explosion at precisely the moment the gateway opened. The spirit of the imprisoned demon fled its tomb, finding safe haven in Elinor’s womb, where it grew to become William and Elinor’s firstborn.
There was only one witness to that hot summer afternoon of madness, a small girl wandering the wilds of Dartmoor alone. Her name was Dolores Hawthorne, and what she witnessed was foretold. In her mind she saw the horrors that the future held, and she wept for the world. Her mother had warned her of what was to come, and she had not believed. In her mind’s eye she saw all, and begged forgiveness for not trusting in her mother’s words. She prayed there was still time for her to learn all that was needed for salvation.
The Five Tors Page 16
