by Guy N Smith
A few weeks ago intercourse had been a pleasant experience. Not mind-blowing, just nice. Now Janice didn’t want to screw at all, the baby was close, sex might damage it. Shannon respected her wishes; she wasn’t sure about Stogie, he probably only held back because their high priest commanded him to. She didn’t trust Stogie. Anyway, the other four kept him fully satisfied.
Janice wished that she could attend a prenatal clinic, just to satisfy herself that everything was all right with her pregnancy. But Shannon said it wasn’t necessary. In fact, he forbade it. Their queen would ensure that everything was fine because the child belonged to the People of the Water from the foetus to the grave. Janice had divine help, what more could she ask?
Which was why Janice sensed that no medic would supervise the birth. She felt like the Virgin Mary in reverse, the anti-virgin. That was when it became a thousand times more frightening and she didn’t want to think about the future. Shannon only related the future to after the floods; the present was just an interim, a time of waiting.
But whatever Royston Shannon said, you ended up believing. In the beginning, she had questioned, doubted. She didn’t any longer because her world was within the confines of this place and its water temple. Nothing else existed, she had nowhere else to go. Indoctrination became blind faith.
She didn’t like it when they went to that other temple, that old dark underground lake. It scared her, even with Shannon to protect her. They always went there after dark, crammed into Shannon’s car. Janice had no knowledge of her surroundings, she had long ago lost all sense of direction.
Down in that awful place the water was icy cold. Things touched you when you submerged in it, invisible hands groped you obscenely, fingers probed all the way up into her womb as if they were checking on the unborn child. Once she had screamed out loud and Shannon had had to reassure her. He was a great comfort to her.
All the same, on those occasions when she thought about her predicament logically, she knew she had to be crazy. She had been vulnerable in those weeks after Alan had gone. Homeless, pregnant, no money, the city subways were her only refuge. She had been a dropout, she had even considered accepting a fix from one of the others in the hope that it would give her highs where there were only lows. Shannon had found her just in time.
Even now she could not imagine what he had been doing in that sleazy snack bar where the proprietor gave her a bacon sandwich and a mug of tea in return for the last of her change. It was as if Royston Shannon had known, he had manipulated her destiny.
By comparison, life was luxurious in the recesses of Packington Hall. Dressing up in fish-like costumes was fun, you screwed for your keep. Prostitution, but when you had a foetus in your womb, it was survival at any price. Sex was a cheap price to pay for your keep.
The others were druggies. Shannon had probably picked them up in circumstances similar to her own; who wouldn’t worship an unheard-of deity in return for everything he hadto offer?
He provided them with cannabis, rationed it, controlled highs to suit his own purposes.
Janice didn’t mix, she was a loner, used her condition as an excuse for keeping to herself. They didn’t bother her but she sensed their hostility towards her. Because she was pregnant; the other four girls were jealous of her, they had been conditioned to think in terms of pregnancy. Procreation for the People of the Water. They were frustrated, Shannon was starting to lose patience with them. Maybe their drugs had made them sterile.
An inflexible rule, you only mated in the water. Shannon had almost convinced her that she had conceived after her arrival here. Almost. Maybe eventually she would believe it, accept it.
She had lost all sense of time, days blended into weeks, into months when your only light was from an electric bulb and daylight was prohibited.
It was the sacrifices that scared her. Jesus, it was nothing short of murder!
That woman that Shannon had brought here, the one called Sharon. She was a hard bitch, you could tell by her expression that she wasn’t pandering to a fish god, just went along with it for what she could get out of it.
Shannon was shrewd, uncanny, he could read your mind, knew what you were thinking. He had seen through Sharon all right, and had brought her here for one purpose only.
Human sacrifice.
They always killed in that underground temple, never here. Here you were relatively safe.
Sharon had seemed to sense that they were going to do something to her. In the half-light of that cold and foul-smelling lake, she had hung back on the ledge, refused to get into the water. Maybe she would have tried to escape if Shannon hadn’t locked the door behind them like he always did. Once you were inside, you weren’t going anywhere without the high priest’s permission.
“Our queen awaits you,” Shannon had smiled with his thin lips, reached out for her. “We must not keep her waiting. See, even now the surface ripples!”
Janice had nearly screamed with Sharon, there was definitely something lurking down there, disturbing the water, casting a luminous glow.
Waiting.
Sharon fought him with a desperation born of fear for her life but her struggles were futile. He grabbed her, lifted her up with ease, carried her down the steps until the water lapped up to his waist.
A splash, the dark waters became a foaming, iridescent cauldron as he held her beneath the surface; held her there until her struggles grew feeble. Only when she was limp did he relinquish his hold on her, return to the shelf above.
The coven huddled together, watched and waited. Only Shannon seemed unmoved, stood there with arms aloft muttering some kind of incomprehensible incantation.
Something floated up to the surface.
It was Lisa who began to scream until Stogie, at a sign from Shannon, clapped a hand over her mouth and stifled her cries.
Sharon’s body bobbed and floated gently back to the steps. The soft light seemed to focus on her upturned face. It was all that Janice could do to stop herself from screaming. Sharon’s expression, the way her features were twisted into a mask of indescribable horror, the dead mouth still screaming mutely as it spewed black water.
Shannon and Stogie retrieved the corpse between them, carried it back upstairs and out into the open; a bizarre funeral cortege through the dark woods until they arrived back at the car where the body was deposited in the boot.
A short drive in silence and then Shannon pulled off the road, killed the engine and got out. Stogie followed him. Janice heard them at the rear of the vehicle, knew that they were lifting the corpse out. She listened to their receding footsteps, guessed by their lengthy absence that they had dumped it somewhere.
It had been much the same with the old man. Janice was fearful that night because Shannon had spoken of their queen demanding another sacrifice and there was no stranger in their midst. Maybe he planned to take one of them; it wouldn’t be herself because the Queen needed her child.
Then, as they stood there on the glistening wet shelf, his whispered chantings echoing eerily in that watery chamber, two muffled reports came from directly above them. Janice thought that maybe it was a thunderstorm. Shannon tensed, signalled to Stogie and the others. They followed him up above like silent water wraiths.
The old man fought them every inch of the way, his struggles only ceasing when they held him under the water. Then they loosed him, waited until the unholy one returned his corpse to the side.
This time it was far worse, sickening. Shannon stopped the car, the two men got the body out of the boot, sprawled it in the road in the beams of the headlights. Even then, the others had not the faintest idea what was about to happen until Shannon drove the car forward; they felt it lurch, jump, heard the cracking and squelching beneath the tyres.
Debbie clung to Sheila, Lisa threw up all down the front of her fish costume. Janice had had nightmares about it ever since.
They would sacrifice the latest initiate, Janice had no doubt about that. An aging but attractive spinster, she co
uld not possibly be destined to play any other useful role in the preparations for the coming of the People of the Water. As with Sharon, Shannon had lured her here as a sacrificial victim. She would be drowned in the dark lake, Janice tried not to think what fate might be in store for Barbara’s corpse afterwards.
Barbara was joining them tomorrow night for their pilgrimage to that place which the Queen had chosen for her return to a watery earth. Barbara would be persuaded to enter the water, held down forcibly until she drowned, and her body left to that awful creature in the depths until it had done whatever it did to human corpses. Janice dared not even think what inhuman act took place below the surface.
Janice’s only consolation was that she, herself, was safe while she carried her baby. After she had given birth was too terrible a prospect to dwell upon. Surely, though, they would need her to care for the infant, none of the others would be capable. That was shallow reassurance.
Each hour brought her closer to giving birth. She was imagining contractions, it was probably nervous tension.
She panicked, writhed on her makeshift bed. She was an accessory to murder, there was no way she could delude herself otherwise.
“Close?”
She started back to reality, came out of her awful reverie she had not heard anybody enter the near-derelict room.
Stogie stood just inside the doorway, sucked on the dead and soggy cheroot stump which had earned him his name. She had never known him even attempt to light it, maybe he was addicted to cold black nicotine juice.
“I thought I was going into labour,” God, he was revolting, a lecherous ghoul who scavenged on Shannon’s sexual leftovers, screwed under the pretext of procreation in the name of an ancient cult. She noted with a feeling of unease that there was an unmistakable protrusion behind the zip of his filthy jeans. Surely he would not attempt to take her on dry land, not in her condition. Shannon’s wrath would be too terrible to contemplate. “It’s just a false alarm, it’s gone away now.”
“Tomorrow,” he sucked on his cheroot, spat a dark brown stream on to the uncarpeted floor boards. “Tomorrow night, I’d say. Just a feeling I get.”
She shuddered.
“Shannon’ll kill us all, you realize that, don’t you?” His eyes flickered in the direction of the open door, his hoarse whisper shook. “He’ll make sure there’s only himself left for the Coming. He won’t chance the Queen choosing any of us ahead of him. I’ve been thinkin’ a lot about it lately, talked it over with the others. They’ve a mind same as me. He won’t have no use left for you after the baby’s born.”
Janice felt the panic gathering inside her, another stab of pain that might just have been a contraction. Her own fears put into words by somebody else was terrifying.
“We gotta stop him,” Stogie spat again.
“How?” Her eyes widened.
“Kill the bastard!” He moved over to the door, looked up and down the corridor outside. “Sacrifice ’im, the same way ’e does others and how ’e’ll kill us when the time comes. The Queen’ll give us power then, for sure.”
Jesus, Stogie was crazy! Indoctrination had gone over the top, now a power struggle threatened a coup within the coven.
“It’s impossible, Stogie.”
“No, it ain’t,” he leered behind his dead smoke, sucked noisily on it. His hand delved into his pocket, came out clutching something. His grasp concealed whatever it was; another glance behind him, he bent forward, pushed it into her hand.
Janice felt its hardness in her sweaty palm, an elongated shape wrapped up in a greasy cloth. Her fingers traced its outline, the hilt and the short blade.
“No!” Janice held it out, thrust it back at him. “Not me!”
“Your only chance, our only chance,” there was a fanatical gleam in those eyes which were no longer glazed over. “We reckon he’ll take you one more time in the water. A final fertilization so that he can claim the baby for his own, a child of the water fathered by the high priest. Strike fast, we’ll push him under, hold him down. Tomorrow night. Hold back if you can, if the baby comes before then, our chance is gone.”
Janice was shaking uncontrollably, wanted to hurl the knife from her, have no part in yet another sacrificial slaying. But it seemed to have stuck to her sweaty flesh. Like this was meant to be.
Like the Queen herself had appointed her to kill Royston Shannon.
Which was maybe why Elaine had left sometime during the night hours. They never saw her again after that.
Fifteen
“Detective Inspector Barr,” the man’s movements were quick, an alertness as he climbed out of the charcoal-grey Escort, the handshake was firm and decisive. A forced charm because he needed the cooperation of the pumping station manager. “Lichfield CID.”
“Pleased to meet you. What can I do for you?” Phil Quiles was both surprised and uneasy, overawed but not in the same way that Dalgety overawed him, respect that was devoid of fear and hatred.
“I’d like to have a look at your underground reservoir,” Barr nudged the car door shut. “Just a routine check. In connection with the recent killings which you’ve probably read about in the papers.”
“Oh, I see,” Phil felt himself relax a little.
“I’ve cleared it with your head office,” a plastic identification card was produced, returned to its folder in the same sweeping movement. “I won’t take up any more of your time than is absolutely necessary.”
“It’s only a few minutes’ walk,” Phil’s thoughts switched to the previous afternoon when he’d gone up to the blockhouse to return that strange ring. He’d left it on the shelf right by the water. It was surely gone by now, disappeared as mysteriously as it had appeared in the first place, taken back by its rightful owner. Mukasa, goddess of the deep waters.
“What’s that hole in the wall over there?” The detective’s keen eyes missed nothing, queried everything. He pointed ahead as they mounted the steep rise leading to the block house.
“It’s caused by the concrete cracking due to the pressure of the water on the inside walls over the years,” Phil hoped that he sounded convincing.
“I’ll take a quick look,” Barr forged on ahead, mounted the second flight of slab steps.
“I’ve tried to mend it,” Phil watched his companion sifting through the scattered rubble. Some of the mortar was still damp. “It just won’t hold. I guess it’s the damp from the reservoir that won’t allow it to set firm.”
“So I see. Fresh cement. Hmm!” Just in case you thought I hadn’t noticed. “Mixed within the last few days at a rough guess. But this hole is definitely not caused by the outward bowing of the walls.”
Phil went cold, his skin started to prickle. Please, come up with a logical everyday, boring explanation. “Isn’t it?”
“No way. It’s a regular tunnel of some kind like foxes or badgers always use the same run. See that slime in the hole where it hasn’t dried because the sun doesn’t get in there, and the damp from the water has kept it from drying out? It’s like an army of slugs or snails has passed to and fro. But they wouldn’t have the strength to bulldoze their way through concrete, now would they?”
“I guess not,” Phil licked his lips.
“Something down in that reservoir of yours uses this as a regular throughfare,” Barr’s eyes narrowed thoughtfully, “Curious, but I guess it doesn’t have any bearing on what I’m looking for. Take a tip from me, Mister Quiles, if you want to find out what’s doing it, borrow one of those steel spring vermin traps from a gamekeeper, the kind they set in tunnels to trap stoats and weasels. You’d catch whatever it is that goes in and out of there, no trouble. It’d be interesting to find out what species it is.”
No, I don’t want to find out, I don’t want to set eye it, it can come and go as often as it likes, as far as I’m concerned. “Thanks, I’ll bear it in mind.”
“Lousy security,” Barr’s tone was scathing as he watched Phil unlocking the outer door of the building. “A heavy duty
door and lock, but that barbed wire surround wouldn’t keep a child out. Anybody with any common sense would climb over the gate so that they didn’t snag their trousers. You don’t even have to get through this door to reach the water, just lift the lid of one of those inspection hatches and drop in whatever poison you’ve brought with you. Or, easier still, chuck it in through that hole in the wall. A terrorist’s or a madman’s dream come true.”
“I’ve told my bosses,” Phil pushed the door inwards. They don’t seem to think that there’s any risk, probably because they’ll be doing away with this reservoir before long, draining it.”
“The population of the village down below could get poisoned in the meantime. A guy who’s crazy enough to inject jars of babyfood on store shelves won’t think twice about contaminating a water supply.”
Phil moved inside. Thank God there weren’t naked footprints all over the floor!
“Christ, what a bloody stink!” Barr coughed, cleared his throat. “Like dead rats are decomposing.”
“It’s the damp and the fact that the place is shut up all the time.”
“Know anything about this fellow Maddox?” The question was fired with a suddenness that was meant to catch the other off-guard, a tactic which the detective employed frequently.
“No more than anybody else around here. Sometimes you wouldn’t see him for weeks, other times he’d be a nuisance hanging round looking for chores. He was harmless but he used to scare the village kids. My son was terrified of him.”
“No reason you know that anybody might want him dead?”
“None that I know.” Phil shrugged his shoulders.
“Drowning a guy and then amateurishly trying to make it look like a hit-and-run road accident is pretty extreme. The same goes for drowning a prostitute and then dumping her miles from the nearest water. Trying to throw us off the scent. How many other people besides yourself have got access to this reservoir, Mister Quiles?”
