Shadowmancer

by G. P. Taylor

  In the bay, pieces of the Friendship were washed ashore by the now gentle waves. Demurral walked up and down the beach becoming ever angrier.

  He screamed at the sea, ‘Come to me my pretty, come to me.’ In his hands he held the acacia pole. The glow of the divining hand was beginning to fade.

  Beadle followed his every step. ‘How do you know it was on the ship? How do you know it will be here?’

  ‘It has to be here. It has to be tonight. There are only two Keruvim in the whole universe and they must be together. They will always find each other, that is the Law.’ Demurral looked out to the ship.

  ‘What if it’s gone down with the wreck? Gold doesn’t float.’ Beadle asked.

  ‘Then you, my friend, will have to learn to swim or you will go the same way as they have and the Seloth will feast on your soul as well.’ He pointed a long bony finger to the ship lying slaughtered on the rocks.

  ‘Where are you? Come to me, come to me!’ The priest shouted at the waves. The sea gave no reply. The wind was silent and the waves babbled over the shingle. Beadle followed Demurral along the beach, both men searching the tide for the Keruvim. It was nowhere to be found.

  The Poisoned Angel

  THE following morning, as the waves crashed and rolled against the beach, a bright amber glow appeared to the north just above the horizon. The clouds were edged with a green tinge, and the fresh morning sun was glowing blood-red. It was as if the sky had been re-coloured.

  The villagers from Thorpe filled the beach looking over the wreckage and taking whatever they thought useful. Obadiah Demurral, Vicar of Thorpe and all lands to the south, rushed into the centre of the gathering and jumped up on a small rock. He was now higher than the crowd that picked over the boxes, sails, and smashed barrels littering the beach. Beadle, his servant, followed on behind, even more pained from the fall of the night before. The Friendship lay broken open a hundred yards from the shore in a gentle swell.

  ‘Gentlemen, ladies, we stand in the midst of a great tragedy. Many fine men have lost their lives in this vessel, and we have to bury the dead of Baytown. Let us not become grave robbers.’ It was clear that he spoke with false concern. The crowd gathered around him and began to mutter and moan. Demurral spoke even louder.

  ‘As vicar of the parish I have the right of salvage. All this belongs to me.’

  ‘The whole world belongs to you, Vicar,’ a young boy with a pair of old boots hanging around his neck shouted out from the crowd, then laughing, ducked down behind a burly fisherman.

  The fisherman took him by the collar of his torn and tattered jacket and held him in the air. The collar ripped and the fabric split around the neck; the boy kicked at his shins. ‘Put me down, you barrel of fish bones!’ he cried.

  The fisherman spun him around by the scruff of his neck, released his grip and the boy slumped to the beach, slipping and falling backwards into a rock pool directly in front of Parson Demurral.

  ‘Thomas Barrick,’ he roared. ‘I should have known it would be you. You’re not only wet behind the ears, you’re wet behind the rump as well.’

  The crowd laughed at the boy as he got to his feet and brushed the damp sand from the back of his trousers. He turned and began to walk away. Demurral continued to speak.

  ‘Friends, let us treat all these things with great dignity. Take all you find to the Vicarage and I will make a correct record. We will hold a wreck sale on the quay at Whitby on All Souls’ Eve. We will divide what we sell by the number here today.’ Demurral smiled as he spoke, but his face was closed and secret.

  Like an obedient congregation, the villagers all nodded. The fisherman shouted up, ‘I agree with the Vicar, let’s take what we can find and sell it on the quay.’ As he spoke he nodded in approval of himself.

  Thomas turned back and shouted at him: ‘You’d agree with the hangman before he dropped you through the trap. What you collect will not be what you sell.’ He looked across to Demurral. ‘Are you going to steal a tenth of this, like you do everything else?’

  ‘Ignore this little vermin, he is only too lazy to help and too stubborn to want to. He’ll be the one who loses, when all he’s got is the bread dole.’ Beadle had surprised himself. He hadn’t intended to speak; the words had just appeared in his mouth. The crowd cheered and Beadle pushed out his chest, suddenly feeling important. His ears began to glow and he twitched his nose with great glee.

  Thomas picked up a smooth round stone from the beach.

  ‘I don’t mind work, Beadle. One more word from you and I’ll knock that wart from the end of your nose. Where were you the night my mother was burnt out of the cottage?’ He pulled back his arm, closed one eye and aimed the stone.

  An old woman spoke softly and motioned with the back of her hand for Thomas to walk on.

  ‘Be off with you, Thomas, this isn’t the place and it isn’t the way. Leave the Vicar to his business or you’ll find yourself before the Magistrate.’

  ‘I’ll be off, but you mark my words, that man has a plan and it’s not one from God. It’ll cost each one of you more than your life.’ His eyes filled with angry tears and he smashed the stone against the cliff.

  Demurral smiled complacently at Beadle and said quietly:‘He may throw stones, but he will find that I can cast shadows. It will not be long before the darkness gathers on his life.’

  Thomas turned and walked along the shingle towards a finger of mud and shale that jutted out of the cliff into the sea, separating the bay from Beastcliff. He scrambled up the shale, over the rock and into the cover of the wood. His anger burnt inside his head and he coughed back tears that he didn’t want to cry.

  Thomas Barrick was thirteen years old. He had lived all his life in Thorpe and had never been any further than Whitby. His father had been lost at sea in a great storm when Thomas was seven years old. He and his mother had lived on in the cottage rented from the church. It was more a stack of rooms than a house. It had one room down and another up, with a dry privy in the yard that they shared with three other cottages. The Vicar owned the villages of Peak and Thorpe. Every house, hostel, farm, and shop paid him rent and tithes: one tenth of everything went to Demurral and the villagers never saw a penny back.

  Thomas was now homeless. The death of his father and the sickness of his mother had left them unable to pay the rent, and with Demurral there was no charity. As he walked along the path through Beastcliff, he remembered how Demurral and his men had threatened that she would be out within the week if she couldn’t pay.

  Two nights later, just after dark, he had left the cottage to pick sea coal from the beach. From the shore he had seen the smoke. He ran back to the village and found the cottage burning brightly in the night air. Demurral and Beadle had just happened to be passing. His mother was sprawled in the back of Leadley’s cart, covered in a blanket. Mrs Leadley was by her side.

  ‘Don’t worry, Tom, she’s all right. We’ll take her to the infirmary. They’ll look after her,’ she said.

  Demurral had butted in. ‘Sorry, Thomas, you should have taken more care of my property. I’m afraid this is a clear breach of tenancy. You will both have to find somewhere else to live.’ He raised one eyebrow higher than the other. The side of his mouth twitched a pleasing twitch. ‘There is always room with my pigs.’

  ‘Pigs!’ Thomas had shouted. ‘There is only one pig around here and that is the Vicar himself.’

  He grabbed hold of an old bramble to pull himself up. The spines stuck into his palm, but his bursting anger dulled the pain. He found the path through the wood that led across the back of the Nab and then down into the Bay.

  He loved the Bay. It was a place of adventure, with the finest sand and no shingle. It was shaped like a giant horseshoe set in the sea. At low tide there were wonderful rock pools full of seaweed, small fish and red crabs. It was a place of legend – chilling stories that went back to the dawn of time, tales of King Henry and Robyn of Loch Sley – framed by the high moor and the great sea.

>   For the past few weeks the Bay had also been his home. Since the fire he had lived in a hob hole, a large cave in which the villagers believed the Hob of Thorpe lived. Every village had its own hob: a spirit that would take on the form of a small man. Hobs were little dark brown creatures with large eyes, small ears, and tufts of black stubbly hair – just like Beadle. They possessed magical powers and would play tricks on the unwary and those who didn’t leave it food or money.

  The villagers at Peak said that Beadle was the son of a hob, that he had been conceived when his mother had fallen asleep on Beastcliff.

  The hob always lived in a hole or cave in the sea cliff. It was said that they could cure all things from belly spots to whooping cough. The whooping cough had killed Thomas’s older sister when she was two years old. She had whooped and coughed for several days and nights, then finally died. His mother had said it had smothered her spirit, taking away her life. Next time, she said, they would take a child to the Hob.

  When Thomas was five he had coughed his way through his fourth winter and fifth birthday on Lady Day and by Maundy Thursday was so sick he couldn’t walk. His father had carried him over to the Hob at Runswick Bay.

  He was covered in goose grease and brown paper and wrapped in a thick blanket. His father had set out to cover the eleven miles on foot with Thomas strapped to his chest. When they arrived at Runswick Bay it was mid-afternoon. His father had stood on the beach in front of the hob hole and shouted the spell into the darkness.

  ‘Hob! Hob! Lad’s got hicky cough. Tak’ it off, tak’ it off, tak’ it off.’ With that he threw a penny coin into the hole, lifted Thomas from the ground and slapped him on the back three times before pushing his head into the hole.

  Thomas could still remember the sickening, musty smell. It was dark, damp and almost full of rotten food thrown in by the old woman who looked after the Hob. Thomas took in a deep breath and began to cough and cough and cough. He felt as though his breathing would stop. He coughed until he was sick. But he never coughed again.

  Thomas had felt cheated. All that way and he hadn’t even glimpsed the Hob. Surely it couldn’t have been that small. There was barely enough room for his head down the hole, never mind a hob as well. By Easter Eve he had convinced himself that hobs did not exist – but he wondered why his cough had gone.

  Now he was returning to his makeshift home deep in a real hob hole, thoughts of his mother’s illness replacing the memory of his own. He had all that he needed: driftwood for a fire, bracken for a bed, candle stubs that he had stolen from Demurral, and dole bread. As a pauper, he was allowed to collect the dole bread from St Stephen’s. Each week one loaf of bread was left for him in the cupboard at the back of the church. This was the only charity he got; the only charity he wanted. Thomas promised to himself that now he was settled he would visit his mother.

  Thomas knew that none of the villagers would come near the cave until All Souls’ Day, for fear of the Hob. He hurried down the track and through the wood. It was a gentle slope to the beach. Soon the tree cover would break open and he would have a view of Baytown and the coast.

  Suddenly he heard the sound of scratching against wood, like the noise of a large animal sharpening its claws. It rasped and chaffed at the bark of a tree to his right, higher up the cliff. He looked but could see nothing. Thomas knew there were no wild dogs in these woods, yet the sound came again, this time from behind him and getting closer. Whatever it was moved from tree to tree and scratched each one as it went by. It was like the sound of a farm cat scratching for mice at the barn door, only this time it was a louder and far bigger creature.

  He shrugged his shoulders and pulled up his torn collar against the wind blowing through the trees. Then he heard the scream. It was a scream that almost burst his ears and took the breath from his body. Thomas began to run in fear to the caves.

  Whatever was stalking him was getting closer. The path of Beastcliff was slippery from the morning frost and as he ran downhill he went faster and faster, jumping the knots of tree roots that burst through the path. Twenty yards ahead the path forked. To the right it went to the beach and the caves, straight on to the top of the Nab and then the sea. He grabbed the bow of a small sapling and it flung him round and on to the beach path.

  He laughed to himself and thought, I’ll never be caught, by man or beast.

  Suddenly in front of him, only a few feet down the path, he heard the scream again. Immense, unseen claws frantically rasped at the wood, gouging deep wounds into the soft flesh, shredding the bark, of an oak tree to his left. All around him the light of day was being transformed into a deep black, sucked into a dark shape that now blocked his escape. The light of the sun was being stolen from the sky and pulled into a black shadow. A shadow that slowly and meticulously began to take the form of a large black animal.

  Thomas felt that his feet were rooted to the ground with fear, beads of sweat dripped across his forehead. The animal began to take on form and substance, becoming almost solid in appearance, towering frighteningly above him. An aura of power surrounded the creature, as the pulsating shadow reached out towards him.

  Digging at the last of his strength, he turned and ran towards the Nab. He was soon out of the trees and on to the narrow path that ran along the top of the rocky outcrop separating Beastcliff from the Bay. He looked back to the wreck of the ship. The beach was now empty apart from a solitary figure dressed in clerical black holding both arms above his head, in his hands a small figure that glinted in the morning light.

  From the wood Thomas again heard the scream and the shredding of wood as the shadow creature got closer and closer.

  There was no escape. He was trapped on the cliff top. Behind him were the creature and the forest; in front was the sea a hundred feet below. High above his head were the battlements of the Vicarage, the home of Demurral.

  The bushes at the side of the path began to shudder as their branches were torn from the trunks and thrown into the air. The invisible beast was at the edge of the wood and only feet away from Thomas.

  Thomas could feel the energy and life being sucked from his body. A thick mist surrounded him and began to wrap him tighter and tighter. His eyelids became heavy and all he wanted was sleep. He began to dream with his eyes wide open, yet he could no longer see the world or hear the sea. Dark shapes appeared then vanished; disfigured faces in black cowls lurched at him laughing and chattering through broken teeth. In his stupor he felt as if he was being lifted from his feet by the mist. A dark hand was squeezing his body so that he could hardly breathe. In his dream he could see his father on the night of the great storm. He was struggling in the sea as waves crashed over him, taking him deeper into the depths.

  Through the blackness he saw something reaching out to him.

  ‘Come to me, Thomas. Come to me. Take my hand; it will free you from the darkness.’ It was the rich, warm, loving voice of his dead father. ‘Fight, Thomas, like I told you how to fight.’

  Thomas limply raised his hand, fighting against the thick black cords of mist that gripped him in his weakness.

  ‘I can’t … I want to sleep. Just to sleep.’ His voiced ebbed away. He had no strength. He was being emptied of his life as the shadow creature swirled around him, binding him tighter and tighter.

  There was a sudden thunderous explosion. The mist disappeared and Thomas felt his arms drop to his side. He could see the sky, then the sea, then the cliff. He was falling, crashing the hundred feet to the rocks below.

  The sea swiftly engulfed him and the ice-cold water burnt against his skin. Down and down he sank, surrounded by the swirling green of seaweed. He could feel the breath bursting in his lungs as he lashed out frantically with his arms and legs, grappling for the surface and the fresh October air. But he couldn’t. His feet were gripped in a mass of seaweed that covered the rocky seabed. He held his breath for as long as he could until his lungs threatened to burst. When he could hold his breath no more he closed his eyes and breathed out,
knowing there was no air to breathe in. He stopped struggling in the weed and rested in the waves, his long hair covering his face like a watery mask.

  The Triptych

  THOMAS woke up in his hob cave. A warm fire glowed in the darkness and the smell of cooked fish greeted him. His clothes were hanging against the wall, drying by the heat of the fire.

  ‘How?’

  He spoke out quietly, his eyes looking around the cave he knew so well and where he had lived for the past few months.

  ‘Who?’

  There was a crunching on the shingles in the mouth of the cave and footsteps crept stealthily towards him. A dark shadow moved over the wall of the cave, growing larger. Thomas slid back under the tatty grey horse blanket and hid his head.

  ‘You’re awake, aren’t you?’ It was more of a statement than a question. Thomas slowly pulled the blanket down from his face and stared into the eyes of a young man with deep black skin and long hair that had been rolled into shoulder-length locks, glinting with drops of oil.

  ‘Who are …?’ But Thomas was interrupted by the smooth voice of the young man who replied in perfect English.

  ‘I am Raphah. I realized you were in trouble when I saw you fall into the sea. I pulled you from the weed.’ There was peace in his voice. He paused, smiled and said, ‘Welcome to my home.’ His bright eyes wandered around the fire-lit cave.

  ‘This isn’t your home,’ snapped Thomas. ‘It is my cave. I found it before you. I’ve been coming here for years.’ He pulled the blanket closer to himself and stared at Raphah through narrowed eyes.

  ‘Maybe I should have left you to the sea, then I could have lived here alone. I hope that not everyone in this place is as ungrateful as you; or are they worse?’ Raphah laughed and turned the fish that was slowly cooking on long sticks held over the fire. ‘Do you want to eat, or are you still full of seaweed?’