No, it didn’t make sense.
When I looked up again she’d gone…
Deep in thought, the mobile phone ringing nearly catapulted her off the seat. Becky fumbled in her bag, catching the call just before it went to voicemail.
“Hi, Toby.”
“Hi! Becky, where are you?”
“On my way home. Be there in about an hour. Why?”
“Nothing much. I fancied a chat, that’s all. I know it’s a bit of an imposition when you’re off duty but–”
“Ah no, don’t be daft. Come on over and I’ll put the kettle on. Cal won’t be back until late anyway – he’s in Goole.”
“Yeah, I know. He left me writing up the report on Woodsend. God, there’s a mountain of stuff to get through.”
The line was quiet for a moment as if he wanted to say more.
“Was it something in particular? I’m guessing it’s to do with what we were talking about the other night?”
“Yes and no…um–”
“Okay, tell me later. Look, while I’ve got you, and this may be something or nothing, but I’ve just seen Alice’s psychologist and she mentioned she’d noticed a woman watching Alice from the yard at the back of the unit. Now the thing is, that yard is locked and this woman was not a member of staff, so I’m just a bit uneasy: she doesn’t fit Ida’s description but what if Ida has an accomplice and Alice is at risk of being snatched? It’s just a feeling I can’t shake.”
“Why would they do that, though? I mean, Alice can’t talk and she’s mentally ill – she’s not going to give evidence in court, is she? Why would anyone want to snatch her?”
“That’s what I was trying to work out. Anyway, I’m just passing it on – call me paranoid.”
“Back atcha with that one! See you later, then?”
Becky ended the call. He was putting a chirpy face on, but that lad was still very disturbed; his six month nightmare was far from over by the sound of it.
***
Just over an hour later they were walking up the front path to Jasmine Cottage, Becky holding her aching back and trying not to waddle – conscious of, as Callum had put it so sweetly, looking like she had a pumpkin between her legs.
Toby, though…Toby was visibly wired. If she didn’t know better she’d say he was on something: his eyes were darting round in the sockets as if he expected someone to spring him any second, and he’d developed a disconcerting habit of constantly checking over his shoulder.
“Are you alright? You seem a bit nervous.”
“Yeah, Becky – honestly, fine, really, yeah…much better.”
Either side of the path, sprays of lavender scented the air and the cottage garden hummed with the drone of dozy bees. Becky glanced over at the stone terrace hoping to see Louie stretching out on the warm stones. It was strange he’d vanished. Nine years old and neutered, Louie had clearly been happy here after months in the RSPCA. What a shame…really…what a disappointment.
She put the key in the lock and they stepped into the cool, musty hallway. “Come in, Toby. Just fling your jacket anywhere. Have a seat.”
“Thanks.”
She threw open the windows and flicked the kettle on.
“Ooh, that’s better – bit of fresh air. Tea or coffee?”
“Tea please, Becks.”
“Right you are.” She rummaged around for mugs and tea bags. “It’s a pity your girlfriend turned the other night into an embarrassment to be honest, because I really wanted to hear what you had to say. Still, Cal wasn’t much better, was he?”
“No, he’s even worse – like he’s in denial or something – he just won’t have it. Anything to do with spirits or religion and he shuts down like a trap door. Anyway, there’s no way on God’s earth I could talk to anyone other than you about what I need to say. I hope you’re ready for it?”
She filled the kettle. “Let me get the tea made then we can talk properly. So you seeing her again then, this Amy? She was very pretty.”
He shrugged. “Think so. If I haven’t freaked her out too much.”
“Well perhaps it’s best not to tell her anything more, she’s a bit young. Mind you, so are you…but she must be what…twenty?”
“Twenty-three.”
“Do you want milk and sugar, I can’t remember? I’m all over the place at the moment.”
“Just a drop of milk, ta. Didn’t you have a cat? Where is he?”
“Yes, Louie. He seems to have vanished, though, the ungrateful swine.”
“Typical, that. Maybe it’s down to the ghost in the mirror you were talking about – they know about that kind of thing, do cats.”
She brought the mugs over and sat opposite him. “Gee, thanks - that makes me feel really great stuck out here on my own.”
“Sorry, I was only kidding. Trying to lighten the mood. You don’t really think this place is haunted, do you?”
“No, but I think I am. Anyway, let’s talk about you. Where were we before the laughing policeman and giggling Gertie interrupted us so rudely?”
Toby took a sip of tea. “Well, I couldn’t have said anymore anyway with them there; don’t know why I started in the first place.”
“Drink. You’d had about six huge glasses of red and counting.”
“That could be it.”
“So let me get the facts straight – you were down under Tanners Dell with forensics when you collapsed? Everyone thought you’d slipped on the wet stones and banged your head, which is why you couldn’t remember anything, yes? But you and I know it’s more than that and now you’ve remembered the cause? I have to tell you I’m bursting to know because I only recently had that message about Lilith, so if it’s to do with her I am seriously interested. I want to get to the bottom of this.”
He nodded. “Yes, oh yes it’s to do with her alright. To be fair, it’s extremely personal and I find it embarrassing as hell, so I really do need you to keep it to yourself. If Cal hears about this I’ll be a bloody laughing stock. I don’t even know if it’ll help either of us but from what you were saying it just might.”
“Are you still having night terrors?”
“Becky, I haven’t told the GP a fraction of this - as far as he’s concerned I’m fine and dandy. I don’t want him giving me anymore sedatives and I don’t want putting in hospital again either. Having mental health issues is never a good career move, is it? And besides, things are a hell of a lot worse if I’m unconscious.”
“How do you mean?”
“They’re not like nightmares you can wake up from, Becky – these night terrors are completely different. I read up about them. There are studies showing they don’t belong to dream sequences – that they’re caused by external factors – it’s been proven they can physically paralyse you. So something other than fear or imagination is causing this, something real. Becky, I swear something’s watching me – just waiting for me to lose consciousness.”
She looked at his young face, ringed with sleepless shadows, and the wider than wide eyes, the way his hands gripped the mug and his legs jittered constantly.
“Well, first things first - I’ve never heard of that. You can read all sorts of unsubstantiated stuff online if you’re not careful, Tobes. Look, let’s start at the beginning and we’ll talk through it properly, okay? Remember I’ve been through some pretty horrible stuff myself that no one to this day has been able to explain, and so have the entire team, so don’t hold back – tell me everything and we’ll take it one step at a time. It does help to know we’re not alone, you know? And you’re not – both Noel and I are experiencing the same thing.”
He nodded.
“Good. Right, so let’s start from where you went into the vault.”
He immediately turned his head away.
She waited. The buzzing of the bees seemed to intensify and the air stilled while he gazed out of the window. After a while there was nothing but the sound of the clock in the hall ticking the time away.
When he finally faced
her again his eyes were unfocused and glazed, fixed on a far point only he could see, almost as if he’d slipped into a trance.
“Toby?”
There was no response.
A tiny flicker of alarm caught in her chest. “Toby, are you alright? Can you hear me?”
After a long moment he blinked repeatedly, almost as if he’d only just realised where he was. “Sorry, what?”
“Didn’t you hear what I last said?”
“Yeah, to go into the vault?”
She nodded. “You went a bit fuzzy on me. Look, only do this if you want to, if it helps. If it’s too traumatic we can stop anytime.”
“Becky, will you promise to keep this to yourself? I’m deadly serious. Even from Cal? I just–”
She nodded. “Yes, of course. Absolutely.”
“Right. Right…okay…” He took a deep breath and then the words flew out. “Well, it was absolutely freezing down there back in February – the floor was slimy and slippy, walls dripping and everything black dark like down a pit. My fingers were numb and I couldn’t stop my teeth chattering – every day it was like you just couldn’t get warm when you got home either – horrible – and it’d been going on for weeks. I suppose looking back it must have got to me, and loads of the others went off sick. Anyway, that particular day I’d gone on ahead, further down the corridor beyond the main room where most of the team were working. It was bad enough in there: I don’t know what we expected – maybe not something so sophisticated - you’d think an underground cave for Satanists would be just that, but it turned out to be old and grand like a masonic hall. In the middle of the floor there’s this really intricate mosaic-tiled circle engraved with animal heads and hieroglyphs, and symbols carved into the stonework – the all-seeing eye, scales and pillars–”
“That does sound masonic.”
“I agree except it isn’t a freemasons’ lodge and never has been. But that’s what I was struggling to understand, you see, because a lot of it was ancient. We brought in some academics but the guy leading the team got spooked and wouldn’t work down there. They had to dig it up piece by piece, which is why it’s taken so long - I’ve still got his reports to go through. Anyway, what I do know is that much of it was imported and may date as far back as the 12th century; they’re still working on where from. The more recent stuff though, was set up like a satanic church – crudity overlaying the finery if you like – with crosses hung upside down and vile pictures of bestiality and orgies. It was a freaky enough place but kind of staged with red curtains and candelabras: just a front for what really went on as it turned out.”
“How do you mean? What’s worse than conjuring up the devil and sacrificing human victims?”
“Like I said – are you ready for this?”
“I doubt you could shock me.”
He laughed bleakly. “Want a bet?”
“Go on then - I’m ready.”
He drained his tea and put down the mug, still staring at her.
“Toby, you’re freaking me out. This must be really bad?”
“Okay, here goes, don’t say I didn’t warn you. Right, well, leading out of that room is a rabbit warren of tunnels. You have to feel your way along inch by inch because it’s coalface black, and you can’t see the way back either because somehow it shuts behind you – I can’t explain it except you’re turning corners so behind you is solid wall again. And it stinks like a sewer - really hard to breathe. I must’ve been holding my breath because I felt dizzy from the off. Anyway, I put my night vision glasses on and at that point I could still hear the others in the main room. I was just thinking, you know, I wonder what’s through here and through here…and so on….
And then I came to the first room and it totally threw me. I just wasn’t expecting what I saw. There were heavy duty chains hammered into the stone floor, leg irons and clamps; and a chair with cuffs and manacles facing the far end so whoever was in it could only see the wall in front of them…It was like some kind of medieval torture chamber. I tried to backtrack at that point but I couldn’t, and accidentally stumbled through to another one…down a step…and this is where it morphed into some kind of suite of chambers. I could hear dripping water and the floor was like ice. Literally, it was one baby step at a time with my arms outstretched. And this one was longer, more like a tunnel…I just had to keep walking through, hoping I’d come out the other side…but it wasn’t a walkway at all, it was another torture chamber. You ever heard of a strappado?”
Becky shook her head.
“It’s where they stretch someone’s arms back using a pulley until they wrench them out of the sockets. They used to use it to torture women during the witch hunts. And hanging from the ceiling were iron hooks – you know, like meat hooks? And in the corner was a tin bath and some buckets. Graffiti was smeared on the walls – God knows with what, it looked like blood – and then I trod on something and picked it up. I’ll never, ever get over it… never.”
“Do you want to say?”
“No, but I’ll tell you. It was a mousetrap, Becky, only with someone’s finger bones still in it…I dropped it and all I could hear was my own blood pumping in my ears in this endless dripping, freezing silence with more and more archways to more and more torture chambers to come and…and… Oh God, imagine being down there with masked figures over you, knowing what’s coming…hearing screams…not being able to see or to get out–”
Becky reached over for his hands and squeezed them tightly. “Go on – just get this out, don’t lock it inside.”
“You can smell it, you know? The blood and the fear and the filth. And you’re just thinking it can’t get worse but then it does and after that you can’t un-see it.
It’s some sort of maze down there: we’ve mapped it now but I didn’t know at the time – all I knew was I no longer had any bearings or clue how to get out again. Panic was rising up but all I could do was keep on going, hoping I’d hit on a main route back, when suddenly it was the end of the tunnel and I’d reached the very last room.
By that time I had no idea where I was and I couldn’t hear another living soul. And there in front of me was a nightmare - lit up in the bluey green haze of my night vision glasses. And this is where it all gets so much worse. Becky, I was staring at an operating table with racks and racks of medical implements – syringes, scalpels, scissors and receptacles – and around it a ring of chairs like it’s a fucking viewing gallery…what… I mean can you imagine, what the fuck they were doing? And on the shelves were glass jars with…oh God–” He looked away and blurted it out in one breath. “There were human eyes, tongues, foetuses…stuff like that…all preserved in formaldehyde; and coffins full of dead snakes and spiders with decomposed bodies inside–”
Neither of them spoke for several minutes.
Becky walked over to the cupboard and poured them both a brandy.
He knocked his back in one. “I wish I could rid myself of the images, I really do. It started then really, with the nightmares and this overpowering blackness weighing me down, like life was never going to be the same ever again for me. The others saw it too – it’s all documented and photographed; it’s real, but they weren’t on their own and they knew what was coming. I’m not saying it didn’t affect them because I know it did, but God, yeah… well, it was the shock of it and the atmosphere: really oppressive and menacing – I still carry it with me, never shook it off.”
“It must have been terrible.”
“I would have got over it though, I’m sure. Really, I’d have been alright even after that. And everyone else saw it so I knew I wasn’t going mad. But no one else went in to her, you see?”
Becky shook her head in confusion.
“What I’ve told you in confidence is documented and will be presented in court. Obviously I wouldn’t want to repeat any of that to anyone else outside the police service, but it isn’t that…I just had to lead you up to this bit, so you know how it happened and how I felt.”
�
�But that was the last room, right?”
He nodded. “Yes, the last room.”
“So?”
“Becky, swear on your life you won’t repeat this….I mean it - even Cal? He’s seen the photographs but he doesn’t know what happened to me personally. No one does. Even I didn’t because my memory blocked it, until the other night when it all rushed back. The only reason I’m telling you now is because it may, just may, help one of us or both of us.”
“I promise.”
He leaned forwards then, lowering his voice as if he didn’t even trust the shadows. “That last room- it had a door. I thought it was maybe a cupboard for where they kept documents or some evil artefacts or something and just thought I’d take a quick look. It was a tiny space and I had to crawl in on my knees. There was nothing in that room, though, Becky. Nothing. I was relieved – truly had my guard down, actually exhaling and getting ready to backtrack and start shouting to the team – when I noticed the ceiling. I lay on my back to shuffle out and get a better look at the same time.”
He closed his eyes tightly, concentrating, determined to relate what happened as accurately as possible. “You know those Greek goddesses carved in glossy marble – you see them in stately homes and gardens? Well, it was like that only it was on the ceiling looking down at me – totally out of place and completely incongruous – and through night vison glasses the white stone shone light green and it was a bit eerie, but not really scary, not compared to what I’d already seen. To be honest what was going through my head was that this was their icon or something, an expensive bit of marble, and now I wanted to go back.
“The problem was that although I was desperate to tear myself away I actually couldn’t. I just could not stop staring. The face had bulging eyeballs as large as peeled eggs, and long hair coiling down a naked body with a snake wrapped round it. There was quite a dreamy feeling really, like being lulled…and then suddenly the little door slammed shut and I nearly had a bloody heart attack. I tried to get up but I couldn’t, and in less than a second I swear the atmosphere got so intense and oppressive it made my head pound and I felt physically sick. And I still couldn’t move – at all. I can’t tell you the panic…my body was going to explode. I kept trying to get up but my legs were paralysed and my chest was weighed down with lead, and the walls were folding in. I couldn’t breathe, I couldn’t shout and I couldn’t move. And all the time I’m fixed on this sculpture in the ceiling, and it’s growing bigger and bigger – floating down on top of me – and still I couldn’t take me eyes off it–
Magda: A Darkly Disturbing Occult Horror Trilogy - Book 3 Page 7
