by G R Jordan
At about 2 am he saw movement in the home and then a figure exiting the front door. They were dressed in black and began to search the immediate vicinity of the care home. The figure moved in a simple pattern and Havers was able to avoid them easily as they approached. Evidently satisfied with their search, the person returned to the home and could be seen through the glass with a telephone in hand.
Two minutes later a black van arrived. Four figures exited the care home briefly and opened up the doors, including a large sliding one on the side of the van. Havers watched them return to the building and then re-emerge carrying two bodies, one of which Havers recognized immediately. Austerley. And there’s his missing foot to confirm it.
Having dumped their cargo into the van, all four figures climbed on board and the van drove off serenely. Havers noted the plate as it went by and with a flick of his wrist threw a small tracker, no bigger than a slice of carrot, onto the side of the van. He waited for a few minutes to make sure the action had moved on before returning to his car.
On sitting down at the driver’s seat he switched on the computer interface and selected his tracker software. Good, he thought, it’s working. The tracker software showed the van entering the lower car park for the town’s viewpoint, Gibbet Point. Havers drove to a spot some distance from the car park and followed the alternative path to the hill top. Mentally checking his armoury, Havers hoped there would be no encounters. This was strictly reconnaissance.
At the top he was able to find a dark spot in the bracken. Crouching down, he saw six figures approach Gibbet Point via the main path. Two of the figures appeared to be walking in a drunken state. One had to be supported because he was missing a foot. Austerley. The figure at the front was slight, but attractive.
Austerley and the other man were dumped unceremoniously on the ground while the slight figure began to remove her outer clothing. It’s that nurse, thought Havers. The one from Austerley’s room. The other three figures crowded over Austerley’s companion and began to chant. Havers watched as the chanting increased. The nurse cried out in a bizarre language unknown to Havers and shed her remaining clothes. Any erotic thoughts were driven from Havers’ mind by the sound of the language. It wasn’t just guttural but positively hellish.
The man on the floor cried out and Havers could see, by what poor light there was, the man’s features start to shrink. Before Havers’ eyes, the man’s hair began to fall out and his nose and ears grew significantly. Blotches appeared on the skin and, without warning, the man’s joints began to contract. He was shrivelling up.
Time to intervene, thought Havers, and he reached inside his outfit to press a button. At HQ, the loudest alarm rang and agents who had previously been spending a quiet night shift sprang to life. Drawing a gun from within his garb, Havers checked it was loaded and pushed through the bracken.
Before him, an apparition began to form, intensely luminous with a distinct tri-cornered hat. After firing off three shots directly into the rapidly forming pirate, Havers fell back as a neon cutlass blade sliced the air.
“Say your prayers, soldier, Captain Smith’s back!”
Gibbet Point
Havers rolled backwards, clear of the first swipe of the cutlass. With one hand he reached deep into his clothing and activated the panic button to alert HQ. The other hand was still on his gun, firing at the apparition before him. It was dressed like a swashbuckler from the movies, complete with buttoned longcoat and pantaloons, but the face was one of decay, with pieces of green flesh attached sporadically to a luminous skull. The eyes were missing from the sockets and there was just a hole for its nose.
After Havers’ initial panic had passed, he realized the bullets were passing straight through the ghost. Pocketing his gun, he reached inside his clothing and retrieved two wooden sticks with short stumpy handles on each end. Taking one handle in each hand and allowing the sticks to run the length of his forearms, Havers stood his ground against the ghastly Captain Smith.
“You’ll feel my blade, son,” hissed the ghost as it lunged forward with an almighty swipe of its cutlass. Havers parried the blade with one of his sticks and drove his other forearm into Captain Smith’s skull. The ghost was thrown backwards and its spectral hat fell from its head.
“You’re not the first thing from hell that I’ve seen. And I sent the rest back to their pit.” Havers was not a particularly large man but now he was looming over the ghost.
“But I rarely venture alone,” said Smith. “Lads, get this ship rat!”
Greenish figures appeared from thin air. Deckhands swinging knives and clubs were running towards Havers. The longer grass parted as the pirates rushed past. Havers’ mind seized this detail and built a plan on it. Looking around desperately, Havers spotted an old archway, filled up with concrete but with an alcove of some six feet. Well, he thought, there’s nothing else for it. Havers ran to the doorway and turned to face his foes. It was a horde. There must have been nearly sixty of them. This is it, Arthur, he told himself. No surrender, no retreat. There’s no mercy and no escape. Focus and let loose. Send this filth back to hell!
Havers pulled two more short pieces of wood from his clothing and dropped them into neat slits on the shins of his trouser legs. The first pirate was on him, thrusting a knife. Havers stepped to one side and launched an almighty kick to its midriff, causing a cracking sound which split the air. Havers marvelled at how even ghostly ribs can be cracked when hit with the right tools. The apparition dropped to the ground, felling two others behind it. Havers brought both arms straight down onto their heads, cracking both skulls.
Sometimes it would be handy if ghostly bodies would behave in the same way as human ones, thought Havers. A body pile in front of him would have been a good shield for this fight. But the bodies just faded away, their glow disappearing. The initial blows struck by Havers had caused reluctance amongst the pirate horde to be at the front of the attack. Havers laughed, remembering his younger days and his first fight. No one likes to disappoint those in charge. They may have come from hell but they wanted to stay on earth, not return as vanquished souls and have to explain their failure to an unsympathetic boss.
“Take him now, lads, and be quick about it! Or I’ll hang every one of you from the yardarm and feed you to the hounds of hell.” The rally from Captain Smith caused a panic, but as the captain slew one of the deckhands at the rear of the charge, the horde raced forward again.
Havers was cool and methodical as he smashed and bludgeoned his way through the horde. Taking the odd blow from a fist or a foot, he avoided all weapons as he tore through the ranks. The protection of the alcove meant he faced a front of only three to four attackers at a time. Gambling that the rules controlling their manifestation in this realm meant they could not pass through solid concrete, Havers didn’t even glance behind him, taking his untouched back as the only assurance he needed. But there was no easy escape and he doubted any help would be found within the hour.
Gradually the ranks of the deckhands thinned and Havers thought he saw his opportunity for escape. Stepping inside the lunge of a sword, he smashed his right arm into one of the figures before racing forward in berserker fashion. Like a whirling dervish, he spun and struck and struck again. With a ten second burst, he broke the ranks on his left-hand side and sprinted for his life. There was a two hundred metre run until the bracken and bushes which would impede both himself and his pursuers, but he was banking on being the more nimble.
The blood pumped hard around his body and he forced himself to breathe in a controlled and measured way, focusing on the first bracken to be struck aside. Not once did he turn to look at the scene behind him, as he knew that any slowing of the pace would have the horde on him without protection on any flank. Ten metres to go and Havers was swinging his arm to clear the bracken when he heard the wind whoosh above him. What was that? To look would be folly so he merely swished the air above him and dived into the bracken.
As his feet left the ground in the
dive, he felt talons rip into his shoulders. The claws sunk in beside his rotator cuffs and he was carried up into the air. Whatever creature it was went into an almost vertical climb before turning back towards where Havers had run from. Captain Smith was laughing. The creature swooped and dropped Havers from six feet up, causing him to clatter hard into the ground. Despite this, Havers turned his messy fall into a forward roll and was just rising up from the ground when he was caught on the chest by a large boot. It pinned him to the floor and a cutlass with a pointed tip was placed in the middle of his face.
“And we’ll take the life from this one too,” laughed the captain.
Breathless and bruised, Havers lay back knowing that for the moment he was trapped. But his mind was still working hard, looking for even the smallest advantage and the opportunity for escape that it might bring.
Beside him, a winged beast landed and lunged forward with its long neck. The beast had a black eagle’s head and talons, and its leathery deep-blue wings were complemented by two massive human arms which ended in claws. With twitching movements, the beast kept one eye on the prone Havers. Smith stepped forward and ripped the wooden weapons from the government man.
“The wood is from this realm so how did these strike me?” Captain Smith asked his captive.
Havers spat some blood from his mouth onto the ground. “Magic!” he answered and stared up at the unholy pirate.
“It does not matter. Nothing matters now. Not now my love has brought me back. Now is the time to rule this place. Captive, have you ever been to hell?”
“Hell, c’est les autres! Especially you!”
“Come. You will see power. You will see men broken by my will. You will see a lord in this place. They rebuked me and now they will suffer. Revenge will be visited on their generations. They will burn.” The captain turned to the other captives. Austerley was looking extremely dopey, probably from the drugs. The other captive had been forced to the ground on his knees. The four people who had brought him now gathered around him and placed their hands on him. And then the chanting began.
It was off-key, off-tone, off-pitch. Everything that gives music its natural beauty had been stripped away and replaced by a distortion of alarming proportions. Havers grabbed his ears to block out the sounds and Austerley became more agitated. The man on his knees rocked and reeled under their touch.
Havers became strangely engrossed as he looked at the man. Horrified but mystified, he watched as lines began to form across the man’s face. His nose grew along with his ears, hair sprouting from both. The body buckled and started to wither inward, with his chest collapsing, his legs thinning and his hair falling out in large clumps. Beside him danced the nurse from the care home, offering up her flesh to the night. Havers saw her face change as she danced. It took on a horrid grin and her eyes became wild.
The withering man collapsed to the ground. His shrunken body was significantly smaller than when they had begun.
The captain kicked the body over and called on his deckhands to remove the jetsam. He moved towards the nurse and roared into the night, “Now we shall take this place away, to the depths of hell, to rule side by side, my dear. And when I have fed on this one’s life, I shall find and take that body you want for me.”
Austerley was dragged forward and thrown to his knees. Havers caught a glimpse of Austerley’s face and saw the look of horror on it. Even in his dreams of Dagon, Austerley had never looked so terrified. But Havers also realized that Austerley was becoming fully awake in his terror. Focus, Arthur, focus, the moment’s coming, he thought.
The chanting began again but this time in a different language, and the nurse did not place her hands on the victim but broke off to be at Captain Smith’s side.
“Dance, my dear, dance! Celebrate our victory,” howled Smith into the night. The nurse began to spin around in unholy erotic poses, much to the captain’s delight. Fighting to keep his attention away from her mesmeric movements, Havers fixed his eyes on Austerley, who began to undergo the change. His thick, wild hair started to drop out in clumps. The jowls on his face tightened and his back hunched tighter. From an obese start, Austerley was shedding so much weight he was starting to look like a starving refugee. But then there was a new noise. Austerley was also beginning to chant.
Meanwhile, the black night was changing. In the sky a fireball erupted and began to grow. A fierce heat radiated from it and it seemed to streak across the horizon, encircling the town. The captain laughed as it grew, occasionally grabbing his mistress with erotic intent, happy for her to be on show. Austerley looked wretched, a poor parody of the man he had been, but, with an inner resolve, he began to stand up. His chanting was now a raging cacophony, enough to grab the captain’s attention.
Havers had no idea what Austerley was doing but the chanting was engrossing everyone, including the winged beast that stood guard over him. Spotting an opportunity, he moved ever so subtly towards his fighting sticks, which were lying just beside the beast.
The ground began to shake and the whole vista caught fire. Captain Smith laughed pointedly at Austerley, who was still chanting even with three people trying to push him back down. Then the earth fell away.
It was like being on a fairground ride with the earth as the car. Everything seemed to drop vertically. The captain and his horde yelled with delight and he grabbed his lover by the waist, celebrating with a brutal kiss. Havers felt sick but concentrated on reaching his sticks. From the corner of his eye he saw Austerley straighten up and his three oppressors fall to the ground. Then the falling sensation stopped like a lift coming to an abrupt halt. All those standing, except for Austerley, tumbled to the ground.
Havers had been lying down so was unaffected by the abrupt halt. He grabbed his sticks and leapt up at the winged beast, which had collapsed flat on the ground, its feet having given way under it. With speed, precision and above all, power, Havers buried a stick into the beast’s head. Without waiting to see if his action had been successful, Havers ran to Austerley and swept him onto his shoulder in an impromptu fireman’s lift. By the time Smith and his horde had reacted, Havers was already racing down the hillside with his prize.
Austerley was babbling. The same statements repeated over and over, as if he were convincing himself all was not lost. “Churchy, they need Churchy. Manifesting, full flesh. Stupid idiot, she wanted him. Consummation, flesh. Need Churchy. Halted now. Halted now but not complete. Not safe, not safe. Havers, find Churchy. Find Churchy.”
Escape
Bracken ripped at his trousers as he crashed through. With Austerley over his shoulder, Havers couldn’t bend down far enough to swipe the deeper tangles clear of his legs but had to plough through regardless. The roar behind him spurred him on and he was able to see quite well due to the light from the fire in the sky. The world was like a well-lit dining hall of old and, while not the same as daylight, it did illuminate all but the darkest corners.
There were three vehicles in the car park at the bottom of Gibbet Point. Two looked modern, and Havers knew that breaking through their defences would take longer than he had. The other car he remembered as being brought out some ten years ago and it looked to be the basic model. This was a good time to start his life as a carjacker.
Austerley was unceremoniously dumped on the car bonnet and Havers drove his elbow through the driver’s window. It was crass but time didn’t allow for finesse. He then drove the handles of his sticks into the radiator grill, leaving the length of the sticks parallel to the front of the car, like bull bars. He opened the door, pushed Austerley into the passenger seat and followed inside, grabbing his colleague’s legs and whipping them out of the way. Havers then reached underneath the steering wheel and ripped open the interior. He was dimly aware of the pirate horde charging down the hill but maintained his cool, calm, dispassionate self as he worked on the wiring.
The engine fired into life and Havers spun the wheel, driving the car across a grassy area and striking down several deckhan
ds in the process. As the wheels fought for grip on the grass, Havers remembered his driving lessons and coaxed the car onto the path. He avoided the main route out to the road as this would take him alongside the descending horde. He believed they might just be able to hold on to a car so he took the walker’s path instead. Havers switched on the car lights and a tree appeared in his vision. He flung the car hard left, causing Austerley to roll sideways and strike his head on the passenger door.
Without looking behind him, Havers concentrated on the track ahead. It was extremely narrow and he clipped shrubs and bushes in rapid succession. Turning a corner on the path, Havers was confronted by a small bridge. Its width looked similar to that of the car but Havers was not stopping. The sides of the bridge buckled as the wing mirrors were ripped off. The hubcaps were squeezed off and Havers heard a tyre burst. The car bounced clear on the other side of the bridge and began to pull to one side. Fighting against it, Havers tried to recall his intended route.
“Where the hell are you going?” yelled Austerley.
“Sanctuary. You’re off to church, Mr Austerley. It’s about time you paid a visit.”
“Watch out for the cops!” Austerley’s warning, while timely, was unnecessary. Spinning the wheel, Havers slid his vehicle past the white car with the flashing blue lights. In his rear-view mirror, he saw the horde descend on the emergency vehicle and flip it into the air. Austerley screamed out but Havers remained calm and focused. Racing down a narrow street he could see a spire in the distance. Thank you, God, he thought, for instilling in your believers a desire for prominence.
Austerley was babbling. “Churchy, they need Churchy. She wants him, needs him. Wants to have him. So they can have relations. Difficult between spirit and flesh. Too difficult. Need Churchy.”
