Chapter One - The Belfry
IT WAS ALWAYS the same, my mysterious dream. It visited me most nights since my sixteenth birthday, almost a year ago. I would awaken in a darkened meadow, the grass soft and moist against the back of my head, the cold evening breeze caressing my skin gently persuading me to follow its direction. Violet it would secretly murmur to me, of course I would always follow the breeze, it was my guide, my friend beckoning me towards something that I knew must be important. I had a purpose, but I couldn’t remember what it was. There was some reason for my journey that my unconscious state could not fully decipher or comprehend.
I would walk barefoot, enjoying the cool sensation of the damp evening dew that had begun to settle on the blades of grass under the soles of my feet. I would stop at the small ditch that hid a winding brook. It was always such a beautiful vision when I reached the grassy verge that sheltered the brook. I would pause and gaze into the babbling water admiring how the full moon reflected off the rocks and pebbles that had settled at the bottom. I would listen as the friendly breeze whispered in my ear; the slow whistling sound was something I found strangely soothing. I was at ease watching the beams of light dancing with the slow moving current of the water. There was nothing and no one left in the whole world apart from a deep sense of secluded serenity. Then I would hear it. It wasn’t a human sound, or at least I didn’t think so. A shrill screech pierced my sense of peacefulness and isolation like a blade. I was not alone in this field. With the beads of cold sweat dripping from my upper lip, creating the salty taste of fear in my mouth, I would wake.
The dream made no sense to me. Before my birthday, my dreams were usually vague and ethereal recollections of places I had been or at least seen in pictures, but this new dream was hauntingly vivid, more like a memory from a past life. I took a swig of water to rinse my mouth, turned my pillow and closed my eyes.
My life so far had been pretty standard for a sixteen year old girl. I lived at sixty six Wikersley Lane, a small mid terraced house in the north of England. I am a nature lover, in those days I used to think that my daily ritual of watering my beloved pansies was a great environmental contribution. I had planted them with my mother when I was seven and every year since, they bloomed, bedded in the huge terracotta pots that held century over the Knight household doorway. Their bright and brilliant colour brought light to a usually gloomy street.
Wickersley Lane at its very best, can generously be described as gloomy. Even on days when the sun beamed down as iridescent light, its rays being caught and thrown around the windows of the homes of the streets surrounding Wickersley Lane. The formidable greyness to my former street remained. Most of the residents were elderly, with the exception of the Dixons who lived at number two.
Pansies are not perennial plants, they shouldn’t really have been renewing every year but they did. Our friendly elderly neighbour Mr Arkwright used to say we had the magic touch and he didn’t know how right he was. Funny how something as small as a pansy can brighten up even the gloomiest of spaces. We placed them there in an attempt to vivify the gloomy concrete paving laid over what must once have been an extremely small front garden that still contained a few persistent daffodils. The daffodils were as stubborn as the pansies and would flower every year in the small edge of earth accidentally left by the previous residents. I used to think of them as small yellow soldiers falling in line for battle. The brightness of the plants juxtaposed with the fading redbrick of the houses in the street. Nobody else bothered with flowers but us, my mother used to say it was important to be colourful when everything else is grey.
Overall, it was a pleasant home but highly lacking in space, I believe the estate agent had described it to my father as ‘cosy’ on our first viewing when I was five. We lived there ever since. A small but cosy family unit, we could sit for hours in one another’s company without ever uttering a word, yet still feel connected. Sometimes I think back and miss the simplicity of life at sixty six Wickersley Lane. I miss my school, although it was falling to pieces and smelt of damp plasterboard. I miss my street, the greying red bricks and the elderly neighbors, all of whom smelt of TPC. I miss my tiny cove of a bedroom. I miss my friends who used to cram into my tiny cove of a bedroom on cold winter nights when there was nowhere else to go. Most of all I miss my mother and father.
My father was a quiet but intense man. He never spoke unless spoken to and even when he did, his answers tended to be no more than three words long. Occasionally and if given the right prompting, politics was his favorite subject; he could hold discussions that would drag on for hours. Some people found him boring, including my own mother sometimes, but he was always well informed on any subject he was willing to talk at length about. He reminded me of an owl, he was wise yet reserved. My mother used to say I was a lot like him, not that I’m wise but I am reserved. I guess I’m just not one of those ‘open book’ kind of people. I’d always felt there was nothing that interesting about me, I’d rather sit back and listen to others than push myself into the limelight. I miss my mother the most.
She had frankness about her, a northern charm. She always spoke with the greatest kindness but the sincerest honesty. Most people loved her for it, some people didn’t. I always felt that the way in which she polarised people was admirable. Surely, it is better to be disliked for who you truly are, than to be liked for who you’re not. It was the greatest lesson my mother ever taught me. One I would try to live by throughout my life. My mother was a nature lover. An avid nature lover and natural adventurer, she used to go on long excursions deep into the countryside on her own. Sometimes it would be dark before she would return. On these nights, I would sit in my flowery red chair, my eyes flicking from the small yellow clock on our fireplace to my father’s worried face. When she did return she’d always laugh and tell us not to panic, insisting she had an infinity with nature that acted as an internal compass. My father thought she was reckless, I thought she was brave.
The countryside my mother would wander for miles into, wasn’t far away from where I lived. Actually, I only had to walk for around five minutes in a southerly direction and I would be surrounded by country farmhouses with flourishing golden yellow wheat fields and a woodland area the local people called Spider Wood. I often went there with friends, it was a beautiful place to dream away the lazy summer afternoons during the school holidays and that’s what most kids my age did. We spent hours collecting conkors, making rope swings and mostly just exploring the numerous pathways that usually led around in full circle back to the opening of the wood, all apart from one that is. The most beaten pathway was also the most breathtaking if you ever stopped to admire it. The ancient yew trees with their outstretched branches intertwined towards their parallel creating a canopy like shadow, hogweed and buttercups sprouted sporadically along the edge of the path of a well-beaten dirt track until a gradual opening led the way to a circular hollow. It was dubbed Spider Hollow, because of the giant spider like grassy mound that lay in the very centre of it. Just beyond the spider, there was an ancient belfry tower and the ruins of an old grey cobblestone church, abandoned long ago. An unusually vivid shade of green ivy stretched up the tower, which unsteadily stood, usually in the shadows cast by the giant willow trees that inhabited the former church garden. Most people seemed to avoid the grass mound spider because of its eerie aura, as if it was just about to detach itself from its verdant bed and pounce. Not a single soul approached the stone ruins because, above all else, they looked highly unsafe with one of the lower corners of the building almost completely crumbled.
This was where the resident kids spent most of their free time. I was always surprised whenever we reached the hollow that the local council hadn’t discovered the old stone building and condemned it, it must have breached about a hundred health and safety laws, but it was always there, barely standing each time.
Other than hang around at the hollow, attending my bi-weekly book club (geeky I know) and work, I didn’t really do much. My life was uncompl
icated; the days rolled into one another easily and routine was the norm. I seemed to spend my every waking hour either at the hollow or at the DIY shop where I worked. I was saving my wages to pay off my prospective tuition fees. I hadn’t even started college yet but I had been working extra over the summer months because universities had upped the price of their courses and there was no way I’d be able to pay the price of a full three year English degree course all alone. I’d actually spent most of the summer mulling over my financial conundrum and whether it would be worth going to university at all. My mother had finally talked me into at least holding onto my savings for a couple of years, hoping that I might be the first person in my whole family to attend university which would then enable her to hold my achievements like her own personal trophy. I went along with the plan dutifully having no better ideas of my own. I suppose I was a little bit lost. I just didn’t realise it yet.
Katherine and Dennis Knight, mother and father to me, were both hard working people. They had saved enough by their early thirties to open a small flower shop on Harold Street around the corner from our petite terraced house. Hanging baskets, displayed on either side of the door during the summer, emitting an array of colours that illuminated the red brick building behind. It was not an ideal area to operate a business from. The shop was sandwiched in-between two small houses on a tiny plot of land that my mother could only just sit her ‘Come and browse at our blooming great deals!’ sign on. As it turned out Knight’s Blooms had opened in the right place at the right time because shortly after my mother had finished stroking the last interior brick wall with the ivory-white coated paintbrush, a funeral parlour had opened its doors directly across the road in a newly restored warehouse. Business for the Knights’ was booming.
My father had asked me a couple of times to come and work at Knight’s Blooms, he wanted me to carry on the family business when they retired but it wasn’t for me. I was a terrible florist with a strange knack for making every bouquet I created look like it had been prepared by a disinterested five year old. I would have made an even worse manager, as uncomfortable as I was around people, people I didn’t know anyway. In any case, I wanted to study English literature. I adored poetry especially William Blake’s ‘Songs of Innocence and Experience’. They enthralled me into a strange hypnotic state. I spent hours alone in my box room delving into fictional worlds of flamboyant imaginations with their daring heroes, passionate love stories and despicable villains. Other than my family and my best friend Dahlia there was no one in the world I would chose over a good book. Blake was always my favourite though. The mourning for nature’s beauty, the green and pleasant land that had become enveloped in man-made fuels and misery was something I found oddly resonant especially living on the outskirts of the urban jungle that was a northern industrial city. I used to wonder if this odd sense of detachment I felt from the natural world was influencing my slumberous self. Maybe the dream that was constantly on repeat was my mind’s subliminal way of telling me to get more fresh air. Even in Spider Hollow, you could still hear the thundering of car engines, whizzing by on the busy road to the west of the wood.
Since my birthday, my mother has been insisting, in her usual candid yet gentle manner, that I needed to start to prepare myself for the adult world I was on the cusp of entering. I had to put down my books, stop bringing half of the forest home with me every evening and get some kind of job. ‘Go out meet new people’ she said. Therefore, I did.
By the beginning of the year, I had found a part time job at a local DIY store named Brick-a-Bracks. It wasn’t ideal work for a young slender girl like me, with the daily heavy lifting and all, but I liked to think it kept me fit and the wage was alright. Brick-a-Bracks was around two miles away from where I lived, past Spider Woods and towards the centre of town. If I caught the bus my journey to work would take double the time. Fortunately most days Dahlia would drive me into work in her small baby blue car that she would humorously refer to as ‘The Beast’.
I met Dahlia Dixon on the first day of school when her contraband golden bouncy ball accidentally hit me in the face. Dahlia had approached me guiltily reasoning that the only fair way to make it up to me was to bounce the ball hard off the tarmac and into her own face. We both sat in the playground teary-eyed and feeling sorry for ourselves for the first half of school that day, that was until we entered the classroom and our bouncy ball war-wounds clearly impressed our classmates. We decided to tell them we had been attacked by a monstrous creature and that we had managed to bravely fight it off with our lunch time carrot sticks, after all every child knows there is more to fear from vegetables than any beastly creature.
Dahlia lived alone with her father Solomon Dixon just at the very end of our street. Her house was slightly bigger, being an end terrace, but very lacking of imagination in the decorative department. Every wall, fitting and fixture was a different shade of blue, other than Dahlia’s room that we had spent a day painting bright pink in protest at the colour scheme. When Mr Dixon had arrived home that day, an almighty argument had erupted. We had accidentally spilt the paint the whole way down the stair carpet and Mr Dixon was furious. Eventually, a sobbing Dahlia demanded to know where her mother lived so she could beg her to take her in. She was very dramatic that way, led primarily by her emotions in a way I was not, but I always admired her for it. A teary eyed Mr Dixon put an end to the argument at that point, shuffling away looking utterly broken, mumbling something about ‘transient’ and ‘heartbreak’ as he passed me. Dahlia never mentioned her mother after that awful day so neither did I.
Before my schedule had become so fully booked, Dahlia and I had been out on numerous spontaneous road trips in The Beast. She passed her test as soon as she had turned seventeen, nearly a full year before me. We would drive to the coast with her swishing her long silky black hair back and forth to the beat of whichever rock song we would have playing on the in car stereo. She would sing out the words to her favourite song in a high soprano voice that always gave me a headache. Occasionally she would become so entranced in a song she would forget she was driving all together and almost veer off the road. We never had a major accident, however one time we did end up driving into some bushes near home. Dahlia swore it wasn’t the music that distracted her. She seemed to think she had seen a mysterious shadow dance into our path and she had felt an overwhelming compulsion to follow it. I always thought that Dahlia had become too susceptible to the rumours of the cloaked monks that haunted the roads, which ran parallel to Spider Wood.
It was a hazy summer’s morning in July, when I left behind the people I loved and the world I knew.
The sun beamed in through the narrow creak separating the floral lavender curtains I had spent at least an hour contemplating before finally purchasing from Brick-a-Bracks. It began much the same as any other mediocre day. I woke and spent at least the first five minutes pondering my nocturnal excursion to the field and what it all meant, before bounding downstairs and scoffing some toast. I brushed my teeth and quickly ran a brush through my long red hair that curled at the tips. I finalised my morning ritual by pulling my wicker necklace over my head. My mother had given it to me when I was five. We were moving house and she came across it tucked away in grans bedraggled box of old possessions whilst cleaning out the loft. The necklaces creator had intricately twisted some wicker rope and then neatly wove it around a golden amber core. Even though I had been wearing it since I was five, she still referred to it as that hideous piece of rubbish. I didn’t care, she just couldn’t appreciate its uniqueness.
I surveyed my reflection in the mirror and concluded that people always got the impression that I was standoffish because of the natural downturn of my lips that gave me a permanent sort of semi-frown. Still, my lips were always my favourite facial feature; at least they were thick and filled my face. My eyes were a cool grey blue colour that was something of a normality in my part of the world so I’d always felt there was nothing special there. My skin was once again
the alabaster white it had always been, despite the fact that it was a particularly hot beginning to the summer and every other person I knew was a nice tone of golden bronze by now. Having decided I was fit and ready for work, I climbed into my black and yellow uniform. I hated it. It seemed to make anyone that wore it a target, for not only human ridicule, but also dive-bombing bees. I grabbed a final charred slice of toast and set off on course to yet another boring day advising people on which lawnmower is best for smaller gardens.
As expected my days work was uneventfully enough other than Derek the kitchen sales person catching a group of kids taking pictures of themselves- trousers down I might add- on one of the display toilets, I thought it was kind of amusing at least it broke the monotony of my usual working day. I tortured myself by watching the clock for the last hour of my shift, checking disappointedly at five-minute intervals for the workday to end. I was tired, hungry and in desperate need of a shower. The shop’s air conditioning system had decided to break on the hottest day of the year, so when Dahlia pulled up in the car park and gave the horn a succession of quick jabs I was relieved to be going home. I climbed in the passenger seat and smelt the familiar scent of vanilla air freshener that Dahlia would replace weekly to keep The Beast smelling nice and fresh.
“Where’s your seat belt?” Dahlia demanded, eyeing me knowingly, she had still not forgotten the time she had to pay a fine because I had not worn it when she had given me a lift to work last winter.
“Ok sorry mum.” I laughed back at her as I pulled out my hot pink mobile, which was making a shrill bleeping noise signaling a text. Dahlia frowned disappointedly when I swiftly stuffed the phone back into my black denim work jeans.
“Look Violet, you know I love you dearly as a friend and that is the only reason I’m saying this but you really need to text that boy back or else I will not be able to control my actions!” She rounded the corner that headed towards the busy road that ran past Spider Wood -the shortest way home.
“You can have him!” I exclaimed stormily, “I honestly can’t understand why any boy would want to pursue a bookworm like me when he’s got a secondary school stunner like you chasing him anyway.” I was not jealous of Dahlia, although she had beautifully soft, truffle coloured skin, enchantingly long lashes and huge chocolate eyes. Most girls our age would have given their right arm for her thick black hair and she had the athletic build of a runner. She was undeniably stunning.
I was not interested in Henry Williams and I would have been happy for her to distract his unwelcome advances away from me. Sure he was the captain of the school rugby team, ok he wore skin tight tee-shirts that perfectly framed his bulging biceps and washboard abs. However, he always seemed a little egotistical and too crass for my liking.
I was quietly pondering how to let Henry down gently. Maybe I would tell him I already had a boyfriend. I considered the idea for a short while before deciding it was a long shot. As quiet as most of my schoolmates were well aware I was, they would never believe it. My contemplation had left me blissfully ignorant of the familiar scenery passing us swiftly by. My silent consideration was abruptly broken as Dahlia let out a short gasp of surprise and veered the steering wheel sharply to the right of the narrow road, colliding with the dry stone wall that bordered Spider Wood. In the same instance, I turned my gaze forward in horror to see that Dahlia was not swerving to avoid some small animal that was the first thought that crossed my mind in such a woody and secluded area. Instead, it was a hooded figure that appeared to have stepped right out from the row of silver birch trees straight into the path of the Beast. Was this one of the notorious ghostly monks?
There was certainly something unnerving about the way this mysterious figure was moving in the few seconds before the accident, it appeared to jerk and over emphasise its movements in an animalistic manner. It seemed strangely unnatural for a human. My heart felt like it had leapt into my throat and every nerve ending in my body was tense, screaming out danger. The figure was dressed in what appeared to be a full body midnight black cloak, the hood was up which obscured the face from view. Although Dahlia’s swift turn had narrowly avoided a full on impact that would have sent the hooded figure flying into the air, she could not turn fast enough to avoid any impact altogether and the very left edge of the bonnet clipped the hooded figure sending it into a forward spin. The figure let out a screech strikingly similar to the one I heard every night in my dreams. Danger! The word flashed into my mind and was gone before I could fully process it. It sent a stone cold chill down my spine and I sat motionless for a few seconds before recovering my senses. Dahlia was clearly in shock as she sat at the wheel nervously eyeing the figure waiting for it to move. She turned to me her face paler than mine usually was, her voice deep in pain and panic
“My God Vi I’ve killed someone!” I eyed the crumple of material lying in the middle of the road closely, somehow I knew this was no human, I did not want to see but I could not look away.
“No Dahlia you haven’t.” I replied. She looked at me, bewilderment filling her teary eyes.
“How can you know that from here, are…are they still breathing?” She whispered desperately. I took a deep breath trying hard to keep my voice as steady as possible, I could see the sheer terror in Dahlia’s expression and I didn’t want to frighten her any more.
“Dahlia when I tell you this, please don’t look ahead” I tried to sound assertive but my voice was now shaking. “Whatever we just hit, it’s not a someone, it’s a something!” I saw the confusion wash like a silent wave across Dahlia’s features, her mouth opened slightly as her eyebrows crumpled and met in the middle she slowly turned her gaze towards the bundle of cloth in the middle of the road. My request of Dahlia not to look had been in vain and she now turned to face the figure who had recovered from our collision and was crouching in a defensive position like a wild animal and snarling at us.
An awful rage that could be felt from inside the safety of the car permeated from the figure. The very sight of this inhuman being compounded our fear. It was hairless and its rubbery skin shone against the reflection of the newly rising moon. Its long sharp upward pointing ears were almost bat like and its fangs glistened threateningly under its curled black lips. The creatures red eyes were the most ominous feature it possessed, in shape they resembled a tigers I had once seen during a family trip to the zoo. The light of the one functioning headlight, reflected in its eyes, bright red with the menace of a wild predator man had instinctively known to fear for centuries. The leaves rustled a warning of danger in the wind. Dahlia began,
“What the bloody…!?” but before the last words had time to reach her lips the angered creature flew towards the car in one spectacular movement and landed on the roof with an almighty BANG!
Dahlia exited the car first followed closely by me, on the passenger’s side. It was only a moment of hesitation as we stood at either side of the car looking up at an enraged creature. It was a moment too long, the creature made a thrusting movement with its hand that seemed to eject a jet of red light that whooshed into the hood of the car ripping a gaping hole directly down the centre. The screech of tearing metal made my ears throb and I began to wonder whether I had fallen asleep in the car and was having a strange and terrifyingly dream. A wayward shard of metal that bit into my cheek put an end to that theory. Through the fireworks of metal sparks, I attempted to search the dark for Dahlia but the creatures gaze came upon her first. It glided down towards the driver’s side of the car and in the faltering beam of the headlight, I caught glimpses of Dahlia diving out of the way of a flash of light that hit the dry stone wall and blew cracked grey rubble into the air. Dahlia had also hit the wall and was unconscious, a single streak of blood began to trickle from an angry gash in her forehead. The creature began to round on Dahlia, it let out another terrifying shriek of anger pulling its spindly arms back, its long thin fingers and palms flat as if it was pushing against an invisible force. I had just witnessed this movement and in a mom
ent, the creature would use the same forward thrusting motion it had used to blow apart the wall. Panicking and terrified, I reached for a large chunk of the stone wall that had landed close to my foot I pulled back my arm and released with all the force I could possibly muster. The stone flew through the air silently and landed with a THUNK on the back of the creatures hairless head. It turned it gaze to me, its tiger-eyes ablaze with rage and I knew that I had succeeded in diverting its attention from Dahlia but now it was coming for me.
A mixture of relief and dread bubbled in my chest and I felt the adrenaline rise in my body, urging me to flee for my survival. I bounded towards the woods in order to lure the creature safely away from Dahlia. I headed off with such ferocious force that I felt my mobile wobble loose and tumble from my pocket falling to the ground with a crack, scooping it up I stuffed it back into my work jeans. The creature followed behind more rapidly than I could have imagined so I weaved away from my original course and began to follow a small but well beaten track further into the woods than I had intended to go. I could hear the bracken and branches cracking under the weight of my feet, the light of the moon reflected through the gaps in the canopy of leaves. I was acutely aware that the creature was still pursuing me gliding soundlessly over the wooden debris I left in my wake, a snarling sound escaping through it razor sharp teeth. I pressed on, running so fast that my throat became dry and began to burn. Gasping, I reached the clearing of Spider Hollow. My shock at my surroundings was quickly replaced by fear of my pursuer, I crossed the hollow as rapidly as my failing legs would allow. I leapt onto the body of the giant grassy spider and tumbled down to the opposite side. I pulled myself upright. I was now breathless and gasping in the shadow of the ramshackle belfry. The creature reached the clearing of the hollow and spied my position easily in the dark, its tiger-eyes shone like candle flames. My options were narrow I could not elude my terrifying stalker much longer, although I liked to think of myself as relatively healthy I was not in the pristine physical condition it would have taken to outrun this, this…thing. With limited options, I headed for the stone steps winding up the centre of the ruined tower.
The structure of the tower was clearly unstable and I began to regret my hasty decision almost instantly, questioning why I had chosen to corner myself at the top of a high and dangerous structure with a ferocious and enraged creature after me? When I reached the top of the tower, where I assumed a bell had once hung, I could feel the cool night air caress my sweaty skin. There were four stone archways supporting a cone shaped stone roof that had huge cobwebs twisting into the centre. I skipped over a gap that had once had a floorboard in its place and landed a little too heavily on the opposite side cutting the palm of my left hand on a cracked floorboard. A cloud of dust erupted around me causing my already burning throat to dry even further although I did not dare to cough. I could hear the creature’s snarls at the foot of the staircase. The noise carried upwards with added clarity, reverberating an echo around the stone stairwell as it evolved from a snarl into a deep throaty chuckle. The creature knew it had me cornered and it was reveling in my terror at my fourth coming demise. All was lost and as I accepted this fact, I felt a strange sense of relief that although I was surely doomed at least while the creature had been preoccupied with me Dahlia would have had the chance to recover and make her escape. I looked toward the clearing of the hollow imagining only a short way away Dahlia was now rousing with the relative safety of the distance between her and the awful creature. Just as that thought created a tiny bubble of defiance in my mind that I would need to harbour in order to face this creature, I caught a glimpse of Dahlia as she emerged into the mouth of the clearing. Surely, she had not followed the danger in order to save me?
“Oh no!” I whispered in despair and desperation, a sinking feeling entering my gut. Before I had time to react to the situation two strange things happened at once. Firstly, my wicker necklace began to glow like hot iron against my neck burning into the flesh beneath my work shirt. Secondly, an old wooden door began to materialise in the archway that I was facing, obscuring my view of the clearing. A cast iron circular handle hung from the heavy door, which had a sharp crack down the centre. The door steadily took full form completely blocking the arch. I swiveled on the spot to see the creature ascend into the loft; a menacing smirk took shape on its face, black gums protruding under its thin lips. A face that I did not quite understand quickly replaced the horrifying expression. The creature saw the doorway behind me and a look of shock and awe rearranged its features into a face that looked almost amusing bulging tiger-eyes and gawping fanged mouth.
“Mistress,” it breathed to itself in a distinctly rasping voice. I took the opportunity of the creature’s momentary distraction to try to escape. I formulated the plan that I was going to try the door and if it opened, I would jump out of the arch in hope that I could land on the relatively soft grassy verge of the spider’s rump. I pulled on the handle and the door gave a long and drawn out creak. I looked back at the frozen awestruck creature and jumped.