With an expression that seemed so alien to Pel, Jack seized the drunk by his hair, then scraped his face along the rough brickwork. The wall worked as well as a grater. It scraped a layer of skin off the man’s nose and chin. He went from threats to blabbing for mercy.
Chuckling, Jack shoved the man on his way. His adversary clearly had all the fight ground out of him. He clamped a heavy paw to his grazed face as, whimpering, he blundered away into the darkness.
‘Jack.’ Her blood pounded. ‘My God, was there any need to do that to him?’
That’s when he pounced. Dragging Pel into the shadows, he seized hold of her; his arms were steel bands; she couldn’t move.
Then he pressed his mouth on hers. She’d never felt such remorseless pressure before on her lips.
2
THROUGHOUT CROWDALE PERHAPS as many as a hundred people started to act out of character. In an apartment overlooking the harbour a husband woke to find his wife admiring her naked body in the mirror.
‘Nice,’ she murmured.
‘Tilly, it’s gone midnight,’ he grunted, ‘come back to bed.’
‘That’s what I intended.’ Tilly leapt on to her husband. Straddling him, she worked herself into ecstasy, just by rubbing her groin against his stomach. His surprise yielded to erotic excitement. In moments she’d impaled herself on his penis, then bounced up and down hard, her knees either side of his torso. As he lay on his back he marvelled. She’d never ridden him with such gusto. Lately, their sex-life had been non-existent. Now she was a women possessed.
In the gloom this robust woman moved her hips, like a lap-dancer, grinding away for all she was worth. Soon, she quickened her pace, flung her head, so her long hair swished; then let out a roar of curses as the orgasm shook her. In the white-heat of ecstasy she dug her thumbs into his eyes. His scream shook the perfume bottles on the shelf.
In the kitchen of the Italian restaurant the chef laughed hysterically. He forced the face of a waiter into a bowl of chopped tomatoes as he ran the sharp wheel of a pizza cutter across the young man’s bare back. Why, in no time at all the possessed chef had etched a blood-red pattern like so XXXX – all the way from the base of his waiter’s neck to the buttocks. Meanwhile, the waiter’s shouts were muffled by juicy slices of tomato.
With a flourish, to finish his XXXX design on the man’s bare back, Chef ran the pizza wheel down the cleavage of his backside. More blood squirted. The waiter’s scream soared to a high-pitched screech. It made the torturer laugh so much he had to pause to wipe tears of merriment from his eyes. Chef had just cut the guy a new corn chute, and it brought Chef such joy, such boundless, inexpressible joy.
One o’clock in the morning. Two men had been in the process of stealing fuel from vans in a yard. So: not the most awesome crime of the year, but the two friends, who’d been sharing heroin needles for years, had woken from a narcotic stupor to find they needed another fix. Therefore, a big, spectacular heist wasn’t required. A few gallons of fuel in a drum could be sold, no questions asked, to a neighbour. The cash would buy enough magic powder to tide them over nicely until morning. Then they could engage in some profitable shoplifting in order to purchase yet another round of exciting needle-time.
They’d pried off a fuel cap without much trouble. Now, liquid spurted down the siphon tube into a plastic drum.
One of the junkies rubbed a bloodshot eye as he crouched beside the container. ‘It’s half full. Make sure the other end of the pipe stays down far enough into the fuel tank. Careful! Air’s coming through. Push your end in deeper.’
His friend suddenly stiffened. He grasped the back of his own neck.
The first one, who crouched said, ‘What the hell’s wrong with you?’
The second one kicked the drum so fuel cascaded over his pal.
‘You idiot,’ hissed the first, ‘wha’ ya do that for?’
In suddenly peculiar accents the second posed a question: ‘Does this nectar from the iron honey pot burn?’
‘Stop acting nuts; otherwise you’ll have to find your own dope money.’
The second produced a lighter. For a split second he seemed to be figuring out how to operate it. As if the device was unfamiliar.
The first addict’s eyes stung too much from the splashed fuel to notice what his amigo fiddled with. A tingle of heat against his cheek, however, told him he was in danger.
‘Get that thing away from—’
Fumes from the fuel reached the flame of the lighter. Both men were engulfed in the fireball. One died screaming. The possessed man danced in the incandescent heart of the billowing flame, laughing.
On the cliff-top Kerry Herne felt it enter her head. To her, it seemed as if a cold, solid object had penetrated the front of her skull. Following that, a sense of her ‘self’ being displaced from its customary seat of consciousness. Before she could even ask herself what had happened to her she whooped with excitement. There in the darkness the flashlight fell from her fingers. Then those fingers explored the contours of her body.
When they found her breasts they eagerly ripped open her jacket, then tore at the shirt until flesh had been bared. With a sensuous delight her possessor squeezed her full breasts. A moan of pleasure escaped her lips.
That expression of delight turned to one of cold fury when her eyes picked out the lantern’s glow in the mausoleum. With an animal snarl she raced through the cemetery toward it. On the way, she wrenched the head off the statue of a weeping child that adorned a tomb. The head, complete with soulful eyes, and stone tears, was about the size of a volley ball in her hands, yet she handled it effortlessly. She sprinted past gravestones. Being alone in the dark didn’t bother her, for it was her possessor who called the shots now.
In seconds, Kerry had reached the iron gate of the mausoleum. Madly, the possessed woman used the carved head to pound at the ironwork. Its nose shattered. An iron lug gouged the eye. Her knuckle caught a bar. Blood gushed from her hand. As she hammered at the gate, crimson speckled her naked breasts. All that mattered to her possessor was to break down the gate. Once inside, she could wreck the mosaic. Then Justice would be free forever. With him would emerge the men and women who obeyed his every command, no matter how grievous, or foul, or sadistic.
Her vision blurred as she struck the iron bars. Pieces of stone flew from the stone head. One raked a scratch on her long, pale neck. But pain didn’t matter. Exhaustion didn’t matter. All that did matter was to enter that hateful building: to destroy the portrait whose spell had bound Justice Murrain and his servants into the earth for more than two centuries. True, its grip on them had already weakened. From time to time, they could escape briefly, but to smash the portrait would break its power for good.
A figure slammed into her. A pair of strong arms forced her against the gate. A hand managed to wrench the statue’s head from her fingers, then fling it aside.
‘Let go, let go!’ The voice that wasn’t Kerry’s thundered from her throat.
‘No. I won’t let you destroy it.’
She managed to turn her head a little. The face, framed with dark hair, just inches from her own, possessed a nerve-tingling familiarity, yet a strangeness, too.
‘You’re not him.’ The words gushed with rabid ferocity from the possessed woman’s lips. ‘You’re not Justice! Let me go!’
‘I’m Jacob Murrain. Justice Murrain’s my ancestor. And I will lock his spirit into the earth. And back into that earth will be banished all those evil souls who have sworn allegiance to him.’
She struggled. But the man held firm. She tried to squirm round, so her naked breasts would be pushed against him, with the intention of distracting him, but no, he could have been hewn from solid oak. There was no shifting him. Not one inch.
When Kerry Herne’s possessor realized it would be futile to remain embedded in this lovely piece of woman flesh, however much it yearned to stay, it released itself from her brain with an enraged howl.
Kerry flinched at the cold iron bar
s pressed against her skin.
Dazed, she murmured, ‘What have you done to me?’
Jacob Murrain spoke gently. ‘I’m sorry if I hurt you. But I couldn’t allow you to break into the mausoleum.’
‘Break into the mausoleum?’ Kerry echoed. ‘Why on earth would I want to do that?’ She noticed her bloody finger in the light of the lamp. At the same time she saw her exposed breasts. Shivering, from both cold and naked fear, she closed her jacket, then held it shut by folding her arms. She blinked. Random memories flickered across her mind’s eye. Images of her desperately attacking the gate. Shards of stone bursting from the stone head, as she pounded the bars. ‘I did attack the mausoleum.’ A sound taut with hysteria. ‘But why? I devote myself to protecting it … but at that moment I wanted to see it smashed. It would have been lovely to break the mosaic into a million pieces …’ She gulped. ‘Oh my God, what’s happened to me?’
‘You’re well again now. Don’t be afraid.’ The man rested his hand on her forearm. A tender gesture of reassurance. ‘You should go home and rest.’
‘But what happened to me, Mr Murrain. Have I gone mad?’
‘Allow me to escort you back to the car. If you wish I can explain then.’
Kerry managed a weak smile. ‘Such chivalrous manners, Mr Murrain. You should have been a knight in armour.’
‘You could be closer to the truth than you imagine. Before this is over we may have to slay a singular demon.’
Though they walked through darkness, beneath a sky of glittering stars, his sense of direction was faultless. Then she knew he’d been attending to the mausoleum and its grim portrait for more than half a century. Although she felt bruised, and even though her senses felt as if they’d been fed into the psychological equivalent of a food blender, a sense of resolve took hold within her. She wanted answers to what had befallen her. And if she had to question Jacob Murrain all night she’d get to the bottom of this.
Meanwhile, Jack Murrain all of a sudden stepped back from Pel. A second before he broke off the kiss she felt a tremor run through his body with such violence that he’d jerked his head forwards, breaking the skin of her upper lip.
Gasping, she leaned back against the house wall. The blue lights of the police cars still whirled down the street. From one of the bedroom windows came hysterical laughter. From another, sounds of sex – but sex undertaken with such gusto one of the partners bleated, ‘Oh-oh-oh-oh!’
The thought hammered through her skull. This is Crazy Town. Get out while you can!
Jack ran his fingers through his black mane. ‘Pel? What happened, just then? What did I do to you?’
‘Let go … I’ll shout for the police … they’ll hear me!’
‘I’m sorry. I don’t know what came over me. Oh, no. Your lip’s bleeding. Did I hit you?’
Pel stared at him in shock. His face reflected the glow of the streetlight. ‘You mean you really don’t know?’
‘I remember we were talking. A woman told us there’d been a murder, then …’ His expression became one of horror. ‘Then a sense of pressure against my head. After that …’ He shrugged, baffled.
Pel broke free of his grip. ‘Don’t play that game with me?’
‘What game?’
‘Pretending you’ve lost your memory. Listen, Jack, you know full well you roughed up that drunk. Then you …’ – she backed away – ‘made a meal of me.’
‘Made a meal of you? What do you mean by that? And how did you cut your lip?’
By this time, he directed those questions at her back. Pel Minton raced along the road. She stopped running when she reached the house she shared with her colleagues. And only when stout door timbers held Crazy Town at bay did she sigh with relief then climb the staircase to bed.
3
AT THE UNGODLY hour of two in the morning Kerry Herne stood naked from the waist up in the cold night air. She’d ditched her torn shirt and jacket into the back seat of the car. A sea breeze, as cold as ice-cream, poured across her bare skin. She drew a fleece from the rear parcel shelf of the car, then grateful for both its warmth – and protection of her modesty – quickly donned it, before zipping it up to her chin.
The car stood on the dirt track that led to the graveyard. By starlight she could make out the ocean-like dark expanse of pasture. At that moment, it seemed as if she’d been conjured into a landscape of elves and giants. The trees in the gloomy landscape were towering structures. The gravestones could have been humpy, goblin-sized men. Normally, she wouldn’t have found such objects troubling, but after what she’d endured tonight, when she seemed to lose her wits, and then attacking the mausoleum, even vines climbing up the cemetery fence had all the ominous intent of tentacles bursting forth from the ground to strangle the unwary. Taking a deep breath, she adjusted the collar of the fleece. That done, she sat in the driver’s seat beside Mr Murrain.
‘Tell me what happened,’ she demanded.
‘You’re cold,’ he told her. ‘This can wait until the morning.’
‘No way, sir. Tell me now.’
In the darkness of the car he resembled the mosaic portrait of his dead ancestor to an unnerving degree. ‘Your body was invaded. One of the spirits freed itself from the mausoleum long enough to take control of you.’
‘You mean possession?’
‘Without a doubt.’
‘How can you know?’ To her surprise she found herself not pouring scorn on the allegation that she’d been possessed – if anything, she wanted evidence to corroborate the statement. Because if some malign force had not taken possession of her, then the only other conclusion was that she’d lost her sanity.
In low, gentle tones the man explained, ‘This has happened before. You can find similar accounts to what occurred tonight in newspaper files of the Crowdale Gazette, and in the court records. Uncannily similar accounts at that. In 1863 one of my ancestors, responsible for caring for the mausoleum, became more interested in playing cards than his ancestral duty. The structure began to decay. Townspeople reported that certain neighbours would suddenly behave strangely at night – often this behaviour would be violent or of a sexual nature. There were murders, assaults, arson attacks. Most of the damage was directed at the mausoleum. By the morning the person who’d behaved violently, would be their old self again. They’d be astonished by the accusations against them. It wasn’t long before a local priest identified the evil that affected them was possession.’ He sighed. ‘Possession by evil spirits from the mausoleum. Many of those who were possessed would make it their mission to destroy the mosaic of Justice Murrain. If it is destroyed the monster’s ghost will be free to go on the rampage forever.’
‘How did they stop it happening again?’
‘You know the story of Justice Murrain? How he housed the criminally insane in Murrain Hall that once stood on the cliff here? And that he turned the lunatics into his own private army?’
Kerry nodded. ‘I researched the local history before we started the dig.’
‘Local children for generations have called the mosaic “the ghost monster” – more accurately, however, it is a ghost prison. It contains the evil spirits of my ancestor and his Battle Men. It is now the Murrain’s family role to safeguard the mosaic. To maintain the building, and keep the light burning. So you might ask me how they stopped that plague of possession back in 1863? It is simple. My family made sure that the building was restored. Soon those cases of possession stopped. Life went back to normal. Miss Herne, I believe there is some mechanism that holds the evil in check beneath the mosaic, but, as importantly, if the building is properly repaired after any damage occurs, that mechanism heals itself. The power is restored automatically. Forces are at work that share the attributes of mother nature. That is, they are self-regulating, and just as animals and plants spontaneously heal themselves after injury, so the forces that operate beneath the mausoleum do likewise. Tonight the integrity of the mechanism was damaged in some way. It allowed the spirits a temporary relea
se. One took possession of you. It willed you to try and break through the gate, so you could smash the mosaic, and so release Justice Murrain and his henchmen for good. But the power reasserted itself in a way that can only be described as miraculous. Then, as if it still held the evil spirits on a long leash, it could draw them back. And you became yourself again. Your mind took back control of your body.’ His voice acquired a more defensive tone. ‘Go on, Miss Herne. This is where you ridicule what I’ve told you. Possession by an evil spirit? Survival of my ancestor beyond the grave? Voodoo? Witchcraft? Black magic? Why don’t you scorn me all the way to hell and back?’
‘Mr Murrain. If you’d told me that even two hours ago I’d have laughed in your face.’ Kerry shuddered. ‘But after what I experienced out there in the graveyard tonight? It felt as if an ice-cold fist had been forced through my forehead into my brain. There was no stealth involved. It was violence! My mind – that thing I call myself – was beaten back until some entity took its place. A something that abused me; violated me; then moved my arms and legs as if I was nothing more than a plastic doll.’ She breathed deeply. ‘And believe me, I have the bruises to prove it.’
‘At last, at long last.’ He was pleased. ‘We are beginning to understand one another.’
‘And respect one another.’
‘Naturally.’
As a measure of that new-found trust she found herself telling Jacob Murrain about the discoveries over the last couple of days. How a prehistoric ritualistic site, which they’d dubbed Temple Central, formed a complex of radiating lines that the worshippers believed were spirit roads. What’s more, an earthwork ringed the plot of land: a special area that would have been holy ground to the ancients. Kerry added, ‘The mausoleum site lies at the heart of Temple Central. I know the son of Justice Murrain built the mausoleum, and he didn’t put it there by chance. He knew exactly what he was doing. I suspect legends, handed down from parent to child, within your own family, would have singled out those few square yards as being an incredibly potent location. It may well have been where the temple altar was placed. The holy of holies. A zone of powerful magic. The man, who decided to contain the spirits of Justice Murrain and his Battle Men here, understood the workings of this occult mechanism. He appreciated how it can bind spirits to the earth, as it were, and keep them jailed.’