He continued down the spiral of steps. The dead weight of metal in his arms wanted to drag him down faster. On this downward spiral he could only see a yard in front of him at anyone time.
So, when he turned the spiral to find that a man had climbed halfway up the tower to meet him, they weren’t any more than eighteen inches apart.
Bulmann froze. The man seemed nothing but shadows and a pair of eyes. They burned into him.
‘Get out of my way!’ Bulmann thundered. Yet fear flowed through him like a river. He’d never experienced terror like it. The thunder continued. However, it wasn’t the echo of his voice in the confines of the tower. He knew only too well what produced that sound.
Cracks in the walls writhed like snakes. Then suddenly they were fissures through which he could see the night sky. He’d never heard a sound so loud. Slowly at first, then with lethal speed, the entire church tower toppled over the edge of the cliff. Bulmann didn’t live long enough to feel the wetness of the ocean. But before he died he experienced the agony of tons of masonry grinding him to a mulch of blood and shattered bones.
THREE DAYS LEFT
1
HE RETURNED WITH the same ocean waves that devoured those butter-soft cliffs of boulder clay. Fishing boats lay in the sluggish waters of the harbour. The first light of day caressed a sign that stated Crowdale Boat Building & Repair. Once he entered the town it was much darker there. Houses at either side of the narrow roads formed shadowed canyons that even streetlights couldn’t dispel.
It seemed to him that he’d recently woken from a deep sleep. Thought hadn’t entirely connected with memory yet. There was vagueness about his identity. Yet he sensed that would be short-lived. When he passed through all those dozens of houses to glimpse people still asleep in their beds he sensed a momentous change in the air. He was approaching a huge event. Soon there would be a profound transformation.
Just what he wasn’t sure. But he could sense its approach. Extraordinary events. Miracles. A transfiguration. That sense of wonder at a secret about to be revealed made him excited. So much so, he didn’t question how he could breeze through those redbrick walls as if they were nothing more than mist. Or how he could rise up through floors as if he was a bubble rising in a glass of ale. When he ascended through a man and woman coupling on the bed his mind filled with the man’s lust. The woman lay beneath the man as he jiggled his hips. Dutifully, she murmured, sighed, then glanced at the clock on the bedside table.
The one who’d drifted into the bedroom poured itself into the man’s head. Now HE was stabbing himself into the woman. She took notice of this. A gasp of surprise. Her brown eyes opened wide. ‘What’s got into you … you’ve turned into a tiger?’
Lust blazed. He pounded his groin against female beauty. It helped him remember. This had happened before a long time ago. He’d taken pleasure in female flesh like this. Now! To burst like a dam inside of her! That’s what he longed for … this ecstasy … it had been so long ago since he’d experienced it.
He knew he’d taken possession of the woman’s husband. So he made the husband’s hands titillate the woman’s dark nipples until they were hard. Then he was kissing her neck … her ears … kisses turned into bites. The woman moved to his rhythm. She was loving it … she was begging for more. She’d abandoned herself to this storm of sexual gratification that raged inside her flesh.
No … he was leaving too soon. He looked down on the man and woman fucking on the bed. His senses had disengaged from the husband’s. Not finishing the coupling as nature intended angered him. But he was slipping away through the walls again.
Once more he was outside, floating through the dawn as lightly as a feather on a breeze. Brickwork engulfed him, then he was in a brightly lit bakery where men kneaded soft white mounds of dough. They chatted to each other. Never once did they look in his direction. He realized he was invisible to them.
What drove his spirit didn’t allow him to linger. Once more he moved through walls. Wires formed patterns in the plaster. He saw copper pipes beneath floorboards as he passed through. Beneath the floor of one house, in a little back room, the bones of a baby occupied a dusty pillowcase. Against a delicate skull, a tiny, pink teddy bear.
He moved faster. A sense of urgency burned in his nerves. This voyage excited him, yet frustrated him. What was he supposed to do? What was his purpose? He appeared to be searching for something. Yet what was it? What must he find?
Into a police station. Through the bars of a cell two policemen argued with a man tattooed with swastikas. The lunatic threw punches at a wall; blood gushed from the broken skin of his knuckles.
‘Cool it, Standish,’ called one of the constables. ‘We’ll put you in the jacket again if you don’t lie down and shut up.’
The drifting one entered the lunatic’s head. He saw dreams of killing the policemen … then setting fire to the building and dancing in the flames. Rage mangled the lunatic’s mind. Hate was his reason for living. So he raved and swore as he punched the wall. For a moment, the drifting one calmed the lunatic. He was learning how to control minds.
The swastika-covered man turned to the two policemen, placed his palms together as if praying. ‘I do beg your pardon, gentlemen. My intemperate outburst must have been disturbing for you to apprehend. As Caesar might have declaimed in ancient Rome: fiat justitia, ruat coelum. Ergo: let justice be done, though heavens fall. However, dum Spiro, spero. Et hoc genus omne.’
The policemen were dumbstruck. One approached the bars to stare in at their prisoner. ‘Standish, what on earth is that gibberish?’
‘Gibberish, gentlemen? Gibberish? That, my dear sirs, is the language of better men than we. It is Latin. The divine tongue that graces heaven.’
The drifter was gone. The lunatic spat, ‘What you looking at cop?’ Then he returned to punching the cell wall. Bared knucklebones shattered. His curses became screams.
Telephone wires, a gull perched atop the pole, a mail van in the street, a boy on a bike delivering newspapers. The drifter saw them all as he searched the town for something that was so important it put his senses on edge. Though the drifter had no flesh that sense of urgency burned him until he longed to howl. But what did he search for? What was his goal? He didn’t know. But instinct would tell him when he found it. He was certain.
A moment later his presence ghosted through a three-storey house. In a bedroom a big man crouched beside an empty chair.
‘I’ll protect you. I’ll keep you safe.’ He spoke to the chair like it was a person. ‘I know you’re frightened, Bobby. He won’t hurt you; I won’t let him.’
The big man suddenly glanced up. For a second he seemed to see a phantom shape floating there. Yelling, he covered his face with his hands then tried to scramble under the bed as if he was a little boy.
Then the wall appeared to touch the drifter’s face. More rooms came and went. Men, women, children: either asleep in their beds, or early risers shedding nightclothes.
Where was this thing he searched for? It maddened him like an itch he couldn’t reach. If he didn’t find it soon his mind would dissolve back into the mist that had held it captive for centuries. Where is it? Where is she?
The instant the formless cluster of shadows that was he entered the room he understood. Lights flashed inside his mind with the force of lightning strikes. Yes, he searched for a woman. Not just any woman.
This one lay on the bed. Aged around twenty she slept deeply. His presence loomed over her. He fixed his gaze on a calm face framed by tight curls. Her body appeared to glow with the promise of something special. The emotion that filled him had such power that he felt changes take place within himself. Whereas he’d been nothing but shadows, now he noticed that pale hands hung down from his sides. He flexed the fingers. A new strength flowed into him. In the mirror he saw patches of darkness in the air assume the shape of a figure. A pair of eyes burned.
This shape wouldn’t last long, he knew that, but this was the start of somet
hing extraordinary. A power grew within him. Soon it would allow him to unleash vengeance – utter vengeance on the town. The sleeping woman drew his attention once more. He leaned over her, staring down at her closed eyes, above which arched a pair of dark eyebrows. The lips were perfectly shaped. He longed to kiss them. To look at her was akin to inhaling an intense perfume. It went beyond beauty; her closeness intoxicated him. Could he reach into her as he’d done with the husband ravishing the woman? Or the lunatic in the police cell?
Light falling through the window grew stronger. As it intensified he realized his mind was melting away. The figure in the mirror dwindled to nothing more than a stray shadow.
Yet before he dissolved entirely into a mist of unthinking nothingness three facts presented themselves. Firstly: he knew that he’d return. Secondly: soon he’d be free … properly free. Thirdly: the woman’s name. He deciphered it on what appeared to be an oblong broach, which also contained a portrait miniature of the woman: Pel Minton.
2
PEL MINTON PINNED the name badge that displayed her photo ID to her sweatshirt. After checking her reflection in the mirror she left her bedroom, determined to grab a decent breakfast before the ride up to the dig site.
Most of the team were already sitting around the big kitchen table. They were upbeat. Excavation of the Murrain site, as they now dubbed it, considering the family’s ties to that locale, was a race against time. It got their adrenalin running. They loved the challenge of rescuing archeological finds before the entire caboodle dropped into the sea. Fried bacon aromas enriched the air to the point it made her stomach rumble.
Nat nibbled at a piece of dry toast.
Pel ruffled his wiry hair. ‘Are you still in love with English beer, Nat?’
He groaned. ‘Never again. If you see me with a glass of bitter smash it out of my hand. Please.’ Everyone laughed. He put his hands over his ears. ‘Not so loud. There’s a poor archeologist suffering here.’
A guy frying bacon responded with, ‘Ten hours shovelling grave dirt will make you as good as new.’ He sliced black pudding into the bacon pan. ‘Hey, Nat. I’m cooking you breakfast. Bacon, black pudding, sausages.’
‘Sadist,’ Nat grunted. ‘I’ll wait outside for …’ He gagged at the sight of fat bubbling in the pan. ‘That’s just evil.’ He fled for the front door.
As Pel sat down to a bowl of cereal another of the dirt-monkeys, a petite redhead of thirty, read a text on her cell. ‘Kerry’s got reports back on those pieces of pottery from the north end of the site. They’re confirmed as first century Roman so we’ve got to put in another trench there this morning.’
The dozen people in the kitchen wolfed down their food. Despite their appearance, sometimes they resembled wandering vagabonds, they loved their work and were truly dedicated. Pel found herself growing so fond of them she’d begun to dread the idea of moving on. But she’d committed herself to travelling through Europe. If she formed any more attachments to the country, or to these lovably quirky characters she’d never escape again.
The vans arrived, driven by the senior archeologists. The more humble dirt-monkeys clambered into the back to drape themselves amongst the shovels, sieves, metal detectors, trestle tables and assorted tools of the excavator’s trade. Nat sat in the front with his head through the open window in the hope a cold blast of air would dislodge the hangover.
‘If I feel like this tonight,’ he declared, ‘just bury me in the graveyard.’
Twenty minutes later, when they arrived at the dig, a startling sight made him forget his headache. ‘Ye gods!’ he shouted, startling everyone in the van. ‘The church!’
The van came to a rest by the graveyard gate. Instantly, everyone tumbled out before racing down to the cliff. A great chunk of earth had dislodged during the night. As it fell into the sea it had taken what remained of the church with it. Pel had set off to follow the group, who were clearly fascinated by the demise of the old building. However, she realized this might be her only opportunity, on what promised to be a furiously busy day, to catch a glimpse of the mosaic that had caused so much controversy yesterday. She pushed through the gate then walked up the path that led to the mausoleum – a ten by ten structure in brick with a black slate roof. The cemetery bore its wounds, of course. Yesterday, the trucks had smashed many an ancient tombstone. An angel’s stone head lay on the path. Twin furrows in the grass revealed where tyres had ripped through during the rampage. The trenches were just how they’d left them last night, fortunately. It would be simple enough to continue the digging and sieving operation this morning.
And on this chilly morning the graveyard sat peacefully amid the green pastures of England. Doves cooed in a tree. One of the last butterflies of summer, with white, papery wings, flitted over a patch of lavender. The substantial difference today was the disappearance of the church ruin. Not that it should have come as a surprise. Coastal erosion encroached by three feet a day. The church on the cliff-edge could have hung on for only a few more hours at best. As she walked along the path she glanced back at her friends on the cliff-edge. They pointed down to what must have been a scattering of debris on the beach. October sunlight glinted on the sea. In the distance, dredging vessels that were the cause of this destruction still glided back and forth as they ripped up ton after ton of seabed. A boost to the local economy that the super-tankers would bring would outweigh the loss of a few square miles of grassland; at least, that’s what the politicians argued.
Pel reached the building at the top of the graveyard. The truck had buckled the iron bars that formed a protective screen across the mausoleum’s entrance. Also, there were fresh-looking cracks in the brickwork. However, the structure appeared reasonably intact.
When she peered through the bars at the mosaic set into the floor the shock winded her. ‘My God,’ she breathed. ‘It’s him.’
Icy shivers tickled down her spine. She leaned closer to see the face looking up at her from the floor. The artist had cunningly created a portrait from tiny fragments of glass and pottery embedded in mortar. Even more cunningly, the artist had contrived a picture of a man’s face that appeared to gaze up as if from a dark void in the ground. A prisoner gazing from a pit. There was no background detail other than what appeared to be shadow. That in turn, forced the observer’s eye to meet the eyes of the man in the portrait. To challenge them. That stare hit you head on. She could feel herself drawn into a battle of wills with that man.
And what a man. He’s the image of Jack Murrain, she told herself. That face – and those eyes – had looked down at me like that after we fell into the trench. She shivered again. The resemblance is uncanny.
Pel found herself not just looking at the eyes but gazing into them. The burning pupils in the centre of the large grey irises pulled a nerve inside her. Her hands found the iron bars. She needed to hold on as vertigo tugged hard. At that moment, it seemed as if she’d fall into those wells of darkness if she let go.
‘He’s looking into me,’ she murmured to herself. ‘He’s reading my mind.’ The insane notion frightened her. Yet why did she feel excited, too? There was intoxicating power in that portrait’s stare. She could feel it stealing through her mind…
‘So what do you think of my picture?’
The shock of hearing the voice so close made her flinch back.
‘Sorry, miss. I didn’t mean to scare you.’
‘You didn’t,’ she said quickly, not wanting to be taken for a dizzy kid.
‘I come up here every morning to check on that devil.’ Jacob Murrain nodded at the mosaic. ‘I’ve got to keep the light burning. Usually, I’m up here at daybreak, but it’s harder to get out of bed these days. Old age is catching up with me. And my leg’s playing up again.’ He gave the bars a tug to test that they were still fixed securely to the brickwork. ‘The truck hit this thing hard yesterday. I’m surprised it’s still standing.’ He turned those grey eyes toward her that so closely resembled those of the face in the mosaic. ‘My gran
dson encountered you yesterday, didn’t he?’ The man smiled. ‘In my day, a young fellow swept a pretty girl off her feet in an entirely different way.’ He checked the cracks in the brickwork with a ‘Tut-tut,’ then: ‘You weren’t hurt?’
‘I’m fine. Your grandson saved my life. I should thank him in person.’
‘I’m sure he’ll like that.’ He met her eye. ‘You don’t find it disquieting? The family resemblance? Jack looks so much like me. And I look so much like him.’ He indicated the mosaic again. ‘That’s Justice Murrain. Born, regrettably, 1700. Died, thank the Lord, 1751. He lived in Murrain Hall – the remains of that cursed house lie out there under the ocean. Along with the church, I see. Parts of the church dated back a thousand years. Justice Murrain worshipped there – though what he worshipped won’t be found in The Bible.’ He produced a key from a pocket in his black coat, then opened the padlock before pulling open the iron gate. Hinges shrieked. ‘I keep the lamp burning. Can you smell roses? That’s because I use scented oil. If I don’t, a bad odour starts to linger. It comes from Justice Murrain there. Even though the devil lies ten feet down in a sealed iron coffin, right beneath the mosaic, he exhales the stench from his lungs.’
Pel had expected Jacob to rave again. But this morning he appeared so calm and so sane. The only odd comment was about his entombed ancestor breathing bad air out through the mosaic.
‘Yesterday I got myself into an upset,’ he confessed. ‘I thought you were going to start digging out the mosaic.’
‘It’s got to be removed,’ she said. ‘If we don’t the sea will keep tearing away at the cliffs until it reaches here. Then, like the church, it falls into the water.’
‘So it’s of historical importance then?’
‘Absolutely.’
‘But it’s far more important than that. It’s vital. This likeness of my ancestor keeps his evil soul trapped in the earth. If it’s destroyed or moved …’ – the man shrugged as he lowered the lamp to the floor – ‘then everyone in the town will suffer at his hands, just as it suffered in the past when he was flesh and blood.’