‘Nearly there. We just need to get to the top of this hill.’
In Tom’s state, the hill that rose out of the valley seemed as big as a mountain. Nevertheless, he clenched his fists and steadfastly pushed forward. The landscape kept switching between being awash with moonlight to being plunged into blackness. Huge, threatening clouds repeatedly covered the moon.
‘We’re here.’ Her voice held a quiet fatalism. As if she’d brought him to the scene of a terrible crime. ‘Keep close by my side. It’s important you don’t move away from me. You’ll be in danger if you do.’
‘Danger? In danger from what?’ The forest stretched out below Tom: a mysterious sea of black.
‘He’ll be here soon. I want you to see him.’
‘Who?’
‘Who? Can’t you guess?’
‘This isn’t the time for games, Mrs Bekk. What have you done to Nicola?’
Even in the gloom, he saw the flash of her teeth as she smiled. ‘It’s not what I’ve done to Nicola, it’s what she is capable of doing to you.’
‘I don’t understand.’
‘Mr Westonby, remember when you visited me at home? I explained that my ancestors were Danish Vikings – they settled here in this valley over a thousand years ago.’
‘What has that got to do with Nicola?’
‘Because I spoke the truth. When my ancestors were murdered, the god Thor gathered up their corpses into a mound; he breathed life into them. All those bodies fused together to become Helsvir, the dragon that would protect the Bekks for eternity.’
‘Mrs Bekk, stop this. You’re not well. My God, you’re not even sane. Just take me to Nicola.’
‘But my daughter is coming to you . . . She’ll soon be here.’
‘I’m going home, then I’m telephoning the police.’
‘Shh . . .’ As she shushed him she gripped his arm. ‘The cloud’s thinning. Soon you’ll be able to see them.’
Tom watched a tide of moonlight spread over the forest. Trees turned from black to silver. A moment later he was engulfed as the moon poured its radiance down on the hilltop. Every detail of Mrs Bekk’s face became visible. Her blue eyes were fixed on an area of woodland. There was such an expression of wonder. She expected to see something marvellous. Or something terrifying. Her fingers tightened around his forearm.
When she spoke she breathed the words in awe. ‘See what stands all around you. Can you see my children?’
Her question was so bizarre that for a moment all he could do was stare at her in astonishment. Then he turned his head left and right.
Figures stood on the hillside. They were completely still. Almost like guards standing outside an important building: all facing the same direction. Their gaze locked on the same area of forest that had caught Mrs Bekk’s attention. Tom counted eight figures. They were male and female. At first glance, these people could have been in their twenties.
Tom took a step closer so he could examine the faces. Something wasn’t right about those figures. God knows what it was about them . . . Their body language? Their strange profiles?
He moved towards a female with pale blonde hair. From this angle she resembled Nicola; in fact, resembled her to an uncanny degree: fair hair, the delicate build. The defiant way she raised her chin.
Oh my God, what’s happened to Nicola? Quickly, he approached the figure. Then stopped dead. This isn’t Nicola. This isn’t even human.
That’s when the moon did the cruellest thing: it grew brighter.
And he found himself confronted with an abomination.
She did not move. She did not acknowledge him. She remained standing there like some evil-looking statue. Guardian of the hill. Demon of the forest. Shivers danced their way down his spine with ice cold feet.
Tom stared at the woman. No, not woman – this corpse thing could no longer be described as a woman. Beneath waves of yellow hair gleamed a bone-white face. Black lines snaked up her neck and over her jaw. At first, he thought they were black tattoos. However, he realized that the lines formed ridges. No . . . these were thick, black arteries that pushed upward against the skin.
And, dear God in heaven, those eyes . . .
The eyes were wide open. And they were perfectly white: a bright, glistening white. Each eye contained a black pupil in the centre. That tiny dot of blackness made the eyes fierce. As if they glared rage at the world.
The other figures, whether male or female, resembled each other – same blonde hair; same bone-white skin; the same hating eyes.
The clothes they wore – the shirts, jeans, dresses – appeared modern. Though there was something faded about them. As if they’d been left in an attic to gather dust.
A hand grabbed his arm. He spun round, expecting one of the statue people to be attacking him.
Instead, Mrs Bekk thrust her face nearer. ‘I told you to stay close,’ she hissed. ‘If you don’t, you won’t see daylight as you are now. Do you understand, Mr Westonby? You are in danger.’
‘What are these things?’ Tom gazed at those figures, and he felt that he drifted in a cold, blue haze of absolute dread.
‘Those things are my sons and daughters.’
‘They’re not alive. They can’t be.’
‘I warned you that you wouldn’t like what you saw tonight.’
‘There’s one that looks like Nicola.’
‘That’s my Annie. The youngest before Nicola.’
‘What on earth happened to her?’
‘The same fate befell Annie as befell all my sons and daughters. They thought I was insane. These children of mine turned their backs on their family heritage. As soon as they could, they left home for the cities. They mated with people on the outside. People like you.’ She spoke with disgust. ‘Within a few months they found themselves back here in the forest. And they turned into what you’re looking at now.’
‘Are they ill?’
‘They are cursed by the gods. They’ll stay like this forever.’ Mrs Bekk spoke in such a matter-of-fact way she might have been describing an ordinary domestic situation. ‘Some might even call them as vampires.’
THIRTY-FOUR
Tom Westonby stood on the hillside with Mrs Bekk. The eerie figures that were her children remained absolutely still. Somehow that stillness made them even more menacing.
Mrs Bekk smiled. ‘I know my sons and daughters are so much more than vampires. They are the warriors of the gods. Now they’re waiting to be called to the final battle.’
He’d have stepped away from her, if it wasn’t for her grip on his arm. Her blue eyes gazed adoringly at her sons and daughters.
‘You’ve made them,’ he told her. ‘These are statues or mannequins.’
‘No, they’re real. They hear what you say, even though they appear to be ignoring you.’ She let go of his arm. ‘The truth of the matter is this: Nicola will become a vampire, just the same as these, if you take her away.’
‘No . . .’
‘Oh, but she will. If you – an outsider – coax her away from her home, this will be her fate: to roam out here in the forest forever. And it will all be your fault, Mr Westonby. You must tell Nicola you will never ever see her again.’
What Tom had decided were statues suddenly let out low moans. Each one shivered. Their eyes opened wider. They seemed to be reacting to something they’d seen down in the valley.
‘Ah, here she comes, Mr Westonby.’ The woman gripped his arm again. ‘Stay close. I’ll do my best to stop you being hurt.’
The forest resembled an enchanted silvery realm as the moonlight became brighter. Mrs Bekk pointed at a dense mass of oaks. ‘There,’ she whispered in awe, as if she saw angels. ‘Don’t you see what’s happening?’
Tom noticed that the trees were moving. A giant must be walking through the forest, he thought, pushing against trees as if they were stalks of grass, making the branches wave from side to side. A loud hissing came in surges. Was this the leaves being disturbed by a breeze, or a large body br
ushing against the vegetation?
The figures standing on the hilltop opened their mouths. ‘Ahh . . .’ they sighed, as if anticipating the arrival of a special visitor.
‘Here she comes.’ The woman spoke in excited whispers. ‘Here she comes. You’ll see her for yourself.’
The object suddenly broke clear of the forest.
Tom had seen this monstrosity before. Back then, he’d believed it to be a hallucination. But surely he must still be hallucinating, wasn’t he? Or was he still in bed back at Mull-Rigg Hall and dreaming? He tried so hard to DISBELIEVE what he now saw. Yet all his senses focused on this creature that surged through the long grass. He could hear the hiss grow louder as it approached: this was the sound of people talking in furious whispers. He smelt the tang of some exotic animal. He could feel the rush of air that enormous bulk displaced as it sped towards him.
What he saw nearly overwhelmed him. Tom Westonby didn’t know whether to laugh or cry.
The body of the creature must have been ten feet high and twenty feet long. Human limbs protruded from the bottom of the body. Like a centipede, it scurried smoothly on an array of limbs, and although these were a mixture of arms and legs, it moved with controlled precision.
The body itself bulged with human heads. Dozens of them. Then came the moment when Tom believed he’d gone mad. Because he saw faces he recognized. There, in that monstrous body, were the three transplanted heads of the young men he’d encountered so violently at Mull-Rigg Hall. He saw the large skull of the big man. Next to that, the face of the guy with the poor excuse for a beard that barely covered his chin. And next to him was the one with the spiky mass of bleached hair. Part of his face was missing. This was a result of the bald head that poked from the flesh beside him, which eagerly gnawed at his cheek, ripping away strands of skin.
The three men locked their eyes on to Tom. Those eyes were pure white, apart from the black pupils, and they held a screaming quality. They seemed to be pleading for help. When they opened their mouths, however, all that came out was the same reptile hiss that issued from the other heads embedded in the creature’s flanks.
‘You’ve met Helsvir before, haven’t you?’ Mrs Bekk gloated. ‘He saved you from the men that attacked you.’ She pointed at the three heads. ‘Of course, you see what happened to them. Helsvir doesn’t just eat his victims. He weaves them into the flesh of his own body.’
‘I am dreaming,’ Tom told her with a desperate certainty. ‘This isn’t happening.’
‘You aren’t dreaming, Mr Westonby – and this REALLY IS HAPPENING.’
He tried to break free of the mad woman’s grip.
‘If I let go of you, boy, Helsvir would take you, too. You’d become joined with him. Your head would be part of that fine flesh.’ She laughed. ‘Can you imagine looking out at the world from this magnificent creature? The power you’d feel. The strength you’d possess!’
Tom struggled harder. ‘Let go of me.’
‘If I did, she would tell Helsvir to claim you.’
She? His eyes roamed over the vast body, up over the dozens of heads that stared at him with wild hunger. His heart gave an explosive lurch, because suddenly he saw Nicola. She rode Helsvir as if she rode an elephant. Her legs were at either side of the part of the creature that narrowed and could be safely described as its neck.
‘Nicola!’
‘She can’t hear you, Mr Westonby. She rides Helsvir in her sleep. Nicola will have no memory of this in the morning. In fact, she doesn’t know that Helsvir exists!’
‘Get her away from that thing!’
‘Nicola won’t be harmed. My daughter is amazing, Mr Westonby. She controls Helsvir. She rides this miracle as if she’s tamed him. None of our family has ever taken charge of Helsvir like this before.’
Tom finally understood. ‘So this brute really did attack those men on the driveway the other night?’
‘He saved your life. Be grateful.’
‘There was so much blood . . . I’d have found it the next morning. But you washed it away, then raked the gravel flat. Those men were killed, and you hid the evidence.’
‘They haven’t been killed. No, they’ve been . . . what’s the word? Incorporated. That’s it. They’ve been incorporated into Helsvir. As I told you, the god Thor created Helsvir out of the corpses of my ancestors.’ With deep satisfaction she added, ‘And now Helsvir adds to his body. He incorporates more people into him. He knows how to make himself grow stronger.’
Tom stared at the faces that gleamed in the moonlight. They bulged like white polyps from that hulking monster. The three thugs screamed for help with their eyes. The one with the yellow hair tried to keep his own head clear of the biter next to him. His neck wasn’t long enough. The biter sank his teeth into the soft flesh of the man’s eyelid before tearing a strip of skin away. The wound exposed meat that was blood-red and wet.
The victim’s expression was the essence of agony and despair.
Then Tom gazed up at Nicola. Her eyes were dreamy, far away. The sleep-rider didn’t recognize that her steed was a fusion of reanimated corpses. She didn’t hear the hiss of heads. Nor did she realize that the man she loved stood gazing at her in horror.
Just hours ago Tom had made love to Nicola. But after seeing her astride that abomination could he even bring himself to touch her ever again?
THIRTY-FIVE
At seven the following morning, Tom Westonby walked along the pathway towards Skanderberg. This strange little dwelling of stone beneath a red roof existed alone in the middle of the vast forest. Dark cloud lumbered overhead. Tom approached the monumental archway, which formed the entrance to the Bekk property. Twelve hundred years ago, Nicola’s Viking ancestors had sailed across the ocean from Denmark to this remote part of England. They’d settled here, and this is where they’d been victimized by the local population: English Christian v Pagan Viking. Like so many conflicts between people with different faiths, it had given birth to entire mythologies of war, murder and miracles.
Tom gazed up at the carving on the stone arch. Nicola told him this was Helsvir. The dragon created by Thor to faithfully protect the Bekk family and their descendants. To faithfully protect the family, that is, as long as they remained loyal to the old pagan religion. He reached up to run his fingers over the weathered engraving. The moment he touched the image of the creature he shivered. A blast of energy seemed to leap from the stonework into his fingers. His diver’s instinct for self-preservation sounded the alarms: get away from here. Leave Mull-Rigg Hall. Grab a flight to Greece. Join up with Chris. Forget you ever met Nicola Bekk.
Nevertheless, he pressed his hand against the carving of Helsvir. A jolt ran through his wrist. Was his mind playing tricks? Or was there a form of energy in this masonry after all? Some vital force? Maybe ancient stonework could soak up power like a battery? Tom gazed up at the representation of Helsvir. Snow, ice and rain had eroded it badly, though he recognized the elements of the creature now. There’s the body, he told himself. It resembles the shape of a whale. Elongated. Symmetrical. A teardrop shape lying on its side. Here are the legs that support it. And here, the faces.
But surely you dreamt that you saw Nicola riding the monster last night!
He’d suffered a textbook case of concussion from the beating. Hallucinations and nightmares after a head injury were only to be expected. Yet memories of what he saw – what he half-believed he saw – waged a battle with the rational part of his mind. That part of the mind that had no truck with Nordic dragons or vampires or curses. Tom strenuously tried not to believe what he’d witnessed in the company of Mrs Bekk on the hillside. Play the Doubting Thomas, he told himself. Keep doubting what you saw last night was real otherwise people will think you’re insane. Yet it wasn’t that easy. What was frighteningly easy, however, was recalling the mass of faces peering out from the brute. The mental images made his throat tighten: those three thugs were locked into the body. Prisoners of its flesh. They were part of the fabric of
the creature now.
Mrs Bekk (whether in reality or in his nightmare) had called Helsvir a dragon. Although it was like no dragon that Tom had ever seen before in books or in films. This monstrosity, which had been built out of human corpses, was a machine designed for vengeance. A Frankenstein beast. It absorbed its victims into itself somehow. This dragon didn’t breathe fire and smoke, it breathed violence and destruction.
Even as he drew his hand away from the carving, he recalled the white figures on the hill. Mrs Bekk had told him that they were her sons and daughters; they’d been cursed, because they turned their back on their family’s heritage. Mrs Bekk described them as blood-drinkers. Vampires, for want of a better description.
She claimed that the same fate awaited Nicola if she left Skanderberg for the outside world.
Low cloud made the place gloomy. He felt a sense of oppression. As if some terrible disaster approached.
Tom wanted to talk to Nicola. Her mother claimed that she rode Helsvir in her sleep, that she’d remember nothing of what happened there on the hilltop. However, he needed to find out for himself. Because right now he couldn’t untangle reality from nightmare. The notion that he’d been hallucinating about supernatural beings made him feel hot and panicky, and it was impossible to dislodge either the headache or those terrifying images of Helsvir.
When Tom approached the house he saw the curtains were resolutely shut. Skanderberg was keeping the outside world at bay. Everything suggested that Mrs Bekk and Nicola were still asleep. Although it was tempting to go knock on the door, he had a sudden change of heart: after all, the figures he’d seen had seemed so real. Helsvir had been MORE than real. And what terrified him now was that if he pounded on the door Mrs Bekk might appear and coolly insist that what Tom had seen had actually been there.
If she did so, what did that mean? That Helsvir and the vampire curse were real? Or would it demonstrate that madness is contagious? And somehow Tom Westonby had caught the insanity bug from that deranged woman? If that was the case, Nicola would surely have nothing more to do with him.