The Colony Part 24

Professor Philip Fortescue was better looking than McIntyre expected him to be. He had a portentous job-t.i.tle and a sing-song Liverpuddlian lilt to his voice that grated a bit on the phone. But in the flesh he was tall and fine-featured with wavy strawberry-blond hair he wore quite long. He was shy and hid rather behind the armour of his gold framed spectacles. But he was not a timid. He was fired up and determined.

'Start at the beginning, Professor. Tell me all of it.'

'You know the sea chest stuff.I don't think there's all that much time. We can't sit around chatting.'

'You've just endured a five hour drive. You need to eat something. I'll order some food and a pot of coffee. You can't run on empty, as our American friends are so rightly fond of saying.'

'I don't have any American friends.'

'But you do know what I mean.'

'I suppose so.'

'Persuade me of the provenance of the Horan journal and if you do I'll read it and if I'm convinced by what it contains, I will help you in any way I can. I don't see how I can say much fairer than that.'

Fortescue told him about Edith Chambers' first phone call and Jacob Parr and the short account of the Great Affliction he had found. He told him about the Barnsley Nightingale and La.s.siter's name-change hunch and Emma Foot and his ordeal in the Elsinore Pit and the failure of Ballantyne's bird to arrive. Then McIntyre read the journal as his guest first paused for breath and then ate ravenously.

He read with mixed emotions. The New Hope Island vanis.h.i.+ng had fascinated him since childhood. He had abandoned his earlier, cherished belief in alien intervention without feeling as much disappointment as he would have expected to. Ever since viewing the film Shanks had shot and La.s.siter had cleverly tracked down, he had suspected, at least subconsciously, that the mystery had in reality a much darker explanation.

He had not thought, though, that it would be as sinister as the Horan journal implied it was. He had thought the apparition Cooper had called a revenant just some poor restless spirit, an infant wretch unaware she had died of cholera or typhoid. The journal suggested it was something demonic, brought back in the shape of Ballantyne's dead daughter to taunt him.

The fact that it was still there when Shanks had settled on New Hope was disturbing. The idea that it might still be there now, though, was terrifying. Seeing it in two dimensions on a screen in a viewing room was bad enough when you were cradling a large gla.s.s of single malt whisky. Having it creep up while you slept and wake you with its antic laughter was the stuff of nightmares.

While the spectre of his dead daughter had been taunting Ballantyne, his community had been slowly and deliberately consumed. They had called it the Great Affliction and it had invaded their Kingdom of Belief. But it had also been the being that hungers in the darkness; something born of virulent magic a continent distant to pursue and destroy in a vengeful spree and the vanis.h.i.+ng had been the consequence.

McIntyre finished reading and closed the journal. He was no longer in any doubt about what had happened to the community on New Hope Island. He now felt that he knew conclusively. And the knowledge gave him no satisfaction at all. He felt sick and empty with dread at what he'd sent people into.

'The thing is it's still there, Mr McIntyre,' Fortescue said. 'Horan is emphatic on that because the sorcerer stressed the point with such certainty and solemnity. He regretted unleas.h.i.+ng it, even as he lay dying. Unless the ritual is enacted that counters it, unless those words are recited that stops it, it just carries on. That's what it was born for. That's all it knows.'

Spite made flesh, McIntyre thought.

'They'll perish there if it isn't put an end to. All of them.'

McIntyre didn't reply. He was thinking of the scream Napier had reported hearing from Blake before failing to find Blake's body. He was thinking about the joke he had made at the missing man's expense.

'What do you need?' he said to Fortescue.

'Is there still no radio contact with New Hope?'

'There's been no communication whatsoever since lunchtime yesterday.'

'Think it will be re-established?'

'I'm sceptical we'll restore it anytime soon.'

'Then I want you to charter me a helicopter.'

'There's an Atlantic storm in the vicinity of New Hope. It may last for a couple of days. The weather is still deteriorating there as we speak. Nothing is flying in that airs.p.a.ce.'

'Charter me a boat, then. I have to get to the island.'

'Can you handle a boat? Can you navigate?'

'Theoretically, I can. I work at a maritime museum.'

'We'll take my plane from here to Mallaig and charter a vessel there. We may encounter some reluctance from the boat hire people, but we'll get something if I pay over the odds. The Scots are pa.s.sionately fond of money and I say that from personal experience. Though the coast guard will strongly advise against our going out, they can't physically stop us, whatever the weather.'

'You're coming with me?'

'I'm an experienced sailor from a seafaring family. I did my national service as a navigation officer aboard a battle cruiser and I've messed about in boats since I was a young child. Captains Pugwash and Birdseye have more legitimate seagoing expertise than you possess, young man. And those people are my responsibility. I sent them to New Hope Island.'

Degrelle told his little congregation what the Cardinal had told him. It was what Samuel Trent had imparted in the confessional after his escape in an open boat from New Hope Island in 1823. He had fled a full two years before the vanis.h.i.+ng of the settlement. But strange and brutal things were going on there and the boy had played his murderous part in those events.

Ballantyne's daughter Rachel died of diphtheria at the age of eight in 1804. She had been loved and she was mourned. But she did not stay restful in her grave. She returned to haunt the captain on New Hope. Her ragged apparition terrified the community and drove their spiritual leader half-mad with despair.

He would see her. And then he would not see her for weeks. He would foster in himself the half-dared hope that she had gone forever. And then one day he would feel a chill and lift his gaze and see her watching him from the heights or wake to see her standing inches above the floor at the foot of his bed, staring at him with the eyes that were only empty sockets now.

He knew the source of the magic that had rekindled her and contaminated her spirit with evil. He remembered his s.a.d.i.s.tic treatment of the sorcerer aboard the slave s.h.i.+p he had commanded in his former, sinful life. He knew that this was the man's revenge for the punitive mutilation that had ended his existence.

Ballantyne thought he knew what it was that would break the spell tormenting him and manipulating Rachel's tortured soul. And that was sacrifice. He had learned something of the customs of the countries he had traded with. He had spoken with their shamans and their holy men and their mystics and their priests and they all insisted sacrifice was the key to power and prosperity.

He knew it from Allbache and Dahomey and half a dozen other kingdoms he had traded with in Africa. He would pay for the power in blood to eradicate forever the dark magic contaminating his own Kingdom of Belief.

At first, Degrelle told his silent audience, he sacrificed only the dying. Then, he sacrificed the old. And when that did not work, he sacrificed the sick, if they ailed to an extent where it did not look like they would fully recover.

All of this was done in secret. None of the people from the mainland with whom the island's commerce was conducted ever found out about it. But it did not work. Still Ballantyne was tormented by the spectre of the child he had loved and lost and grieved for so bitterly.

He built a special place, his Temple of Darkness, a church without windows in which the sacrificial ceremonies could be staged with elaborate ritual. He recruited boys from among his community to carry out the sacrifices for him.

These were accomplished with cleavers, said Samuel Trent, who was one the boys instructed to accomplish this b.l.o.o.d.y task. There were robes and incantations. Candles spluttered and incense wafted pungently. But Trent said it was no different really in method from the slaughter of a goat.

The sacrifices never entirely stopped. They decreased in number when they were seen even by the leader of the settlement to have no effect in freeing him from his torment. But by that time they were a part of what New Hope saw as its own religious orthodoxy. And so they continued, one a month, the sacrificial victim chosen by the drawing of lots.

'He was a f.u.c.king lunatic,' Walker said, when Degrelle had finished. 'Sorry about the language, Father.'

'I've heard worse,' Degrelle said, smiling faintly.

'He was a butcher,' Alice said.

'Thank G.o.d you didn't enter the church when we went to the settlement,' La.s.siter said to her. 'It was a charnel house.'

'A Temple of Darkness,' Jane said, 'in a Kingdom of Belief. What are you going to do, Father? Are you going to sanctify the building?'

'If there is anything demonic on the island, that will be its home,' Degrelle said. 'I will perform the rite of exorcism there in the morning.'

'Weather permitting,' Lucy said.

'The weather won't enter into it,' Degrelle said. 'I will brave the tempest or the deluge, my dear. It is what the Cardinal sent me here to do.'

'You're nervous about it, aren't you, Father?' Napier said.

Dregrelle said, 'I'm fortunate in that I've never for one moment doubted my faith. But I don't think I've ever faced a test as formidable as this. The island has been drenched in innocent blood. It has been a bastion of sinful pride and blasphemy. For two centuries, it has been contaminated with evil. It is a wicked place.'

'I'm nervous just about tonight,' Davis said. 'That storm sounds pretty fierce. And it's strengthening.'

'You're not as nervous as Cooper's going to be, alone in that abandoned settlement,' Lucy said.

'He isn't alone,' Degrelle said. 'Some living affront to G.o.d lurks in the church without windows. Something spewed from h.e.l.l is harboured in that stone insult to Christian faith. He has that creature in the settlement for company.'

La.s.siter said, 'Does anyone really think Karl Cooper is still alive?'

'I don't,' Alice said.

Walker said, 'I should think that settles it, then,' and he barked a laugh that sounded to Napier uncomfortably close to hysteria.

There wasn't much drinking or much conversation after Degrelle had said his piece. He stated that he intended to set off for the settlement to perform his sacrament at dawn. Then he left for his room and his vigil of prayer and whatever scant ration of sleep that heavyweight penitent allowed himself.

Napier felt pretty tired on his own account. He was close to sleep himself when he heard a soft knocking through the thud and crush of wind outside, against his door.

It was Lucy. She closed the door behind her and shed her clothes still walking and slipped into the single bunk beside him. She felt deliciously warm.

'What's this?'

'I suppose you could call it a down-payment on the bill for saving my life.'

'I'm really sorry I said that.'

'I know you are. If you weren't, I wouldn't be here.'

He reached his arms around her and held her tightly to him. He kissed her.

When the kiss broke she said, 'I'm going with Degrelle in the morning. It's my job. If something happens, I need to be there to see it.'

'Above and beyond, I'd say.'

'I'm scared,' she said. 'Just hold me, Paul.'

They held each other at the start, flesh on flesh, entangled together. At the finish, they fell asleep that way.

La.s.siter and Alice lay in her bed together, awake. She said, 'I'm worried about what will happen to you, Patrick, if anything happens to me.'

After a moment he said, 'What about the others?'

'Jane and Lucy are coping. So is Napier, remarkably. His man Walker is on the verge of cracking up, though. And we have a priest in denial about the loss of his faith.'

'You don't need to worry about me,' La.s.siter said. 'I haven't left your side since hearing about the warning in the cottage and I won't, now. If anything happens to you, I'll already be dead.'

Shortly after he said that, she fell asleep. And La.s.siter suddenly remembered the young professor from Liverpool with the arcane job t.i.tle he'd refused to help because he could not let Alice come here on her own. He didn't feel at all confident about his ability to protect her. They were all of them clueless here, all of them miles out of their depth. They were helpless, no more any of them really he feared, than prey.

He wondered had the Keeper of Artefacts had any success in his search for the lost doc.u.ment compiled aboard the Andromeda. He very much doubted now that he would ever get the chance to have that question answered.

Chapter Thirteen.

Waves broke white and wrathful over the bow. The craft bucketed under their weight and immensity. The stink of Diesel rose through the smart of brine. 'My father captained one of these,' McIntyre said, roaring into the tempest to be heard. To Fortescue, he seemed almost exultant, 'modest upbringing, mine. Self-made wealth, my lad, it's the only sort worth having.' He cackled like a pirate happily freed from the moorings of sanity.

Wind moaned and shrilled through the rust stained superstructure. Their toiling engine made the steel deck thrum under his feet. Philip Fortescue lifted his head and the sky was bruise coloured and tumultuous above him when he raised his eyes to blink at it through the deluge it spat down.

They hadn't been able to hire a boat. They'd arrived at Mallaig too late for that. Instead, McIntyre had bought an old trawler from a man they'd met in a pub on the harbour. It didn't seem at the time the most watertight of arrangements to Fortescue, but he had to concede, however grudgingly, that it was the quickest way in the circ.u.mstances to get them to the island.

McIntyre said the tub they were aboard was the same cla.s.s of vessel his father had worked out of Aberdeen, fis.h.i.+ng for mackerel. Fortescue's educated guess was that she was about sixty or seventy years past her prime. But McIntyre's logic was that a working boat was the safest bet to get them where they were going in the conditions confronting them. On land, it had seemed a more convincing argument.

They had started their voyage in calm weather. The harbour had been tranquil and the open sea beyond it an emerald waste disturbed only by the odd whitecap. They had set a deliberate course for the island and therefore, for the storm raging around it. Now they were cresting rises that sent them careening down into canyons of black water. And McIntyre seemed to be enjoying it. He was evidently one of those infuriating men enlivened by a dangerous challenge.

The swell gleamed and glimmered in the yellow spread cast by the bow light. Fortescue was reminded of the Dylan Thomas poem; the one about singing in chains. He was almost delirious with fear. He supposed elemental was the word, but he hadn't known the elements were anywhere near as vast and delinquent as this.

It was a failure of imagination, he knew, because his job, over the years, had offered him an abundance of clues. Vessel foundered was a familiar phrase to him. So was, all hands lost. In mitigation, theory and practice were an unplumbed distance apart. He did not think that you could imagine the violence of the sea in an Atlantic storm. You really had to witness this phenomenon first hand.

The boat pitched, McIntyre cackling dementedly as he wrestled with the wheel against the rudder and forced their course.

Fortescue puked over the side. He'd already parted with the expensive meal his host had provided him with at the Hotel on the loch. Anything else he was retching up was bile. It was close to midnight and they were making about 14 knots according to his mad, elderly skipper and it was the longest waking day of his life.

The previous day had earlier qualified as the longest day of his life, but its t.i.tle had been dismayingly short lived. An abandoned mine shaft at the Elsinore Pit outside Barnsley was uncomfortable and testing. Being on a boat in a storm as severe as this was infinitely greater an ordeal.

He looked at the water, uneasy in the knowledge that it was a thousand fathoms deep. It was a dark and silent graveyard down there, littered with hulks like the one he was aboard. He puked again and closed his eyes but with his eyes closed, he felt if possible, even worse. There was that anodyne phrase, wasn't there? I'm out of my comfort zone. Beyond that, though, there was the abyss of uncertainty he felt he teetered above. I'm not out of my comfort zone, he thought. I'm totally out of my depth.

Sour-throated and with no saliva, he croaked out the words of the ritual to himself. He had learned them by heart. They needed to be recited with vigour and commitment. That was what Horan's journal had implied. Merely incanting the phonetic sounds and phrases would not do it. Strength and concentration were required to evoke the necessary magic. They had been qualities beyond the sorcerer, remorseful over what he had unleashed, as he lay lapsing in and out of consciousness, dying in the slave hold of the Andromeda.

Should he survive this crossing and reach New Hope, Fortescue would recite the words he had memorised there himself, enact the ritual and so save Jane Chambers the bother. There would be no real need then to pa.s.s the journal on to her at all.

He would give it to her anyway. He had no wish to cross the ghost of Jacob Parr. Parr had not sounded particularly nice when Edith had described him and Horan's description was of a sly and self-serving man treacherous and entirely without principle.

So why had he helped? Edith had thought that he did so only reluctantly. Someone or something had scared his truculent spirit into obliging. That suggested there were good as well as malevolent forces at work. Of course there were. It was a battle, wasn't it? It was a conflict that had been going on since the dawn of recorded time. Fortescue didn't really want to pursue that line of thought too far, though. Not aboard a boat in a storm, he didn't. Events seemed fatalistic enough as it was.

McIntyre was singing. He was singing a f.u.c.king sea shanty. Was there no mercy? Fortescue could half-hear the bellowed verses in odd lines not s.n.a.t.c.hed away by the gale. He recognised the tune. It was The Wild Goose. It was a song Kate Rusby sang on the alb.u.m, Sleepless.

He did not honestly have any great optimism that he would survive this crossing, never mind this whole experience. He was acting only out of a rash promise made over the phone to a sobbing adolescent girl. If he did by some fluke make it, he resolved there and then that he would never listen to music of that sort again. It was too maudlin, altogether too mournful and sad. From now on, for Phil Fortescue, it was going to be Metallica. Iron Maiden, if he was in a particularly wistful mood.

There was a radio aboard the trawler, a powerful old a.n.a.logue transmitter with a range that enabled it to pick up almost anything. The aerial reached above the wheelhouse but the set itself was in the galley below, where the charts and distress flares and other bits and pieces of important nautical kit were kept.

Soaked through, s.h.i.+vering and sick to the bone, he went down to try to divert himself from the physical fact of the storm by trying to make contact with the expedition base. It was his third attempt to do so. Dregs of cocoa lay staining an enamel mug on the table bearing the transmitter. He had parted company with the mug's contents over the gunwale about an hour earlier. He retched sourly at the memory and sat with a grimace in front of the set.