The Book: Chapter 41

The road up-country from Barrow to Ravenglass was notoriously bad but undeniably beautiful. Mick told her to relax and enjoy the drive, but he might as well have peed into the wind. Alice was too riled up to sit still, never mind relax. She’d seen enough horror movies to know that people who walked toward ominous buildings in the dark usually ended up dead. So, naturally, they were doing it anyway.

Again, they’d set off at the worst possible time. Mick had tried convincing her to wait until morning—after all, she had no job to rush to—but Alice wasn’t having it. ‘This is a terrible idea. It’ll be dark by the time we get there, and don’t expect any street lights in the middle of sodding Armageddon,’ he said.

He was right. Before they’d hit Bootle, shadows stretched across the fields, distorting the landscape into eerie shapes. And, by the time they reached the site—after getting lost twice—night had settled in. It cast the ruins of St Eustace as an unsettling hulk under the moonlight. At least the sky was clear around here with no town smog to dull the stars, which had all come out to watch the two crazy humans tramping down a rutted track in the dark. Hawthorn hedges rose on either side of them close enough to touch and thin double tyre tracks formed the path they walked along. This was a place that nature nourished and time had forgotten. The ground for miles around was uneven and only used for grazing. A few dotted farms in the foothills of the fells and forestry, were the only buildings, apart from the ruin they’d come to visit. There was a trickle of running water, somewhere to their left, but it was distant.  

Mick still favoured his healing leg, so Alice had driven. ‘Flipping heck, I didn’t realise it was going to be this far from the road,’ she said.

The ruins appeared suddenly as they crested an incline in the uneven ground. It wasn’t large, but it had the wreckage of cloisters and the crumbling high walls of the nave, transepts, and presbytery. A fully formed arch in red stone stood at the east end of the old church, where an impressive stained-glass window had been.

She didn’t need the book to tell her this place was touched by the unnatural. The air had the same weight as when the book showed its presence. It was thick and unmoving, pressing against their skin as the land tried to turn them back to their car. They were unwelcome here.

The priory’s skeletal remains rose from the evening mists. It was accessed by a rusted iron gate that hung open, swaying, though no hand had touched it. Come in, come in. The book taunted Alice.

After making the ancient ruins as inhospitable as possible seconds ago, it virtually grabbed their hands and dragged them in. Contrary as ever, it whispered in Alice’s head and she had to try and block it out. Welcome to my dungeon. Won’t you come on in? Secrets abide and memories linger, but will you be astute enough to glean my knowledge? Or will Cerberus come forth to guide you to the underworld? She heard the voice as clearly as when Mick spoke to her, but she kept what it was saying to herself. There was no point in them both being more rattled than they needed to be.

The Lakeland stone walls looked unearthly, shrouded in the sudden fog rising from the ground. They were fractured and jagged, their grand structures reduced to crumbling danger. The windows had long since lost their glass and were open holes, staring like blind eyes into the darkness.

Mick looked at Alice and squeezed her hand. ‘Ready?’

She held on for dear life. ‘Let’s go.’

As they stepped through the gate onto the overgrown path of the old central courtyard, their torches cut beams through the darkness, illuminating wild brambles. Passing through a smaller gate, they entered the cemetery where ancient gravestones stood and listed. Their inscriptions were worn away by centuries of Northern English weather and neglect. Their footsteps were heavy in the soft mud as the ground remembered all the wrongs buried in the past.

Something moved in the gloom ahead of them. A fluid shadow, fast and sleek slipped between the walls of the old church and was gone before they could react. Alice’s breath caught in the frigid air. ‘Did you see that?’

Mick nodded. ‘We’re not alone.’

Whatever whispered from below knew they were coming. It had been waiting for them.

Because many of the walls had crumbled long ago, the crypt had been exposed enough that they had no trouble locating it. A narrow set of steps hewn into the rock led below ground to a sinister subterranean level. It had a wrought iron fence enclosing the entrance, and a sign warning, Danger, but somebody— maybe many people—had already breached it, leaving the steps accessible in their wake. Alice hoped they were behind them and weren’t waiting for them under the earth, in the dark. Somebody had pushed a slab across the corner to hide the opening, but it seemed pretty pathetic.

They stood at the entrance to the crypt pulling on their nerve. It looked like a yawning maw beneath the old priory, drawing them into its perverse darkness. The stone slab was heavy, resisting their intrusion, but it wasn’t so heavy that they couldn’t slide it out of the way. The steps descended into a black hole so complete that Alice didn’t know if she could do it. The smell of damp stone, mildew, and something older—something wrong—rose to meet them.

‘Do you think it’ll hold us?’ Mick asked.

‘Probably not. But if we want answers that’s where we need to go.’

 ‘I’ve just got my cast off, and I don’t fancy being dropped down there with no way back up. You wait here so you can run for help if anything goes wrong,’ Mick said.

‘Sure, I’ll wait up here, alone in the dark, with the haunted hedges and demon trees. Not a chance, Bear Grylls. We’re in this together.’

She heard a noise and gripped his arm. ‘There’s evil here,’ she whispered.

He swallowed, and his Adam’s apple bobbed like an oblong sweet in a Pez dispenser tube. ‘It doesn’t want us here.’

‘But the book does,’ Alice replied.

‘Aren’t they the same thing?

‘I don’t know. But this is where the book wants us to be. I feel it. And, there’s more than one presence here.’

It wasn’t just the cold and damp. They felt the lurking ghosts, unseen but unmistakable. A watching, waiting group of entities.’

‘They’re here,’ Alice said. Her voice came back to her on an echo making them both jump. She forced herself forward, every muscle screaming at her to turn back.

Their footsteps echoed in the confined space as they descended. The narrow steps were slick with a greasy substance beneath their boots and the build-up of moss harboured a spongy mould. It released its spores into the dank air. The walls were damp, the porous stones breathing out an ancient fetid chill.

The crypt opened into a long, arched chamber. It was lined with burial alcoves, but any skeletal remains had long since turned to dust. The air was oppressive, vibrating with an energy that made the hairs on Alice’s arms stand on end. She felt something waiting for them at the far end of the chamber.

A massive stone relief stretched across the back wall, lit by the beams of their torches. As they moved closer—and nearer to the threat—they saw the rear wall etching. It was stunning and intricate in design, and the craftsmanship was incredible. A mural depicted a cloaked figure in a monk’s habit. Its arms were raised and it clutched a dark book, holding it aloft as it incanted. Surrounding him were other hooded monks performing some diabolic ritual. Their faces were upturned to the man at the front, who stood on a raised platform in the picture. Their faces twisted into grotesque expressions, and Alice couldn’t tell if they were in agony or lost in religious ecstasy. Their hands stretched outward, forming a ring of bodies forever locked in the sacred—or sacrilegious—rite. Though these monks were men of Christian faith, a slaughtered goat’s head lay on the altar in stark contradiction to their supposed beliefs. The scene reeked of black magic, its carved figures frozen mid-ritual, caught in something evil and dangerously wrong.

Forgetting her fear for the moment, Alice’s eyes were drawn to the floor at the base of the central figure where something else drew her attention. Barely noticeable at first, a child knelt at the feet of the dark abbot.

   A girl had no place in this madness. 
 

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