The House of the Wicked

16





Generations Long Dead





Shards of firelight flickered and danced in his brandy glass; tiny deformed demons that gyrated to a silent, devilish symphony. He swallowed the amber liquid, draining the glass, and it lingered hot in his throat. But the firelight demons were still there, still dancing, still mocking.

Gerran Hendra stooped forward, grasped a bottle in uncertain fingers and slopped more brandy into his glass. A small puddle spread on the table around it. He did not pause to muse on the demons this time. He drank deep, his lips parting from the rim of the glass and exhaling a profound sigh; he had not touched a drop of alcohol since the night his wife had died. Since Jenna was born. For on that night he had been out late, drinking with business partners, securing investments, whilst at home his wife was screaming in labour. He arrived back at the house in the early hours, with cheeks flushed red and bearing good news for the future of his business an his growing family. But the house was in sombre mood, the maid turning from him in tears. The doctor came to him and told him that the baby girl was alive and well, but something in his grey demeanour spoke of darker things. His dear wife was dead. He could not believe, refused to believe, and rushed to her still, pale form lying in bed, sitting beside her and shaking her shoulders till the doctor gently pulled him away. In a crib by the bed his new daughter cried, and he lifted the tiny bundle to his chest and wept.

Hendra looked at the hand that cradled the bowl of the brandy glass. A huge hand that had once cradled the head of his newborn daughter. The same hand that had struck her viciously across the cheek. His head sank, his eyes closing tiredly, but he knew he could not sleep. Though his body craved the warmth of its embrace he had been cruelly denied this for days now. Almost as if he were being punished. Yet he could not argue against this for he was deserving of it. No one could punish him more than he had already punished himself.

Why was it so cold, he thought? Why, when it should be the tail end of summer still? And the storm, the cliff fall – was there a mighty hand at play here, directed fully against him? He drank the last drops from the glass, and as he bent to refill it again a knock came at the door.

His boulder of a head turned. “Go away!” he yelled. “I told you…”

Reverend Biddle was standing in the doorway. He slowly closed the door behind him. “Gerran, what are you doing, sitting here all alone in this tiny room, in the dark?”

He continued to fill the glass whilst Biddle watched silently. “It is no business of yours. Please go away, Marcus, and leave me in peace.”

Biddle went over to the fireplace. A small, smouldering block of wood had fallen onto the hearth, close to the edge. He nudged it back with the toe of his boot. He regarded Hendra with his hands behind his back. “You are drinking,” he noticed, not with malice or accusation but quietly spoken.

“I cannot argue with the facts,” he fired abruptly.

He removed his glasses, absently inspecting the lenses. “What is wrong, Gerran? You have not been yourself of late.”

The brandy did not hit his mouth as it first had; it was all but tasteless. But the glass partly masked Biddle, shielded him from the man, so he held it there, sipping the alcohol. At length, when the silence between them became too oppressive, he wiped his lips with a drag of his index finger and said: “I am truly sorry about your equipment, Marcus. I will replace it.”

He shrugged, slipping the glasses back on his nose and adjusting them for comfort. “Material things can be repaired or replaced, Gerran, but friendships are less easily restored. And we have been friends for many years, have we not?” He didn’t respond. “And I am here as a friend, to help you.”

“I do not need your help. I am beyond that commodity.” Biddle remained quiet, and at length Hendra shuffled uncomfortably in his chair, placing the glass on the table. “My life has been a long and hard fight, Marcus. You know of my beginnings. I started out in this world with nothing, born kicking and screaming into a poor fisherman’s cottage, but I worked all the hours God gave me, and I dragged myself out of the mire of poverty.”

“Something you should be justifiably proud of, Gerran.”

“I vowed my family would never have to suffer as I did. They would never know hunger, feel the cold.”

“It is a common and praiseworthy ambition.” Biddle’s eyes strayed to a mahogany desk by the window, its surface covered with paper. It was unlike him, he thought; he was generally such a tidy man.

Hendra followed his gaze. “How many years I have sat here poring over the accounts,” he said miserably, “keeping the business afloat.”

Biddle went over to the desk. He noticed a drawer was partially open. Within he saw the distinctive shape of a pistol.

“What is troubling you, Gerran?” he asked, slowly sliding the drawer shut. “You can confide in me.” He turned to see the man reaching for the bottle again, his hand trembling as he did so, fumbling and all but knocking it over. “Gerran, must you?” he said.

He hesitated. Fingers poised by the neck of the bottle. He grabbed it and poured more brandy into his glass. “Yes,” he said. “I must.”

Biddle took the glass from him as it touched his lips. “You have had enough, Gerran.”

His eyes flared angrily. “You will not tell me when I have had enough, by God!” He made a movement to grab the glass back but held himself in check and sank resignedly into his chair. “Forgive me. Forgive me…”

“You are in some kind of trouble, my friend. Please, let me help you.”

His bloodless lips wavered. “I am ruined, Marcus,” he said. “Everything I have worked for reduced to dust.”

“You are feeling maudlin, that’s all. The events of today have been most disheartening and downing this vile brew is not going to help matters.”

“No, trust what I say, I am ruined.” His fingers rubbed his closed eyes. “Why do you think I have been trying to marry Jenna off to some wealthy gentleman? Because I wish to see her married, given away to another man? No, because I wish to save the business. The last few years have been hard for me. I have borrowed heavily and beyond my means to keep the business going. Now I have no more investors, and my creditors hound me for their pound of flesh. The storm has destroyed hundreds of pounds worth of equipment, which I am unable to replace. And this business of the murdered girl has been the final straw. Now the men refuse to work and each day costs me more than I will ever be able to recoup. I am bankrupt, Marcus.” He indicated the room. “All this, everything, will be sold off and I will finish my days as a pauper. And Jenna, what of her? What future for her now?” He shook his head solemnly. “She wanted to invest in more modern equipment, did you know? She has a good head on her shoulders but I could not indulge her ideas.”

“She does not know?”

“Of course not. I thought I might be able to haul us out of this slough, before she found out, but I have failed.” The logs in the grate filled the silence with sparks and cracks. “The police were here,” he continued, “asking their questions. They have taken Jowan, you know, and the body of the girl.”

“Yes, I am aware of that,” he said.

He sighed heavily. “I am not an evil person, Marcus,” he said. “But I have done something very wrong. Yet you must understand I did it for all the right reasons.”

“Was it you that set the men on Jowan?” he said bluntly.

Hendra looked as if his very soul had been scooped out and laid bare before him. “Yes, it was I. You see, I could not have the old fears resurface with his presence. The business could ill afford the disruption. I tried to scare him away. But I had other reasons, Marcus. He was trying to unearth what truly happened to his mother, his father…”

At this Biddle came nearer to Hendra, bent down close to him. He could smell the alcohol hot on his breath. “And what was it that truly happened to his mother? Is there some secret you know, Gerran, for I have found out this very day that Jowan did not kill himself but was seen to be pushed?”

“Pushed?” He looked suddenly quite terrified; pale, old and vulnerable. His lower lip quivering. “That cannot be…”

“The men who did it, they were in your employ. What do you know about this, Gerran? Is this true?”

He moaned loudly. “That was never the intention. None of this was ever intended. My fault! My entire fault!” he said, his eyes wide and wild, “And the girl, last night, that too was my doing!”

“Keziah?” said Biddle incredulously.

“Yes, Keziah. But I did not mean any harm to befall her, or anyone. But it was the storm…”

“You are not making any sense, man,” said Biddle.

“And Jowan’s mother, all those years ago…” He sank his head into his hands and sobbed. “Poor, poor woman…”

He reached out, placed a hand on each of Hendra’s shoulders. “My friend, if you know something then you must confess it.”

His head snapped up, his face a twisted, manic mask. He rose sharply to his feet. “This has to end, Marcus. I cannot hide this any longer. I cannot keep the secret. It has been eating at me for thirteen years. I am damned and I must show you…”

“Show me what?”

He had dashed to the door, sweeping it open. “Come with me, Marcus.”

He followed. They raced down corridors and Hendra strode purposefully, if a little drunkenly, into his library. It was lit only by a couple of oil lamps which gave the faces of the portraits on the wall a luminous quality, floating spectrally out of the gloom above them. Hendra yanked open a drawer in a Davenport, and frantically searched inside, moving aside papers, tossing them onto the floor. He opened another drawer and did the same. “It’s not here!” he said. “It’s not here!”

“What is missing?” Biddle asked.

“The key!” he retorted. “The key is missing!”

“You are raving, man. Calm down!”

Hendra rushed from the room. He met a maid exiting another and called for her. She came to him a little uncertainly. “Yes, sir?”

“Who has been in my library? Who has taken something from my drawer? Is it you?” He grabbed her by the arm and she screwed her face up n horror.

“No, sir, I have not been in the library. I would not take anything, sir…” She pulled back. “You are hurting me, Mr Hendra, sir,” she said.

“Gerran!” said Biddle. “Let the woman free!”

He released her. “Have you seen anyone in there? Anyone at all?”

“Only Miss Hendra, sir. I saw her a little while ago, coming out of the library as she is often want to do. Nothing unusual, sir.”

Hendra swept his hair back and massaged his forehead. “Oh my God,” he said. “She is going to the Bolt…”

“The bolt, Gerran?”

He did not reply but dashed back down the corridor with Biddle hot on his heels. He went immediately to the desk drawer and took out the pistol.

“What on earth are you doing with that thing, Gerran?” he said, alarmed by his friend’s frenzied expression.

“It is my fault,” he said, checking to see if it were loaded. “If anything should happen to her…” He paused to stare deep into Biddle’s unbelieving eyes. “Her ignorance is putting her in grave danger, Marcus,” he said.



* * * *



“Please bring your lantern nearer, Tunny.”

He knelt down, holding the lantern so that it fell upon the trapdoor. “The place is empty save for this in its centre,” he said. “It looks like it has not been used in a long while.”

“It appears,” she said, lifting the old lock on the trapdoor, “that father never intended it to house anything but this, almost as if the stables and its outbuildings had been purposely built around it when the old barn was demolished. This part has always been locked and shut up, never used, and in all honesty I never thought much about it. The only person I know ever to have used it is father.” She slid the key that Jowan had brought with him into the lock, giving Tunny a quick glance before she turned it. There was a satisfying click as the lock sprung open.

“So beneath this door lies what you call the Jacobite Bolt? The one Jowan also spoke of?” he asked.

“It would seem so. Please, take the ring and lift it for me and we can determine the truth.”

He stood the lantern on the floor, grasped the hefty iron ring in the trapdoor’s centre and heaved it open. A chill draught fanned their faces, rushing from a black, fathomless pit. Tunny brought the lantern over the hole and bathed in the weak, buttery glow it revealed a set of wooden steps leading down into the blackness.

“What do you suppose is down there?” he ventured.

“It is my intention to find out,” she said. “Take my hand and help me down, Tunny.”

“I don’t know, Miss Hendra. It does not look safe.”

“Nonsense!” she scolded, and lowered her leg into the cool dark, her foot settling on the wooden step which moved fractionally beneath her weight. “Hold the lantern so that I may see well.” She climbed down. He watched as she sank further beyond the reach of the lantern and out of sight then heard her shoes scrape against stone. He dropped the lantern further into the shaft; it was brick-lined and had the appearance of a chimney stack. Her moon of a face looked up at him from below. “Bring it down here, Tunny. I think there is a tunnel.”

Tunny clambered down and joined her at the base of the shaft, some fifteen feet or so high he estimated. The lantern revealed a low tunnel hewn out of the very rock. It extended beyond the reach of the lantern and again disappeared into blackness.

He squinted in the dull light. “Where do you suppose this leads?” he asked.

“I have no idea, but legend has it that it is an escape tunnel, and as such I warrant there is an exit somewhere, if it is indeed the Jacobite Bolt. Hand me the lantern and I shall lead the way.”

He shook his head. “Begging your pardon, Miss Hendra, but I will take the lead.” He squeezed past her and, at a crouch they began to ease their way down the tunnel.

The walls were wet and shiny with water in places, their shoes splashing in shallow puddles. In some instances the passage was barely wide enough for a person to pass through, the ceiling dropping so low that they were all but on their knees; in others they could almost stand upright. Every now and again Tunny would issue a warning of a proud rock at head height, or some other obstacle likely to trip the unwary. The air grew steadily colder, the draught a little stronger.

“This could go on for miles,” he said eventually, turning to her and calling a halt. “We have been in this tunnel for at least twenty minutes, I should guess, and as yet there appears to be no end to it.”

“There has to be an end. Go on,” she ordered.

He let out a breath that spilled from his lips in a gossamer vapour, said nothing and resumed their trek.

At length she bade him stop. “Look, Tunny,” she said, her hand brushing the rock face. “This tunnel is no longer man-made; this is a natural cave we enter now, probably carved out by an ancient underground river.”

It was true. The rock was smooth and lacked the jagged edges of the previous stretch. “What business does your father have down here?” he asked as they continued to traverse the prehistoric water course.

She did not answer. She glanced back over her shoulder; all she saw was an impenetrable blackness that caused her to shudder involuntarily. They continued for some time before Tunny stopped abruptly.

“Oh my Lord,” he said, turning to her, the lantern at his chest and casting strange, dancing shadows on his face. She could not see what had caused his unease. “This is not something you should see, Miss Hendra,” he said, putting a hand to her shoulder as she moved forward.

“Don’t be foolish, Man!” she chastised. “Give me the lantern.” She had to snatch it from him and held it out before her to light the narrow passage.

On either side the walls appeared to take on the form of gnarled, twisted tree roots. But as she advanced she saw what had caused Tunny’s concern. They were constructed of human skulls, stacked neatly on top of each other, from floor to ceiling, and in between them dense layers of other human bones, laced neatly and precisely together. The flickering lantern gave the effect of movement, as if the skulls were alive, their lipless mouths uttering silent words, their eyeless sockets staring balefully at them as them as they passed.

“The legend of Myghal Connoch and his cave of skulls is true!” said Tunny, his face bathed in both awe and fear.

“It is an ossuary,” she said. “An ancient burial place used by a race of people long dead and forgotten.” She held the lantern closer to the rack of skulls. Some of them had crumbled into formless grey masses. “Myghal is a myth,” she continued, “but knowledge of this, or a distant memory of it, helped promulgate the myth.”

“There are hundreds of people buried here,” he said.

“It must have been used for many, many years, for generations of people lie in these walls of bones.” She moved on further into the cave, taking the light with her. Tunny hurried to catch up. “This place had to be accessible for it to have been used so.” She sniffed the air. “Do you smell that, Tunny?”

He tested the air. “Yes, it is the sea. I can smell the sea.”

“The escape route must lead to the coast,” she surmised, “to one of the many cave entrances that lie at the base of the cliffs.”

“The caves along the coast have been explored many times,” he said. “It would have been discovered long ago.”

“Unless the caves had become inaccessible over time, like the ones in Baccan’s Maw. Those are now impossible to reach from the cliff top, for it is so steep and dangerous to climb down, and they cannot be reached by sea because of Baccan’s Teeth and the many treacherous rocks.”

The bones extended for about fifty yards then gave way to bare rock face again. They took a sharp dogleg and were immediately brought up by a time-blackened wooden door barring the way.

“That is not something I expected,” said Tunny, inspecting the huge twin bolts that held it fast at top and bottom.

“Certainly this was not built by the ancients,” she replied. “The bolts have been recently greased, too.”

“Not a door designed to keep people out,” mused Tunny, “for there is no lock; but possibly designed to keep something in?”

She frowned. Beyond this door, she knew, lay the answer. Her delicate fingers grasped the bolt at the bottom and slid it back. The noise sounded like a gunshot in the narrow cave. She reached up for the top bolt.



* * * *