Witch Hunt

Chapter Forty-Six




When I came back to myself I could distinguish Felix’s form across the grass. The moonlight crawled across him. There were no moths upon what was left of his face.

His body wasn’t moving.

From where I lay, maybe three feet away, I just about made out a dark stain seeping over his clothes. I pulled myself onto my hands and knees and crawled to him. My body felt out of sync, as if on some time delay. I couldn’t hear a thing – I’d been temporarily deafened by the shots.

Part of Felix’s head was misshapen and concave. One remaining red eye stared up into the night sky, unseeing. The expression on his face was a rictus of surprise. His shiny brown hair was covered in thick bloody clumps of matter. I prodded his arm. My hand met with no resistance. A ragged and bloody hole was in the place where his chest should have been.

In the struggle his clothes had become dishevelled. And that’s when I saw it – glinting, sticking up from between the ragged exposed ribs.

The bone pipe.

I knew there was something in that bloody thing. An evil or menace that may have even predated Hopkins, but was certainly compounded by him. A dark suckling thing that fed off corruption and horror and fear and blood.

And perverted those who used it.

Felix had given it a taste for blood back then at St Botolph’s Priory and now it was guzzling greedily.

‘You shouldn’t have blown it, Felix,’ I said and closed his eye.

Then I trailed my fingers over his chest and grabbed hold of the pipe. With a wrench I yanked it out of his heart. A warm jet of liquid gushed round my fingers, making them slippery, but I kept hold of it.

Wiping the vile thing on his jacket I reached into my pocket for my lighter. There was an old cigarette packet in there. I put the pipe into it, lit the packet and poured the liquid lighter fuel on top. Then I sat and watched it burn.

I don’t know how long I stayed there beside Felix’s body under the all-seeing moon. The bullet had caught my shoulder and I was losing blood, going into shock. Scared that I was going to bleed out, with a mega effort I raised myself up, washed my clothes down in the river, wiped my fingerprints from the gun.

Then, taking the briefcase, I slipped into the mist, just like my forefather had done.