Dawn of the Demontide (20 page)

By the time they reached the midpoint of the staircase sweat was running down their faces. They were now about fifty metres up. Rachel looked over the edge. The colour drained from her face and she swallowed hard.

It was strange—the higher they climbed the colder the air became. Their breath began to snake before them in grey twists. Legs aching, lungs burning, they reached the cavern ceiling. Those huge stalactites loomed all around them. Up close, Jake saw the similarities between these figures and the ones below. Each was unique and yet they shared the same human-like features: faces and limbs hewn from the rock by the constant drip of water. Another weird aspect of these gargoyles was the fact that their faces seemed to be turned towards the staircase.

Turned towards Jake and Rachel.

The staircase continued through a large hole carved out of the ceiling. The luminous lichen did not spread beyond the cavity. Torches in hand, Jake and Rachel climbed into the darkness.

That was when the whispers began.

‘
Hear him—his footstep in the dark—his tread upon the stair
.’

‘
He returns at the End of All Things. At the Dawn of the Demontide
…’

Rachel shuddered. The voices were as sharp as knives. The torch in her hand flickered twice and went out.

‘
He is not alone. I sense another. Her fear is like the sweetest symphony
…’

‘
A girl. But it is not HER.
’

‘
No, no, no,
’ the voices gabbled together. ‘
SHE has not returned with him. She is long gone, and cannot re-emerge from the dust of death. The mortals cannot pluck HER from the pages of history.
’

A single voice, rich and slurping rose up. ‘
But deep down, he
will
remember her. His sweet Eleanor
…’

‘Eleanor … ’ It was Jake’s voice, hollow and sad.

Rachel’s torch sparked back into life.

They were standing in a small chamber, roughly five metres in height and width. It was horribly cold, the steps and the walls coated with ice. The staircase continued right up to the roof. Jake was kneeling near the top of the steps, his hand hovering an inch below the grey stone ceiling. Elaborate designs—moons and stars, pentagrams and triangles, figures and faces—were carved all over the stone. At the centre was a symbol in the rough shape of a trident. Reddish-brown stains had been smeared all across this marking.

‘What is it?’ Rachel asked.

‘It’s a doorway,’ said Jake. ‘
The
Doorway.’

‘To what?’

He shook his head. Rachel joined him beneath the Door.

‘Those voices?’

‘Them. They are waiting to break through. It won’t be long now.’ He sounded distant, as if his soul had flown far away from Crowden’s Sorrow. ‘We can’t stop it, Rachel. The Demontide is coming … ’

‘
He admits defeat!
’ the voices echoed gleefully.

Jake put his hands over his ears. Tears coursed down his cheeks.

‘
What would his beloved think if she saw him now? His sweet Eleanor. His long-dead maiden. She would weep for him
…’

‘DO NOT SPEAK OF HER!’

Jake roared the command. His eyes blazed. He pressed his palms against the stone door. All at once, the swirls and triangles, the moons and pentagrams shone with a fiery blue light. Screams of surprise and fear rang out from beyond the Doorway.

‘Now cease your wicked prattle,’ Jake said. He took his hands from the stone. ‘I shall meet you soon enough. Then shall our reckoning commence.’

A single, dark voice broke out. ‘
We shall look forward to it, old friend. In the meantime, the Third Omen is come.
’

The sound of stone breaking against stone rose up from the cavern. It echoed like thunder in the little chamber.

‘What is it?’ Rachel cried.

‘Gargoyles,’ Jake said, his voice normal again. ‘They’re waking up.’

Hand in hand, they raced down the steps and out of the chamber.

Rachel halted at the stop of the staircase. She had tried not to look down as they climbed. Now, standing at this dizzy height, it was impossible not to stare at the cavern floor hundreds of metres below. She could feel Jake gently pulling at her arm. As the sound of splitting stone rang out on all sides, she tried to move. She could not.

‘We have to get out of here.’ Jake stood before her, blocking her view. ‘Keep your eyes on me. Don’t look down. We have to move fast.’

She allowed herself a stray sideways glance. Her gaze fell on one of the stalactites. Growing out of the roof, its weathered skin resembled that of an old woman, her arms thrown over her head. One of the arms flinched—creaked—and reached out for the stairs.

‘Let’s go,’ Rachel nodded.

They plunged headlong down the staircase, taking the steps three at a time. From all around came the sound of stone monsters awakening. The air filled with dust. Within seconds the floor of the cavern had been coated in a grainy mist. The dust roiled and began to climb the stairs. It reached Jake and Rachel and obscured all but the step in front of them.

‘I can’t see the edge of the staircase,’ Rachel said. ‘We could fall.’

‘Have to—to keep going,’ Jake choked.

They tore a path through the dust. Occasionally, as they ran, Jake would look down and his eye would catch movement in the mist. A misshapen head, a giant fist, a twisted red back loomed out of the shadows. Glancing up, he could see the stalactites clamber across the cavern roof and down the walls. Soon they would join their brothers below. The walls quaked as dozens of craggy hands and feet descended.

Jake hit the floor with a jolt. He turned to Rachel. Hair and skin dusted white, the girl looked ghostly.

‘The gap in the wall’s straight ahead,’ Jake shouted. ‘Don’t stop for anything!’

They ran.

As they dodged across the wet, uneven ground, Jake tried to keep his thoughts on the path ahead. It was not easy. His mind kept slipping back to that moment at the Door. It had felt as if another soul had taken possession of his body; that another voice had been speaking through him. And yet, in some sense, he had been comfortable with that strange presence. As comfortable as he had been in his dreams of the Witchfinder.

ELEANOR.

The name made his heart ache …

The bone-shattering arm of a gargoyle swung wide and crashed into Jake. His hand slipped out of Rachel’s and he soared through the mist. Stone faces with hollow eyes passed by in a whirl. He hit the ground and all the air left his body.

‘Jake!’ Rachel screamed his name over and over.

‘Don’t stop!’ he cried back. ‘I’ll meet you at the mouth of the cave!’

He got to his feet. Nothing appeared to be broken. Eyes narrowed, he peered into the dust clouds. It was difficult to tell from which direction he had been propelled. The green light shone weakly through the dust and gave him little sense of his whereabouts. The stalagmites had been the only signposts in the cave, and
they
were now on the move. All he could do was run and hope for the best.

Shadows lumbered through the haze. Sometimes they were close enough for Jake to make out their crude features. He saw a gigantic shape stalk past, its three heads turning this way and that. One colossal form pounded the earth with spade-like fists. Another jumped into the air and landed a few metres away from Jake. The ground trembled as each of the giants passed. They were like dinosaurs roaming through the mist of a primeval swamp.

Jake reached the cave wall. The best course of action was to grope his way around until he found the gap. It was a good plan. The only trouble was that the stone block against which he stood was
not
the wall of the cave.

Stunned, Jake could only watch as the ‘wall’ rose into the air. Easily the size of a double-decker bus, the largest of the stalactites towered above him, its great foot hovering overhead. Any minute now the foot would fall and crush Jake into a fine paste. It was stupid, but he didn’t feel he could move. He held his breath and waited for death.

A second before the foot fell, he felt himself being swept into the air. A huge stone hand held him fast. His hair flew back as the creature raced across the cave, anxious to keep its prize for itself. A moment later, Jake was thrown to the ground, the giant’s hand slapped across his body and he was trapped. He peered up at his captor.

The stalactite was not as large as some of its brothers, being roughly the height of Stonycroft Cottage. Bent almost double, its face sat in its chest. A pair of broad shoulders ended in somewhat stumpy arms, so that it had to lean to one side to hold Jake down. Its legs too were thick and short. It looked like exactly what it was: a boulder that had sprouted limbs. Hollow eyes and a crack for a mouth made up the face. The gargoyle raised its fist, ready to pound.

This time, Jake’s brain did not seize up.

Deep in his mind, he flipped open the pages of his dark catalogue. He chose a particular area of horror fiction.
Think, think. Stone monsters … Beings created from the earth … The homunculus—a creature created by the ancient alchemists. Frankenstein’s monster was a kind of homunculus. No, no, no. Medusa, the snake-headed gorgon? Her stare could turn people into stone. NO. Come on, come on. The Golem! Yes, the Jewish monster that was made from clay and animated by rabbis.
But what good was that knowledge?

The creature drew back its hand. Its crack mouth widened into a smile. Fresh dust fell from between its massive fingers.

Emet.
That was the word used by rabbis to animate the Golem. In the Hebrew language ‘
Emet
’ meant ‘Truth’. And to stop the monster all you had to do was lose the initial letter. ‘
Met
’—the new word—meant ‘Dead’.

‘
MET!
’ Jake screamed. ‘
MET!
’

The hand swung down.

Of course! This creature hadn’t been created by a rabbi. It was a being conjured by English witchcraft, perverting Hebrew mysticism. Could it be so simple?

‘DEAD!’

The slab of the monster’s fist stopped an inch from Jake’s nose.

A final shower of dust rained across his face and made him sneeze. The monster had returned to its inanimate form. That relentless pressure on Jake’s chest slackened and now he could wriggle free of the fist. Panting, he staggered to his feet.

Silence in the cavern. The magic word must have worked on all the creatures. Tiny white particles fell through the air. The dust was settling. Jake strode out, making for the cave wall. He passed several golems, frozen into new positions. Each was too large to have passed beyond the entrance to the chamber, and so Jake guessed that this Omen must be limited to Crowden’s Sorrow.

‘Rachel!’

No answer. He prayed that these empty-headed monsters had not found her.

This time there was no mistaking the wall. The mist had dropped to a metre or so from the ground, and so Jake was able to see its full height. By a stroke of luck he also appeared to have arrived at the gap. With no sign of Rachel, he squeezed through the aperture.

‘What the … ?’

This was
not
the entrance to Crowden’s Sorrow. He had entered another chamber. Unlike the one at the top of the staircase, this had not been carved out of the rock but was a natural cell. It was larger too, about the size of two basketball courts laid end to end. In the centre stood a rock pool and, in the shadows next to it, a large block of solid ice. Jake’s heart thundered. Although the green lichen grew inside the chamber, bathing it in that spooky glow, he took out his torch and shone the light against the block.

The hazy figure of a man loomed through the ice.

Emet
—TRUTH—screamed at Jake. Keeping the figure of the man in view, he tried to listen to that truth. His senses flared, his thoughts burned. On unsteady legs, he moved across the chamber. With each step, it felt as if something was trying to leave him—as if his soul were splitting in two … No, that wasn’t right. Not splitting, but trying to come together. To reform and make itself whole once more. His life up to now was the second half of a story—a tale that stretched back hundreds of years.

He laid his hand against the ice tomb.

‘Who are you?’

The world-weary voice of the Witchfinder answered him.

I am my reflection. I am all that you are and more. I am all that you are and less. In despair, we shall find each other.

Jake ran his hand across the ice. It was not cold and yet the block was solid. He put his face right up to it and stared at the man beneath. He had never seen the Witchfinder’s face in his dreams, and was frustrated to find that it was now obscured behind layers of thick ice. This was it—the answer his dad had promised—frozen in time. Jake’s dreams must have been leading him to this place. Somehow the dead Witchfinder could stop the Demontide, without the need for sacrifices or weapons.

The secret remained out of reach.

Jake’s finger slipped down the block and into a pencil-sized hole. The hole seemed to run deep into the ice, as if it had been drilled …