Paranormal Investigations: No Situation Too Strange (14 page)

"Okay, there's obviously some law of physics that I don't get because that makes no sense to me.  Can we stick to the Ladybird Book version please?"

"Where do you want to go?  What can I show you to make this easier?  Do you want to go and see your mother?"

Panic thundered in me.  A blank wall opened up.  No.  No I did not.

I shook my head.  "Can you tell me anything that will help me?  Why the fairies want this ring for example?"

He leant closer and touched my hand.  It was a much less pleasant experience when standing as my stomach tried to fall out my feet.

It was another evening when I opened my eyes.  Fairly early, as it was only just growing dim.  I looked around.  I recognised this street.  Tourists pushed past me and I slunk back against a wall.

"Got it yet?" Dad asked.

I did another three sixty.  "Outside the British Museum."

He nodded, then I was distracted by a familiar figure.  I opened my mouth to call out his name, but my father steadied me with his hand.

"He doesn't know you yet.  Wait."

True and Bob wasn't even Bob then... now… the then that was
now
.

"Shouldn't I follow him?"

Dad shook his head and then gestured with his eyes across the road.  Someone was paying very close attention to Bob's movements.  I couldn't see him very well - I couldn't tell if he was wearing a hooded cloak or he was blurry.  No one else was looking at him, but seemed to instinctively move around him as if on some level they knew he was there.

I rubbed my eyes.  "Why is he all blurry?"

"Strong magic.  I can barely see him at all, although I would have been able to once.  You are the Seer.  You can see beyond these things."

"Not very well I can’t.  I mean, fat lot of use Seeing is, if all I get is the white noise channel."

"It is a very powerful enchantment.  One of the best.  You will get stronger.  You have only just discovered your skill.  Watch him."

I did so and as I did the figure turned and began to walk away.

We followed.

It was hard to keep sight of him as he blurred in and out of the shadows, when in doubt I followed where people suddenly moved aside for what appeared to be no good reason.  I guessed they wouldn't even know why they moved.

The crowds thinned out as we went off the tourist route and into a large square, one of those with large and grand houses around a central garden.  Blue plaques covered the houses and it was sad to see most were broken up into flats now.  They were far too large for any family without a huge body of servants.

I stopped suddenly outside one of the houses.  It had one set of steps going up to the main door and another going down to the basement entrance.  A dusty window peeked out at us.

"I think he went in," I said to my father, "what do we do now?"

He touched my hand and with another whoosh we appeared to be in the basement.  I looked to my left - there was the dusty window outside of which I had just been stood.

"Beam me up Scotty," I said to myself.

There were voices coming from upstairs.  I tiptoed closer to the stairs, my father sat down on a box.  He didn't look so good - I was about to ask him if he was okay when a voice spoke upstairs.  I cautiously climbed the stairs and put my ear to the basement door.

"He's stolen it," a deep voice said, "I followed him to the gates my lord.  It will be in his possession now."

"Did they tell him who it was for?" a second voice asked.

"No my lord, he is one of their usual playthings.  He does their bidding."

"And they know what to do with him when he hands it over?"

"They do."

There was a pause.

“Are you not worried they will use it themselves?” the first man asked.

"They cannot wield it, it’s too human.  They need us.”

“Just as well, their greed makes them uncontrollable."

The voices grew dimmer, as if they had walked off in the other direction.  The last thing I could make out was:

“…on humans first…we’ll know if the legends were true…”

I descended the steps back down to the basement.

"What did you find out?" my father asked.

"Just what I already knew: Bob was meant to hand it over to the fairies and then they were going to kill him."

"Nothing more?"

"Well, they did say they were glad 'they couldn't wield it' and I presume that means the fairies can't use it themselves.  Oh, and I think it is to be tested on humans before fairies - kind of a test run, but I got the feeling they were really interested in how it turns out.  They also said something about a legend."

"The ring is an ancient one."

"How ancient?"

"I'll show you."

He touched the back of my hand again and we were off.  I was starting to feel like Ebenezeer Scrooge on Christmas night.

Our next destination was cold and dark.  A wind whipped around my ankles and the splatter of water dripping echoed.  I waited for my eyes to adjust to the dark.

"Is he dead?" a young man's voice asked.

I followed the voice, my fingertips touching a wall as it was so dark I didn't want to injure myself by tripping over or losing my way.  The wall was bumpy, damp and a little slimy.  I bet trolls would like it.  Around a bend there seemed to be a glimmer of golden light.  I looked around the curve of the wall, but not enough to be in the light and be seen.  I stayed firmly in the shadows.  It was an open chamber in a cave, candles were ablaze on shelves of rock and in the middle of the chamber stood a stone table on which a man lay.  He was quite, quite motionless.  At his feet stood a man in what I would have described as dressed like an old fashioned knight who had seen battle.  He wore some kind of chainmail over which a colourful tabard, ripped at one end and with a slash mark cut across the chest, was fastened.  The dark marks upon his clothes and skin looked very much like chocolate sauce in this light, but it seemed more rational to suppose they were blood stains.  He was blond and not very old.  He looked worried.  The other man stood by a natural stone shelf on which a book and some jars stood.  He was older, with long grey hair and a grey beard, he was not knight - his robe was long and fastened modestly with a piece of old rope.

"To the people outside he will never be dead." the old man said, fiddling with the contents of a jar.

"But..."

"The king is sleeping.  That is what you will tell them."

"But they won't believe me."

"They won't want to believe you if you tell them otherwise.  Tell them he is sleeping and will come again in their time of greatest need."

"That is a lie."

"In part.  He is dead now, but I will preserve his flesh so he may come back one day."

"How?"

The old man smiled.  "That is where you come in Bedivere.  You must start the legend.  The once and future king will keep this isle secure."

"But how will he come back?"

The old man held something out between his fingers, it was too far away from me and the light too dim for me to see in any detail.

"This ring is ancient.  Older than you can imagine there being time enough in the world.  It was passed to me from its last guardian.  There is a whole line of ancient kings waiting in a valley for this ring.  It can be used to bring the fallen back to life with the words of the ancients." He paused and then spoke in a strange tongue that somehow I understood the meaning of - arise and be with us again. "You, Bedivere, are to be the next guardian of the ring.  Find the last of the druids and lead them to safety.  Be their leader and keep this ring safe."

"Can't you keep it safe?" he said in such a sulky way he made me think him a sullen teenager.

"Alas, I have my own sins to pay for and must attend to them." He passed the ring to the blond knight who didn't look like he wanted to take it. I'm sure he had other plans for his life that did not involve leading an order of druids and babysitting a ring.

"What if it falls into the wrong hands?"

“That is your job, to ensure it does not.”  The old man smiled, he knew exactly what a burden he was placing on the young man.  "It is your job to protect the ring of resurrection and ensure it does not fall into the wrong hands.  It would be dangerous if it fell into the wrong hands."

"But if it does?"

"The only way to control this ring of resurrection is to make it no longer a ring of resurrection - change its purpose and keep it in that purpose.  It must be a strong bond on sanctified ground."

A hand touched my shoulder.  I turned.  My father had looked at his watch again.

"Sweetie, it's time to go.  We need to go back to your time.  You have things to do."

This time he didn't just touch the back of my hand, he took my hand in his own and we left together.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

The Intellectual Dead

Holding fast to my dad's hand I landed on another cold, black night.  My feet hit the ground as if I had fallen from a great height.  I looked around into the darkness.  An icy breeze tried to fight through my dressing gown. 

Autumn leaves were under my feet.  They were just beginning to be tinged by ice.  My breath came out like dragon smoke.  Man - it was cold!  The only part of me that was warm was the hand that was in my dad's.

As my senses returned, I tried to figure out where I was.  Lights low in the distance suggested we were on a hill and the absence of light in the immediate vicinity meant we weren't on a street.  There was a road nearby, I could hear cars passing by.  The amount of cars and their speed suggested London or some other big city.

"Am I back at the right time?" I asked, "Just after the demons in the kitchen?"

Dad's watch beeped.  He let go of my hand.  "I have to go now."

I frowned at him.  Fat lot of use he was with his 'don't know how I do it' and buggering off when I needed all the help I could get.  "Now?  But I've got to get that ring back - somehow!"

"I'll see you at the end."

"The end?  Hold on, that doesn't sound good..."

And he was gone.  It was curious seeing it from the other side, it was just like he'd never been there.  I even looked around to check, but he was just not there anymore and there was no clue he ever had been.

Great.  I didn't even know where or when I was and I had a heap of bad guys to sort out, a ring to recover and a friend to save.  It was a lot to ask a girl on her birthday.

I shivered and pulled my dressing gown tighter.  There was nothing for it but to walk to warm myself up and keep my senses on high alert.  Somehow this place was important, it had some connection to what was going on with Bob, the ring and those mean fairies. 

As I was supposed to be some kind of 'Seer' I tried to See.  I can't say I wowed myself with my spidey senses.  To be honest, I didn't 'See' anything out of the ordinary, just shadowy shapes.  Then I tripped over a grave.  So much for 'Seeing' things.  I used my phone to illuminate the stone.  The name on the grave stone resonated with my memory and after what seemed an intolerable wait the mind fug cleared and I remembered where I had heard this name before: on a tour of Highgate cemetery.  This grave had been quite modest in comparison with the other elaborate statues and mausoleums, but the tour guide had stopped here to deliver an historical anecdote.  The lady within this small grave had been a lesbian dwarf dancer at the Moulin Rouge during the height of Toulouse Lautrec's patronage.  She had been ahead of her time and had retired to London to be a librarian.  So I was in Highgate cemetery, either that or there were more lesbian, dwarf, French dancers turned librarians in the Victorian world than I had anticipated.

Why was Highgate cemetery important?  Why was I here?  Then I felt another chill down my spine.  Some big bad assed bastard had a ring that could resurrect the dead and I was in one of the largest cemeteries in the city.  He had the potential to raise an army of the un-dead - the two people I had heard from the basement had said it would be tested on humans first.  Dead humans would serve the purpose.  Now I regretted not listening to that mad woman I had once met in Mill Hill who had told me about her zombie escape plan.  All I could remember was that she said to avoid the tube because it would soon be flooded without non-zombie humans to pump it out.  And why the hell didn't I live in Bristol where the council had the forethought to issue an official zombie escape plan?  I could guarantee Boris wouldn't have thought of this - unless it involved cycling away in an environmentally friendly manner on a blue bike.  And trust me, they were so heavy it was an effort to get speed out of them.  Even going downhill.  And that was if you could get the machine to take your credit card in the first place.

Okay - time for a plan of action.  Smash their brains out, right?  It's all about the brains with zombies - or so science fiction had reliably informed me.  And don't get bitten - being bitten is bad, unless you fancy a life as a soul less, brain-eating, non-smiling member of the officially dead un-dead.  Unless you were an Ofsted inspector of course and then it was pretty mandatory to fulfil said criteria.  In fact it was a plus.