House of Bones (15 page)

“Tell her I miss her, too.”

Lucy came in from the kitchen, where she had been making shepherd's pie. “Everything all right?”

John nodded. “Fine. I feel fine. I don't know what's happened to me today. I stood up to Cleaty and he just fell apart like a box of wet Kleenex.”

“Cleaty's all right. He's just like most people. More scared than they ought to be.”

“And you're not? If that statue finds us…”

At that moment, they heard the key in the latch.

Uncle Robin came in with two large books and a bundle of papers under his arm. “Success, I think,” he said, and gave them the thumbs-up.

After supper, they sat around the kitchen table. Uncle Robin opened his books and spread out his papers. “I went to see this chap in Croydon today – he was the one who made that documentary on Druids. I didn't tell him what was going on, but he said that there have been literally scores of unexplained disappearances in England and Wales over the past hundred years. Whole families have vanished without any trace at all – and their houses have always been on recognized ley lines.

“It's a known phenomenon – but up until now, everybody put it down to natural causes.”

Lucy said, “Hasn't anybody ever put two and two together?”

“Oh, yes. There have been dozens of books and articles about ley lines, connecting them with unexplained disappearances, but none of them have ever been taken seriously. Bit like UFO abductions, really.”

“But this man believes in it?”

“Believes in it? He's passionate about it. He said that when the original Druids dispersed and died out, their spirits lived on, along the ley lines; and so their influence on the British countryside remained enormous. They still control all the magical highways that connect one sacred site with another.
They still have an influence on weather, and crop-fertility, and fate.

“In the early days, people in England and Wales buried their dead along ley lines as an offering to the Druid spirits that lived on under the ground. In fact, the whole practice of burial arose because we were offering our dead to the Druid priesthood, in the hope that they wouldn't try to take the living.”

“This bloke,” said John, “did he give you any idea how we could
stop
these spirits? I mean, can't we exorcize them or something?”

Lucy said, “If the ley lines are like highways, isn't there a way we could make them change course, you know, like a diversion, or block them off?”

Uncle Robin shook his head, “That's like trying to stop the tides or postpone the night. The ley lines are a huge natural force, like streams of pure primeval energy. But there might be one hope.

“At Mont St Michel, the monks got rid of the Druid spirits buried in the rock beneath them, even though they did it by accident. They drove a series of iron spikes into the granite to support their new foundations, and one night there was a huge thunderstorm. Lightning struck the iron spikes – which sent a huge electrical charge deep into the mountain.

“I don't know whether the lightning destroyed the spirits or whether it simply drove them away.
But from that time on, the monastery was never troubled by any more disappearances or strange noises or anything.

“The Romans must have known about the effect of lightning on ley lines, too. Look here – this is a contemporary account by Suetonius Paulinus, who massacred the last Druids in Anglesey in AD 61.
Even after death the Druids threatened our settlements, pulling men and women into the very earth as sacrifices. We learned from living Druids, under pain of torture, that their spirits could be expunged from the underground paths through which they travelled by the power of lightning
.

“What the Romans did was to thrust their spears into the ground wherever a ley line ran, and wait for the spears to be struck by lightning.”

“Well, that's something, isn't it?” said John. “I bet you that we could find a way to direct a lightning strike into one of Mr Vane's houses.”

“We probably could. But it's a bit of a long shot.”

“So what? It's still worth a try.”

“I've also found out about the statue,” said Uncle Robin. “The Druid spirits can rise up out of the earth, into the roots of an oak tree, and occupy the trunk and the branches. That allows them to see the sun, which they need to rejuvenate their strength and their magical powers. But of course an oak tree can't move.

“In AD 1457, however, after some kind of divine revelation, the Order of Druids employed sixteen craftsmen to make them a jointed statue. Apparently it was a perfect replica of Aedd Mawr, the man who founded the Druids in 1000 BC. It was made out of oak, with an ivory face. This sounds an awful lot like
your
statue, don't you agree?”

“They made only one?” asked Lucy. “We saw them all over the place.”

“So far as the history books tell it, there
was
only one. But this one statue allowed the Druid spirits to rise up out of the ground and to walk wherever they wanted. You see, they could enter the oak statue in just the same way that they could enter an oak tree. But unlike the oak tree, the statue isn't rooted into the earth. It can move. It can run after you. Not only that, it can travel along ley lines like a stone from Stonehenge.

“That's how it was able to turn up outside your house, John, and then almost immediately afterwards appear at Lucy's flat. It took the fastest route through south London – the ley line. That's why it didn't even need a key to get in. It came through the ground, see. Right through the earth.”

He paused. “You're privileged, in a way. You've had Aedd Mawr after you, the greatest of all the Druids. The most vengeful. The one most likely to tear you limb from limb.”

“Oh, yes, some privilege,” said John. “But how can we stop something like that?”

Uncle Robin said, “I asked my two experts, but neither of them knew. And I have to confess that I don't know, either. Maybe you can chop it up with a hatchet. Maybe you can stop it with a spell. But there aren't any records of anybody ever confronting it, and if they did, they didn't live to tell the tale. I'm sorry. I really am.”

“That's all right,” said John. “I think you've done really well.”

Lucy said, “I wish
I
had. I went to Streatham library and I managed to find out a few things about Mr Vane. Not very much. Everybody seems to know him, you know, but nobody seems to know very much about him. He's always invited to give away the prizes at flower shows, that's what it says in the local papers. He's a member of the Streatham Rotarians, but he never seems to go to any of the meetings.

“I checked the electoral register. His full name is Raven Vigo Vane and he lives at 6 St Helier Street, Streatham. He's the only voter in the house, but that doesn't necessarily mean that he's the only person who lives there.

“I also talked to my friend Gloria who works for the local paper. She's going to go in early tomorrow and see if she can find out anything else,” said Lucy. “They've got files that go back over a hundred years.”

“That's very good,” said Uncle Robin. “But I hope it doesn't take too long. Remember that John is supposed to be meeting Mr Vane at half-past four tomorrow, and I think it would help him a lot if he had a fair idea of what he's really up against.”

“I don't think that you should go, John,” Lucy told him. “It's obvious that Mr Vane knows what we've been up to. He's going to try to make you disappear – just like Liam disappeared, and all of those other people.”

“The difference is that I'm going to be ready for him,” said John.

“Yes, and he's going to be ready for you.”

“I know. But it's the only way. Somehow we have to trick him into admitting what he's been doing, and if I don't go, I won't have a chance of getting him to do that. If I carry a mobile phone, and keep it connected to
your
mobile phone, then you could record everything he says without him even realizing it.”

“Well, that doesn't sound like a bad idea,” said Uncle Robin. “And if anything goes wrong, Lucy and I could be waiting close by. Sort of a back-up squad.”

They talked until well past one in the morning. They drank hot chocolate and then Uncle Robin opened a bottle of red wine. They talked about the statue, and Druids, but even with his heavily-bruised shoulder, John still found it all too hard to
believe. “It looks like a man and it moves like a man, but when you see it close up its face still looks as if it's carved out of ivory. It's totally scary.”

He had seen the statue and he had seen Liam taken right in front of his eyes. Yet he still found it difficult to believe that they were fighting against three-thousand-year-old Druid spirits.

How could spirits have survived for so long underneath the earth? How could they have tolerated such an endless existence, trapped inside walls and rocks and burial stones? All John could think of was claustrophobia. Yet the Druid spirits must be everywhere – everywhere you walk. You probably couldn't walk across a field anywhere without crossing a ley line. Wherever you went, there were hungry spirits seething in the earth beneath your feet.

“The houses are the key to all this,” said Uncle Robin. “The houses are the Druids' sacrificial temples. When the Romans destroyed the Druid religion, they made sure that they knocked down all the Druid temples and scattered their sacred stones.”

“We can't knock down Mr Vane's houses. There are twenty-seven of them.”

“I know … but if we could just find out more about them. I mean, what makes them different from other houses … what makes it possible for the Druid spirits to live inside their walls.”

He paused, thoughtfully, and then he said, “I think I'll pay a visit to a builder pal of mine tomorrow morning. He's been putting up houses in Streatham for the past thirty years. Perhaps
he'll
have some ideas.”

Lucy said, “The only thing I know about those houses is that they frighten me half to death.”

John was dreaming that he was lost in a dark forest of oak trees when he heard a loud knocking noise. At first he thought that someone was knocking in his dream, but then he heard Uncle Robin's bedroom door open, and the landing light was switched on.

The knocking was repeated.
Bang – bang – bang
! It seemed as if the whole house shook.

“All right, all right, keep your hair on,” said Uncle Robin, as he went down the stairs.

Bang – bang – bang
! John sat up in bed and suddenly he had a deep feeling of dread. Who would beat so loudly on Uncle Robin's front door at two o'clock in the morning if they didn't have seriously bad news – or wanted something
so urgently that they couldn't wait until the morning?

He pushed back the covers and climbed out of bed. He picked up his jeans, which he had thrown over the doll with the leprous face to stop her from staring at him in the moonlight. Still buttoning them up, he opened his bedroom door and looked out on to the landing.

Bang – bang – bang
! The knocking was so loud this time that the sash window over the stairs rattled in its frame.

“For goodness' sake, I'm coming,” said Uncle Robin, and slid the chain off the front door.

“Uncle Robin!” called John. “Ask who it is first!”

Uncle Robin glanced up at him. “Yes, you're probably right.” He paused, with his hand on the latch. “Who is it?”

Bang – bang – bang
!

“I said, who is it, and what do you want? You can't go knocking on people's doors at this time of the ni—”

With a smash, the door burst open, throwing Uncle Robin up against the wall. Framed in the darkness stood the statue, its calm eyes staring directly up the staircase at John.

Uncle Robin climbed unsteadily on to his feet, holding his head in both hands. He stared at the statue and it was plain by the look on his face that he knew what it was, but all he could do was to
open his mouth and close it again, without uttering a word.

The statue stepped into the hallway. It was so tall that its monkish hood brushed against the lampshade and set the light swinging backwards and forwards, so that one moment its ivory face was brightly illuminated and the next it was plunged into shadow. It grasped the bannister with one gloved hand, and took a step upwards. It was just as supple as a living man, yet it was so heavy that it made the stairs creak.

John was paralyzed for five full seconds. He couldn't move. He couldn't breathe. All he could do was watch the statue slowly climbing the stairs towards him, and the light swinging backwards and forwards.

His fear rose and rose like the red line in a thermometer. Then suddenly it reached a point where it burst and launched him into action. He threw himself across the landing, hurled open Lucy's bedroom door, and screamed at her, “
Lucy! The statue! It's found us
!”

He slammed the bedroom door shut behind him and twisted the key in the lock. He heard the statue reach the landing and turn towards him. Lucy was sitting up in bed blinking at him in shock. “
Come on
!” he told her. “
We've got to get out of here! Quick
!”

Lucy staggered out of bed. She was wearing only
a long striped nightshirt. “My clothes—” she said, but at that moment there was a thunderous knock at the door. Plaster showered down on either side of the frame, and the panels started to splinter.

“
Forget about your clothes! It's going to kill us
!”

John went to the window, unlocked it, and lifted it upward. Just below the sill there was the narrow sloping roof of Uncle Robin's front porch. John clambered out. The porch roof was so steeply angled that his feet slid down to the guttering, and he was only able to save himself from falling by clutching on to the drainpipe.