Phoebe Wren and the Vortex of Light (28 page)

Phoebe, Demetrius and Ella passed a relatively uneventful few days together, unpacking and putting away Phoebe and Demetrius’s belongings and helping Jack and Eva to get their home into some sort of order. Phoebe and Demetrius’s first week in Ireland had passed quickly, and since Uncle John and Aunty Kate had come over with the kids most days, the week was busy enough and breezed by fairly quickly. Today, the Wrens needed to arrange for the bulk of their goods to come out of storage, and had several meetings to attend. Neither Jack nor Eva had offered any further information as to what these meetings entailed, and in her own busyness Phoebe had not thought to ask. Eva had asked Phoebe if she and Demetrius would be happy enough to do their own thing while she and Jack saw to what needed to be done, and Phoebe had been glad to be afforded the opportunity to spend the day alone with her friends. As soon as Jack and Eva left the house, she and Demetrius called Ella, who came round straight away.

“Guys, I’ve been thinking – a
lot
– about everything you’ve told me the last few days, and I think we ought to pay a visit to Darken Abbey on Quagmire Hill. I mean, surely that’s the most obvious place for us to start? Shouldn’t we investigate a bit and see what it is that Cosain and the others have in store for us? What do you reckon? Are you up for it?”

Phoebe had been leafing through a magazine which was three weeks past its print date, and now she paused mid-leaf and frowned at Ella and Demetrius. She was hesitant, reluctant even, and something instinctively told her that they should wait for further and more precise instructions. “I don’t know, El,” she said slowly. “Don’t you think we need to wait until we hear from Cosain?”

Cosain…
hmmm.
It struck Phoebe as odd that a week had passed without any word from the Heavenly Host, but as Demetrius kept reminding her, they just had to trust that Cosain and the other angels knew what they were doing.

“No, it’ll be okay Phoebe. We’re not going to do anything, just have a look around. Oh come on Bird, I’m dying to see the place, a quick visit can’t hurt?” Demetrius was eager to get going, and his willingness to have a snoop around only served to make Ella all the more eager. Despite her gut instinct, Phoebe just couldn’t say no.

“Oh okay then,” Phoebe concurred reluctantly. “But we’re just gonna swing by, see it, and get straight back – agreed?”

Demetrius and Ella grinned excitedly at each other. “Agreed!” they said in unison, and the three friends pulled on their jackets as they set off in the direction of the old abandoned stone Abbey that stood still on the top of Quagmire Hill. It was a good twenty minute walk and despite the bright July day, there was a nip in the air and the teenagers were glad of the extra layer of clothing. Phoebe was certain that the temperature dropped as she and her friends approached the old wrought iron gates that guarded the walkway up to the Abbey, but Ella and Demetrius had laughed and told her that she was being entirely paranoid. The teenagers stopped outside the decrepit rusty gates, and Demetrius pulled at the heavy duty metal chain which had been wrapped several times around the closed edges of the two heavy gates and fastened with a very old fashioned rusty padlock.

“That’s not gonna budge,” he observed, although he grabbed the chain and tugged on it again as if to prove the point to himself.

“Well, we’ve been, we’ve seen it, we can’t get in,” remarked Phoebe with a not inaudible sigh of relief. “Let’s just get back home, my folks might be wondering where we are.”

“Your folks aren’t gonna be back for
ages
, Bird,” said Demetrius without looking in Phoebe’s direction as he was scanning the perimeter fence, obviously hoping for a way in.

“Dem, you promised. You said we’d only look…” Phoebe was getting nervous now; there was something about the blackness and the chill of the dilapidated old abbey that made her very uneasy. She was convinced now that the nip in the air was
not
just in her imagination, and was wary of the way in which the bright July sky seemed to darken and cloud over above the abbey’s arches and spires.

“We
are
only looking, Phoebs, no need to panic,” soothed Ella. “Although maybe we could look just a
little
closer. Like from
inside
this fence?”

“Dem, Ella. Please, no, let’s just go now.” Phoebe already knew that her pleas had fallen on deaf ears, and the sense of foreboding in her belly crescendoed until her she felt shaky and a bit nauseous. “Guys…” she tried once more to make Demetrius and Ella see sense, but her pleas were lost on her less cautious friends, who had both started off along the perimeter of the abbey in search of a broken post they could squeeze through or a suitable point to climb over.

“Come on Bird, just a quick look,” coaxed Demetrius, who had found a space in the fence was already squeezing through it sideways like an overgrown crab. Ella followed Demetrius through the gap, and the two stood grinning out at Phoebe, who furrowed her forehead and
tutted
her disapproval before she too shook her head and slipped through the space in the fence, joining her friends inside the grounds of the abbey.

“See?” Demetrius grinned his ‘
I told you so
’ at Phoebe. “We’re through, and we’re okay. There’s nothing to be afraid of here.”

Phoebe could not bring herself to agree with her friend’s assessment of the situation as she reluctantly followed him and Ella along the overgrown path, which lead to the imposing front doors of Darken Abbey. The abbey had not been used since the early 1900s, and Phoebe had heard it said that its sudden closure was cloaked in scandal and mystery. If local people knew exactly what had happened back in 1909 when law enforcement had raided the building, no-one seemed to want to talk about it. ‘
Must have been something dark going on up here
,’ Phoebe mused. The thought flittered only briefly through Phoebe’s head, but it was enough to make her shudder and renew her appeal to Demetrius and Ella to make a U turn and head for home. There appeared to be no reasoning with them now however, so Phoebe pulled her jacket tightly around herself as if its flimsy fabric could somehow protect her from whatever lay ahead, then put an inch to her step to keep up with her adventuring friends.

From one of the broken windows of the abbey, two sets of orange eyes peered out and focused on the three friends as they made their excitable but cautious approach.

“Our waiting has paid off, brother,” hissed Graygor. “They are here. The idiotic mortals have walked right into our hands!”

“We must alert Schnither,” retorted Braygor, who was more intent on impressing his Dark Master than enjoying the moment. “He will be very happy to see these unfortunate humans.”

The wretched little demons’ faces wrinkled into laughter and they unfurled black leathery wings as they shot into the heart of the dank abbey where they would deliver the news that their heinous Captain had been awaiting.

It took only a couple of minutes for Demetrius and Ella to reach the great front doors of Darken Abbey, with Phoebe following unenthusiastically behind, protesting all the way. The abbey, though derelict and neglected, still presented a striking first impression and many of the great pillars and arches were still in fairly good, if weather-beaten, condition. Several of the windows had long since been broken, but one or two remained miraculously intact, and these boasted the most glorious colours and artistry. Phoebe noticed that some of the windows depicted scenes involving angels and what looked like gnarled demon-esque creatures, and the portrayals only served to make her jittery senses worse. It was one thing to survey such depictions having never actually encountered angels or demons, but quite another when she had been up close and personal with both.

As the friends approached the entrance to the abbey, Ella pointed skyward, drawing her friends’ attention to the statues and figures stationed around the roof. Looking up, Phoebe could not help herself and gasped in fright at the stone gargoyles glaring down at her from the roof, eyes cold and mouths forever ajar in snarling, growling expressions. Higher up still, on the abbey’s roof, there were larger statues which were more difficult to see, but appeared on initial inspection to be misshapen, tortured creatures forever entombed in stone. For all her reluctance to be there, even Phoebe had to admit that the impressive building was an incredible feat of architecture which stood testament to the skill and ability of individuals from a time gone by. ‘
What went wrong here?
’ she wondered. ‘
Surely this abbey should have been a place of security and refug
e?
Why would the authorities need to wade in and shut it down?
’ The questions played on her mind until Demetrius interrupted and derailed her train of thought.

“Let’s go in, girls.
Please?
I can’t bear to only see it from the outside,” he suggested, his voice pleading like a young child who wanted an ice cream, eyes wide and dancing in a manner that told Phoebe that deterring him would be nigh impossible.

“Demetrius, no.
No way
, we are
not
going through the doors! Besides, they’re probably locked or jammed – or both!” Phoebe was adamant this time; she had followed her friends into the abbey grounds, and had grudgingly gotten this close to the abbey, but she was not going inside, not today,
no way, no how
.

“Look Dem, round here!”

This time it was Ella’s voice that broke the standoff between Phoebe and Demetrius. She had wandered around the west side of the abbey and was standing in an arched doorway looking very pleased with herself. The smaller single door had opened inwards, and just over Ella’s shoulder Phoebe could see a darkened anteroom which, she assumed, must lead on to the main hall of the abbey.

“Ella,
no
…” But Phoebe need not have wasted her breath, because before she could protest fully, Ella and Demetrius had scampered inside the enormous building, leaving her alone outside. Phoebe fumed for a moment, at once annoyed that her friends would not only trail her this far, but would leave her
alone
out here in the eerie coolness, and anxious at the growing sense of foreboding in her belly. With everything she had experienced in the last few weeks, Phoebe had become acutely aware that there was often much more than met the eye in the situations in which she found herself, and somehow she felt that this would be no exception. She paused, weighing up her decidedly limited options, and concluded that she was anxious enough to not be able to stay outside on her own one more minute. Finally, she heaved a huge and agitated sigh and opted for the lesser of two evils then stepped cautiously though the open door and into the abbey’s anteroom.

Above Phoebe, one of the grizzly stone gargoyles slanted its dead eyes and blinked, revealing familiar orange orbs – Graygor! As Phoebe vanished from sight inside the abbey, the diminutive demon morphed out of the stone figure and stretched as Braygor uncoiled himself from the neighbouring gargoyle, his limbs creaking and cracking as he stretched back to life.