Soul Stealer (13 page)

At that moment, they caught a glimpse of Scrotton across the playground. He had a small, thin boy in a neck lock and was repeatedly
punching his upper arm.

“As you may see for yourself,” Sebastian declared, “the bestial in him comes forth when the human retreats.”

T
he next afternoon, Pip, Tim and Sebastian watched through the library window as Scrotton set off through the school gates,
carrying his scruffy bag. As soon as he was out of sight, they left the school and followed at a discreet distance.

Walking briskly, he headed out of the town and along the road towards Brampton. At a point where the road and the river went
past a steep wooded hill, Scrotton suddenly veered right through the trees along a barely discernible trail that might have
been made by deer or foxes. His pace did not slow even as the hillside grew progressively steeper. Pip, Tim and Sebastian,
hiding their school bags under a thicket of brambles, followed him through the trees, taking care not to step on fallen twigs.
Yet it seemed that Scrotton was oblivious to them and kept on ascending the hill, keeping to the path. Squirrels, busy here
and there burying nuts, paid him no heed. Pheasants, pecking around in the leaf litter, merely looked up then continued their
foraging.

“Notice,” Sebastian said quietly, “how the animals are not afeared of him, for he is one of them.”

Three hundred meters up the hill stood a vast oak tree. Tim reckoned it had to be at least a thousand years old. Leaving the
path, Scrotton headed straight for it, scuffing his feet behind every step to erase his tracks.

Nearby was the substantial trunk of a fallen beech tree. Sebastian quickly crouched behind it, signaling to Pip and Tim to
do likewise. Beneath the oak was what looked like a badger’s sett, fresh earth turned out from between the roots. As they
watched, Scrotton got down and thrust his schoolbag into the hole. Then, with the agility of a snake, he slithered in after
it. They saw his shoes disappear into the darkness of the cavity.

“What on earth is that?” whispered Pip.

“I don’t know about what
on
earth it is,” Tim said quietly. “It seems he’s gone
to
earth.”

“This is his place,” Sebastian said softly.

Tim asked, “Why doesn’t he live in that old house?”

“He is ill at ease in houses,” explained Sebastian. “Here he feels safe.”

“What now?” Pip pondered.

“We bide our time,” said Sebastian. “He will be out shortly for it will be night in an hour or two and he must find food.”

Sure enough, ten minutes later, Scrotton reappeared. The first they saw of him was his face peering through the entrance to
the tunnel, looking around like a wary animal assessing whether or not it was safe to exit. Finally, he wriggled out of the
sett, no longer wearing his school uniform but a pair of muddy jeans and a soiled brown sweatshirt. Turning, he went up the
hill, over the brow and disappeared into the depths of the wood.

“Now is our chance,” said Sebastian. “Pip, keep
guard. Call to us if he returns. But softly. Do not alarm him. Tim, come with me.”

At the entrance, Sebastian handed Tim what looked like a ball of dark-blue gum the size of a cherry.

“As long as we are within, chew upon this.” He placed another piece in his own mouth, his cheek bulging. “Now, let us descend
into the lair of the wodwo.”

Two meters in, it was pitch dark, only a glimmer of late afternoon light seeping in through the entrance. Tim blinked to try
to adjust his eyes but with no success. However, as soon as he put the ball of gum in his mouth, it was as if he was wearing
a pair of military night goggles. The interior of the sett was immediately bathed in a pale glow.

“Hey! Cool!” he exclaimed. “What’s in this stuff?”

“Extract of carrot,” Sebastian replied, “and a few other ingredients of which you are to remain ignorant.”

The tunnel was about a meter wide and high, with a right-angle bend approximately four meters in. The walls were of earth
with, here and there, the massive roots of the oak above supporting them. In places, they were polished where Scrotton had
rubbed against them in passing. Beyond the bend, it carried on for at least another eight meters. The earth of the floor was
smooth and as hard as concrete, while the roof was loose and held together by a dense network of small roots, some of which
hung down like inanimate tendrils.

At the far end of the tunnel was a larger chamber, the roof reinforced with intertwined sticks, the walls containing small
cut-away shelves upon which Scrotton had placed his school books. Into one, he had jammed his school uniform. Towards the
back was a large pile of
brown leaves and bracken to serve as a bed. Beside it was a dented aluminium bowl of brackish water.

“He really does live like an animal,” Tim commented. “How long do you think he’s been here?”

“Several centuries,” Sebastian answered.

“Several centuries!” Tim replied with amazement. “And no one’s found him?”

“Why should they?” Sebastian said. “They believe this to be a badger sett.”

“But what about hunters? People with dogs? They used to kill badgers. Or government agricultural officials? They gas badgers
because they think they carry tuberculosis to cattle.”

“Yes,” Sebastian concurred, “but Scrotton is not a badger. He will have killed any dogs that entered his den, and on occasion
the men who accompanied them, too. There will be many skeletons in the woodland…”

Tim’s stomach muscles tightened with fear. Suddenly, what had seemed little more than a prank was now a deadly dangerous situation.
He thought immediately of Pip outside.

“Will we be long?” he asked Sebastian nervously.

“We shall be but minutes,” Sebastian announced. He rummaged in the bed of bracken, pulling out from under it a wooden box,
the corners strengthened with dull brass brackets, the hasp sealed with an ancient but well-lubricated padlock.

“Right! Let’s go!” Tim said. “We can open it back home.”

“That is not possible,” Sebastian stated, placing the box on the earthen floor. “If we steal the box, Scrotton will find it
in our possession. It will call him to its
side. Even now, I am sure it is telling him someone is tampering with it in his absence.”

“So what do we do?” Tim asked agitatedly.

“Open it,” Sebastian replied, “as rapidly as we may.”

“We don’t have the key,” Tim responded, looking fervently around the chamber.

Sebastian closed his eyes, cupping his hands around the padlock. There was a metallic click and the hasp of the padlock parted.

“Nice one!” Tim exclaimed.

“It is but a single-lever mechanism,” Sebastian replied, “and requires little skill.”

Opening the box, Sebastian removed a small, leather-bound book, the cover blotched with mold, the spine cracked with age.

“What is it?” Tim asked, his fear momentarily forgotten.

Sebastian opened the book at random, swiftly turning over page after page before announcing, “It is a compendium of spells
known as
The Book of Gerbert d’Aurillac.”

“Who?”

“I will tell you of him anon,” Sebastian replied.

Tim moved nearer to peer into the box. Reaching out, he asked eagerly, “What else is there?”

“Touch nothing!” Sebastian said sharply, pushing Tim’s hand aside. “Scrotton must not know we have been here.” He carefully
replaced the book.

When he saw them, Tim was aghast at the other contents: a lamb’s skull, some cow’s teeth, the russet tail of a fox, a snake’s
skin and what he assumed from their color were two dried crows’ wings. It was not until Sehastian
began to close the box that Tim noticed an object about the size of a small child’s clenched fist, black and studded all over
with small protruding nails like panel pins.

“What’s that?” Tim exclaimed.

“That,” Sebastian replied, “is a heart.”

Tim was momentarily silent. The vision of a gamekeeper or a man naively walking his dogs through the woods on a fine summer’s
afternoon entered his mind. This was quickly followed by an image of Pip crouching behind the fallen log, Scrotton creeping
up on her unawares.

“A human heart?” he asked querulously.

“No,” Sebastian answered. “It is a canine heart.”

“Why is it studded with nails?”

“This is a method,” Sebastian stated, “of protection against any others of its kind.”

He closed the box and put it back under the bracken. They headed on all fours for the sett entrance.

On reaching the right-angle bend, Sebastian ordered Tim to wait while he went ahead to signal to Pip and ensure Scrotton was
nowhere in sight.

Tim, with some reluctance, agreed. He sat on the hard earth floor with his back to the wall, his arms clasping his knees.

After a few moments, he had the uncanny feeling between his shoulder blades that he was being watched. He glanced down the
tunnel towards the chamber. There was nothing there. Looking the other way, he could make out Sebastian’s shape in the tunnel
entrance, silhouetted against the light.

It was then something wet touched his neck. He reached up, thinking it was a drip of water from the soil above. His fingers
met something thin, soft and damp: yet the moment he touched it, it was gone. Looking over his shoulder, there was nothing
to be seen except a tiny hole in the tunnel wall.

“All clear?” he asked Sebastian in a stage whisper.

Sebastian gestured for him to stay put.

Just as Tim signaled his understanding, something slimy fell on his head, rolled off and briefly wrapped itself around his
ear before dropping to the floor.

Instantaneously, the roof of the tunnel became festooned with gigantic earthworms, dangling from holes like obscene Christmas
decorations. Shiny with slime, pink and brown, they writhed to and fro as if searching for him, tasting the air for him, pointing
at him as if to tell the others where he was, a clump of them over his head fingering down towards his scalp. Two detached
themselves from the roof and started to intertwine with his hair. He clawed at them, pulling them free only to find others
had replaced the first. His hands were slick with their translucent mucus.

Disregarding Sebastian’s order, Tim scrambled towards him. Just as he arrived at his side, Pip frantically beckoned to them.
Running at a crouch, they made for the fallen beech, leaped over it and lay flat. In less than a minute, Scrotton came jogging
down the hill, occasionally dropping to all fours and moving forward like a chimpanzee. He paused at the tunnel entrance,
looked furtively around, then vanished into it. They waited five minutes then, as cautiously but as rapidly as possible,
made for the road, collected their school bags from under the brambles and speedily headed home.

“So who’s this d’Aurillac?” Tim inquired as he and Pip settled down that evening on two stools, facing Sebastian across the
table in his underground chamber.

Sebastian stretched, crossed his arms and, leaning on the table, began, “Gerbert d’Aurillac was born in the mountains of the
Auvergne in France, in the tenth century. His date of birth and his original family name are not exactly known, nor is his
background, but he is believed to have come from lowly stock.

“In the middle of that century, he became a Benedictine monk at the monastery of St. Gerald at Aurillac, hence the name by
which he became known. About a decade later, he was sent by his abbot to Spain to study the
quadrivium,
the four subjects of arithmetic, music, astronomy, and geometry. After attending to his studies in the libraries of the cathedral
of Vic and the monastery of Ripoll, he visited Cordoba, the capital of southern Spain, which was then ruled by Muslim Arabs.
Very cultured and learned in mathematics, astronomy, and astrology, they possessed a library of many thousands of books.”

“I don’t understand something,” Pip interrupted. “If he was a Christian monk, how could he go to an Islamic land?”

“In that time,” Sebastian explained, “Christian and Muslim men were not enemies as later they were to become in the Crusades.”