Triskellion (15 page)

“What is it?” Her hands flew instinctively to her head, and she felt something sharp stabbing at her fingers, as whatever had swept out of the sky clung to the matted curls of her hair.

“It’s a crow,” Adam shouted. “Keep still…”

But the more the bird tried to disentangle itself, the more Rachel shook her head in panic, and the more the crow’s talons got caught up.

Adam opened his mouth to speak again, but froze as Rachel’s shrill squeals of panic turned into a single, piercing
howl of pain which ripped through the still of the forest.

Adam was screaming himself as he ran to help his sister, seeing the trickle of bright red blood running down her forehead into her eyes. He raised his hand towards the bird, which had now embedded its claws in Rachel’s scalp. Rachel screamed again and tried desperately to blink away the blood from her eyes. Adam reached out towards the crow, which made an angry cawing sound at him and, as he made to pull it away, drove its large, black beak into the web of skin between his thumb and first finger.

Now Adam’s howls of pain joined those of his sister as he clasped his bleeding hand. He dug quickly into his rucksack, pulling out one of the trowels they had brought to dig and raising it over Rachel’s head.

“No, Adam!” Rachel screamed, her face streaked with blood and tears. “You’ll kill me. Go and get help. Gabriel can’t be far away.”

Adam stood helpless, not knowing what to do.

“
Please
, get Gabriel…”

Adam, pained and panicked, repeated Rachel’s cry. He shouted Gabriel’s name at the top of his voice, before tearing off into the forest in the hope of finding someone who would know what to do.

“Gabriel!”

Adam pushed on through the forest, leaping over fallen logs and jumping clumps of tangled bramble. Behind him,
Rachel’s voice grew gradually fainter, until he couldn’t hear it at all, and his own voice had quickly become hoarse as he repeatedly shouted Gabriel’s name.

He stopped momentarily, attempting to regain his breath, and realized suddenly that he had lost any sense of the direction in which he was headed. He wiped a grimy hand across his sweaty face and looked to his left and right. He wheeled round and looked back in the direction from which he had come. But the trees had closed behind him and he could not be sure from where he
had
come.

The wood was still and silent.

He called Rachel’s name, terrified that not only had he failed to get his sister any help, but that now he had lost her as well. He should have stayed with her, he thought. Should have made another attempt at helping her. But he had panicked…

“Rachel! Gabriel!”

He could feel his sister’s fear and pain every bit as much as he was feeling his own. He couldn’t bear it for another second. He knew he had to do something and do it fast. He picked a direction at random and launched himself into the thick wood once again. He had to find Gabriel, or someone who could help him.

Quickly finding another, more established path, forking off to his left, Adam renewed his efforts. He ran as fast as the foliage would allow, until, on the far side of a line of thinning trees, he could make out a small, red-brick lodge.

There was a trickle of smoke coming from its chimney.

Adam cleared the trees and ran, his lungs bursting, up the muddy path to the lodge. He all but fell on the door, thumping it with his fist then rapping hard on the dull, brass Triskellion-shaped knocker…

Only a few hundred metres behind Adam – sight and sound obscured by dense woodland – Rachel lay sobbing, her head cradled in Gabriel’s lap.

Gabriel tenderly wiped the blood, dirt and tears from her face with a tissue and ran his long fingers through the damp hanks of Rachel’s hair.

“These birds are territorial,” he said. “Maybe there are young near by. It just got tangled up…”

And as he worked, gently shushing her while the sobs died away, the pain seemed to ease from Rachel’s wounds, and the cuts and scratches themselves seemed to fade beneath his hands.

Beside them, on the ground, its head twisted backwards, lay the broken corpse of a large crow.

T
he door of the lodge swung open and Adam found himself staring into a pair of piercing, pale blue eyes. With a sickening jolt of recognition he realized that they belonged to Hilary Wing. After what he had seen done to the Bacon boys, Adam almost turned and ran, but he was immediately disarmed by the man’s friendly tone.

“Hi,” Wing said. He was wearing the same long leather coat that Adam had seen from his hiding place in the trees. His eyes twinkled and his face folded into a warm smile.

“I need help,” Adam shouted. “We got lost and…”

Hilary Wing watched Adam splutter, the smile still playing across his features. “Yes? You got lost?”

“And my sister got attacked by a bird.” As soon as he’d blurted it out, Adam instantly regretted it. He knew how absurd, how unlikely, it must have sounded.

“Really?” Wing didn’t look as though he thought it was remotely unlikely.

“We need to help her.”

“Of course we do,” Wing said. “Come in for a minute. I’ll get some stuff together and we’ll go look for her.” He stepped back from the threshold and ushered Adam in.

Adam stepped in without a second thought. This man was clearly scary if you got on the wrong side of him, but he was being friendly enough now. Besides, Rachel was in trouble and it wasn’t as if Adam had anywhere else to turn.

The door opened into a sitting room dominated by a wood-burning stove in front of which sat a big, battered leather sofa. The walls of the room were covered with rough wooden planks, like the inside of a log cabin. Smoky oil lamps lit up the antlers and animal skins that were mounted on the walls while a tatty stuffed fox stood on a long sideboard, teeth bared, a small rabbit trapped beneath its paw. From a shelf above, a stuffed owl looked down on a row of small animal skulls that were lined up on the mantelpiece, all covered in molten wax from the large candelabra perched over them.

“I won’t be a moment,” Wing said. “You’re Celia Root’s grandson, aren’t you?”

“Do you know her?”

Something passed across Wing’s face. “I do … well, my father does at any rate. They’ve known each other a very long time.” Whatever had changed his mood was gone as quickly as it had come and the smile returned. “I’m Hilary Wing, by the way.”

Adam knew exactly who he was, of course, but grasped
the hand that was offered none the less. It felt as though Wing had broken his fingers when he shook it, and Adam wiggled them back to life as Wing fixed him with a stare that made Adam feel as if he was being asked to explain himself. Even though he thought that Hilary Wing was probably the last person he should talk to, he found himself gushing, eager to please.

“We got lost, me and Rachel. We were looking for the Triskellion thing…”

Wing laughed, low and easy. “I think you’ll find it’s that big chalk circle up on the moor. Not too difficult to find, really.”

“No. A bit of the
gold
one, like the one in the church. There’s a map…” Adam checked himself, remembering where the map had come from, and realizing how stupid he was to be babbling on like this.

Wing stopped what he was doing and looked at Adam. The smile was dying at the corners of his mouth. “A map?”

“Just this thing a friend of ours drew on tracing paper,” Adam said, thinking on his feet. He moved back towards the door. “Listen, I think we should get back to my sister now.”

Wing nodded, and disappeared through a yellow curtain printed with red elephants that hung in a doorway at the far side of the room. Adam waited, pacing anxiously around the room; feeling the seconds tick away and knowing that they needed to get out into the forest to help Rachel.

“Please can we hurry up?” he shouted. There was no answer from the next room.

He stared round at the stuffed animals, noticing the stubs of rolled-up cigarettes and unwashed glasses stained with red wine left carelessly about the place. He nervously drummed his fingers on the sideboard, aimlessly drawing a Triskellion in the dust on its dirty surface.

“What are you doing?”

Adam turned to see Wing standing behind him. He was carrying a shotgun.

“What’s that for?”

“I use it to hunt,” Wing said. “All sorts of wildlife around here.” He broke the barrel and squinted down the tubes. “Now be a good chap and get me some cartridges, would you? There should be a bag hanging on the back of that door.” He swung the barrel, gesturing towards a door in the corner.

Adam went over and with trembling fingers unbolted, then opened the door, while Wing polished the stock of the gun with a cloth. Just inside hung a green, military-style bag full of red, brass-capped cartridges. The door opened directly on to a brick staircase that descended steeply down into darkness and Adam balanced carefully as he tried to unhook the bag.

“Do you need all of these?” Adam asked. He tried to unhitch the bag which was caught around a coat hook.

“No,” Wing said, and a second later the door crashed towards Adam with the force of a hard kick and slammed shut.

Plunged suddenly into darkness, Adam toppled momentarily, grabbing at the canvas strap of the bag for support, but losing his grip. He fell backwards down the brick stairs, hitting himself on the limewashed wall, before landing in a heap on the mud floor at the foot of the stairs.

Adam felt a sharp pain in his back and opened his eyes in the pitch black.

Nothing, save the stars that burst and faded before his eyes. He registered the sour tang of mildew in his nostrils and heard the bolt at the top of the stairs slide decisively shut.

A
dam attempted to move…

Lying on the damp, earth floor, he felt a sharp pain in his ribs, where he must have hit something on the way down the stone stairs. Feeling was gradually returning to his legs, which were angled above him on the steps. He blinked, attempting to see through the darkness as his eyes adjusted. But he could still see nothing, nor hear anything but the rush of blood in his own ears.

He dragged himself into a sitting position and rubbed at his sore ribs, then staggered to his feet, wincing as he put weight on the ankle he had twisted as he fell. Supporting himself against the cold brick wall, Adam felt around for a light switch, but found none. He put one hand in front of the other, trying to find a corner: something to locate him, to allow him to build a mental picture of the room in which he was imprisoned.

As his hands edged along the wall, he began to realize that the room was round in shape, like a brick vault. Then
his fingers slipped into a hole, or alcove of some sort. Holding on to the edge with one hand, Adam waved the other into the deep, dark cavity, making contact with something wooden … and hollow.

Adam drew his hand away sharply. What was it? A box? A box of
what
?

He continued round the wall and found another alcove, then another, equally spaced round the wall and all with wooden boxes inside. Adam dared not probe further to find out how big or long these boxes were, but putting his hand into the fourth alcove, he discovered a box that had no lid.

Adam steeled himself and tentatively put his fingers inside the box. He felt something, and recoiled, then, after taking a deep breath, put his hand inside again. Sticks? No … smoother, he thought.

Bones
.

Adam pulled his hand away, his mind racing as he visualized himself surrounded by coffins piled high with rotting bodies. Was this some kind of mausoleum? Or did Hilary Wing regularly slaughter people and bury them down here?

He stepped back from the wall, his heart beating so hard that he could feel it banging against his ribs. He stood, stock-still, in the centre of the room with his eyes tightly shut and his arms clutched across his chest, hands balled into fists. As he tried to calm himself, Adam took deep, slow lungfuls of the peppery underground air, regulating his breathing until he felt a little calmer. Telling himself that they were just
boxes, and that if they
were
bones inside, they were probably just the remains of animals. Taxidermy was clearly one of Hilary Wing’s hobbies, after all.