Pilgrim

  Pilgrim

  Devon De’Ath

  Copyright © 2020 Devon De’Ath

  All rights reserved.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places,

  events, locales and incidents are either the products of the

  author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner.

  Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead,

  or actual events is purely coincidental.

  DEDICATION

  In loving memory of Heiko Rechholtz.

  A young man of integrity, so full of life.

  You were taken from us too soon.

  1

  Initiation

  “Quick, hide by the river,” a stumbling man in black robes panted with a hoarse whisper. He flung both arms forward, releasing two panicked, slender figures of children from his sweaty grip. The first, an eleven-year-old boy, helped his sister up from where she’d slipped on dewy grass in the moonlit darkness. Protective instincts kicked in to defend a sibling two years his junior. He pulled her closer, and they ran on. A chorus of frogs chirped from a patch of tall, waterside grass ahead. It waved in a cool breeze, sighing through the blades. A sound like some whispering spirit attempting to betray the children’s location to their pursuers.

  Across the meadow they’d traversed in a breathless dash, a dozen torch beams zigzagged. Their rays sliced the darkness in scything arcs. Crumbling stone walls of an ancient priory formed a sinister backdrop to figures clad in similar garb to their unlikely rescuer.

  The boy slid down the bank of a ponderous, meandering river. His foot sank into muddy shallows with a splash. That sudden noise drowned out the frogs for several moments. Its precarious cacophony caused him to snap his head back the way they’d come. His sister shivered beside him, more from fear than cold on this otherwise pleasant spring evening. A whimper escaped her quivering lips. Starlight reflected in lost, moist eyes fresh from witnessing horrors too terrifying to comprehend. Her brother raised a warning finger to his lips and swallowed hard. The girl replayed the events of those last few hours in her anguished mind.

  “This is our special day.” Nora Hanson twisted in the front passenger seat of the silver family Honda Accord to regard her children behind. Side-parted, dark blonde hair that ran down her back in a ponytail, flicked at the motion. A thin smile through broad lips echoed in pale blue eyes beneath plucked brows. She ran one playful, affectionate hand through a similar golden mane adorning her daughter’s brow. The child’s oblong head sported a pronounced but attractive jawline, evidencing physical solidarity with the maternal gene pool.

  “Is there food after the ceremony?” A dark-haired eleven-year-old boy, swinging his legs beside the girl, rose to peer through the windshield.

  “Sit back down, Conrad.” A gruff, burly man in his mid-thirties barked at his son from behind the steering wheel. Strong biceps and a thick black beard combined with a small, ebony quiff fading into a grade two haircut receding around the temples. He presented the text book image of a biker, wrestler or body builder. In reality, the man’s job as a car mechanic never seemed to satisfy.

  “He’s all right, Peter. He’s got his seatbelt on.” Nora’s eyes slanted down in time with her meek defence of the child.

  Peter’s nostrils flared. His tone simmered with controlled force. “He must learn to obey without question. We all have to. Our induction into the order isn’t a game, Nora.”

  “I know. But…” She offered no further argument. Peter was no longer the man she’d married after falling pregnant with their son. She’d been so attracted to the six foot beefcake as a teenager back in Sweden. He set the heart of every girl in their class aflutter. Romance blossomed between them, making her the envy - and enemy - of every other school beauty afflicted by the green-eyed monster of jealousy. When her father moved their family to England on business in 1984, an eighteen-year-old Nora couldn’t believe her luck that Peter followed. He trained as a car mechanic for five years, saving enough to put down a deposit on a modest home after Conrad’s birth in 1989. Their shoe box house on a dodgy estate in Stanhope, Ashford, might not have been the start her father desired for Nora, but she never caused Peter to suffer for it. She didn’t have to. He was hard enough on himself. His behaviour grew more angry and frustrated after their daughter’s birth. Nora loved her children. A nicer home and more disposable income would be grand, but while everyone in her immediate family remained safe and well, she had no complaints. If only Peter could be happy and respond to her the way he used to.

  Then came that fateful Friday her husband returned home with an enormous bunch of flowers. A customer at the garage gave him a generous personal bonus for an emergency repair Peter performed on his Mercedes. The man said he liked Peter’s attitude and wanted to introduce him to others in his circle. People who might have various rewarding outlets for his talents. Their house got a new kitchen and bathroom. Both children received everything they could want for Christmas. This circle of benefactors comprised many powerful, wealthy figures of influence. It seemed their ship had come in at last. Peter told Nora these people belonged to a secretive order. He guessed it to be something like the Freemasons. They met at different, secluded locations to conduct semi-religious rituals designed to strengthen their position. Their endgame was a perfect social order, or so they claimed. Peter couldn’t believe his luck when informed they had chosen his whole family as new initiates. After an induction ritual at an old priory - now a private country house - outside Wye, the Hanson clan could consider themselves made for life.

  Peter indicated a right turn off the A28, following a twisting country lane to pull up at a pair of manually closed level crossing gates. A train rocketed past on its way to Canterbury, causing the car to jostle with a blast of air in its wake. A crossing guard emerged from his hut to allow a line of waiting motorists through. The Honda rumbled over the rails, then crossed a bridge spanning the River Stour. To their right, a compact weir fed into a lazy watercourse beneath them, then angled past ‘The Tickled Trout’ pub on the other side. Peter turned off next to the hostelry, ascending a gentle incline beside St Gregory and St Martin's church.

  Nora allowed a longing sigh to slip free of her mouth upon spying the house of worship with its squat, crenellated tower and gold-numeralled clock. She and Peter had tied the knot there on a sunny June day, many years ago. They didn’t have two pennies to rub together back then, yet somehow life felt richer. Nora played with the end of her pony tail. It was a stupid thought, wasn’t it? Look at the opportunity they were now presented with. She wondered what the induction ritual would entail, as Peter turned down Olantigh Road beside the agricultural college. Behind a bank of trees and hedgerows to the left, ragged stone walls appeared and disappeared through fleeting foliage gaps. Dusk settled over the rising Wye and Crundale Downs opposite. A large chalk carving on the hillside, known as ‘The Wye Crown,’ appeared like a royal seal of approval stamped into the landscape.

  Peter pulled their car to a steady halt. He nodded at a pair of broad, wrought-iron gates barring the entrance to a long, tree-lined drive sweeping back towards the river. “Here we are.”

  A soft creak and whine crept from the gate hinges. Both barriers swept open on electric motors, as if a ghost beckoned them to draw nearer.

  Illogical ripples of nameless fear caused Nora to dig fingernails into her husband’s leg. “Are you sure you want to do this, Peter? This place is creepy. It scares me.”

  Peter frowned, frustrated eyes fixing on her at the threat of dashed hopes for their future prosperity. “Don’t be silly. You’re scaring the children. It’s a formality. The start of a better life for us all.” He put the car in gear and drove through the gateway.

  “Why can’t we wear any clothes un
derneath these things, Mum?” The nine-year-old girl fiddled with a red cord tied at her waist around dinky, white, custom made robes.

  “I don’t know, darling. It’s all a part of the ceremony. Don’t worry, I’m sure you won’t have to take anything off until we get dressed again.” Cold flagstones against the soles of her feet made Nora shift her weight from side to side. Their chilling sensation added to her discomfort and a rising sense of dread. An ominous knot in her stomach suggested none of them should be here.

  A man clad in similar styled attire, though the colour of buffed onyx, entered the cold changing room where the family awaited. He bore a brass censer around which clouds of heady blue smoke hung in an overpowering aromatic wreath.

  “Poo, that stinks.” Conrad pinched his nose.

  Peter shot him a sharp stare, causing the lad to quieten in a flash.

  The recent arrival placed his acrid burden on a side table.

  Peter fidgeted. “Are we supposed to do something with this?”

  The monk-like figure’s face crinkled at the edges. “No. It’s ‘The Smoke of Purification.’ A symbol of your transition from darkness into the light of truth.”

  “I see. Someone else brought us ‘The Water of Cleansing’ to drink.” Peter tried to sound like he understood what was happening. This was all a mystery to him. None of the family were religious. But if they had to jump through a few weird ceremonial hoops to get ahead in life, what of it? This order of secretive social revolutionaries had the contacts and funding to provide his family with everything Peter dreamed of. No doubt all would become clear in time. He turned to his children. “Do you remember the phrase we have to repeat?”

  Both nodded. Their father had hammered it into their craniums every night after work for the last week. They spoke in unison. “Templi omnium hominum pacis abbas.”

  Peter rotated his fingers in midair to keep them repeating it as he joined in.

  Nora winced at the sound of her children uttering a bizarre Latin phrase. The dreadful smoke from that censer clouded her mind. It added to the heavy feel of some strange tasting liquid they’d consumed earlier. Peter’s intense, bleak stare burrowed into her forehead. A reluctant participant, she joined in the chant while those fumes caused her wits to blur. The dark clad acolyte opened a heavy bolted side door beneath a Gothic arch. It led down semi-circular steps teased by faint, flickering candlelight. From the bowels of an expansive undercroft, the same phrase rose in response from an unseen array of human mouths. Their infernal chorus of chanting beckoned the family downward with expectant insistence.

  A shout across the meadow disrupted the youthful girl’s recollection. Less than a minute had passed, yet those memories played out in her mind as if at actual speed. She hugged tight to Conrad, chilly water numbing her ankles in the grassy shallows.

  “Got you, filthy traitor.” An enraged man struggled with the form of their hooded rescuer. Two more dark-robed figures joined in the fight to subdue him.

  The children strained to listen. They recognised the hoarse voice, rising in defiance. “I’ve notified the police. You won’t get away with this anymore.”

  One pursuer slapped him across the face. “Fool. You know how we operate. The father of the temple of peace of all men, sees your treachery.” Three dagger blades glittered in the moonlight. “He has judged and found you wanting. Where are the children?”

  Their prisoner spat at the one who slapped him. “Gone. You’ll never find them.”

  Nine torch beams converged on the assembly. In their battery-powered wash, the daggers rose and fell. A bloodcurdling scream erupted from the captive’s mouth, cut off in full flow and replaced by an ultimate rush of air from punctured lungs. His body thudded into the grass. The torch beams scanned the riverbank.

  Conrad placed both hands on either side of his sister’s face, pressing firm against her cheeks to lock their gaze together. “When I make a break for it, swim out into the river. I’ll try to distract them.”

  The girl tried to shake her head in his firm grasp.

  Conrad kissed her on the nose. He fought to conceal an uncontrollable rising pitch in his voice. “It’s the only way, or they’ll catch us both. Maybe I’ll get lucky and they won’t nab me. I love you, Sis.” He pushed her out into the water with silent fingers. A deceptive current pulled her away from the bank. She reached out one helpless hand in vain, watching Conrad break from the grass with a crash and run for a small, wooden footbridge.

  One of the robed searchers let out a roar. “There’s one of them. After him.” An array of bouncing torch beams followed his shout.

  A floating tree trunk, once petrified by a lightning strike and now tumbled into the River Stour, bumped against the girl’s shoulder. She grabbed hold of the buoyant, natural inland flotsam, using it both as a flotation device and means of concealment. Torchlight flares cut through waterborne mist, sweeping the river for signs of an errant swimmer. The girl remained still, ducked beneath the bobbing tree and clutching tight to its crumbling bark until her fingernails bled.

  More memories from the ritual chamber caused her to sob between spitting out mouthfuls of unpleasant water. The chanting. The naked people dancing and pushing their intimate body parts together. Men impaling women upon swollen, turgid, fleshy sexual apparatus. All moaned with unfathomable pleasure as the chorus grew louder. The curved undercroft roof arced over a painted emblem depicting some angry goat, staring down at the worshippers with pitiless intensity. Then her mother and father struggled, tied to wooden stakes. Robed figures with those glittering blades whirled about them all. She and Conrad’s wrists were bound with nylon cord. The moaning of those naked revellers became deafening. As they juddered and cried out, a blade severed her father’s throat, spraying dark, crimson blood in a fierce jet. Some of it splattered across her cheek, like a slap to rouse the child from a stupor induced through an intoxicating beverage and acrid smoke. Her mother screamed, one relentless shriek vanishing in a puff of air and spurting blood as another dagger scored a second sanguine release. The naked figures drew nearer, lapping at her parents’ throats and drinking their life essence. Sweaty bodies writhed at each fount of red, salty living fluid. All about the room, the robed figures chanted a single word over and over: ‘Baphomet.’ An unearthly, discordant gaggle of voices laughed at a shrill pitch. Fury, malice and vengeful glee nuanced each note of that dreadful, inhuman timbre. No mortal person laughed like that.

  Then someone cut the nylon cords about the children’s wrists. While the throng of worshippers remained distracted, two sweaty hands pulled her and Conrad up another set of steps into the cool night air.

  The girl wanted to cry with unfettered abandon, but at that moment she wondered if she’d ever utter another sound or coherent phrase again. From the other side of the river came a familiar yell. It reminded her of the time Conrad fell off while riding a bike with stabilisers, aged five. One caught the kerb in the cul-de-sac where they lived as he cycled in tight, unending circles. That collision flicked him to the ground, breaking his left arm on impact. His outburst made a dreadful noise. Despite a mere three years of age, she’d hurried inside to tell her parents, who came running. Now those terrifying people who’d killed her mother and father had recaptured her brother. She could do nothing to help.

  The current carried her out of harm’s way; a pathetic, heaving shadow beneath a floating tree on a quiet Kent country river.

  Ten minutes later, the lifeless, bobbing wood drifted beneath a railway bridge. Headlight auras and the intermittent roar of tyres from passing vehicles on the A28, caused her to release the flaking trunk and swim for the bank. The Stour narrowed, leaving her a mere half dozen splashing breast strokes from another grassy bank. She hauled herself out. A sudden tiredness threatened to overwhelm her body. Dare she risk laying there to rest? How far along the river would those hooded fiends search, and what were they now doing to her brother? The girl scrambled up beside the road. A Chilham-bound estate car’s headlights brush
ed a small black and white road sign: ‘Godmersham.’ The tarmac cut into her tender, bare feet. She stepped aside to struggle along the uneven grass verge. Hands outstretched, the girl stumbled like a blind beggar towards twinkling cottage lights, a quarter of a mile distant.

  “Who is it at this time of night, Charlie?” The mature woman’s voice may have wanted to sound stern, yet failed to disguise someone of kind heart and immeasurable patience.

  On the cottage doorstep, a shivering girl in a waterlogged white robe squinted at the silhouette of a man of retirement years, evidencing a slight stoop commensurate with his age.

  “Good Lord. It’s a girl.” The man bent forwards. “Are you all right, young lady?”

  The child’s silent, wide-eyed face studied the one drawing closer. A pair of caring brown eyes swept over her from a thin countenance. A bushy head of side-parted, snow white hair clashed with eyebrows still his natural black. The man’s soft smile broke through some horrific, emotional crust, keeping the girl from releasing her burden. Tears welled up in her ducts.

  A wiry but attractive woman in her late sixties pulled the door open further. She cupped one hand beneath short, grey permed hair. Eyebrows fine enough to have been drawn by pencil, rose above wrinkled eyes spread far apart across a square yet feminine head. “She’s soaked through. Quick, Charlie, help me bring her inside.” The woman reached out slender, calloused hands. “Come on, darling. We need to get you dried off before you catch your death out there in the night air.”

  “Looks like she’s dressed for choir practice or something.” Charlie placed a reassuring palm against their visitor’s shoulder blades, ushering her across the threshold and closing the front door.

  A procession of reflecting blue strobe lights flickered back from whitewashed render on the surrounding buildings. A fleet of police vehicles roared along the lane towards Olantigh Road.