Shelter, page 18
It was much cooler in the wood, cooler than she’d expected, and she shivered slightly in her crisp, thin cotton blouse. Her socks, as usual, were around her ankles, but she pulled them up her legs as far as they would go as some protection from the vicious bushes of stinging nettles that lined the path together with great clumps of dock and thistle.
As she walked deeper into the wood it grew even darker, the canopies of the trees above her growing closer together and shutting out the sunlight almost completely. Here the undergrowth changed slightly. Wild foxgloves grew in profusion, their stately spikes of purple flowers moving gently in a breeze only they could feel. Toadstools grew in fairy rings by the side of the path, and ferns replaced the stinging nettles, their lacy fronds catching what little light slipped through the crowns of the trees above.
Birdsong seemed more muted here, as if the magpies, thrushes, and jays were sitting on branches high above her watching her hesitant progress below. Occasionally she’d catch a glimpse of a squirrel scampering up the trunk of a tree or a wood pigeon gliding from one branch to another. Farther on she was startled when the undergrowth parted and a small deer stepped out onto the path in front of her. It only lingered for a second before it sensed her presence, its innocent round eyes swiveling to meet hers for an instant. Then it turned tail and darted off into the shelter of the thick swathes of rhododendrons that filled great areas of the wood.
She was beginning to feel frightened, and a nagging little voice whispered in her ear that she should never have come into the woods alone. Visions of the witch’s gingerbread cottage from Hansel And Gretl popped into her mind, unwelcome visitors in her thoughts, joined by the wolf from Little Red Riding Hood. She quickened her pace, almost running along the path, not daring to look anywhere but straight ahead in case she saw a pair of evil eyes staring back at her from out of the undergrowth.
She’d been walking for an hour and the light in the wood was gradually changing, becoming brighter as the trees thinned. Seconds later she emerged from the wood and found herself just yards away from Tom Hooper’s cottage. The potting shed and the outbuildings were at the side of the house, and from where she stood, in the shadow of a tall elm, she had a clear view of them.
All she needed now was for Mary to leave the outbuilding as she had the other day. It didn’t occur to her that Mary, and indeed David, might not be there; neither had she prepared herself for a long wait on the woodland edge.
Thirty minutes later her stomach rumbled and she realized she hadn’t eaten since breakfast. She should have prepared better for this. She should have made some sandwiches, or at least taken an apple to eat to stave off the hunger pangs that were starting to gnaw at her stomach.
She had no wristwatch, no way of knowing how long she’d waited, except for watching the passage of the sun across the sky. Tom Hooper once showed her the sundial in his garden and told her how to tell the time using the shadow. He’d said she could do the same with a stick planted in the earth, but she didn’t really know how to mark out the increments for the hours. Instead she started counting. First the seconds, and then, using her fingers to keep track, the minutes.
She’d counted ten minutes thirty seconds when the door to the outbuilding opened and Mary stepped out, shielding her eyes against the sun. No bucket this time, but that didn’t seem to matter. As before she walked up the flattened earth path to the house and let herself inside.
It was now or never, Catherine thought. Running on tiptoe she covered the hundred yards to the brick-built outbuilding in seconds. A Suffolk latch secured the door and she pulled the lever down and slipped inside.
For a moment she was disappointed. There was nothing here apart from a collection of garden tools, an ancient lawn mower, and a rack of lichened terra-cotta flowerpots. And then she saw the trapdoor. Set into the floor and constructed from stout boards, the trapdoor was secured by a heavy cast-iron bolt.
David was down there. He had to be. She sank to her knees and slid back the bolt. Using two hands she lifted the door, resting it against the wall of the building. She was expecting a dark and gloomy pit, but instead the room below was lit by the flickering light of an oil lamp. There was a metal ladder set into the wall below. Gripping it tightly she descended. She didn’t dare try to pull the door closed behind her. It was far too heavy to support and she needed both hands to hold on to the ladder. When Mary returned and found her there she’d be furious. She’d tell Father and Catherine would probably get a spanking, but the imperative was to find David. Nothing else mattered.
She reached the bottom of the ladder and looked about her. She was in a large room, lined with brick. Against one wall was a single bed, neatly made. Resting on the counterpane was an embroidery ring, the work—a picture of a rose picked out in red, gold, and green silk—half completed. Against the other wall was a bookcase packed with Barbara Cartland romances and Louis L’Amour westerns. A suitcase stood open on a small trestle table in the corner, and next to the bed a nightstand with a clock and the oil lamp.
The most curious feature of the room was a circular hole in the floor, beyond it a doorway set into the wall covered by a thick brocade curtain. She approached the hole cautiously and peered over the edge. It was a well, the surface of the water just inches from the brick surround. She stepped around it and stood before the curtain.
“Who’s there?”
The voice that came from behind the curtain sounded like David, but different somehow. Deeper, more guttural.
“David?” she said. “It’s me, Cathy.”
There was a thump on the other side of the curtain that sounded like a wet sack had been dropped onto the floor. This was followed by a slithering sound that made the hairs on her arms start to prickle.
“You shouldn’t be here,” the voice said.
“I want to see you,” Cathy said, but stood stock-still, not venturing closer to the curtain.
“No!” The voice was vehement. “You mustn’t see me. Not like this.”
Cathy shifted from foot to foot uncertainly. She wanted to see her brother, but there was something about that voice, and that slithering sound, that stopped her moving forward. She glanced back at the ladder, at the opening made by the trapdoor. Perhaps she should just go. Go before Mary came back and discovered her here. Go before the curtain was pulled back and she saw what was on the other side.
No! She’d come here to see David and she wouldn’t go until she had.
“David, please let me see you. Come back to the house with me. I miss you.”
The slithering again, and the curtain twitched. Cathy took a step backward.
“Go away from here, Cathy. Go away before I hurt you.”
“Hurt me? Why should you want to hurt me?”
A pause. Silence. The curtain twitched again. “Can’t . . . Can’t help myself . . . Go! Go now!”
The anger and anguish in her brother’s voice terrified her. She took another step backward, then another, but her foot connected with empty air and she tumbled back into the well. She screamed as stale, brackish water poured into her mouth and down her throat as she sank beneath the surface. She flailed with her arms, trying to swim, but her hands hit the slimy brick of the walls. Her clothes soaked up the water, growing heavier, dragging her down. “David!” her mind screamed. “David, please help me!” But a suffocating blackness was already beginning to envelop her, and her thoughts were starting to drift, buoyed on the inky black water. Gradually consciousness began to slip away.
Just as she closed her eyes and prepared to accept the cold, black embrace, strong hands grabbed her under her arms and hauled her out of the water.
She lay on her back on the cold hard stone at the edge of the well.
“Is she . . . ?” Mary’s voice drifting through her hazy thoughts.
“Stand back. Give her air.”
Cathy coughed, expelling a lungful of filthy water. She opened her eyes and stared up into the concerned and kindly face of Tom Hooper.
“Why she down here?” Mary’s fractured English again.
When Hooper was sure Cathy was breathing normally he scooped her up in his muscular arms and carried her across to the ladder. “Not a word about this,” he snapped at Mary.
“But I want to see David,” Cathy said, struggling in Tom Hooper’s arms, then looked back at the now open curtain. And she screamed.
Laid out on the floor, much like a discarded rug might be or a blanket slung over a bed, was a small uneven shape. In the few seconds she had to look she realized what the shape was. Shriveled with nothing left inside it, torn slightly where attack had taken place, it was the empty skin of David. The arms were thrust forward as if ready to dive into water, while the legs were spread out behind. The head was wrinkled with threads of hair curled across. The torso was split across the back, the pink raw skin already turning gray.
Suddenly the curtain billowed as something pressed against it.
“Get back!” Tom Hooper said, the distaste evident on his face. Mary moved forward, speaking quickly in Arabic, blocking Catherine’s view.
Then a dark movement pushed past Mary; there were no legs, just a fleshy pad of tissue that rippled across the floor with wet, sucking sounds. Catherine screamed again and buried her face in Tom Hooper’s shoulder.
“I said, get back!” Tom Hooper said again and moved purposefully toward the ladder and started to climb.
Hooper carried the sobbing girl up the ladder. Once at the top he kicked the trapdoor shut with his work boot and carried Cathy out into the daylight.
Cathy lifted her face from his shoulder. “But David—” she said.
“David’s dead,” Hooper said sharply. “What you saw down there doesn’t exist, y’hear? Doesn’t exist at all.” He stared hard into Catherine’s eyes, daring her to disagree. Eventually she nodded her head slowly as hot tears dribbled down her flushed cheeks.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
“You see? To me David died when I was eight years old,” Catherine said. “For a long time I blocked that day out of my mind—children have the ability to do that. It was only when I reached my teens that I started to think about it again. I’d have nightmares where I was back in that room, just standing there in front of the curtain, watching it slowly being pulled back. I ran away to get away from my life here, but I think I was also running from the memory of that day. The drugs helped, and have helped ever since. They help me sleep dream-free, which is a small blessing.”
Richard said nothing for a moment. He sat, cross-legged, picking at an imaginary thread on the knee of his chinos. Finally he said, “All these years and you never told me.” It wasn’t an accusation. He was beyond recriminations now. His mind struggled to digest what he had just been told. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I had no idea.”
“It’s not your fault. Hell, it’s not anybody’s fault, except maybe your grandfather’s. He started all this because he couldn’t control his libido. Couldn’t keep it in his trousers long enough to think of anyone else. They say the sins of the fathers are visited upon their children. I think we, as a family, have been reaping the whirlwind ever since.” Catherine got to her feet. “Come with me. I want to show you something.”
She led him up the stairs to her bedroom. She reached under the bed and dragged out an old suitcase, battered, rubbed, and secured with a strap. A thick coating of dust covered the lid. She unbuckled the strap and released the catches. Inside was a collection of books and envelope folders.
“This is the result of all the research I did. The real breakthrough came when I went to Morocco. I found people there who were willing to talk about their myths and legends. To them, you see, they were very real, almost commonplace.” She handed Richard a folder.
He sat on the bed and opened it, taking out a sheaf of paper covered with his mother’s neat script.
“It took me five years to compile all this. The girl your grandfather got pregnant was a Verani—an ancient race of people from the area he was stationed in just after the war—but then he probably told you that. I have documents here, eyewitness accounts of this sort of thing happening time and time again throughout the centuries. Take your time, read through the papers. I think you’ll come to the same conclusion as me that whatever David was, it wasn’t his fault, and he certainly wasn’t a monster.
“The typed sheets contain the information I managed to get from various libraries and from people I interviewed. The handwritten ones fill in some of the gaps. Most of that came from Tom. After Father died he saw no reason not to tell me what he knew. He was there when the Verani girl gave birth. He and your grandfather were summoned to witness it by the local chieftain. The Arabs killed the mother, you know. Slit her throat. Seems that’s just another of the traditions.”
Richard was listening without really hearing what was being said to him. His mind was reeling from these new revelations and he was beginning to feel slightly sick.
There were so many questions now, so much he needed to learn. If he had any future at all with Laura he had to deal with the question of his heritage once and for all. He had to get used to the fact that his grandfather had probably lied to him. He shuffled the papers, leaned back against the headboard of the bed, and started to read.
“I’ll get us another drink,” Catherine said, returning several minutes later with two more whiskies. Richard was engrossed. She sat on the chair by the dressing table and stared at her reflection in the mirror. Perhaps now was time to make a fresh start. It would be hard work. She would have to confront her own personal demons and nullify them. She would have to kick the drugs she had come to rely on so heavily. But today marked a new chapter in her relationship with her son, and with Richard at her side, she knew she could find the strength to change her life forever.
Richard’s eyes flicked over the pages. The story that unfolded was in turn fascinating and frightening.
The Verani are believed to have come about in the ninth century when Prince Veran was ruling a small part of the Sudan. Legend has it that he travelled to Morocco with his family to trade and while they were there a Hurana, a Moroccan water demon, seduced his daughter. The result of this coupling was a race of people who took their name from the family. Verani were born with the ability to breathe on land or in water. They were feared and respected, treated like gods in some parts of North Africa. The legend has it that all the males of the race lived as humans until puberty, but once that time arrived they changed, the part of them that was Hurana became more dominant, turning them back into water demons.
Of course, water demons aren’t limited to Arab culture. There are references to them in many cultures, all under different names. India has its Vrita; in Japan they fear the Kappa; in Tanzania they tell stories of the Katavi. And then, of course, there’s the Scottish Kelpie. I believe there’s even references to them in early Christian documents, though the collective churches of the West tend to sit on details like that, and I don’t believe much has been heard about them.
Verani are particularly violent. Docile until puberty, they can live as normal humans for the first thirteen years of their life. After the Transition they can only exist out of water by infusing themselves into a human body. Effectively trapped like that until they can re-immerse in water, they also need to feed by killing other humans, and the feeding pattern seems to vary depending on the age of the Verani.
As they are capable of hibernating for years at a time, there is no record of how long an adult Verani lives. The other reason they appear to need human form is so that they can mate. Female Verani mate with human males and male Verani seek out human women to impregnate.
I first came across them in a work about the life of Pêro Da Covilhã, the Portuguese explorer. Da Covilhã was in the service of Alfonso V and when he died, he served his son, James II. James sent Da Covilhã on two missions to North Africa. In 1493 Da Covilhã sent a communiqué to James telling of his experiences in the area. It seems that while in Cairo he hooked up with a group of Arab merchants and travelled with them to Aden. In the communiqué he mentions that traveling with them were two women and a young boy. Both the women and the boy seemed to be held in extraordinarily high regard by the merchants—almost deference. He was told this trio were Verani, an ancient race of people from Morocco, and it was their job to see they had safe passage to the north. Da Covilhã didn’t go into too much detail, but made a point of mentioning a rather strange occurrence at an oasis midway through their journey.
It transpired that upon reaching the oasis the young boy walked out into the middle of the water hole and simply disappeared beneath the surface. The women he was with seemed completely unconcerned, but the men threw themselves to the ground in supplication. Unfortunately Da Covilhã never elaborated further, but his account ties in with what I’ve learned since.
Slowly a picture began to form in Richard’s mind and the more he read the more his stomach began to heave with apprehension. “One question,” he said heavily.
“Go ahead.”
“Where did Grandfather lock David away?”
“At Tom Hooper’s. There are cellars underneath the grounds that used to belong to the Dunbar Court chapel. When they knocked the chapel down they built the house on the same site.”
He threw the papers down on the bed. “But you were there the other day. Surely you saw the cellar was open?”
Catherine looked away.
“You saw and you said nothing? Why?”
“I told you before. David’s dead.”
“Oh, you stupid, stupid woman. You did all this research, you wrote ream after ream about the Verani, and you still cling on to your vision of your precious David.”
