The long entrance up to the farm had been beautifully maintained, the fences lining both sides were freshly painted, the trees measurably taller and larger than my five-year-old recollection.
The coach had let me out close to the entrance and not a scheduled stop. The driver had chatted amiably when he heard I wanted off there. He told me all about the local tragedy, how the old lord and lady had lost their only child in a freak accident thirty years back. The little boy of five years had fallen from the roof onto the wrought iron spears of the garden fence; been impaled through the chest and belly and he’d died in his mum’s arms. The Earl and his lady had gone crazy, tearing down the fence and the gardens and nearly destroyed the house, too. If it hadn’t been for the farm manager and the young maid, no telling what would have happened to the farm.
I had asked how the place was doing presently and he’d said that Cryllwythe Farms was now one of the top producing enterprises of the EU.
“Mr. Pendennis is the manager?”
“In his sixties, he is. Still as hale and hearty as ever. His son helps out, took agriculture management.”
So, he’d let me out at the beginning of the drive and I walked stolidly forward.
A crushing sensation attacked me, sat heavily on my chest. The further I walked towards the mansion, the worse it became until I was gasping for enough air to breathe. The minute I turned round and retreated, the easier it was to draw in a lungful. No matter how hard I tried, or how many attempts I made, I could not walk past the halfway point of the drive; I couldn’t even catch a glimpse of my childhood home.
It was the same when I walked back along the side of the lane towards the village. Even though it was a goodly hike of 12 kilometers to town, I could approach no closer than five from the outskirts could. Eventually, I gave up and stuck my thumb out, hitching back onto the A389 towards London. I was hoping I could get someone to take me to the train station and pick up a berth back. I still had the other half of my ticket unused.
The ticket man had been right, now that my attention was diverted from the goal of returning home and my parents; I noticed the unusually large amount of vehicles traveling to Losthwithial. I soon learned not to be standing too close when one of the big lorries passed; they created a suction that nearly snatched me underneath their tires.
I walked for a couple of hours, did some nine or ten kilometers in that time, and took an exit feeder into a small village where I asked directions at a petrol pump to the train depot. The attendant was a pimply faced teen with a pierced tongue, painted white skin and a surly attitude. He told me to buy a map; he wasn’t no fucking Rand McNally and went back to his girly sheet.
I asked him if the tongue thing hurt. He went on in graphic detail that it had but he liked pain.
“Doesn’t it feel weird hitting your back teeth and the roof of your mouth? It makes you talk funny. What’s with the black nails and white paint?”
“Goth, man,” he sneered. “Where you been, under a rock? I worship the devil, the Great Master Satan.”
“Yeah? I met the other.”
“Yeah, right,” he snorted and I flushed. “How’d a runt like you attract God?”
“I died. Twice. The first time I was impaled. Died in my mum’s arms, went into the light, and saw all the people who’d gone before me. Was brought by my friend, Ned. He was my imaginary friend in childhood or so everyone thought. Ned really was a ghost, stuck with me until we both crossed.”
“Ned?”
“Edward. Plantagenet. The Tower Prince.”
He laughed and mocked me until I showed him the gold signet ring I wore around my neck on a chain made of common metal. The ring glowed with that particular radiance that only 18K gold possessed and the ornate design of the House of Tudor inscribed on it convinced him further.
By the time his shift ended, he had offered to take me to the depot himself and I agreed, thanking him again as we mounted the motorbike with me holding tight round his waist. He twisted and turned with the bike’s motion and I enjoyed the ride. He smelled of sweat and something else, a heavy musk that teased my nose.
He took me downtown into an apartment area where the city had built a complex of standard housing for the less socially advantaged. Housing projects, they called them. Groups of teenagers hung around the parking areas and the entrance ramps, a few waved as we drove by.
“Hey,” I said. “Where’s the depot?”
“Just back of the flats,” he said over his shoulder, pointed with his chin, “Two streets beyond.”
He turned between two buildings and stopped, his feet going out to hold the heavy bike upright. Four more chaps came out from the shadowy niches to stand around us. I let go of his sides as one of them dressed in chains, black clothes and more piercings than I’d ever seen reached for my backpack. He tore it off me, pulling me backwards off the bike to fall on the chipped macadam.
I skinned my elbows and banged the back of my head, leaving me somewhat stunned. They stood over me, talking. “Holy Christ, Zane,” one said. “There’s like 10,000E in here. What did he do, rob a bank?”
The teen named Zane replied, “Dunno. I picked him up at work. Wanted directions to the train station. He’s only twelve, a virgin, an orphan, got no family, and no friends. Perfect present for the ritual. And his eyes. They’re fucking weird. Pale purple.”
“Oh man, I’d given up hope of finding a gift for the Master,” another said. “Too many locals go missing, the coppers get antsy. As it is, the neighborhood’s been noticing all the missing and dead pets.”
“Samhain’s the perfect day. Only a fortnight away. We have time to purify the sacrifice.”
“Where will you stash him?”
“There’s that old hut on the Freeling track near the Heath where they take the horses for gallops. No one’s been there in years.”
“No, too open. They would spot anyone hanging about. Take him to the Beast’s. He has that old house with all those cellars.”
“Give him something to knock him out so he don’t scream.”
“His head’s bleeding. He hit it on the concrete when he fell. I think he knocked himself out. Besides, I gave him a couple of roofies when he drank at the station. He won’t be feeling nothing for hours. Pretty, ain’t he? Got really cool purple eyes. If we didn’t need no virgin, I’d fuck him myself.”
“Is a virgin boy the same as a chick? Does that count?” A voice sneered.
“The vessel must be pure and untouched so the master’s seed can fill the sacrifice and prove a worthy gift to call the Master Belial forth,” he quoted. “If we touch him and the Master finds out we had a perfect sacrifice and defiled it, he’ll kill us. I’d just as soon not be the one hanging by my heels watching my bloody intestines dangling out of my guts. Let’s get him out of here and hidden.”
One of them picked me up and threw me over his shoulder. He had that same punky smell; his hair was dirty and greasy under the black dye job.
“Says his name is Aidan Argent, his address is some posh Prep School in Peacomb. I thought you said he was just an ordinary bloke, no family.” He was accusatory as he found my papers.
“That’s what he told me. Hey, pretty boy? How come you got such a cushy berth?”
“Scholarship,” I murmured my brain with no inhibitions. “No one knows or cares I’m alive.”
“He said he died twice. That’s why I snagged him,” Zane offered. “He’s seen that light, he’d be a perfect gift, maybe even the one.”
“Satan’s balls. If we found the one who could bring Satan onto earth permanently, we could rule this fucking world.”
Too late I remembered the queer man’s words, don’t trust anyone; evil walked in such innocuous masks I would not recognize it until it was too late.