Jake Conley Mysteries Collection

Chapter 14

A return to Elfrid’s Hole had to be done, whatever amount of courage, stupidity, or cussedness it took. Jake convinced himself that it was a personal crusade to be undertaken. Somehow, he would make the place safe forever. The problem lay in that one word: somehow. His only plan was to go there and poke his nose into the cavern to discover what resided there. This required no special equipment; he didn’t even consider anything to keep him safe, and he therefore more than fulfilled the stupidity criterion.

somehowThe need for protection of some sort only occurred to him when he approached the cave entrance, the boulder still missing, and peered into the darkness. Conscious of his heart beating like an express train with its wheels pounding over the gaps in steel rail lines, he edged closer and closer to the opening. This time no sound came from within, which helped him keep his nerve. Even so, he detected a malign presence, but absurdly, he pressed on. He bowed his head to enter the cold, dank space. Cursing under his breath at the scrunching of pebbles or grit under his boot, he stepped forward. No noise at all would have been better. He reached into his pocket, pulled out his mobile phone, realising that switching it on might not have been his cleverest move because the home screen illuminated his face, but he wanted to use the torch option. Finding it, he tapped the icon, and suddenly the black hole was lit by a blinding beam. He directed it around the wall to his left – nothing. Then swung the beam forward into the depths of the cave – nothing. Then to the right. Was it possible? Again, nothing. But he could sense an evil presence. Was it invisible to him?

“I know you’re in here, whatever you are!”

His voice sounded too high and frantic to his own ears. Then he heard it. The unmistakeable sound of a footfall from within the cave. He swung the beam around and lit up the depths in front of him. And there it was! The torch picked out the two eyes. Nightmare eyes! They shone unnaturally red and evil and were glaring at him from a skull-like head covered in long whiskers and capped by a steel helm. Then came the grin. Broken and missing teeth added to its baleful appearance. Unnerved, Jake had two choices: run or bluff. He chose the latter.

"Follow me outside. I’ll be waiting for you in broad daylight.”

He had meant to say this in a virile voice, but it came out squeaky. It’s hard to do a macho impersonation when you are unarmed and concentrating on constricting your bladder. He slid the beam down over the rest of the apparition. It wore a mail shirt and leather leggings. Equipped for battle then, and he, i***t, had nothing to fight or protect himself with. But at least, he consoled himself, he had seen what occupied Elfrid’s Hole – even if it scared him almost him to death.

He turned and re-emerged into the daylight, acutely conscious of the complete lack of other human presence. Facing the cavern once more, he stared at the opening until at last the dull glint of a helm signalled the appearance of the entity. It straightened up to its full imposing height, and Jake quailed. Here, quite alone, he faced his adversary, a stocky, muscular Saxon warrior in a mail shirt, with an axe swinging in his right hand. His fiendish grin and bright eyes issued the challenge Jake so much wished to avoid; he, Jake Conley, would-be writer, head-case – a domestic cat against a tiger! What death wish had driven him to return to the grotto?

At that point, he might have turned tail and run, but something weird happened. The dreadful figure in front of him shimmered and faded. Jake could see a shadowy form walking towards him slowly until this, too, faded. He blinked and still saw nothing. But he sensed a presence close to him. Then he felt it! The pressure of an icy hand on his chest. So cold it penetrated his sweater and the vest underneath. It was as if the entity was feeling for a heartbeat. It would have no trouble detecting it since it was pounding like a steam hammer. A fetid odour accompanied the gelid pressure on his chest: a stench of the grave. He could bear it no longer, but before leaving, he had to show defiance.

This was more than he believed himself capable of. He’s seen the severed ear, and he’d seen the well-honed axe dangling from the skeletal grip. There was nothing to stop the Saxon wraith from chopping him to pieces here and now. Nonetheless, Jake took one step backwards away from the icy touch and cried, “Heed this, whatever you are! I’ll not rest until I’ve sent you to Hell where you belong!”

He’d used the archaic ‘heed’ for effect. But the only effect it elicited was a diabolical shrieking from within the cave. The pure evil of the sound was too much. Jake turned, and with a self-control that hinted of insanity – he later reasoned – he walked steadily out of the clearing and down the track. He was certain that the spectre was following him apace because, although he couldn’t see it, every time he turned to stare back up the track, he could sense its presence.

There was no reason to suppose that the malign being would shadow him only as far as the main road and not beyond. He supposed this, anyway, but was wrong. The unseen presence continued to dog his steps right up to the front door of his accommodation. Rather dramatically and foolishly, Jake put the key in the lock, opened the door and flung himself inside, slamming the door closed, all achieved in less than a second. As if a closed door could stop a spectre passing through.

Trembling, he leant against the hall wall. Gwen appeared, frowning, to see why he had slammed the door. Before she could say a word, Jake pointed.

“A ghost. The wraith of a Saxon warrior! It’s followed me down from the cavern.”

“Don’t be daft! Ghosts don’t come out in daylight.”

“This one does, and it’s got a battle-axe!”

Gwen scrutinised her guest. Many thoughts were going through her mind but not least that Jake had finally snapped. She just hoped this madman was harmless. She decided to humour him.

“Don’t worry, love. I’ll take a look outside and make sure it’s gone.” She made to turn the latch but found her wrist clamped and Jake begging her, “Don’t!” His eyes were wild. “Leave it be! It’ll go away when it’s ready.”

“Right.”

She fell back on her reserve tactic, a cup of tea. After she’d calmed him down and heard his full account, Gwen, a level-headed woman, persuaded him to accompany her into the front garden. There, the absence of fetid smell, more than anything else, convinced him that the ghost had returned to its station at the grotto.

He speculated why there should be a ghost – or more than one, because he’d heard the fiendish laughter from within the cave whilst confronting the spectre. Ghosts were usually the tormented spirits of people who had met a tragic end. Back in 705, those Saxons were defending their wounded king. Could it be that some of them had died in the attempt? One thing was certain, he told Gwen: the spectres were still determined to defend the cavern against all comers forever, and they didn’t stop short of killing. That, after all, was their profession.

“You’re a damned fool, Jake Conley, and lucky to be alive to tell me this. I told you to stay away from that place. It’s cursed, and knowing why doesn’t change anything.”

“You’re right, Gwen, but I’ve got to find a way to rid Ebberston of these infernal beings.”

He said this with a bravado that he certainly didn’t feel in his timorous soul.

“And how do you suppose you’re going to do that on your own?”

“That’s what I have to work out.”

He spent a relaxing afternoon browsing the Internet on his laptop and, between sessions on the social media, navigated to ghost-hunting sites but found little of interest and even less of practical use. He spent the evening in front of the television in the guest’s lounge, and when he began to nod off in the comfortable armchair, he decided to retire for the night.

He fell asleep almost as soon as his head touched the pillow but woke up not long after, unsure of what had disturbed him. Almost immediately, he noted the fetid smell of earlier and stifled a cry. It was strong and near his bed. Jake became fearful. Something was not right. This was not how the universe was ordered. He had locked the door, but there was somebody, something, near the bed. The terror of the dark outweighed fear of what he might see, so he reached out and clicked on the bedside lamp.

thing“Where are you?”

His eyes adjusted to the light, and he saw a shadowy shape, one that shimmied and shivered. Then it attacked. More than seeing the dark form of the axe, he felt it swoosh through the air and rolled frantically to one side. The honed blade sliced into the pillow where his head had been a fraction of a second earlier, sending a cloud of white down into the air. Heart pounding, Jake leapt out of bed and rushed to the door, dodging another murderous black arc that flashed past his head. He screamed, flung himself out of the door, and plunged downstairs for the front door.

Alerted by his scream, Gwen came to the landing in time to see Jake dash out of the front door in his pyjamas.

“Wha—” Her cry was cut short as a hand in between her shoulder blades shoved her downstairs. She crashed to the bottom, banging her head and losing consciousness before arriving in a crumpled heap against the door.

Jake found her when he gathered the courage to return inside or, more likely, couldn’t withstand the cold night in his thin pyjamas any longer. Relieved at the absence of the graveyard stench, he rang for an ambulance, got dressed, and accompanied his landlady to the A&E reception. She regained consciousness in the ambulance and found Jake holding her hand and looking concerned.

“It’s my fault. I brought this thing on us! I should have taken your advice, Gwen.”

thingShe bit her lip, narrowed her eyes, and complained about pain in her arm. In hospital, they whisked her away for X-rays, and Jake waited outside a door with a red light lit above it and a warning about radioactivity on it.

When a woman in a white lab coat came out at last, he intercepted her with impatient questions but was brushed aside by a curt, “She’ll live.”

This was most unsatisfactory, and pursuing her, Jake was ordered to a waiting room. He’d been there for more than an hour, unable to extract information from anyone, when a policewoman he believed to be of middle-eastern extraction came to take his statement.

How could she realise that his hesitation to begin wasn’t suspicious but just him trying to formulate the right words for her to take him seriously? The question was, how far back did he have to go? When he had completed his statement, the large brown eyes of the constable indicated she hadn’t believed a single word. This became clear when she began to ask for his home address and name of his family doctor and pressed to discover where he worked and other personal information. Finally, she asked outright, “Mr Conley, did you push Mrs McCracken down the stairs?”

you“How could I, if I was already outdoors in my pyjamas when she fell?”

“Well, she says someone pushed her, and you two were the only people in the house.”

“Except for the ghost.”

The constable snorted her disbelief, closed her notebook and said, “We’ll be in touch.”

“Just a minute. Are you going to check out Elfrid’s Hole?”

“My superiors will decide that, sir.”

With that, she walked away, but he heard her mutter, “Ghosts!” and saw her shake her head. He’d show them all. Ebberston was infested with them.

When, at last, he was allowed to visit Gwen, he found her sitting up in bed with a cast on her right arm. He’d had time to reflect and said straightaway, “Have the police questioned you, Gwen?”

She nodded.

“They more or less accused me of pushing you downstairs.”

“You? I told them you couldn’t have because I was watching you dash outside when I felt the shove. But who could it have been if you were down there?”

You? “The ghost, of course!”

“My God, you didn’t tell them that, did you? They’ll think you’re a nutter!”

“I did. It’s the truth, Gwen. I want them to investigate Elfrid’s Hole. We’ve got to put an end to this once and for all before someone else dies.”

“Ay, well, I could have broken my neck with a fall like that. You just won’t leave well enough alone, will you?” Her grey eyes glared at him, but did he detect that she believed him and wasn’t as angry as she pretended to be?

He spent an uncomfortable night dozing in the armchair by her bed, disturbed by the comings and goings of the night nurse. They would not discharge Gwen until they’d checked out her head for any after-effects of the blow she’d sustained. In mid-afternoon, he called a taxi, and it took them back to her house.

“Lucky I have no other guests until next week,” she said on the way home. “I’m going to have to learn to cope with one arm.”

“I think I should offer you dinner in The Grapes, Gwen. It’s the least I can do.”

The table booked, he fussed around his accommodation, making tea for his landlady, then slipped out to the shops with a list of purchases she needed. He had no idea that the local police were in contact with York, gathering information regarding his mental state. Perhaps he would have been relieved had he seen Constable Patel close the case as a domestic accident. He might not have been so pleased to read of his psychological disturbances following the road accident and the weeks in coma. The young policewoman dismissed his references to ghosts and Elfrid’s Hole as post-traumatic delusion.