Jessica Bannister and the Evil Within

By Janet Farell and ttl

As an intrepid reporter for one of London's most widely read tabloids, Jessica Bannister is certainly no stranger to danger and often ends up in dicey situations of the supernatural variety while attempting to bag her next scoop, but when her adversaries have the ability to turn a friend into a foe, she finds herself in a whole new level of peril, unable to trust those closest to her and occasionally even herself! A revelation about her past makes her re-evaluate her supernatural gifts and once again she is left wondering whether they are a boon or a bane, and what exactly the trail of death left in their wake means for her future. While she wrestles with all of these existential questions about the nature of her powers, she finds herself haunted by sinister monks, long-dead serial killers, and perhaps most perplexing of all, unusually vicious swans. What terrifies her the most, however, is the evil that lurks in the hearts of man, and how easy it is for it to bubble up to the surface.

• Language: English
• Publisher: J-Novel Pulp
• Release date: Aug 23, 2022
• ISBN: 9781718323605

Book preview

On the Hunt for the Witch’s Treasure

by Janet Farell

Scotland. The small farming community of Caerlugum near Carlisle, in the autumn of 1628.

An icy wind whistled mournfully through the narrow streets, weaving its way between the houses towards the pyre that stood in the middle of the marketplace. Flaming torches had been placed in various corners of the square, their flickering glow giving the unfolding scene a spooky ambiance, and a tense silence hung heavy in the air. Suddenly, the whispering wind carried a babble of voices into the square, the quiet, timber-framed houses nearby making the sound echo back in a bizarre, eerie way. The voices were rough and numerous, all of them singing a cruel chorus of hatred in unison.

‘Burn! Burn! Burn!’

The howls of the angry mob sounded like the guttural roar of an enraged demon. The patch of darkness on the east end of the market seemed to coagulate and sway back and forth in a surreal way, before all of a sudden, the shapeless darkness started spewing out people until there was a whole army of figures — black, creeping silhouettes against an overcast October sky. Wispy clouds drifted by overhead, and from time to time, the moon doused the scene in a cold, silvery light.

‘Burn! Burn! Burn!’

Scythes, hoes, and pitchforks protruded upwards from the crowd, the agricultural tools waving menacingly in the air in time with the chanting of countless voices as the small procession marched solemnly along the muddy streets of Caerlugum with a large crowd following in their wake. This procession turned out to be six men encircling one woman, who seemed to be an elderly, emaciated peasant with clear signs of torture marking her face and body.

The men were clad in the coarse habits of monks, each carrying a flaming torch in their hands, and at the very front of the procession, wearing a wide purple robe with an equally wide cowl, was their abbot. His face could not be seen under the cowl — in fact, the only flesh on show was his long, scrawny fingers that were clinging almost desperately to the brass cross of their church that was mounted on the end of a long wooden stick. This man was the master of life and death in this place, and his body language suggested he knew it — he understood that it was he who had been tasked with deciding how to carry out ‘God’s will’, for he was the inquisitor.

The crowd surged forwards, howling like insane dervishes, and in the twitching firelight, their faces looked spectral, their shadows — splashed indistinctly across the walls of the small houses that surrounded the marketplace — unnervingly surreal. The light from the flames didn’t help much in lighting the scene, however, as the darkness seemed reluctant to retreat from the burning torches and appeared to grow even denser and more impenetrable around the flickering circle of light.

‘Burn! Burn! Burn!’

The once-peaceful village folk of Caerlugum had transformed into a bloodthirsty mob that would not rest until the witch known as Jasprey had finally been burned at the stake. The six lay brothers manhandled the woman, pushing her forward in front of them so roughly that she staggered and nearly fell, but she just managed to find her footing again at the very last moment and saved herself from tumbling face-first into the mud. None of the men had extended a hand to stop her from falling, nor did they help her stand upright again afterwards.

The small, dirty buildings around them towered darkly and menacingly against the sky, and all that could be heard aside from the chanting was the squish of mud under the crowd’s feet as they formed a circle around the large pyre. The icy wind was still blustering its way through the deserted streets around the square and as it washed over the gathered masses, almost as one, the angry mob shivered violently.

All of a sudden, the inquisitor stopped walking and raised a hand, causing the cassocked men to also stop abruptly and the crowd to fall silent. An eerie calm returned to the square, with only the cold and evil whine of the wind breaking the stillness. The inquisitor stood motionless for a moment before lowering his hand again. He slowly lifted both hands to his cowl and pushed it back to reveal pale features and an aquiline, cruel-looking, hooked nose that looked demonic in the flickering red light of the torches. A hint of a smile played across his taut, thin lips as he raised his voice and bellowed his proclamation across the square.

‘In God’s name, I — Henry James Trebleford — hereby pronounce the verdict of the High Council regarding the crimes committed by the accused, Jasprey!’

There was absolute silence. Of course, every single person in the crowd knew what the verdict would be, but they still found themselves paralysed by a strange tension in the air. The woman stood tall, and even though silvery trails traced the path of tears that ran almost imperceptibly down her dirty face, she didn’t cower in the face of her fate.

‘We managed to prove the accused’s courtship with Satan. She conducted black masses and committed a number of heinous sins under the watchful eye of our Lord.’

The crowd waited with bated breath as the inquisitor slowly turned to the old woman and stared straight into her eyes. She didn’t avoid his gaze, staring straight back at him even though his eyes were sparkling triumphantly. He raised his voice a little more as he continued to pronounce the judgement against the woman his gaze was fixed upon.

‘For these reasons, it is the High Council’s ruling that Jasprey be condemned to burn at the stake, so that her soul may be purified and not fall prey to eternal damnation!’

For a split-second, the square remained quiet until these words finally sank in and all hell broke loose again.

‘Burn! Burn! Burn!’

The angry roar of the crowd had increased in volume and was now at fever pitch, becoming an inhuman-sounding ball of fury. People needed an outlet for their anger, someone they could blame for the recent bad harvests, and here, a man of the cloth was presenting them with the perfect scapegoat: a witch. Jasprey — who was in the process of being dragged to the stake by the lay brothers — showed no emotion, for she knew every visible tear and every plea for mercy would only increase the sense of triumph the cruel inquisitor was feeling. However, she also knew the real reason she was being tied to a stake and condemned to death by burning.

Not a single person in the village had dared to even suggest that Jasprey was a witch or in league with the Devil. On the contrary, no one held any malice towards the old woman and her small band of followers who were seen regularly picking herbs deep in the surrounding woods. Nearly everyone in the village had visited the old woman at some point in their lives to ask for advice and the natural remedies for ailments she provided, and her treatments had proven most effective. Despite being poor themselves, many of the village folk had shown their appreciation and gratitude by giving her gifts, and over time, she’d amassed something of a treasure trove containing a not-insignificant amount of valuables — and it was precisely these valuables Trebleford wanted to get his greedy mitts on.

The inquisitor had heard on the grapevine that a strange old woman was hoarding money and valuables somewhere in the forest. Once he’d tracked her down, he very quickly persuaded the villagers, partly through his own influence and partly due to the trust people had in the church, that Jasprey was a witch. She hadn’t spoken a single word to him in all that time — not during the hours upon hours of torture, nor during the long, long weeks in the dungeon at Portree Abbey — and now it looked as though she was going to burn at the stake.

With a length of strong rope, the men tied Jasprey to the wooden pole that had been driven vertically into the ground, her feet standing on the dry brushwood that had been gathered especially for this execution. Jasprey scanned the crowd, a deep, dull despair at her impending fiery death rising up inside her. She spotted familiar faces in the frenzied crowd — people she’d once helped who now looked down at the ground in shame as Jasprey gazed at them. The inquisitor picked up a flaming torch and approached Jasprey, leaning forwards until his face was almost touching hers — so close that the old woman could feel the heat of the flames on her face.

‘This is your last chance to tell me where you’ve hidden your treasures, you miserable herbalist,’ he hissed, spittle spraying from his mouth and spattering across her face.

‘I will never tell you, Trebleford,’ she replied in a firm voice, a proud look on her face as she stared him down.

‘Tell me, and I’ll let you down from this pyre.’ There was a coaxing edge to his tone, and the offer sounded like an enticing one.

‘You’re lying. I know I’m going to die one way or another,’ she said curtly.

The inquisitor’s face contorted into a grimace of pure hatred for a few seconds, then he abruptly turned around and raised the flaming torch.

‘She refuses to repent for her crimes!’ he shouted to the crowd. ‘May the Lord show her mercy and welcome her into His arms!’

And with that, he tossed the torch onto the pyre, where the flame immediately took hold and greedily engorged itself on the wood, sending a violent wave of heat upwards over Jasprey’s helpless body and into the sky. The inquisitor took a few steps back, tilted his head skywards, and let out a laugh that could only be described as crazed.

‘I will find it, Jasprey! You can bet on it!’

The heat was getting more and more unbearable, and the sparks flying up from the pyre burned the old woman’s skin. The fire that engulfed Jasprey crackled and blazed eerily, and she had to bite back the pain as tears welled up in her eyes.

‘You will never get your grubby hands on it! Only those with my blood in their veins can find my treasure!’

The scrawny man convulsed with laughter. ‘We shall see about that, witch! I swear to you, I will not rest until your treasure is in my hands!’

‘So be it,’ Jasprey murmured with one last smile as the crackling flames reached her legs.

***

I sat at my typewriter in the London City Observer’s spacious open-plan newsroom and pondered my latest assignment. The general hubbub of journalists running about like headless chickens, various voices babbling away incessantly about something-or-other, and the omnipresent wail of telephones ringing off the hook didn’t really bother me now after so long working in this environment. To tell the truth, if I got really immersed in whatever assignment was holding my attention, a bomb could go off next to my desk and I wouldn’t notice.

I stared sullenly at the sheet of paper clamped into my old typewriter, which only had a few sentences on it so far. Martin T. Stone had given me an assignment that — like so many of his ideas for obscure stories and articles — didn’t seem to make a lick of sense initially. It was about the dogs who were going missing in droves in the East End of London, and some pisshead off his face swore blind that he’d seen a UFO lit up like a Christmas tree carrying the dogs off into the night sky.

I sighed inwardly, and figured I must have annoyed Stone somehow, because he only gave journalists who were in his bad books thankless tasks like this one. I just hoped I could get this ‘story’ done and dusted as quickly as possible and to a level Stone would be satisfied with, so that I could finally get back to devoting myself to my real areas of interest.

‘Ah, Miss Bannister, I see you’ve been given a challenging new assignment!’

Even before I turned around, I knew who that spiteful voice belonged to: it was Sarah Johnston, one of the older journalists at the paper. I couldn’t for the life of me fathom why she’d made me her sworn enemy as I’d never once treated her unkindly. Maybe she couldn’t deal with the fact that, despite my youth — I was, after all, still in my mid-twenties — I already had a number of scoops and successes under my belt and I’d made quite a name for myself in the newspaper biz.

Sarah Johnston, on the other hand, worked on the section we’d dubbed ‘The Odds and Sods’, and to my knowledge, her most exciting story to date had been about staff strikes in a handful of London’s eateries. I sometimes thought Martin T. Stone only kept her on out of pity — a trait you wouldn’t think he had if you didn’t know him very well, but which every journalist under him knew he possessed. Sarah was still eyeing me condescendingly, and it was only then that I realised she was waiting for some kind of response from me.

‘I’m writing about dogs that have gone missing,’ I said, as calmly as I could.

Sarah smiled wickedly. ‘Ah, that sounds about the right level for someone with your talents,’ she replied pointedly.

I sighed and glanced at the photo of Aunt Bell I’d pinned on one of the thin plywood partition screens that marked my work area out from the rest of the open-plan office, giving it a look that said, ‘Help me out here!’ even though it was just a picture on a wall.

‘Well, as you can see, I’m extremely busy,’ I mumbled, nodding at the typewriter. There really was no point in arguing the toss with Sarah.

‘Yes, I can see. Though, if you—’

Thankfully, whatever Sarah was going to add was abruptly interrupted.

‘Hey, Jess. What in God’s name are you doing here?’

I turned around and saw Jim Brodie, dressed as per usual in his patched-up jeans and one of his many faded T-shirts. His lanky frame seemed to be bobbing back and forth, as if he was trying to suppress his excitement at something, with only limited success.

‘What do you mean?’ I said.

‘The old codger’s been calling for you for about half an hour now. How come you aren’t up in his office yet?’ he said reproachfully.

I swallowed, but my throat was suddenly dry. If it was true Martin T. Stone had summoned me to his office and I hadn’t shown up in front of his desk almost instantly, I was in serious trouble. I was already mentally preparing myself for the inevitability of being lumbered with writing about striking restaurant workers and dognapped mutts for the next six months.

Sarah Johnston still had a smile on her face as she shot Jim a dirty look, which turned into one that was altogether more knowing and suggestive. ‘I see you two have a lot to talk about, so I’ll leave you to it. Have fun,’ she winked, and with that, she turned and swept away.

Jim went beetroot red and called after her: ‘Say hi to those waiters for us, Sarah!’

It wasn’t some big secret that Jim liked me a lot. Truth be told, I’d noticed he had a soft spot for me in my first few days working at the Observer. I was fond of him too, but he wasn’t the type of guy I could ever see myself falling madly in love with, so we’d just stayed very good friends and that’s the way I liked it. Besides, Jim had been dating the girl we’d rescued from the clutches of the Guardians of the Blue Flame, Susan Marriott, for some time now, and it really seemed like he was head over heels in love with her...

I was on my feet by this point and was just turning to head up to Stone’s office when Jim grabbed my arm. I shot him a quizzical look.

‘Don’t worry. Martin T. Stone didn’t call for you,’ he said with a grin, his eyes flashing.

‘What? But then why did you...’

‘Well, I had to find some way to shoo that stupid bint Sarah away from your desk,’ he said, giving me a friendly slap on the shoulder. ‘Everyone at the Observer knows you two aren’t exactly the best of friends.’

I couldn’t help laughing. Jim had proven time and time again that he had a knack for saying the right thing at the right time, even if he did do it in the cheekiest way possible. He didn’t give me chance to reply to this as he was already leaning over my desk and peering at the sheet of paper in my typewriter.

‘Kidnapped by UFOs! Extraterrestrial Experiments on Dogs?’ he read with a frown. ‘Christ on a bike, Jess. If Old Iron Eater’s given you a topic like that, you must really be in the doghouse. Did you tread on his toes one too many times or something?’

I smiled gently. Jim knew how to — and how not to — interpret Stone’s actions pretty much as well as I did, and he was thinking along the same lines as me.

At that moment, a petite blonde woman with her hair pinned up into what looked like some kind of narrow turret and her eyes flashing effervescently behind rimless glasses frantically made her way across the open-plan office towards my desk. From what I could make out, she was Martin T. Stone’s new secretary, the old one having handed in her resignation over some... disagreements with her boss, as well as her conviction that she’d quickly get hopelessly snowed under by all the tasks Stone would give her. I sometimes wondered if there was a secretary anywhere in the world who could stay in the job more than a few weeks without Stone scaring them off.

‘Jessica?’ she asked.

I nodded mechanically. Most of the employees at the Observer referred to me by my first name, rather than messing about with all that ‘Miss Bannister’ nonsense.

‘Mr Stone wishes to speak to you right this minute.’ She shot me a quick glance and I was sure I saw pity in her eyes. ‘And by right this minute, he means you should be there now!’

I looked around at Jim, pleading with my eyes for him to help me, but he had a pained smile on his face, and he ended up just shrugging. ‘Go on. You might as well just get it over with. After all, it can’t really get any worse than dogs getting beamed up by UFOs...’

***

I approached the door with the frosted glass that shielded Martin T. Stone’s office from the hustle and bustle present in the rest of the building with a sense of trepidation. The name of the editor-in-chief was inscribed on the glass, and after taking one rather drawn-out deep breath, I managed to pluck up enough courage to grab the door handle and swiftly open the door.

Martin T. Stone was sitting behind his huge desk, which — like always — was overflowing with notes, books, newspapers, photographs, and a thousand other things. If Stone hadn’t been quite a bulky chap himself, he would probably have disappeared completely behind the mountain of paper and never be seen again.

Stone raised his head an inch or two, looking up from a book he’d been totally immersed in up until I’d walked through the door. He had a green highlighter in his left hand, and he’d apparently been highlighting passages with it, but on seeing me, he put the book and the highlighter aside and nodded for me to take the seat opposite him. swivelling his leather armchair around as he did in order to be able to look me square in the face. Feeling somewhat self-conscious, I sat down in the chair he’d indicated and looked at him inquiringly. Stone seemed to let his cogs whirr for a moment before running his hand through his dark hair that was greying at the temples — a gesture that struck me as being a little agitated, even frantic.

‘You’re going on a little trip,’ he finally said. ‘I’ve got a story I want you to look into.’ A stunned silence gripped me, but Stone just looked me up and down with a benevolent expression on his face. ‘I earmarked you for it because it seemed right up your alley.’

‘What kind of story is it?’ I asked cautiously, my current assignment on those dognapped mutts floating to the forefront of my mind.

‘Someone’s been kidnapped,’ Stone said.

I swallowed hard. Not again! I thought.

Stone broke out into a short-lived smile. ‘Don’t worry, it’s not dogs this time. There’s this little village up near Carlisle, just over the Scottish border, called Caerlugum. Some women have gone missing from there, and no one can make heads or tails of it.’

I gasped. ‘What do you mean by gone missing?’ I asked.

A strange tingling sensation seemed to rise up from somewhere deep inside me. Stone once told me a real reporter could ‘sense’ when they’ve come across a good story, and they get the kind of feeling a passionate big game hunter would on stumbling across the tracks of an elephant. Well, as far as I was concerned, that statement was proving completely accurate.

Stone sighed softly, and I could see from his facial expression that there was some kind of inner turmoil going on as the cogs whirred in his head, attempting to find the right words to say next. Eventually, he rested his elbows on his desk and looked me straight in the eye.

‘What do you know about... elves?’ he asked.

‘About what?’ I blinked.

‘Elves,’ Stone repeated, his eyes seeming to glitter with barely suppressed amusement.

‘Elves? You mean those little imp-like sprites?’ I stuttered. What on earth was he asking about elves for? ‘As far as I know, they... they can grow up to about a metre and a half tall, and they have pointy ears and almond-shaped eyes.’ I tried to sound as authoritative as I could. ‘And perhaps most importantly, they don’t really exist.’

‘Well, that’s exactly what you’re going to find out,’ Stone said with a smile. ‘In this Caerlugum place, there are two... well, let’s call them eyewitnesses... who, independent of each other, claim they’ve seen elves, and that these little creatures made of light dragged the missing women off with them into the nearby forest.’ He shrugged slightly. ‘You’ll be covering this one with Jim Brodie — maybe he can get some snaps of these elves dancing around a fire or something. And you’d better come back with a good story,’ he said, his tone turning serious again. ‘All joking aside, I think there’s something else going on behind the scenes here — something we can’t quite gauge at the moment. My source gave me some vague hints to what it might be, and I think you’re the best person to follow up on this story. You’ll certainly find it easier to get information out of the locals than a certain middle-aged, bespectacled Observer reporter I could mention.’

I allowed myself a little smile at this, but Stone remained deadly serious, even seeming a little worried about what he was asking me to go and do. Yet I realised he’d made a point of assigning this story to Jim and me out of everybody on his payroll.

‘You’ll drive up to Caerlugum,’ he stated. ‘It’s at least a good two hundred miles northwest of London, just up past the northern edge of the Cumbrian Mountains. It’s better if you only take the one car. I’ve been told Jim Brodie’s a dab hand behind the wheel, and he keeps maps of the British Isles in his glove compartment too.’

I nodded again and was about to get to my feet when a thought popped into my mind.

‘Oh, just one more question,’ I said. ‘What do the police have to say about this story?’

Stone cleared his throat. He’d probably expected this question. ‘Caerlugum’s a small place, remember. The nearest police station’s about thirty miles away in Dumfries, but as is so often the case, the local police are at a total loss. And, well, elves obviously don’t fit into the usual criminal profile.’

I smiled. ‘Oh, and I just thought of something else: who’s going to carry on with the work I was doing here? About the dogs, I mean...’

Stone cocked his head, his face deadly serious. ‘I thought it might be something Sarah Johnston could sink her teeth into. After all, I’m sure she’d be more than happy to finally get out of the rather dry political corner she’s found herself in recently.’

I had to stop myself from breaking out in laughter and hugging the boss — Stone somehow always managed to let his soft centre shine through his hard outer shell. Instead, I got up in as professional a manner as I could manage and was just turning to leave when a short, clearly forced cough from Stone made me pause. I looked at him quizzically.

‘Jessica, take care of yourself up there. All the women who have gone missing were around your age, with only a few on the older side. If there really is some nutjob stalking the place and kidnapping women in the middle of the night, I definitely don’t want him abducting you. Do I make myself clear?’

There was an urgency to his voice, and I could clearly hear how much he cared about me. I could see it in his eyes that he’d never forgive himself if anything happened to me.

‘If you feel like you’re in even the slightest bit of danger, you get the hell out of this Caerlugum place, story or no. Do you understand what I’m saying?’

I nodded silently, even though I already knew I’d hunt until the bitter end for something I could use for a story. After all, other reporters were constantly exposed to some kind of danger, and in my eyes, this wasn’t any different. Stone’s facial features morphed back into his familiar grim expression, which had earned him the nickname of ‘Iron Eater’ around the office.

‘Now, off with you, and bring me back something I can print,’ he growled grumpily. ‘After all, I’m not paying you to stand around here.’

He turned back to his book again, which was a sure sign that the conversation was over. As I was turning to leave again, I suddenly realised the book he was reading was Lord of the Rings by J.R.R. Tolkien...

***

I wasn’t particularly thrilled by the idea of Jim and I going up there in his car, largely because I didn’t really trust Jim’s rusty old Ford to survive the journey, but also because the thought of spending nearly a full day sitting in a car didn’t strike me as particularly appealing. Plus, you could never really be sure what the traffic was like, or if you’d encounter badly maintained roads or mechanical trouble, which meant there was no upper limit to how long the journey might take. After all, it was almost 340 miles from London to Caerlugum, and a good portion of that would see us taking seldom-used B-roads and I had a feeling dirt tracks might be involved somewhere along the line.

Martin T. Stone was also being extremely uncooperative when there was any mention of finding another mode of transport to get us up there — he wrote off going by rail straight away, which is perhaps unsurprising as the nearest train station was several miles away in Carlisle, and flying was right out. He also claimed taking a car up would give us a lot more independence and if anything happened while we were there, we could easily jump in and speed over to the scene, which was essential if you wanted to be a successful journalist. That put an end to any discussion on not going by car.

Then there was the matter of Beverly Gormic — or as I called her, Aunt Bell — my dear great-aunt who had raised me as if I was her own daughter after the death of my parents. She owned a large Victorian villa on the northside of London in Hampstead, as her late husband had made sure she would be financially independent in the event of his death — and she was just that when he ended up being declared missing presumed dead.

Aunt Bell was practically a heart in female form, though one of her odder qualities was that she was slightly more accepting of the supernatural and viewed such phenomena as perfectly normal. Ever since I was sixteen, she’d tell me over and over that I had latent clairvoyant abilities, though it didn’t become clear to me until much later that she’d been right all along, when I found out I’d inherited my burgeoning supernatural powers from my mother.

When I told Aunt Bell about my trip up to Scotland and the word ‘elves’ had accidentally slipped out in response to one of the questions from the hundreds that inevitably rained down on me, that was it. There was no stopping her from then on, and I was bombarded with presumably handy advice on the best way to deal with the fey, goblins, and so-called ‘green witches’ all in the space of a little under two hours.

Aunt Bell also made it crystal clear that I was to ring as soon as I reached Caerlugum. She always got a little worried about me whenever I went away for an article, and it was especially tough this time as I found myself having to persuade her that I wasn’t really going to run into any elves in the small Scottish village I was heading to. When it finally came time to say goodbye to her on the morning of our departure, her face was etched with genuine concern...

I shifted about in my seat, trying to find a reasonably comfortable sitting position in Jim’s rickety old Ford. According to our admittedly rough calculations, we would likely be on the road for a good eight hours, not including the quick comfort breaks we were planning to take in Birmingham and Manchester. It would be late by the time we made it to Caerlugum, perhaps even very late...

***

The feeling that washed over me when we finally pootled into Caerlugum was indescribable. I couldn’t quite put my finger on what caused this rush of emotion, though maybe it had something to do with the seemingly never-ending journey to get here, which hadn’t been dull exactly because, to his credit, Jim had tried his level best to stop our conversation from petering out, and I had to admit, he was actually a good driver too.

Looking at it from the outside, you’d think this rusty old Ford had been salvaged from the scrapyard by someone who was a sandwich short of a picnic — and in truth, the interior didn’t do anything to dispel that impression. ‘Chaotic’ was a reasonably good word to describe Jim, and you could tell that about him just by looking at the interior of his car. Camera bags, magazines, old issues of the Observer with photos framed in red, boxes of film, and broken lenses all lay strewn across the back seat and in the footwell. When we got in the car, Jim had felt the need to explain, looking somewhat sheepish, that he kept meaning to have a good clear out, but he hadn’t managed to get around to it. And it was fair to say that the car didn’t look like it had been neglected — it was just a bit on the messy side, which is why it seemed like a good fit for Jim, at least to my mind.

The trip had taken it out of both of us, and despite stopping a number of times on the way, the drive up had dragged on for what seemed like an age. My eyelids had fallen shut again and again, and I wasn’t particularly surprised it was the middle of the night when we finally rolled into Caerlugum. I thought nothing would be able to shake me out of my drowsiness, and all I longed for was a lovely hot shower and a soft bed to crawl into so I could spend the rest of the night forgetting the hardships of the journey north... but I was jolted out of my lethargy almost as soon as the first houses of Caerlugum crept out of the darkness towards our trundling car. It was an indescribable feeling, no doubt about it.

The Ford crunched its way over the uneven, stone-filled dirt track that led us through the forest until all of a sudden, the conifers that were about the width of a man abruptly disappeared and the woodland opened out onto a view of a shallow valley filled with trees. The twin cones of light from our headlights were somewhat ineffective, seeming to wander aimlessly into the darkness only to get swallowed up by it.

The small village of Caerlugum was a rather gloomy-looking sight, nestled as it was at the edge of a small basin, its dark, squat buildings seeming to press themselves up against the black slope for protection. Not a single light shone out of any of the buildings, and the only light in the whole place seemed to be the glow of a few dim street lights scattered about the place, looking completely lost and out of place.

I knew from the very first moment I laid eyes on the village of Caerlugum that something was wrong here. The eerie silence, the sense of desolation, its remoteness — there was a special meaning behind it all, I just knew it. The air seemed to vibrate with an almost implausible level of tension, and dark, wiry shreds of cloud tumbled through the sky, only occasionally allowing a brief glimpse of the pale, silvery full moon. A soft, mournful wind swept through the streets of the little village, where no living soul moved and the streets were utterly deserted, as if the whole population of Caerlugum had vanished into thin air all at once and all that lay before us now was a dead and lonely ghost town.

‘What sort of place is this?’ Jim mumbled quietly. His lips were pressed together, and his face looked pale and unhealthy in the glow of the dashboard. His voice was unusually serious. ‘Maybe Stone was right about this place after all...’

‘How do you mean?’ I asked him.

He smiled weakly. ‘Let’s put it this way, if some fella comes running up to me and starts ranting and raving about goblins doing a merry jig around a fire nearby, I’d believe him without going to check out the scene.’

I nodded feebly and was about to add my tuppence worth when a distant rumbling sound made me sit bolt upright and strain my ears to hear what was going on out there in the darkness. Was it a thunderstorm?

I got my answer about half a second later when a lightning bolt streaked through the sky and earthed itself somewhere in the distant Cumberley Mountains. For a split-second, the entire valley was bathed in a harsh white light, and it was then that I caught sight of the ruins rising up from a wide plateau cut into the rocks above the village, which were practically impossible to make out in the darkness due to the edge of the basin being higher than the building’s battlements. Those brief seconds where I glimpsed the crumbling ruins in the flash of lightning were enough to sear themselves into my memory forever.

A menacing aura seemed to emanate from the fortress — a feeling of oppressiveness that was difficult to put into words. The defiant walls — long since structurally compromised and overgrown with creeping plants and moss — extended ominously upwards into the night sky like claws on a scrawny hand. A murder of crows, vast in number, circled the highest tower in the complex, as if keeping watch for approaching enemies on behalf of the long-dead guards of the fortress. The well-preserved main building with a metal cross on its roof that seemed almost to glow in the eerie light of the lightning dominated the courtyard.

I thought back to my first impression of Caerlugum’s buildings, and how I’d assumed they were nestling into the dark slope in search of protection. After seeing this forbidding sight high on the rocks, I knew now that my assumption had been all wrong. The buildings were in fact bowed in reverence to the mighty ruins of this fortress that towered over them up there on the rock, casting its long shadow across the valley like a sinister, ever-present giant. Though this absurd notion fell out of my head as quickly as it had popped up in it, and looking out again, I saw that the valley had been plunged into darkness once more, which seemed doubly impenetrable after the dazzling light show. The sharp bright outlines of everything that the flash had produced for mere fractions of a second had burned themselves into my retinas, meaning that I saw a negative of the valley on the back of my eyelids whenever I blinked. It took a while for my eyes to adjust to the dim lighting in the car again.

‘Well, that was quite a sight, wasn’t it?’ Jim said. ‘If I ever captured something like that on film, I’d be a very rich man.’ He blinked a little irritated. ‘What kind of building do you think that was?’

‘A monastery or an abbey maybe,’ I suggested.

Jim looked at me sceptically. ‘Why do you think that?’ he asked.

‘Well, didn’t you see the cross?’ I replied.

‘What cross?’ he said, looking perplexed.

‘The cross on the roof of that long building in the courtyard, of course,’ I told him.

Jim looked at me very strangely, in a way you might look at a child who’d just asked you why you can’t see the little leprechauns all around you. When he spoke again, his voice sounded particularly calm and serious.

‘Jess, I’ve been taking photos for quite some time now, and whenever I look at something, I take it all in — and I mean all. You might even say it’s fundamentally important for my profession for me to do so. And I can guarantee you that there was no cross up on those ruins.’

I felt a shiver run down my spine. ‘No cross? But I’m sure I saw...’

‘Jess,’ Jim interrupted me. He was driving a bit faster than before, his eyes firmly fixed on the dirt track we were bumping along. I could see a thin film of sweat covering his pale face like a mesh. ‘There was no main house either. The only structures that hadn’t been completely destroyed were the tower and the battlements.’ His voice dropped to an almost toneless whisper. ‘You just saw a building that hasn’t existed for a good four hundred years!’

***

I fell silent. Of course, at first I thought Jim must have got it wrong — that, for possibly the first time in his life, his ‘photographer’s eyes’ had let him down and he’d failed