Chapter Two: Friday night
“Mr. A. Burningham was driving along a Surrey lane in August 1959 when he saw ahead of him what he described as an enormous cat, the size of a Labrador dog but with a distinctive feline gait. Burningham observed the cat for several minutes before it moved on, eventually dismissing the incident as a quirk.”
“Did anyone see you leave?”
“No, I don’t think so.”
“How long do you think you’ve got?”
“An hour, maybe more. They were just starting their meal.”
“And they won’t miss you?”
“They think I’m in my quarter. They never include me when they are drinking as well.”
“Hypocrites!”
“What do I care? It gives us our chance, doesn’t it?” The young woman took the man’s hand, interlaced their fingers, and pulled him closer towards her.
“So, where do you want to go?” he asked.
“I don’t know. Somewhere close. Just so long as we don’t run into those weird kids again.”
“Who?”
“You know, last time, those teenagers and their stupid black magic stuff.”
The young man laughed, “You talk as though you were so much older than them yourself.”
“Well, you know.” Sheepish. It was already dark along the towpath though and the woman’s coy look was lost to the night.
“Okay. How about we walk a little way up the bank and see if we can find somewhere sheltered under the trees.”
“Won’t it be damp on the ground? It was raining earlier.”
“Well, we don’t have to... you know, do everything.” The young man was growing impatient. “Come on. We’re wasting our time talking out here in the open. We’ll find somewhere,” he added, reassuringly. He put his arm around his companion’s shoulder and together they stepped off the shingle path, ducked under a low branch, and disappeared into the black night of the wood.
•••
“They were sentenced yesterday. Did you see it?”
“You know, Vince, I’m really not that interested in this sort of stuff. It gets me a bit spooked,” said Zoe.
“I saw them,” said Graham, “On the T.V. last night. They looked mad.”
Vince ignored Graham’s comments and addressed the blonde-haired girl, “Spooked? That’s the point. Come on Zoe, you know you’re interested really. Why else are you out here?”
Zoe tried to sound casual. “I like the park at night, that’s all. You can see so many stars.” Zoe lay flat on her back on the short grass, oblivious to the cold and the damp. The earth maiden. She stretched her arms out wide as though to embrace the whole black universe, which filled her range of vision above her. Vince took the gesture as a sign of invitation to him and started to move towards sitting down astride the young woman. Zoe sat up abruptly, “Vince! What the fuck do you think you are doing?”
Vince giggled nervously and then sat down beside Zoe, continuing his previous conversation as though there had been no interruption, “She gave the sign of the Horned One. Did you see?” The young man held his hand up, first and little fingers extended in imitation of a beast’s horns.”
Graham, interested, moved closer. It was dark in the park and he had not been able to see Vince’s gesture. “How was that?” He sat down beside his two companions and peered intently into the dark, trying to define the position of Vince’s hand. He copied the sign, smiling broadly.
“I’m considering changing my name,” said Vince.
“Oh?” Success. He had managed to get Zoe interested despite her best intentions.
“What to?” asked Graham. “What’s wrong with Vince Grey?”
“Stan. That’s what to.”
Zoe laughed and Vince looked momentarily annoyed at being ridiculed. He tried to justify his decision, “It’s an anagram of Satan.”
There was silence for a few moments while the others digested this piece of information. It was Graham who finally said, “Isn’t there an ‘a’ missing?”
“What?”
“An ‘a’. Satan has an extra ‘a’.”
Zoe laughed again and Vince tried to hide his embarrassment by returning to his description of the trial, “They’ll go down as martyrs to the cause.”
“The cause?”
Vince was not to be interrupted, “Stabbed their victim more than sixty times and then drank his blood.”
“Then made love. That’s what I read.” Zoe added.
“You see, you are interested.” Vince was pleased at the direction the conversation had taken. It had been almost a month now since he had first invited Zoe to join him on one of his night-time sorties into the park and he had still not succeeded in either inveigling her into the black arts or himself into her underpants. She still persisted with her ‘free spirit of nature’ persona. Of course having Graham tagging along all the time didn’t help either, although he was sometimes quite useful as the comic foil and as the butt of Vince’s jokes.
“You realize that tomorrow is a special day?” said Vince.
“Oh?”
Vince could not resist an opportunity to show off and to belittle his companion at the same time, “You don’t know? I would have thought you New Age types would have all been out celebrating.”
“What?” said Zoe, intrigued.
“Tomorrow is Candlemas.”
“Candlemas?” Zoe had not heard the term.
Vince went on to explain, “One of the four ancient quarter-days in Scottish lore, along with Hallowmas, or Halloween as it’s become known, Lammas and of course...”
“Eric Luf.” It was Graham who broke into Vince’s flow.
“What?”
“Eric Luf. You could change your name to Eric Luf.”
“Why on earth...?”
“Lucifer. Eric Luf.” Graham lapsed into his own quiet thought again, his lips moving silently in the darkness, as though he were concentrating at working out some private mathematical problem.
Vince glared in his direction before addressing Zoe, “As I was saying... Where was I?”
“Lammas.”
“Oh yes. And of course Beltane.”
“So what’s so special about Candlemas?”
“The 2nd of February. It’s the day, in the Roman Catholic church, when all the candles that will be needed throughout the year are consecrated. You know, blessed. It is the festival of the purification of the Virgin Mary.” He was not unknowledgeable on his subject was Vince.
“Ted Hevil.” It was Graham again.
Zoe laughed. “That’s feeble.”
Vince was annoyed, “What are you talking about?”
“Or Old Nick. Though that’s not an anagram, of course.”
Vince tried to draw Zoe’s attention back to what he had been saying, “Ignore him. What was I saying?”
“How about Phil Mestophees”
“What?”
“Phil Mestophees. Mephistopheles. Or Norris Fenspacked.” Graham was on a rare verbal roll and was proving hard to halt. Vince resorted to physical means. He was a tall boy, often taken for much older than his seventeen years, plus slightly overweight, and it did not take many moments of applying his considerable bulk on top of Graham’s prone being for the smaller punster to shut up. Not before he managed one final retort though, “Vince Grey. Never really black.”
Vince might have been tempted to retaliate further if it had not been for the cry. It was a long, loud howl finishing with a harsh, gargling reverberation, like a death-rattle cough from the lungs of a titan; it was a noise somehow intrinsically linked with the image of pain and distress; not close at hand, but not so far away as to not be unnerving. It did not sound human but it did not sound like any animal that the threesome would have normally associated living in an area of suburban parkland.
“Did you hear that?”
“Yes. Someone in the woods, do you think?”
??
?Someone being murdered if it was.” said Graham.
“Oh, and you’d know what that would sound like,” said Vince, sarcastically.
“Shut up the pair of you.” It was Zoe. “I think we ought to be going.”
“Scared?” asked Vince, trying to sound bolder than he felt.
The blonde-haired girl got to her feet. She had kicked off her shoes when she lay down and she now had to feel around in the darkness to retrieve them again, forcing her feet into them without undoing the straps. “Stay if you want. I’ve got to get home. I’ve still got some work to do for school, and I don’t want to leave it for the weekend. Are you coming Graham?”
Graham looked towards his mentor for his lead, “Vince?”
With Zoe leaving Vince had no particular desire to remain. It was bitterly cold in the exposed park and Graham alone did not provide sufficient stimulation to make up for the continued discomfort. “Okay, let’s all go. Same time tomorrow, though. Candlemas, remember.”
“Okay,” Graham agreed.
“Maybe,” Zoe sounded doubtful.
In the darkness Vince smiled to himself. She would be there. Not necessarily on his account; he did not flatter himself that he had been successful at wooing her yet. He did not know what it was, but there was something about the place that meant that she just couldn’t keep away.
•••
Rob and Janet had passed first base when they heard the noise. They had not been able to find a suitably dry patch of ground to suit their amorous intentions, or at least when they had it had been covered in a carpet of fallen, short, dead twigs, which Janet insisted would be ‘too prickly’. In the end, and conscious that they were running out of time, they had contented themselves with a snog and a grope leaning up against the trunk of a tall, birch tree. They were still within shouting distance of the canal path and the barge community of which Janet was a member, but lost amidst the darkness of the wood they were confident that they were invisible to any spying eyes.
Rob had worked with impatient zeal and moderate skill and had successfully negotiated the obstacles caused by the zip of Janet’s anorak, the weight of her thick jumper, several buttons on her blouse, and had just worked his hand through the multitude of layers to be able to feel the thin, silky material of the cup of her bra and the reassuringly hardening protuberance beneath, when he was halted in his exploration by the sudden, deep, throaty cry which rent the air with a terrifying note of anguish. He felt Janet freeze in the darkness before him, her every muscle going taunt.
“What was that?”
“I don’t know.”
“It sounded close.”
“Shush.” Rob was straining, trying to listen, but the call was not repeated. There was the sound of the wind through the bare branches and the rustle of the dead leaves on the ground, but otherwise all was silent.
Janet was doing up her buttons and pulling down her ruckled sweater, “I think I had better get back.”
On another night Rob would have tried to detain her, would have tried to prolong their tryst even at the expense of making her late returning to the barge, but suddenly this evening he had no desire to remain in the black wood.