Phil Rickman - The Lamp of the Wicked

Huw snarled, ‘ Shush! ’ He turned the handle and slammed his shoulder against the door. ‘That changes nowt.’ He went in roughly, the door juddering. ‘Lights!’

Ingrid followed him in and snapped down the switches. The filaments in the hanging bulbs strained to reveal what they could of the former Underhowle Baptist Chapel in all its shabby splendour – and of the Reverend Huw Owen who, with his dusty, scarecrow hair and his liver-spotted dog collar, was looking suddenly like the minister it deserved.

‘In fact,’ Huw said, ‘what the lad’s just said makes it worse. The bitch was trying to feed it.’

He looked around the hacked-at walls, at the dust sheets hanging from the gallery. Then he moved into a shadowed area the size of a carport and came back dragging a plywood tea- chest, which he upturned and placed at the opposite end to the gallery, kicking shards of plaster into the corners.

‘Altar,’ he said.

The door just opened. As soon as Jane touched the knocker, the door fell away under her hand into the oaky darkness, and she stumbled forward into Chapel House.

Moira’s hand came from behind, took hold of Jane’s arm above the elbow and pulled her back.

‘All I did was touch it.’

‘I know,’ Moira said soberly.

‘Why would she leave it open? I mean, even in Ledwardine.’

‘She wouldn’t, Jane. She wouldnae do that.’

As they’d walked across the square from the lightless rectory, just a minute ago, Jane had seen Jenny Box at the top of these steps, at the door of Chapel House. She must have rushed in, leaving the door unsecured.

But there were no lights on inside. The wrought-iron lantern over the adjacent alley also remained unlit, just like the other night.

‘If you want the absolute truth, Jane,’ Moira said, ‘I do not like the feel of this.’

Jane held on to the railing and glanced back down the steps. Just a few doors away, the Black Swan was fully lit, a couple of men chatting by the entrance. A car door slammed on the square. The whole situation was absolutely normal.

‘Look,’ she said, ‘we’re going to look stupid if we start raising the alarm and then it’s nothing. It’s not like this is some remote—’

Shush a minute.’ Moira slipped inside.

‘Can you hear something?’

‘I won’t hear a bloody thing if you don’t— Just stay there, all right?’

‘What are you doing?’

‘I’m trying to… OK, c’mere a minute.’

Jane stepped into the darkness. She thought for a moment that she could smell the beautiful, sensuous scent of apple wood, but then she couldn’t.

‘What’s that?’ Moira said.

‘Oh.’

There was this gilded sliver in the middle distance, low down in the darkness.

‘Don’t move, hen.’ She could hear Moira’s hand sliding about on the wall, and then the lights came on: subdued, concealed lamps sheening the old oak panels.

Something was lying on the floor. Jane clutched Moira’s arm.

‘It’s a rug,’ Moira said, ‘rolled up. But what’s that alongside?’

The golden bar was a slit in the floor, a light on underneath it.

‘Trapdoor,’ Jane whispered. ‘That has to be her chapel down there.’

Moira called out, ‘Hello! You left your front door open!’

Nothing.

Moira went and tapped on the trapdoor. ‘Hello down there? Mrs Box?’

‘There’s a ring handle.’

‘Yes, Jane, I can see the ring handle.’ Moira sighed and pulled it. The trapdoor came up as easily as the front door had opened, as if it was on a pulley system, uncovering a mellow vault of light.

‘I’ll go down,’ Jane said. ‘She knows me.’

‘You bloody well will not go down.’ Moira called out, ‘Hello! You OK down there, Mrs Box?’ She pulled a face and put a foot on one of the stone steps.

‘Be careful.’

‘Aye.’ Moira went down. She wasn’t creeping, she was clattering, which was sensible. If Jenny was holed up in there, expecting trouble, best not to scare her.

Moira was down there like for ever, or that was how it seemed. Jane looked out of the front door, could see the tail lights of a car on the square, could hear voices. ‘Yeah, cheers!’ someone shouted, and a car horn beeped. Situation normal.

Jane was about to go down the steps when Moira emerged.

‘Right, Jane,’ she said briskly. ‘Let’s go, yeah?’

With no make-up, you could tell straightaway how pale she’d gone.

Jane said, ‘Oh shit. What?’

‘Jane…’ Moira pointed at the front door. ‘Out.’

‘ What? ’

‘Let’s keep this nice and quiet, huh? We’ll talk about it outside.’

Jane slammed the front door, shutting them in, something welling up in her chest. ‘No! I want to know. What’s happened to her?’

Moira sighed. ‘Isnae her. It’s… it’s him. I guess.’

‘Gareth?’

‘Big moustache?’

‘Yes.’ Staring at Moira, Jane moved towards the steps.

Moira pushed down the hatch and stood on it. ‘I really don’t think so. I… it’s not that I don’t think you can take it, because I’m sure you’ve seen dead people before—’

‘ No! ’

‘Just…’ She had her hands on Jane’s shoulders. ‘I don’t think we should touch anything.’

Jane looked back at the closed front door and pulled away from Moira, ran to another door, flung it open, saw the cold green tint on leaded glass – the room she’d been in with Gareth. Light from the hall showed that the fireplace was dead. She backed out, went to the foot of the oak stairs and shouted up, ‘Jenny!’

Leave it,’ Moira hissed. ‘For Christ’s sake, she’s beaten the guy’s head in with a bloody great iron cross and there’s blood over three walls. Now will you just open that front door and get the—’

‘Jenny…’ Jane ran up the stairs. ‘ Jenny! ’

Huw stood in front of his tea-chest altar, with the chalice on it and the saucer of wafers, and addressed the five of them: Ingrid, Sam, Fergus, Lol, Merrily.

‘We’re asking God to cleanse this place of evil.’ Over his head, a pale bulb burned coldly on a black flex. ‘I want us all to be quite sure what we’re about.’

Merrily said, ‘I honestly don’t see how we can be sure.’

‘Aye.’ Huw looked down at his shoes. ‘All right, I’ve an axe to grind. As Merrily knows, a woman who became a very close friend of mine lost a daughter, it were thought, to Frederick West. Donna Furlowe – found not in the garden or the cellar at Cromwell Street or under Fingerpost field or Letterbox field, but in the Forest of Dean. Was it West? Or an imitator? Or was it a person or persons who believed they had… let him in?’

Merrily saw that they’d instinctively formed a semicircle around Huw – at one end Lol, looking a little shivery in his alien sweatshirt, and pensive; at the other the lanky, dark-suited Fergus Young.

‘Look…’ Huw pushed out his hands. ‘ I don’t know who killed Donna. Could very well’ve been Lynsey Davies, and one day somebody might find the finger bones that were taken away from her, and they might find them here, and then we’ll know. But until then, all we know is the source. And the source is the evil that was nurtured in West and in Rosemary West. I’m inclined to say that that were a demonic evil and may eventually have to be dealt with as such.’

‘But not yet,’ Merrily said. ‘Not until we know.’

Huw said nothing.

‘Let’s be sure about this, Huw. You’re saying that the malign, earthbound essence of West, with his beloved 25 Cromwell

Street removed from the face of the earth, was… invoked here.’ Ingrid broke the semicircle to approach Huw. ‘Can I say something?’