Stephen Jones - Dark Terrors 3 - The Gollancz Book of Horror

He was used to the idea that many country churches were kept locked most of the time for fear of burglars, but he had never heard of anyone shutting in the congregation! He suspected there were people inside, though he had not actually seen anyone enter. Probably a large proportion of the population of the village were gathered there. And where else could his son have gone, unless he was hiding behind one of the gravestones? No: Daniel was sure the boy had long since grown out of such foolishness: at his age, he was too self-conscious and insecure to play infantile pranks.

It occurred to Daniel it would be a good idea to walk round the church to see if there was another entry. He soon discovered there was not, and found himself again confronting the door that was closed to him. Resisting the desire to try to force an entry, and realizing that would not be possible without the aid of a battering ram, he flung himself down on a nearby wooden seat, folded his arms, and glared angrily down at the ground in front of him. Then he noticed something he had missed before: on the paving stones on either side of the little porch that fronted the church, positioned just about on the spots where the two old people, the vergers, had been standing minutes earlier, were two dark patches of what at first he assumed was water. Curious, and with nothing better to do, he went over and squatted down to inspect one of the damp places. If it was basically water, it was mixed with something else — something that glistened slightly, that had a greenish hue a similar colour to the lichen that grew on the cement-clad walls of the church, and that had a pungent, bitter odour. There was a hint of ozone in the smell, and something else far more unpleasant. The liquid, whatever it was, was drying out quickly in the glare of the sun but, if it had come from the two old people, they must have been dripping wet: absolutely soaked in the stuff! And how they must have stunk! He would not have liked to be in an enclosed space with them.

Inside the church, for instance.

Daniel was now very concerned about Marc. Why had the vicar allowed the boy in, and shut him out? The man had invited them both to the service.

Then Daniel remembered that the dog-collar round the vicar’s neck had been worn almost threadbare, and was filthy.

Somewhere back in the garden the band began to play again. After a few seconds Daniel noticed the sound they were making was getting louder, and guessed they were on the march now, and heading towards the church. He stood gazing in their direction rather nervously, waiting for them to appear through the trees.

Daniel had left the gate that gave access to the churchyard open when he had passed through it. A man with a drum was the first of the musicians to reach it. He then came to a Halt. Small, thickset and ungainly, swaying slightly as he marched on the spot, he looked as though he was stewing inside his tight, thick uniform. His sweat-slicked face was mottled with poppy-red blotches and his angry little eyes, staring furiously at Daniel, looked as though they might crack and burst, like chilled eggs dropped in boiling water. The man whacked both sides of the drum in a way that suggested barely controlled fury with two leather tipped, dumbbell-like sticks, producing enough sound to drown out most of the noise made by the rest of the band, who, visible now, and approaching at a funereal pace, were still some way behind. From the position the man had taken, and his commanding, threatening posture, it seemed to Daniel that he had deliberately taken it upon himself to act as guardian of the gate: a sentinel who would not let anyone in or out. The fellow seemed to be challenging Daniel to try to pass through, if he dared!

Unable to allocate a cause for this behaviour, Daniel stood his ground, staring mildly back at the drummer and grinning awkwardly in bafflement at the man’s inexplicable and inappropriate aggressiveness. If he thought his grin might have some mellowing effect, he was wrong. The musician’s chest rose at the sight of it, his chin came up, and his whole figure seemed to expand and grow taller with pride — or was it triumph.?

Daniel’s smile froze slowly on his face as the rest of the band caught up with their leader, lined up behind him and began to march forward towards the church, because behind them, he saw, were many more people, also advancing towards him. They were spread out among the trees, and, looking around, Daniel saw they formed an arc as far as he could see: an arc that was almost certainly a section of a circle of men and women stretching all around the graveyard. By the time the possible significance of this fact had registered in his mind, Daniel found he was partly encircled by a second, much closer, arc of people, formed by members of the band. He had not given the musicians any attention before because he had no ear for, and was therefore unable to get pleasure from, music of any kind, but now, he realized, some of them were more than a little peculiar looking. Their faces were partly concealed by the brass instruments they were playing, so it was not possible to detect exactly what was wrong with the features of many of them, but the distortions were greater than one would expect from the normal effort required to produce notes, he thought.

The drummer now stood directly in front of Daniel, about ten feet away. His unrelenting pounding of the instrument was deafening at that distance: Daniel felt each beat like a blow against his own chest. The din made the ground beneath him quake and his knees shake, and even seemed to affect his bowels and stomach. The sounds the rest of the band were making were awful too, to his hearing, and had a worse effect on him than music normally did. Then he realized it wasn’t just the faces of the players that were strange; their instruments were unconventional, too. The valves were surely longer and thinner, the brass tubes twisted in over-ornate curves, and the bells pointed down and around in ways unlike other trumpets and trombones he had seen before. He could not be certain, because he didn’t trust his own ears, but he thought the range of tones produced was different to those obtained from normal instruments.

These reflections were driven from his mind when the entire band started to march forward, closing ranks as they did so, forcing him to back away towards the church. They advanced in a determined rather than menacing way. With the exception of the drummer, who continued to scowl directly at him, they had their eyes almost shut, and seemed to be concentrating totally on the production of the sounds they were making. Nevertheless, Daniel did feel menaced. He made some effort to brave it out and held his ground as long as he could, until they were close enough for him to reach out and touch. Then, trying to maintain as much dignity as possible, he turned and retreated.

Arid found himself moving towards the welcoming face and the outstretched arms of the priest. The man stood just in front of the now wide open door to the church. The musicians suddenly seemed to run out of steam. The music they were playing fell apart in discordant tatters as, one by one, in quick succession, they stopped playing. Within seconds a shocking silence returned — shocking, that was, to Daniel, who had been beginning to think the noise would never stop.

Into the silence, the priest said, ‘You look troubled. I hope our celebrations have not over-excited you. Perhaps you would like to enter our little sanctuary for a while, until you regain your composure.’ His voice was deadly calm, cold even, undermining, to some extent, the authenticity of his benign expression.

Daniel badly wanted to see inside the church, out of curiosity now, and because he expected to find Marc there, but, now he was invited to enter the building, he was reluctant to take up the offer. He felt totally confused by the circumstances he found himself in, in fact, and wanted to come to some understanding of recent events, within himself, before embarking on any further action.