The Stranger House
If his appearance had given her a start, hers seemed to return the shock with interest. He froze with the back of his hand at his forehead, giving the impression of a mariner shading his eyes from the sun as he peered over the bow in search of land. But the expression on his face suggested it was a fearsome reef he saw.
She gave him what she intended as a reassuring smile and moved on towards the church door. Here she glanced his way again and saw he was still staring at her. He was a man in his fifties, square-built and muscular, with a leathery face that looked as if a drunken taxidermist had been stuffing an English bulldog and then given up. But that unblinking gaze belonged to some creature far less cosy than a mere bulldog.
Sam didn’t bother with another smile. Why waste it? This felt like the kind of place where not only did they stare at strangers, they probably pointed at the sky whenever a plane flew overhead.
She raised the old-fashioned latch and pushed the door open. Like the gate, its opening was accompanied by a sound effect, this time a groan straight out of a horror movie. Hadn’t oil reached Illthwaite yet?
She stepped inside.
When God said let there be light, He must have forgotten St Ylf’s. It was so gloomy in here she had to pause a moment to let her eyes adapt. When murk began to coalesce into form, she found herself standing by a font consisting of a granite block out of which a basin had been scooped deep enough for an infant to drown in. Around its rough-hewn sides a not incompetent artist had carved a frieze of spasmodic dancers doing a conga behind a hooded figure carrying a scythe.
You live in the valley of the shadow, must seem like a good idea to let your kids see early what lies in wait for them, thought Sam. To her left was the space beneath the tower which seemed to be used as a kind of storeroom. The back wall was lined with dusty stacks of hassocks and hymn books, perhaps a reminder of days when the vicar expected a full house at every service. A rickety-looking ladder led up to a trapdoor which stood open, revealing the scudding clouds and admitting just enough light to make the shadowy church even more sinister.
She turned away to face down the aisle where the Gothic experience continued.
At the far end within the chancel on a pair of wooden trestles stood a coffin.
She set off towards it, trainers slapping against the granite floor. As she got nearer, she slowed. This was getting to be too much.
The coffin lid was drawn back to reveal the face of the corpse within.
It was a young face, pretty well de-sexed by death. She looked at the brass plate on the lid. It read William Knipp—in the seventeenth year of his age.
Poor sod. He died young.
She thought she heard a noise behind her and turned abruptly.
Nothing.
But there was the sound again. Her keen ear tracked it to the porch, or rather the store space beyond, beneath the tower. She walked back down the aisle and looked up at the open trap. The sky didn’t seem quite so dark now.
She called, ‘Hello! Anyone there?’
Though there was no reply, it felt like there was someone up there, listening.
‘Hi,’ she called. ‘Sorry to trouble you, but I could do with some help.’
Still nothing. She was beginning to feel irritated. While she didn’t have much time for priests and such, wasn’t it part of their job description that they should be there for you when you needed them?
‘OK,’ she called. ‘If you’re too busy to come down, I’ll come up.’
Setting the Guide on the floor, she grasped the rough wood of the old ladder and began to climb.
She was a good climber, light, supple and nimble. Watching her rapid ascent of the big blue gum overshading the north side of the house at Vinada, her pa had said, ‘If I’d bought a monkey, I’d sell it.’
It only took a few seconds to get to the top of the ladder, though it felt longer. The higher she got, the more rickety it felt. She glanced down and the floor seemed further away than she would have guessed. Thank God I don’t suffer from vertigo, she thought.
Unless vertigo began with a sudden petrifying sense of being watched!
The sooner she was off this ladder, the better. She reached her left hand up to get a grip on the floor of the tower.
And next moment the trap came crashing down.
She whipped her hand away, felt the frame graze her finger ends, lost her right hand’s grip on the topmost rung of the ladder, and suddenly the floor which had seemed so far away was getting closer far too quickly.
As she fell she had a sense of a darker shadow against the cloudy grey square. Or rather, later she had a sense that she’d had a sense, but for the brief time being all she was registering was her fervent desire not to crash head first on to the unyielding granite slabs.
She knew about falling. She’d always been good on the trampoline. In fact they’d persuaded her to try competitive gymnastics at school, but she’d left the team when it got too serious. Even then she’d known the medals she wanted from life weren’t to be got by bouncing. Now, however, all that twisting and turning looked like it might be useful.
First off, she tried a backward somersault to straighten herself up, but all it did halfway through was bring her in violent collision with the back wall.
This however turned out to be her salvation. Instead of sliding down it at great speed to make contact with the floor, she hit the stack of hassocks and hymn books piled there in anticipation of some future full house sell-out. The hands of angels might have done a better job at bearing her up, but maybe this kind of divine intercession was the best an Aussie atheist could look for.
This was her last absurd thought before she hit the ground with sufficient force to drive all the breath out of her lungs but not to kill her. An avalanche of hassocks and hymn books swept down after her, filling the air with swirling dust. She twisted round to protect her face from the holy debris and cried out as it clattered and bounced against her back. Fear of heights she didn’t have, but most of her childhood nightmares had been associated with fear of being trapped in a constricted dark place.
The downslide seemed to go on forever. She felt as if she were being buried alive under a mountain of dusty books and cushions. And even when they stopped crashing upon her, through the roar of terrified blood rushing along her veins she seemed still to hear noises: creaking wood, steps, doors opening and shutting.
Till finally these too, whether imagined or real, died away, leaving her to something more frightening than any sound.
The silence of the dark.
4 the wolf-head cross
Later Sam worked out she probably lay there only a matter of seconds, certainly less than a minute. Also that she could have dislodged the hymn books and hassocks simply by sitting up. But at the time it felt as if she lay there an age, fearful that the slightest movement would bring the whole weight of the tower crashing down upon her.
And finally a voice.
‘Jesus Christ! Gerry, give me a hand. Miss Flood! Miss Flood! Are you all right?’
Someone was pulling the books and hassocks from her body. Someone who knew her name. Maybe it was God. Though surely the All-knowing wouldn’t need to enquire after her health?
She squinted sideways and saw a pair of knees. Would God wear blue denim? She didn’t care. She could see, not too clearly, but at least she was out of the dark.
‘What happened?’ she gasped.
‘You fell. Stay still. Gerry, don’t just stand there. Get some water.’
Gerry? God’s second son, maybe. Jesus and Gerry. Now she was being silly. On the other hand this Gerry did seem able to conjure up rain which was now falling in very welcome cool drops on her exposed cheek.
Her mouth felt dry as dust. She swallowed and realized that in fact her mouth was full of dust. She needed to get some of this delicious liquid down her throat. She struggled to turn her face upwards.
‘No! Don’t move till we get help.’
Right, of course. She should lie still until experts had assessed the extent of damage and how best to proceed without causing more.
But even as this eminently sensible response was struggling along the self-repairing synapses of her brain, she was twisting round from prone to supine and flexing everything that she felt ought to be flexible.
‘I’m OK,’ she gasped. ‘Water.’
The source of the rain she now traced to a shallow silver platter from which Gerry the Son was flicking water with his finger. God the Bluejeaned was still kneeling by her. She used his shoulder to haul herself into the sitting position, grabbed the salver, and drained what little water it still contained. Then with the instinct of a thirsty animal in the outback, she pushed herself upright, tottered to the font and buried her face in its cool dark pool. When her mouth was washed clean of dust, she cupped her hands and threw the water against her face and gasped with pleasure as it trickled down her body.
‘This is good stuff,’ she said finally. ‘Does this mean I’ve been baptized? My pa will kill me.’
The frivolity popped out as it often did at moments of high stress. Her rescuers didn’t seem to find it funny.
God was a six-footer, broad-shouldered, barrelchested, though the barrel showed signs of rolling downhill into a beer gut. Way back he must have been a craggy good looker, but now he was definitely the ancient of days, in his sixties she guessed, his weathered face lined and crinkled. But his eyes still sparkled a bright blue and his thatch of silvery hair was still touched here and there with starts of gold.
The other one, Gerry the rainmaker, was a bit younger, mid-fifties maybe, his hair still black with only a slight frosting at the edges. His rather chubby face looked as if it could relax into a kind of koala attractiveness, but for now it was set in a blank from which his slatey eyes viewed her more like a strange animal who might be a threat than a young stranger who’d just had an accident. In contrast to God’s sports shirt and jeans, he wore a dark suit and a collar and tie.
‘I still think we should get you checked out,’ said God. ‘That was a nasty tumble you took.’
‘You saw it?’ said Sam.
‘No. I came in and saw you lying on the floor under all that crap. It didn’t take Miss Marple to work out you must have fallen off the loft ladder, right?’
‘It might have tested her to work out what my name was,’ said Sam.
Before he could reply, the porch door opened and another man came in, this one wearing a priest’s cassock and collar. He too was in his fifties, medium height, slightly built, with a salt-and-pepper shag of hair, and a matching tangle of beard, which, if the moistly anxious brown eyes peering out above it were anything to go by, had been cultivated to conceal meekness rather than express aggression.
‘Thor,’ he said. ‘And Gerry. Hello. What on earth’s happened here?’
As he spoke his gaze swung rapidly from the pile of hassocks and hymn books on the floor to Sam, and stuck. His mouth opened and white teeth gleamed through his beard like the moon through a bramble bush in what may have been intended as a welcoming smile but came over more as a grimace.
The man called Thor (right name for a god, wrong religion, thought Sam) said, ‘I came down to make sure young Billy got screwed in properly. This young lady seems to have slipped off the tower ladder. You should get it fixed. It’s a death trap.’
‘Oh dear. I’m so sorry. Are you all right, Miss…?’
‘Flood. Sam Flood,’ said Sam. ‘Yeah, I’m fine. Few bruises, nothing broken. And I didn’t slip. Someone slammed the trap shut on my fingers.’
Something in what she said robbed the vicar of the power of response for a moment and when he got it back, it hardly seemed worth the effort.
‘What…? You’re sure…? Who would do such a thing…? It hardly seems likely…’
While the vicar was wittering, God ran up the ladder with the casual ease of an ancient mariner and pushed open the trap.
‘No one up here now,’ he declared. ‘Wind must have blown it shut.’
He slid down, landing easily.
‘You’d need a bloody gale!’ protested Sam.
‘Gales are what we get round here,’ said the man. ‘Did you actually see anyone?’
‘No, not really,’ she admitted. ‘But I did hear something. And he had time to come down and get away…’
She moved away from the support of the font and was pleased to find she was pretty well back in control of her limbs. Standing under the once more open trap, she peered up at the clouds and recalled that sense of a presence just before it slammed shut. No features, just that frightening feeling of being at the focal point of a predatory stare…
‘There was a guy outside digging a grave when I arrived,’ she said. ‘Was he still there when you arrived?’
She directed this at the man the vicar had called Thor.
‘Laal Gowder? Yes, I had a word with him. Why?’
Because I thought it might be him who came in behind me and climbed up to the tower seemed even less sensible an answer than it had a moment ago.
‘Just thought he might have seen someone,’ she said lamely.
‘Coming out of the church, you mean? Well, I didn’t see anyone. And you were coming up the path behind me, Gerry. You see anyone?’
‘No,’ said the silent man. ‘Only Gowder.’
He spoke the name as if it tasted foul on the tongue. Despite his apparent lack of enthusiasm for her own presence, Sam felt maybe they had something in common after all. She recalled that Mrs Appledore had mentioned someone called Gerry Woollass. It came back to her. Not God’s son, but the squire’s son. Same thing round here, perhaps?
Despite beginning to have doubts about her interpretation of events, she wasn’t quite ready yet to give up.
‘He could have gone out that way,’ she said, pointing to another door in the wall opposite the main entrance.
‘Sorry, no,’ said the vicar. ‘That’s the Devil’s Door.’
‘Sorry? What was that? The devil’s door?’
‘Yes. It opens north, which in the Middle Ages was regarded as the direction the devil would come from. In some churches the doorway was actually bricked up. Here at St Ylf’s we’re not so superstitious. We merely keep ours locked.’
The bramble bush smile flashed again, this time definitely a smile, signalling a joke.
Sam thought of checking the door but didn’t. These old farts probably thought she was simply overreacting to the embarrassment of admitting that she, young, fit Sam Flood who held her year’s record for scaling the uni’s climbing wall, had fallen off a ladder. And they might be right!
She said, ‘Look, I’m sorry for the bother I’ve caused. Thanks for all your help.’
‘Glad to be of service,’ said God. ‘I’m Thor Winander, by the way. And this is Gerry Woollass.’
Got you right, then, thought Sam, looking at the vicar who, rather reluctantly, said, ‘And I’m Peter Swinebank, vicar of this parish.’
‘Same as the guy who wrote the Guide? Which reminds me, it must be lying around here somewhere.’
It was Woollass who spotted it. He picked it up, dusted it off and handed it back to her, taking the opportunity for a close inspection of her face as he did so.
‘Good. Well, I’m glad that no real damage was done,’ said Swinebank rather stagily. ‘Once again my apologies. Now I really must get on. People will be arriving for the funeral soon…’
‘Can I have a quick word first?’ said Sam. ‘It was you I was looking for when I started climbing the ladder. Thing is, I think maybe my grandmother came from these parts. Don’t know much else about her except that she made the trip out in spring 1960.’
‘The trip out where?’ enquired Swinebank.
‘Have you got cloth ears, Pete?’ said Winander. ‘I should have thought even a deaf man would have picked up our young friend has come hopping along the yellow brick road from Oz.’
‘Oh, shoot,’ said Sam. ‘And all them elocution lessons my ma wasted money on. Anyway, Vicar, any chance you can help me?’
‘I don’t know,’ said Swinebank. ‘What was your grandmother’s name?’
‘Same as mine. Don’t ask me why. It’s a long story,’ she said. ‘Flood. Samantha Flood. I thought if it was a local family they might be mentioned in the church records.’
The three men looked at each other.
‘No,’ declared Rev. Pete. ‘To my best recollection there has never been a local family called Flood. Right, Thor? Gerry?’
The other two shook their heads.
‘No?’ said Sam. ‘Still, if maybe I could glance at your parish records…’
‘I’m afraid that…when did you say she left? Spring 1960, was it?’
‘That’s right.’
‘You’re sure of that? And that it was Illthwaite?’ probed Swinebank.
‘I’m sure of the date, and pretty positive it was Illthwaite or something like it.’
‘Thwaite is a common suffix in English place names,’ said Swinebank. ‘As for the records, I fear we can’t help you much there. You see, the church was broken into a few months back and everything valuable stolen. Fortunately the really old records are kept locked in a safe in the vicarage, but most of the post-war books vanished. But, as I say, I’m pretty sure there hasn’t been a local family called Flood. Now I really must start getting organized for the funeral. Thor, I presume you’ve come to see to the coffin?’
‘That’s right. You can tell Lorna the memorial should be ready tomorrow.’
‘Excellent. Gerry, Lorna’s so grateful you’ve agreed to say a few words about Billy. The sense of a community coming together is so important at a time like this.’
The sense of a community coming close together was very much what Sam was getting. And maybe she was being neurotic, but she felt a sense of relief here too, as at a problem solved or at least sidelined.
She said, ‘I’ll get out of your hair. Thanks again for your help. Have a nice day.’
Not perhaps the most apt form of farewell to men about to screw down a coffin and get ready for a funeral, but if it confirmed them in their Pom prejudices that she was an uncouth young Aussie who stuck her nose in where she wasn’t wanted and fell off ladders, that was OK by her.
Outside she saw that the grave-digger with the odd name—Laal Gowder, was it?—had disappeared, his job presumably completed. It was to be hoped so, as the church gate now screeched open to admit what were presumably the first of the mourners.
The wind had become intermittent, but a sudden gust strong enough to support Thor Winander’s theory sent a chill down her body. She glanced down and realized that the soaking she’d given herself from the font had left her looking like an entrant in a wet T-shirt competition. Not a very strong entrant, in view of her shallow frontage, but hardly what a grieving family might want to encounter so close to the dead boy’s grave.
She headed round the back of the church, thinking she might find another way out here. But when she put the building between herself and the road, she pulled up short.
Here, at the centre of a quincunx formed with four yew trees which overshaded but did not overpower it, stood what must be the famous cross mentioned by Mrs Appledore.
It was at least fifteen feet high. Its shaft was ornately carved with intricate knotwork patterns interspersed with panels depicting various human and animal forms. The most striking image, both because of the vigour of the carving and its position at the centre of the wheelhead crosspiece, was a wolf’s head. Its gaping jaws were wedged open by a sword, but the one huge visible eye seemed to glare straight down at Sam, tracking her hesitant approach, promising that this state of impotence was temporary.
She broke eye contact to look at the Guide. This informed her in measured prose that the cross was Viking of the ninth century. Like many similar crosses, it made use of old Norse mythology to convey the new Christian message. The Reverend Peter K. commended the craftsman’s skill and gave a detailed interpretation of the symbols used.
The huge snake coiled around the lowest section of the shaft base devouring its own tail was at the same time Satan seducing Eve, and Jormungand, the great serpent which encircles Midgard in the northern legends, while the figure leaning out of a boat and beating the serpent’s head with a hammer was both the thunder god, Thor, and Christ harrowing Hell. As for the wolf, this was the beast Fenrir, which the Nordic gods thought they had rendered impotent by setting a bridle round its neck and a sword in its jaws. Eventually, however, it would break loose to join in that destruction of the physical universe called by pagans Ragnarokk or the Twilight of the Gods, by Christians Judgment Day.
Whether this meant the wolf was a good or a bad thing wasn’t all that clear.
There were two other problematic areas. One was a front panel from which the image had disappeared almost completely. This defacement, Peter K. theorized, probably occurred in 1571 when a group of iconoclasts toppled the Wolf-Head Cross. It lay in several pieces for nearly twenty years and it was only when it was repaired and re-erected that the second problematic inscription was discovered on the lowest vertical of the stepped base. The symbols revealed didn’t look like anything else on the cross. A series of vertical lines with a stroke through them (runic? postulated Peter K.); an inverted V, and another with the lines slightly extended to form a disproportioned cross (Greek?); an oval with two wavy lines through it (hieroglyphic?); and a surround of swirls and whorls.
Sam was amused by the number and variety of ‘expert’ interpretations: a prayer for the soul of a local bishop; a verse from a hymn to an Irish saint; a magical invocation.
That was always the trouble. Like some proofs in maths, once you got started, the sky was the limit, but often it was finding the right place to start that was the big hold-up.
Illthwaite, she told herself firmly, was a wrong start point. All she could hope was that the dark man at the Stranger House would let her enjoy a good night’s sleep, then up in the morning and on to Newcastle.
And if there was nothing new there, then maybe it was time to follow Pa’s example and let the dead take care of the dead.
With her back to the church she took a last look up at the Wolf-Head Cross. What had this remote and eerie place been like when those distant inhabitants had decided fifteen feet of carved granite was what they needed to make life comprehensible? Indeed, what had attracted them to settle in this dark and dreary valley in the first place?
Well, whatever it was, it looked like it had worked. Centuries later, and their descendants were still here, though maybe more under the earth than over it.
She shivered at the thought and forced her gaze away from the intricate scrollery of the carving which led you round and round into places you didn’t want to go, and eventually, inevitably, back to the eye of the wolf. She checked out the high wall beyond for another exit gate but found none. What she did notice was that the sheep-grazed neatness and order which prevailed elsewhere was scutched here by an outcrop of briar and nettles and rosebay willowherb against a small section of the wall. As the gusting wind moved among this vegetation, out of the corner of her eye she got a brief impression of lines more regular than those provided by the curved stones with their tracery of mortar. She advanced beyond the cross and squatted to take a closer look.
The briar was studded with such ferocious hooks that she could see why the sheep avoided grazing here. It was hard enough for her to brush aside the veiling vegetation but she finally succeeded at the price of several scratches and stings.
Her reward was to discover her glimpse of regularity hadn’t been delusive. On a huge base stone someone had carved a quatrain of verse, arranging it in a perfect square.