Northern Fiction - Going Underground
Wizard In Limbo
'What d'ya hear, Tonto?' Hamish whispered after a few seconds.
Nick shrugged. 'Sounds like there's something moving, a long way off, in the bushes. I can't make it out _ the noise from the main road drowns everything out.'
'Well, as long as we're careful,' Eloise murmured, getting up and brushing down her skirt. She reflected that she should have changed before coming out on an expedition like this, but it was too late to turn back. She slipped into the shadows beneath the trees, and her two companions followed.
The edge of the woods lay silent and empty for a quarter of an hour. The faint noises of the trio's advance were audible for a while, but they died out into the distance. Silence reigned.
After a while, the same sound of furtive approach started up from the right, but faded away quickly in the opposite direction. After a moment's silence, it returned, this time from the left. A while later, Hamish staggered out into the clearing between the fence and the thicker woods, and stood staring around. The dark shapes of Eloise and Nick joined him.
He glared around.
'We're back where we started,' he complained. He crouched down and squinted through the bushes. 'Look,' he added, pointing. 'There's the car.'
'That's right,' murmured Eloise. 'Strange,' she added enigmatically.
'You must've got us lost,' shrugged Nick.
'But I've got an excellent sense of direction,' Eloise replied, shaking her head.
'Come off it,' snapped Hamish. 'You got us lost there.' He scowled. 'Not surprising,' he added, generously. 'I'd have got lost in that maze if I was leading the way.'
This admission did nothing to mollify Eloise.
'You might get confused in woodland,' she said angrily. 'Both of you are townies. But I was brought up in Sussex. I'm used to woods.'
'So am I, like,' complained Nick. 'My mum always took us to the Wirral at weekends . There's shitloads of woods there.'
Eloise sighed, and shook her head emphatically. 'You don't understand _ I spent all my childhood around trees. I don't get lost.'
'Well, you have done this time,' Hamish sneered. 'You must be losin' your knack.'
'We could always go home,' suggested Nick nervously. He hadn't enjoyed stumbling around in the darkness, it was plain. 'Looks like we're not gonna get to the house from this side, anyway.'
'No,' said Eloise decisively. 'We're not giving up now. This might be my only chance to...' She bit her lips, clearly having let on to more than she'd intended.
'To what?' demanded Hamish. 'What are you really after?'
Eloise gazed at her two companions, seeming to touch their souls with her deep, dark eyes. In a voice that reflected the hypnotic fascination of her gaze, she began to explain.
'Some time ago, months before his death, Samael Anghelides published an excerpt from a book he was translating in Nexus magazine. The book was the Necronomicon. He was not the first to publish a work claiming to be from that particular grimoire _ there were at least three hoaxes during the seventies _ but the excerpt he published was far more convincing than any of the previous attempts. What I want to do is to find the original manuscript, and check whether or not it's authentic.'
Hamish broke in impatiently.
'Och, so it's just another of your freaky Gothic occult trips, is it? Well, let me tell you what I...'
'But how does this help if we can't find a way into the place?' Nick interrupted, earning himself a hot glare from the skinhead. He ignored it, and went on. 'The woods make a better barrier than any magic would...' He broke off as a flash of comprehension lit up Eloise's sombre face. Hamish didn't see it.
'Shut up, you Scouse bastard!' he snarled. 'Listen, Eloise _ if there's nothing worth my while in this place, you'll regret it! I'll...' He broke off, seeing the girl's face. 'What's up?' he asked.
'I've got it,' she murmured, 'Why we can't get in the place.'
'You're not gonna tell us it's something fuckin' supernatural...'
Eloise laughed. 'Hardly supernatural.' She smiled. 'There's nothing supernatural about low magick.'
'Magic isn't supernatural?' Nick frowned.
'Some kinds are, some aren't,' Eloise replied. 'What we're up against here is rather more psychologically based... Look, I'd explain it if we had the time, but we don't. Basically, what we need to do is to use the same kind of magick to anull the effect.'
Hamish growled. 'I'm not messing around with your hocus_pocus...'
'There's nothing to it,' Eloise insisted. 'Just an expression of the will. And it seems to me you're pretty strong_willed already.
Hamish shrugged indifferently, but seemed secretly pleased. 'What do we have to do, then?'
'Both of you, take my hands,' Eloise commanded. They complied, and followed her as she began to advance in a straight line towards the trees. 'What's been happening is that the ritual performed on this site had created a blind spot in our consciousness. There is a way through the trees, but we can't find it. What we have to do is to concentrate our minds on penetrating through the veil of illusion...'
Beside her, Hamish's brow was wrinkling with the effort. He searched the undergrowth ahead for a path. He couldn't work out how they'd find one this time when the previous attempt had led them round in circles. Still, Eloise seemed to know what she was talking about. He felt sick at the idea of occultism and diabolism, but if there was no other way... Nick's voice broke in on his thoughts.
'Look!' he whispered. Hamish peered ahead. before them, snaking through the trees and bushes, was a narrow but clearly defined path. The Scot shook his head. He was sure they had been this way before, and he hadn't seen anything last time.
'Where the fuck did that come from?' he demanded. Eloise turned to him, her dark eyes shining.
'Don't you see?' she whispered. 'We've broken the spell. We can get on with it now.'
Nick moved closer.
'Ssh,' he said urgently. They turned to him questioningly. He was listening again.
'It's stopped,' he said, frowning. He glanced up at his two companions. 'That noise I heard before; the crashing. I thought I could hear it again. But it's stopped now.'
'Did it sound like it might be a security guard?' Hamish demanded. He clenched his fists in anticipation.
Nick shook his head, bewildered. 'No, nothing like that...'
'After all, if Anghelides could protect himself like this, he wouldn't have needed to employ security guards,' Eloise broke in.
'Och, we've nothing to worry about, then,' Hamish grunted, relaxing.
They stood in silence for a few seconds.
'Unless...' Nick said slowly. 'Unless the spell was supposed to keep something in.'
The other two stared at him for some time.
Eventually, Hamish broke the silence.
'Come on,' he muttered, pushing through the bushes towards the distant path.
Warily, the other two followed.
They vanished into the shadows of the wood. Silence held full sway for a while.
Then something horrifically vast pushed aside two interlinking trunks and lumbered down the path after them.
The trees began to thin on either side of the dark path, and finally petered out at the edge of a formal lawn. Out of their cover, the three companions halted and crouched down, staring about them.
'There's the house,' hissed Nick, indicating a large shadow that loomed squarely before them about forty yards away. They gazed at it from the edge of the woods.
Wroxeter House was a Victorian Gothic folly, complete with crenellated walls, thin, arrow_slit shaped windows, buttressed walls and arched doorways. The gloomy edifice seemed to emanate a sense of age_old evil, though Eloise knew this could have nothing to do with the building itself. Still, this combination of Victorian bad taste and cosmic terror reflected the late owner's character remarkably well. As Eloise scanned the building for an entrance, she noticed one anomaly that broke up the monotony of blindly staring windows and ivy_covered walls.
'Look! Up on the second floor,' she murmured. The other two followed her gaze.
'It looks like someone's already broken in,' murmured Nick. It was true; the windows directly above the front door were shattered, and the stone facing surrounding them seemed to bulge outwards.
'Someone's got here before us!' hissed Hamish. 'Who the fuck caught on to this before we did?'
'No,' Eloise muttered. 'Remember the paper. There were signs of a disturbance in the house. This must be it.'
'Surely the police would have done something about the hole,' Nick murmured. 'It looks as if it's going to fall in at any moment.'
'Or out,' Eloise agreed. 'It looks more like something's broken out, than broken in.'
Hamish raised an eyebrow. 'Have to be bloody strong to bash its way out of there,' he muttered.
'Hey, what's with the "it"?' asked Nick. 'There isn't some kind of demon running round, is there?'
'No!' Eloise laughed. 'Demons only exist within. The only corporeal form they can take is through possession.'
She got up, and strode across the lawn towards the steps up to the front door. The other two hurried after her. Nick caught her arm. She glanced at him questioningly.
'We won't get in through the front door,' he said. 'We'd be better off finding a way in round the back, or something.' Eloise shrugged, and allowed Nick to lead them off round the side of the gloomy mansion.
As they disappeared, something moved heavily through the trees towards the lawn. As its great paws touched the grass, it turned to face the house, searching for something. Its gaze lit upon the broken windows. Two webbed membranes extended out on either side of its massive torso, and it launched itself towards the second floor, landing soundlessly on the windowsill. As it lowered its head to fit inside, a moonbeam caught briefly on its dark, slimy hide.
Nick trod cautiously, leading Hamish and Eloise along the path that surrounded the mansion. As he made a circuit of the house, he kept his eyes open for a way in. He turned a corner to find himself on the far side of the building from their starting point, and stopped. Eloise bumped into him.
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