Defiled Earth and other tales

  Defiled Earth and other tales

  By Tom G.H. Adams

  This collection of stories has been written in UK ENGLISH. Spellings in other territories may vary.

  ~ ~ ~

  Copyright

  Published by Rivendell Publications, Brampton, Cumbria, UK at Smashwords

  Copyright 2015 Tom G.H. Adams

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without the consent of the publisher and author, except where permitted by law.

  ISBN 9781311760777

  Acknowledgements

  Cover design by Debbie at 'The Cover Collection' www.thecovercollection.com

  Dedication

  This book is dedicated to my wife, Helen.

  Table of contents

  Title page

  Acknowledgements

  Dedication

  Defiled Earth

  Defiled Earth - author's note

  Special pupil

  Special Pupil - Author's note

  The Wardrobe

  The wardrobe - author's note

  Possession at 3,000 perforations a minute

  Possession at 3,000 perforations a minute - Author's note

  Head

  Head - Author's note

  Lusus naturae - chapter 1

  Lusus naturae - chapter 2

  Lusus naturae - chapter 3

  Lusus naturae - chapter 4

  Lusus naturae - chapter 5

  Lusus naturae - chapter 6

  Lusus naturae - epilogue

  Lusus naturae - Author's note

  Prophecy and pork chops

  Prophecy and pork chops - Author's note

  Preview - The Psychonaut

  About Tom G.H. Adams

  Defiled Earth

  His parents named him Cormac.

  His mother, Siobhân, said on the occasion of his birth “I may o’ got knocked up with him by an Englishman, but he’s ‘moine and he’s going to have a good old ‘oirish name.”

  Her side of the family held to tradition with a tenacity that would shame a terrier with a bone, and although they had lived in the north-east of England for three generations, they remained true to their roots. Just how deep the roots ran, was something Cormac remained oblivious to. That is, until the day Cormac’s boss announced a change in working practices.

  Old man Augit slammed the newspaper down on his desk. “I’m bankrolling idiots.”

  Cormac, in the corner of the porta-cabin room, flinched but otherwise stood motionless with his hands crossed in front of him. He wasn’t the subject of the tirade. The two men facing the Boss’s particular brand of Geordie music were Baz and Parky. They shifted uncomfortably, not daring to utter a word.

  Must be shitting themselves, Cormac thought.

  “Who’s idea was it to dump the stiff in the local tip?”

  “It seemed the best option, Boss,” Baz said. “We reckoned no one would ever find him buried under a mountain of rubbish.”

  “They bulldozer the fucking stuff all over the place, you spanners. The fucking driver ended up with the corpse in his front-loader, and now it’s on the front page of the fucking Echo. I swear, if this is traced back to me, you two’ll be wearing concrete boots at the bottom of the Tyne.”

  “We’re sorry, Boss. Guess we weren’t thinking straight,” said Parky. “But we were rushed. We heard on the pigs’ radio band they’d copped our registration plate and identified our car as stolen. We had to get rid of Tizer fast. Couldn’t have them pulling us over with him in the boot.”

  “Fucking excuses. If you fell into a barrel of tits you’d still come out sucking your thumbs. Now piss off. Or should I get Cormac here to roll out the cement mixer?”

  “We’re gone, Boss,” Baz said. They both left, no doubt thankful they’d got off with merely a tongue-lashing.

  “Shit, piss and fuck,” Augit said, running his hand through Brylcreamed, grey hair. “We’ve got to find a better disposal method, Cormac. There’s likely to be another couple of hits this week and we need a more secure arrangement. Any ideas?”

  Cormac knew he had the old man’s respect. He wasn’t just six foot five of well-toned muscle, he had a brain too—a lethal combination. “There’s a place on the moors, twenty-odd miles from here,” he said. His voice was high-pitched, almost whining and incongruous with his build. It had earned him the nick-name Squeak—not to his face, mind you, not if you didn’t want your face rearranged to look like you’d fallen off the bells at Notre-Dame.

  “It’s a bit of a long way out.”

  “So, I’ll use one of Archie’s butcher vans. They’re all legit, and a bit of blood and guts won’t go amiss.

  Augit paused, fingers drumming on the desk. “The bodies won’t be found?”

  Cormac smiled. “No, Boss. Never in a million years.”

  ~ ~ ~

  So it was, two nights later, Cormac found himself behind the wheel of Archie’s van. A guy called Bobby Moscrop rode in the back, wrapped neatly in heavy duty DPM and bound with half-inch diameter rope. It had been a neat kill. Quick work with his Bowie knife and no witnesses. The Boss was one step closer to clearing the boards and ruling the trafficking roost on Tyneside.

  The B-road leading up to Black Dub moor was little more than a track. The headlights lit up tufts of grass growing through the centre-line of cracked tarmac, and Cormac had to focus fully on the snaking road as it hair-pinned up one-in-three gradients to the summit.

  The track eventually petered out and he killed the engine. It was down to leg work now. He put on a head torch and opened up the back of the van.

  His tools of the trade tonight: a spade, harness and two breeze blocks. He’d got a saddler mate to rig him up the harness. It had two thick, padded shoulder straps and a system of buckles and leather straps.

  The body was light. Three years of heroin usage had whittled Moscrop’s frame down to that of a wraith, so he had no difficulty manoeuvring the body to a sitting position on the ground. He kneeled down and clipped the straps to the improvised body bag, then put the harness on. Once the apparatus had been tested for weight distribution, he took the strain and lifted himself up.

  His destination was a half-mile across open moorland and peat bog. He’d have to tread carefully. Hidden gullies could swallow a man’s leg up to his thigh, and treacherous mounds of reed and heather threatened to twist the unwary ankle.

  After a hundred yards or so, he’d worked up a sweat and a rhythm. The torch beam bounced in front of him, illuminating the way.

  He smelt it before he saw it.

  A gust of wind carried the odour of putrefaction in a sudden assault, making him gag. It triggered a childhood memory; the only other time he’d ever been up here.

  It had been a dare, borne on the wings of a wise-woman’s tale, that brought a young Cormac and his two mates to the bog.

  Billy’s aunt held court twice a week on the local traveler’s site, offering tarot readings and crystal-gazing for brass. So Billy, his brother Glenn, and Cormac had paid the woman a visit one hot, sweltering afternoon. They had their fortunes told and a bonus tale to boot.

  Grieve’s Bog, she told them, was where black witches performed their rituals and sacrifices in days gone by. The convergence of ley-lines made it propitious for practices that summoned demons, and empowered the witches in acts of mischief on the local population.

  “Be warned,” she said, with a stern look in her one, unclouded eye. “Stay clear of that place.” She told them how witches would sacr
ifice goats, pigs and sheep. But their most powerful magic required human blood. Once a year, some hapless orphan was offered up to their dark gods. Always a girl. Always a virgin. “You know what a virgin is don’t you?”

  Billy giggled in embarrassment. The rest nodded, their expressions grave.

  “Afterwards, they’d throw the corpse in the bog and watch it get swallowed up by the devouring soil. For weeks later, the milk would turn bad, cattle would give birth to two-headed calves and misfortunes trebled in number. The locals called it season of the witch.

  The boys looked at each other, fascinated.

  “But there’s more,” she continued. “So as the witches’ curses wouldn’t fall on their village, the people of Halton-by-Water would offer up their own daughters to the black hags. Lord only knows how many innocent maids breathed their last up on that moor over the centuries.”

  Billy’s aunt seemed to gain pleasure from the dread she placed in the boy’s heads. Cormac recalled clearly her parting words. “No, don’t you ever go there my little sprites. The ground there is bad. Poisoned. Nothing grows, nor ever will. Mark my words.”

  Of course, they had gone.

  The bog was marked by three standing stones and the wise-woman had been right. The ground was desolate. The reeds, lush and green beneath their feet stopped abruptly. Gases from the bog diffused into their nostrils, their mouths, their sweat pores. It seemed to the young Cormac that even his ears were desecrated, like the bog had a hellish timbre pealing in his brain. Were they voices he heard? Whispered, phantom words bouncing off the walls of his skull?

  Billy and Glenn must have heard it too, because in simultaneous, unspoken agreement, they turned on their heels and ran, scrambled onto their bikes at the foot of the hill and pedalled frantically until they reached Glenn’s house.

  They had parted company and never spoken again of that day. It remained a terrible secret, locked and forgotten in the dungeons of their minds.

  Now, in the raven-blackness of the moor, carrying his macabre burden, those prisoners were set free within Cormac’s head again. The stench of decay was the key that unlocked the door. That, and the sight of the three stones, standing like sentinels in the light-shaft of his torch.

  He needed to get the job done and over with, then skedaddle.

  Christ, the smell was foul.

  Under his feet, a sponginess in the ground indicated a transition to the lifeless, black circle. A few steps further and he had passed the stones. He stopped, flipping the clasps on the harness and let the body with its double pendulum of breeze blocks fall to the ground.

  In the foreground he saw a slab of rock, perched on two grey boulders like a table.

  An altar.

  He moved towards it and felt his foot sink into the peat up to his ankle. He let out an involuntary cry and toppled forward, arms flailing, only just managing to recover his balance.

  His foot was sinking—fast.

  The bog was a beast with a voracious appetite, sucking him down into its rotten stomach. He quickly shifted weight onto his back foot, the one that remained on solid ground. The other remained fast.

  He pulled against the bog’s grasp, exerting every ounce of bench-pressed muscle force. The strain was so great it felt like his calf would be torn in two.

  Then, almost imperceptibly at first, he heard a gurgling sound. His leg was released one precious inch. He squatted down, wrapping his arms under the crook of his knee and re-doubled his efforts. It seemed to take hours, but his foot gradually emerged from the treacle-thick ooze until, like a claw opening, the bog gave up its hold and he tumbled onto his back. His left foot was covered in the slimy black stuff.

  “Fuck me sideways,” he said.

  He lay there a couple of minutes, panting heavily. He drew the cloying air into his lungs and when he could stand it no more, staggered up and reached for the corpse. He wouldn’t need the spade.

  He dragged it over to where he stood before, careful not to overstep into the soft peat-ooze. It was a strain, but he hauled the corpse up to chest height, then, with a grunt, hefted it forward with all his strength. It landed a short distance away with a glop.

  The breeze blocks attached to the feet sank first, tilting the body up slightly as they were pulled deeper. Rigour mortis made the corpse look like a plastic-covered titanic as its stiffened form plunged deeper into the peaty morass.

  Cormac counted the passage of time by the heartbeat pounding in his ears. Within a hundred or so such beats the body was completely submerged. No trace was left but a dwindling sucking noise, soon masked by the whistling of the helm wind. As he listened, the moaning of the wind gave way to a sighing under-current. It grew louder so that in seconds it became a wailing in his ears, as of tortured souls crying to be set free from centuries of torment. He swept his head left and right, allowing the torch beam to play over the bog, but no movement could be seen.

  Fucking wind.

  He picked up the spade and walked slowly and deliberately, forcing himself not to give way to panic. The wailing increased in volume behind him and he thought he could make out words. He could sense a layer of itchy sweat, building beneath his cagoule.

  Release us... so... long... captive ... the voices seemed to say. Was that the wind again, or did he feel something caress his neck? Something like fingers?

  He span round.

  Nothing. This time he upped the pace and strode quickly down the heathered incline. As he moved further from the bog, the phantom-moan trailed off in his consciousness.

  Cormac Leary run? No fucking way.

  With steely determination he forced himself to take an even stride until he arrived back at the van. He threw the spade in the back, plonked himself in the cab and gunned the engine. The bog-stench clung to the fibres of his clothes all the way back to Newcastle.

  Next day, after two cycles of the washing machine, the smell was still on them. He threw the lot into an empty oil barrel and burned them.

  ~ ~ ~

  Next morning the Boss called him in early.

  “Looks like Moscrop’s brother-in-law, Jimmy Hodge, didn’t take kindly to us topping one of his relations. He fire-bombed the strip club on Marley Street last night.”

  “I heard they were pretty close,” Cormac said. “You want him taken care of?”

  “Already done. Parky and Baz did something right for once, but I still need to lose the body. Your place work out alright?”

  Cormac scratched the back of his head. “Yeah Boss, no problem.”

  Augit narrowed his eyes. “You sure?”

  Cormac could hear the nightmare voices surfacing in his memory again, could smell the centuries-old corruption.

  Get a grip, Cormac.

  “It’s a God-awful place to get to, that’s all. But it fits the bill. I’ll get rid of the body tonight.”

  “Good man. I knew I could depend on you.

  ~ ~ ~

  The clear night sky revealed a malignant moon that lit Cormac’s path in its baleful glow. The whirr of night birds and buzzing of insects receded as he drew closer to the bog again. This time he wore a face mask, but the bog-stench fingered its way under the seal, and in the end he ripped it off. It made him feel claustrophobic anyway.

  He wasn’t sure if the preternatural silence was real or perceived, but it added to his fear. His scalp itched and his fingers tingled. He wasn’t going to hang around tonight, that was for sure.

  He slung Moscrop’s brother-in-law down on the peat and separated the corpse from the harness. The air was still and suffocating, but at least it reassured him that the previous night’s phantom voices must have been a product of the wind.

  He lifted the body and lugged it to where he thought the edge of the bog began. Taking a last look round, he brushed off the notion of secretly watching eyes and hurled the body in. It didn’t travel as far as Moscrop’s corpse had. Jimmy obviously dodged the salad bars on a regular basis.

 
His natural urge was to put some distance between him and the bog, but his conscientiousness won over. He had to make sure the stiff disappeared. Sure enough, it upended just like Moscrop’s had the previous night, and sank into its peaty grave.

  He was turning to leave when something grabbed his ankle.

  He looked down and screamed.

  He saw a hand, its black fingers clasped around his lower leg like a gin trap. It had reached from beneath the surface and now pulled him inexorably toward the churning bog. Strength drained from Cormac’s body, turning his legs to rubber and transfixing him like a statue.

  The bog-denizen tugged at him with inhuman force and he fell backwards, bouncing on twelve million years-worth of peat deposit. He clawed at the ground, but there was nothing he could grab onto. He scrabbled with his other leg, willing it to act; kicking with his heel until, mercifully, his boot gained purchase.

  It was a brief respite. The hand started pulling with increased force, fuelled by some source of dark energy. Cormac pulled back, but unlike last night, there was no let-up.

  His heart was pounding like a jackhammer. Terror rose in his gorge and just when he felt the horror could not be greater, Moscrop’s head emerged from the bog, followed by his shoulders and upper body. Fragments of DPM still clung to his clothes where he had torn his way out from inside the plastic cocoon.

  “Holy fucking mother of God,” Cormac yelled.

  The filth-covered face was a mask of maniacal glee, the eyes showing only the white sclera. Cormac’s body shook uncontrollably as Moscrop’s hands clamped themselves on his calves, then his thighs and finally his waist.

  Cormac’s feet were now in the gloopy muck, and in minutes he knew he’d be feeling the bog closing over his head, pulling him downwards into a peaty hell. Condemned to become Moscrop’s eternal bog-buddy.

  The creature—for Cormac could no longer think of it as human—raked at his abdomen, nails gouging into flesh. He screamed a second time, only to have the sound swallowed up, damped down as if the peat itself had sucked it in. Frantically, his hands scooped into the soil, the nails ripping and breaking in a last attempt to arrest his egress into the bog.