Murderer in Shadow Read online

  Night of Terror

  Stryker Farm lies abandoned, its buildings rotting, fields overgrown. The residents of Knight’s Crossing give it a wide berth and pray they might wipe its very existence from their minds. The lonely farmstead bore witness to a dreadful crime, the slaughtering of the entire Stryker clan by one of their own, young Dale Stryker, never brought to justice. None mourn for Ezekiel Stryker or his viperous brood. They are well rid of the loathsome family, villagers claim. If letting young Dale escape punishment means him never returning to Knight’s Crossing, then let it be done. Years later, the horror of the Stryker massacre is resurrected when a young boy vanishes. Amidst mounting dread and hysteria, DCI Arthur Ravyn and DS Leo Stark of the Hammershire Constabulary probe old murders no one wants to remember. As Knight’s Crossing is consumed by panic, the detectives hunt for a murderer who has long hid in shadow, an evil presence who will murder to keep long-buried secrets concealed.

  Murderer in Shadow

  A DCI Arthur Ravyn Mystery

  (DCI Ravyn #4 )

  by

  Ralph E. Vaughan

  Dog in the Night Books

  2017

  Murderer in Shadow

  ©2018 by Ralph E. Vaughan

  Cover by Ralph E. Vaughan

  DISCLAIMER

  This is a work of fiction. All characters and places depicted, even Hammershire County and its villages, are fictional. No real people or places should be inferred from any description or comment. In the few rare instances where actual historical personages or places are mentioned, they are used in a fictional manner.

  NOTE

  Because the characters in this novel are English and the setting is England, use of British English spellings in dialogue and narration seemed appropriate. In vocabulary I’ve tried as much as possible to adhere to England’s national conventions and to regional variations found in Hammershire County and have tried to do so consistently. I apologise (especially to my British friends and acquaintances) for any lapses that crept in, despite my best efforts.

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENT

  I gained insight from Parabola’s “Solitude” issue (Spring 1992) and The Handbook of Solitude: Psychological Perspectives on Social Isolation, Social Withdrawal, and Being Alone (Wiley & Sons, 2014), edited by Robert J. Coplan and Julie C. Bowker. Of help in elucidating some characters’ beliefs were True Magick by Amber K (Llewellyn, 1990), The Magician’s Dictionary by E.E. Rehmus (Feral House, 1990), and, most especially, Magic: An Occult Primer by English magician David Conway (Bantam, 1973). Regarding the mantra “I do not believe,” I first heard that phrase used in the 1962 film Night of the Eagle (American title, Burn, Witch, Burn) derived from the novel Conjure Wife by Fritz Leiber.

  Table of Contents

  Some Notes on Hammershire County

  Prologue

  Chapter 1 Missing Boy

  Chapter 2 Constable on Edge

  Chapter 3 Trouble With Yobs

  Chapter 4 Stryker Farm

  Chapter 5 The Other

  Chapter 6 Talking Bones

  Chapter 7 Cold Case Heats Up

  Chapter 8 Oh! I Do Like to be Beside the Seaside!

  Chapter 9 Grimoire of a Mad Boy

  Chapter 10 Touched by Shadows

  Chapter 11 Too Many Magicians

  Chapter 12 The Beckoning Past

  Chapter 13 ”I Do Not Believe”

  Chapter 14 Magic Circle

  Chapter 15 When the Magic Fails

  Epilogue

  Britishisms for the Bewildered

  About the Author

  Also by Ralph E. Vaughan

  How to Contact the Author

  Call to Action

  Some Notes on Hammershire County

  The effects of isolation are more acutely felt in Hammershire than elsewhere in England. In other counties, we also find lonely moors, dreary wastelands and uninhabited woods, but only in myth-haunted Hammershire do they induce such intense feelings of melancholia, loneliness and desperation. What is amazing to visitors, however, is not that such places exist, but that there are those who actively seek them out. Every village in Hammershire has its outliers, not just hermits but entire families shunning human contact. Take any rough path from even the smallest inbred village and you are sure to come across a cottage embraced by primeval woods, a moss-covered house in the lee of great rocks at the edge of a dreary moor, or a lone farmhouse surrounded by fields unsuitable for even subsistence agriculture. Though the inhabitants possess a wealth of knowledge for researchers seeking legends, lore and folk magic, approaching them can be frustrating and at times perilous. Isolation and solitude can bring spiritual enlightenment, as witnessed in the ascetic lives of Christian hermits and mystics, but among the lower orders can cause festering hatred and suspicion, perverse religious and societal aberrations, and even criminal acts that the self-exiled will view as normal and justified. At its worst, isolation can cause a condition known in the Dominion of Canada as “Wendigo Psychosis.” In such cases, isolation and desperation cause a reversion to a subhuman state, the kindest of men becoming murderers and devourers of human flesh. A Wendigo, according to indigenous tribes of Canada, is a demon able to possess the bodies of lonely people. Although not all psychologists view the abnormality as a valid mental disease, I felt its possible reality a compelling enough reason to give some habitations in Hammershire a wide berth during my many extensive walking journeys there.

  —The English Counties: The Journeys of an Antiquarian

  by Alfred Herron Altick,

  James Nisbet & Co., Publishers,

  21 Berners Street, London

  1979 (revised)

  Prologue

  The elementals were either excited or furious. Neither state was good as far as Dale Stryker was concerned. If agitated, they would engage in mischievous deviltry more annoying than dangerous. As the youngest, he would be tasked with cleaning up after them.

  But if they were flushed with anger…

  Dale feared what might happen if the elementals summoned by Grandfather Ezekiel were wrathful. Twice, he had endured magical workings gone awry. There had been pain and suffering, misery and brutality. No one spoke of those failures, No one dared. Grandfather Ezekiel forbade it. True, there had only been destruction and injury, but if things went wrong again, who knew what might happen? This time, even death might come calling.

  Huddled between bed and wall, fists pressed to his ears, he still heard the demonic beings shriek near the barn where Grandfather Ezekiel chanted binding spells in the Elder Tongue. Failure was always a possibility, whether admitted or not, but Dale fervently hoped this would not be one of those nights.

  In the guise of a windstorm, the elementals flung debris against barn and farmhouse. The building shook to its foundation.

  Dust sifted down from exposed beams, their dry tang mixing with the sourness of his sweat. The floor shuddered. In his panic he thought he felt the wood rippling.

  Dale hated his grandfather’s magical workings. At the moment, however, his existence depended on them. If not for the old man, the farmhouse might crash down around them all.

  Why can’t Grandfather leave them alone? Dale thought. Why disturb them? Why draw them from the Other Realm into our world? Great Goat God, please make him stop! Make him stop!

  Silence abruptly descended upon the farmhouse. Dale opened his eyes. Dust still drifted down, but in silence. The windstorm had ceased utterly. Dale listened intently.

  The elementals and the old man quieted simultaneously. That which had first seemed an answer to his prayer now troubled him. The calm was not simply a cessation of noise but an utter absence of sound, a hush so deep it hurt his ears.

  Though they were now still, Dale did not think the
beings had returned to their realm. He felt them close by, watching, waiting.

  Watching for what? he wondered. Waiting for what?

  Even more troubling was the old man’s sudden silence, halted in mid-incantation, the final binding left undone. Never before had Grandfather Ezekiel failed to complete a magical working, even when one had gone wrong. He knew the dangers.

  Unrestrained by Grandfather Ezekiel’s will, they would answer their own malevolent natures. Dale shuddered. Elementals, whether of fire, earth or air, were inherently malevolent toward humanity. Free to wreak havoc in the world of men, they were deadly.

  Waiting in silence, he felt the walls close in. Starlight sifted in through tattered curtains of the room’s sole window, but illuminated nothing, made encroaching shadows even deeper. Dale felt small in a cosmos that hated him, that dreamed of murder.

  He had prayed for the old man to stop, but now, smothered in a dreadful silence, he prayed Grandfather to resume his incantations. Given a choice of evils, he would gladly choose his grandfather, even though the old man was mad as a badger.

  He thought of his mother, how she held him as a child. In vain, he wished he could run to her now, feel her soft and warm embrace, hear her whispered words of comfort. But only innocent children were held by their mothers. That innocence ended with his initiation into the mysteries of magic at five years.

  Besides, he thought, his mother had no time for any of them, not anymore. A hot flush of resentment sluiced through his cold fear. With the coming of Grandfather’s disciples, everything had changed. He hated them all. But his heated emotions died in the continuing silence, submersed beneath freezing terror.

  Dale reached into his pocket, pulled out a small box of Bryant and May matches and lighted the stub of a candle he kept under his bed. He reached between frame and mattress. The feel of the old book bound in cracked leather was reassuring. He felt the Elder Sign incised into the cover. The book was his by right of discovery and his by right of secrecy.

  He flipped past the pages penned by hands other than his own, at least two others, he reckoned, each centuries dead. He had found it when clearing an outbuilding for Grandfather Ezekiel. A brief look and he knew he had come into possession of something special. He had jammed it down his trousers, all the while knowing the old wizard was about to strike him dead for his deception.

  That Grandfather Ezekiel remained ignorant of his sin was a greater wonder than the old man’s magic. From that day, Dale wrote in secret all he heard and drew all he saw. He did so now. The scratch of the pencil against the paper seemed deafening in the profound silence. He prayed it did not attract unwanted attention.

  A scream shattered the quiet with the suddenness of breaking glass. It began on a sharp note, then turned ragged as it rose in pitch. It came from the direction of the barn and ended abruptly.

  Dale dropped his pencil. It rolled to wall. He clutched the book to his chest and scrunched down deeper in his huddling place.

  The ensuing silence lasted less than two heartbeats. Dale heard slamming doors, pounding feet, a rising babble. In the maelstrom of sound, he recognised the voices of his family.

  A shotgun boomed.

  Dale pushed the book back into hiding, then ran and jammed a wooden chair beneath the green-flecked doorknob. Something had entered the farmhouse. If not an elemental, he thought, then some kind of demon or other evil spirit. The sounds of its rampaging provided his imagination a form denied his eyes.

  The cries of his family seemed to blend into a single shriek, punctuated by occasional booms of his father’s shotgun. Then Dale heard the weapon clatter to the floor.

  Dale wondered why Father would use an earthly weapon, one good only for discouraging curiosity seekers, on an unearthly being. While Lemuel Stryker was hardly a patch on Grandfather, he still knew the spells of binding and submission. Why, Dale wondered, had he not heard his father’s voice incanting?

  One by one, their cries ended wetly. At the end, the lone voice was that of his mother, sobbing, screaming, pleading. She was so mad with fear he could not make out her words. It was Dale’s duty to run to her, to protect her from whatever fell being had invaded the farmhouse. His muscles refused to move.

  Martha Stryker’s cries moved through the besieged farmhouse, nearing Dale’s room. He had to open the door, let her in, then bar it again. Though inexperienced in the ways of magic, he knew that if he established a warding he could offer his mother sanctuary. First, though, he had to remove the chair from under the doorknob.

  He felt sick.

  Something slammed against the wall by his closed door.

  “Why are you doing this?” Martha demanded, voice gasping and tremulous. “We have always…”

  Her words were replaced by a low, gurgling moan. In less than a moment, even that fell to silence. Dale was perplexed. Speaking to a demon except in terms of binding and banishment was foolish. Dale at least knew that much. His mother knew it as well.

  Darkness flowed beneath the door. Blood’s coppery scent filled the room. Fearful lest his mouth betray him, Dale clamped his hands to his face and gave silent voice to his protective incantations.

  The door shuddered. Its hinges rattled with each assault. The legs of the chair dug into the wooden floor. The crack of splintering wood overcame Dale’s paralysis. He pushed aside the curtains and threw open the window. Behind him, the door broke to pieces, the chair flew away.

  As Dale clambered into the night, something caught hold of his left foot. He kicked back with his right foot, solidly connecting. Three blows and he was free, tumbling to the ground.

  Though the air was knocked from his lungs, he forced himself to his feet, forced himself to run. His first instinct was to go to the barn, but in his heart he knew Grandfather Ezekiel had been the demon’s first victim.

  Legs windmilling, Dale ran toward the Sacred Oak beyond the well. If he could jump the boundary fence he was sure he could find sanctuary amongst the infidels in Knight’s Crossing.

  Heavy footfalls pounded behind him. He did not look back lest his fear root him to the ground. The thuds grew louder in his ears. It was no use, he realized. The demon would be upon him long before he escaped the limits of the farm.

  By starlight, he saw the sacred portal to the underworld and the standing stones around it. The magic symbols incised into the rocks seemed to glimmer. There was power in the primal stones. Dale did not know if he knew enough magic to call forth their destructive energies, but he had to try. It was his only chance.

  He stumbled toward the megalithic structures, careful to avoid the gaping pit. Turning, Dale raised his hands defensively, ready to chant incantations in the Elder Tongue. He opened his mouth, but no sound emerged. He dropped his hands to his sides.

  “You!” he gasped, then gasped again as a knife plunged into his chest. A coldness spread through him. He staggered back, watching the red-smeared knife pull out. He fell into an endless black gulf.

  Chapter 1

  Missing Boy

  “It’s one boy in a postage stamp village,” Superintendent Giles Heln said. His telephone on speaker, he kept his eyes on the overtime spreadsheet he was reviewing for the ACC. “How many places can a boy possibly hide? Look for him. How hard can it be? Get volunteers from among the villagers.”

  “Sir, I haven’t enough volunteers to cover the outlying areas,” Police Constable Hillary Ware said. “Too many places they won’t go. Plus, there’s trouble in the village, yobs harassing…”

  “No excuses, Constable.” It was hard to focus through her yammering. “I did not take your call to listen to excuses.”

  “Yes, sir.” She had no idea why her call to the constabulary in Stafford had been shunted to him. She had asked Control for the Regional Sergeant. Heln was the last person on earth she wanted to talk to. “It would be easier if we brought in uniformed officers.”

  “Easier does not get you noticed, Constable Ware,” Heln said. “Not in a good way. Complaining is not efficac
ious.”

  She pushed on. “There are not enough strappers to cover places where the rooted refuse to go.”

  “Strappers? The rooted?”

  “Newcomers, sir, as opposed to people who’ve been here for generations,” she said. “I don’t know how familiar you are with Knight’s Crossing, sir, but…”

  “I know it’s fairly small, less than a couple thousand inbred and superstitious fools,” Heln said. “Only worth a resident constable.” He paused less time than it took her to draw a breath to make protest. “A resident constable who is supposed to show initiative, handle all the mundane problems of the day without bothering the constabulary for every little thing.”

  Ware bit her lips to keep ill-chosen words from tumbling out. She did not like the way he referred to the villagers, and her. He knew full well Knight’s Crossing was her home.

  “Small, but with outlying areas,” she repeated. “People who’ve been here donkey years are wary about going near some of those places. Call it superstition it you want, but…”

  “I will call it anything I damn well please, Constable Ware!”

  After a long moment, she said: “Yes, sir.”

  “You are the resident constable for Knight’s Crossing.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Assigning resident constables is outdated,” Heln said. “Not good law enforcement nor an accepted best business practice, but it has the power of tradition. It’s the norm in Hammershire County, at least until a more progressive administration makes better policy.”

  Ware knew Heln was not soliciting her opinion about anything, much less official policy. If Heln had asked her about resident constables, she might have told him she thought it a good system for villages not large enough for a division. After all, it made sense, putting the affairs of a village in the hands of someone who knew the village. Even as she thought this, however, she knew that if he had asked she would still have imitated a stone. She had not yet learned the complexities of station politics, when to stick her neck out and when to keep her head safely tucked between her shoulders, but she decided this was no time rise to the axe.