The abbey, p.1
The Abbey, page 1
Also Available From Jacy Morris
Fiction:
The Abbey
The Cult of the Skull (The Enemies of our Ancestors: Book 2)
The Drop
The Enemies of Our Ancestors
Killing the Cult
The Lady That Stayed
The Pied Piper of Hamelin
This Rotten World
This Rotten World: Let It Burn
This Rotten World: No More Heroes
This Rotten World: Winter of Blood
This Rotten World: Choking on the Ashes
An Unorthodox Cure
Movies:
All Hell Breaks Loose
The Cemetery People (Coming Soon)
The Abbey
By Jacy Morris
Copyright © Jacy Morris 2015
To
MY WIFE
and all those that have taken
a chance on reading my books.
Table of Contents
Prologue
Chapter 1: Being a Tourist
Chapter 2: Shanghaied
Chapter 3: The Tale of Keir
Chapter 4: In the Stacks
Chapter 5: The Clock is Ticking
Chapter 6: The Journey Begins
Chapter 7: The Night Before
Chapter 8: In the Room
Chapter 9: The Benefactor
Chapter 10: Ascent
Chapter 11: The Children of Strudwick
Chapter 12: Dead End
Chapter 13: Freed
Chapter 14: Brother McKracken
Chapter 15: Going Deeper
Chapter 16: The Cracking
Chapter 17: Her Name Was Death
Epilogue
A Word From Jacy
About the Author
Prologue: The Night Whispers
Prologue
He would make him scream. So far they had all screamed, their unused voices quaking and cracking with pain that was made even worse by the fact that they were breaking their vows to their Lord, their sole reason for existence. Shattering their vows was their last act on earth, and then they were gone. Now there was only one left. A lone monk had taken flight into the abbey's lower regions, a labyrinthine winding of corridors and catacombs lined with the boxed up remains of the dead and their trinkets.
Brenley Denman's boots clanked off of the rough-hewn, blue stone as he trounced through the abbey's crypts, following the whiff of smoke from the monk's torch and the echo of his harried footsteps. His men were spread out through the underworks, funneling the monk ahead of them, driving him the way hounds drove a fox. The monk would lead them to his den, and then the prize would be theirs. And then the world.
He held his torch up high, watching the flames glimmer off of golden urns and silver swords, ancient relics of a nobility that had long since gone extinct, their glory only known by faded etchings in marble sarcophagi, the remaining glint of their once-prized possessions, and the spiders who built their webs in the darkness. Once they were done with the monk, they would take anything that glittered, but first they needed the talisman, the fabled bauble that resided at the bottom of the mountain the abbey was built on.
Throughout the land, legends of the talisman had been told for decades around hearthfires and inns throughout the isles. Then the tellers had begun to vanish, until the talisman of Inchorgrath and its stories had all but been forgotten. But Denman knew. He remembered the stories his father had told him while they sat around the fire of their stone house, built less than ten yards from the cemetery. His father's knuckles were cracked and dried from hours in the elements digging graves and rifling pockets when no one was looking. He knew secrets when he saw them. His father had first heard the story from the old Celts, the remains of the land's indigenous population, reduced to poverty and begging in the streets. His father said the old Celts' stories were two-thirds bullshit and one-third truth. They told of a relic, a key to the Celts' uprising and reclamation of the land, buried in the deepest part of the tallest mountain on the Isles. Of course, they spoke of regeneration and the return of Gods among men as well, but the relic... that was the important part. That was the part that was worth money. And now, he was here, with his men, ready to make his fortune.
He heard shouts, but it was impossible to tell where they were coming from. Sound echoed and bounced off of the blue, quartzite stone blocks, warping reality. He chose the corridor to his right, quickening his pace, his long legs eating up the distance. His men knew not to start without him, but you never knew when a monk would lash out, going against their discipline and training and earning a sword through the throat for their duplicity. That would be unacceptable to Denman. The monk must scream before he died.
His breathing quickened along with his pace, and he could feel the warmth of anticipation spread through his limbs as his breath puffed into the cold crypt air. Miles... they had come miles through these crypts, twisting and turning, burrowing into the secret heart of the earth, chasing the last monk who skittered through the hallways like a spider. The other monks had all known the secret of the abbey, the power it harbored, the relic it hid in its bowels. To a man, they had sat on their knees, their robes collecting condensation in the green grass of the morning, refusing to divulge the abbey's mysteries.
They had died, twisted, mangled and beaten. But still, all he could pull from them were the screams, musical expulsions of the throat that he ended with a smile as he dragged the razor-fine edge of his knife across their throats. Their blood had bubbled out, vivid against the morning sun, to splash on the grass.
When there was only one left, they had let him go. The youngest monk in the abbey, grown to manhood, but still soft about the face, his intelligent eyes filled with horror, stood and ran, his robe stained with the pooled blood of the monks that had died to his left and right. He was like one of the homing pigeons they used in the lowlands, leading them to home... to the relic. They had chased him, hooting and hollering the whole way, their voices and taunts driving the monk before them like a fox. The chase would end at his burrow; it always did.
Ahead, he heard laughing, and with that Denman knew that the chase was at an end. He rounded one last corner to see the monk being worked over by his men, savage pieces of stupidity who were good for two things, lifting heavy objects and killing people. Denman waved his hand and they let the suffering monk go. The monk sagged to the ground, his head bent over, his eyes leaking tears. He sobbed in silence.
Denman stood in the secret of the crypt, a room at the heart of the mountain, the place where legends hid. How deep had they gone? At first there had been stairs, but then they had reached a deeper part of the crypt where the corridors twisted and turned, the floor pitched ever downward. Time and distance had lost all meaning in the breast of the world. How long had it taken them to carve this place, the monks working in silence to protect their treasure? Hundreds of years? A thousand?
The room was simple and small, as the order's aesthetics demanded, filled by Denman and the nine men that he had brought to take the abbey's secrets. Wait, one was missing. He looked at his men, brutal pieces of humanity, covered in dirt, mud and blood. The boy wasn't there. Denman shrugged. He would find his way down eventually.
The walls of the room were blue-gray, stone blocks stacked one on top of the other without the benefit of mortar, the weight of the mountain providing the only glue that was needed. The only other features of the room were an alcove with two thick, tallow candles in cheap tin holders and an ancient oak table.
The smoke from his men's torches hung in the air, creating a stinging miasma that stung his eyes. Brenley Denman squatted next to the monk and used his weathered hand to raise the monk's head by his chin. He looked into the monk's eyes, and instead of the fear that he expected to see, there was something else.
"What is this? Defiance?" he asked, amused by the monk's bravado. Denman stood and kicked the monk in the mouth with his boot, a shit-covered piece of leather that was harder than his heart; teeth and blood decorated the stones.
"Where is it?" he asked the monk. There was no answer. Denman had expected none. Say what you will about the Lord's terrestrial servants, but they were loyal... which made everything more difficult... more exhilarating. Denman was a man that loved a challenge.
He handed his torch to one of his men, a broken-faced simpleton whose only gifts were strength and the ability to do what he was told. Denman knew that he would need both hands to make the monk sing his secrets.
"Hand me the Tearmaker," he said to another of his men. Radan, built like a rat with stubby arms and powerful legs, reached to his belt and produced a knife, skinny and flexible, designed not so much for murder as it was for removing savory meat from skin and fat. It made excellent work of fish, and it would most likely prove delightfully deft at making a tight-lipped monk break his vows.
As he reached out to take the proffered knife from his man, the monk scrambled to his feet and dove for the alcove. Before they could stop him, the monk grasped both of the candle sticks and yanked on them. The candlesticks rose into the air. Rusted, metal chains were affixed to their bases, and they clanked against the surrounding stone of the alcove as the monk pulled on them.
The distant sound of stones grinding upon stones reverberated throughout the crypt. Somewhere, something was moving. Denman glared at the monk. The robed figure dropped the candlesticks and turned to face them. With his head cast downward, he reached into the folds of his robe and produced a rosary. He folded his hands and began to pray, beads moving through his fingers, his lips moving without making sound.
The crypt shook as an unseen weight clattered through the halls of the crypt. Dust fell from the ceiling, hanging in the air, buoyed upwards by the tumbling smoke of their torches.
"What have you done?" Denman asked.
The monk did not respond. Instead, he reached into the hanging sleeve of one of his robes and produced a small stone thimble, roughly-made and ancient. It was shiny and black, the type of black that seemed to steal the light from the room. The monk put it up to his mouth, hesitated for a second and then swallowed it, grimacing in pain as the object slid down his throat.
In the hallway behind them, the grinding had stopped. The crypt was silent, but for the guttering of the torches and their own breathing. "Go see what happened," he said to the oaf and the rat. The other men followed them, leaving Denman alone with the monk and his unceasing, silent supplications to the Lord above.
Denman forced the monk onto the oak table. He offered little resistance. With Tearmaker in his hand, Denman began to carve the skin lovingly off of the monk's fingers. First, he carved a circle around the man's fingers, then a line. With the edge of his knife, he prodded a corner of the skin up, and then, grasping tightly, he ripped the skin away from the muscle and bone, dropping the wet flesh onto the ground. He did this to each finger, one by one. Sweat stood out on Denman's brow, and the monk had yet to scream. He hadn't so much as gasped or hissed in pain. He was turning out to be more work than he was worth. Except for the blood pulsing from his skinned fingers, he appeared to be asleep, his eyes softly closed.
"Where is it, you bastard?" There was no response but for the bleeding.
Denman pulled the monk's robe up around his waist. It was a quick jump, but he was eager to be done with the man on the table. Usually, he would take his time with a challenge like the monk, savoring the sensation of skin ripping from muscle and bone, but he could feel the weight of the mountain about him, its walls shrinking with every minute. Sweat covered his body, and the monk's calm demeanor was unnerving.
Radan rounded the corner at a run, his body dripping with sweat and panic on his face. He skidded to a stop, his boots grinding dust into the blue stones. "We're sealed in here," he said.
Denman looked at the monk lying on the table. His hand gripped Tearmaker tight. "What have you done?" The monk lay there, his eyes closed, a look of peace on his face. "What have you done!" he screamed, jabbing the knife into the monk's ribs. Then Denman saw the monk's hands. Where before his index and pointer finger had been reduced to skinless chunks of muscle and bone dripping blood on the table, there was now skin. "Impossible," Denman whispered.
The monk's eyes snapped open, and finally, Denman got the scream that he had been waiting for.
Chapter 1: Being a Tourist
She was stupid. That's all there was to it. As Morna Quigley wandered throughout the ruins making sure that no random graffiti was placed on the moss-covered stone blocks, she kept an eye on the foreign woman. Currently she was sitting on a stone block with her giant purse in her lap. The huge purse seemed as out of place in the ruins as the woman's almond-brown skin tone did in Scotland.
Morna's job as caretaker of Inchorgrath Abbey's ruins, combined with the fact that she lived in a hamlet of fifty people, made her naturally skeptical of anyone who didn't fit the picture of the quintessential U.K. tourist... and this woman did not fit the picture. On top of that, she seemed virtually indifferent to the ruined antiquity that was around her. Sure, the old abbey had seen better days, but why come to an ancient ruin just to tan? She was already the tannest person in Scotland.
Built in the 10th Century according to the carbon dating of some tube jockeys from the University of Edinburgh, the abbey had long ago fallen into disrepair. Its skeleton had been rummaged and ransacked for the better part of a millennium. All that was left now were tumbled-down stones covered in moss, a few gravity-defying archways, and a cemetery so old that the wooden crosses had rotted away to fragile splinters. Morna had been there when the Edinburgh eggheads had triumphantly held up a sliver of petrified wood smaller than a toothpick. She didn't give two thistles about their discovery, but she took her job seriously. She didn't want any of those too-big-for-their-breeches college kids playing scientist wandering off to vandalize the ruins, so she had stuck to them like glue while they played archaeologist in the ruins.
As it was, many of Inchorgrath Abbey's stones had been repurposed in the past centuries. Morna had seen some of them sandwiched in the low, stone fences that separated the plots of land in the insignificant hamlet of Brittleridge. It was an insular town of 50 people, most of them farmers and retirees trying to live the simple life. It was also Morna's home. For those that braved the two-mile walk from the hamlet's lone inn, there wasn't much to see. Yet, incomprehensibly, this woman had been there every week, lugging around her ridiculous purse and sitting in random spots for hours. Had Morna's mother been there, she would have told the woman that she was going to get hemorrhoids from sitting on the cold stones. Though Morna knew that sitting on cold stones was as likely to cause hemorrhoids as a cold beer, she still found herself thinking about the old wives' tale every time she saw the woman sitting there, freezing her tail off in the late February sun and its false sunshine.
After two days, during which the tourist had likely contracted hemorrhoids, Morna had finally asked old Fingal Hume, the middle-aged proprietor of Brittle Inn, about the persistent tourist. He didn't know much besides the fact that she was American. The information had been something of a relief, as Morna's first suspicion had been that the woman was Middle Eastern and maybe even a Muslim. She was happy to know that the girl wasn't a terrorist, but something still bothered her about the woman.
Fingal had said that the woman generally kept to herself at the inn, eating dinner when she got back and then disappearing into her room for the evening. She didn't socialize with the other tourists and had very little to say. As far as Fingal knew, she was alone.
As the sun darkened and turned orange, the woman grabbed her purse, clutching it to her chest and began her descent down to Brittleridge, picking her way among the scree and jagged rocks. Morna followed, keeping a safe distance and playing the part of a tired worker on her way home.
As they descended, they passed the tiny rills that erupted from the mountainside, cascading down into the Fay Pools, tiny pockets of trapped water that were crystal clear and given a magical blue hue by the shiny bits of quartz that lined the bottom of the pools. For most tourists, the ruins of Inchorgrath Abbey were of little interest. The ancient stone blocks, molding in the mountain grasses, played second fiddle to the fabulous Fay Pools. Scots, Brits, and all sorts of tourists went out of their way to see the Fay Pools, dip their toes in the water and have a drink of fresh mountain spring water. Legend had it that drinking from the pools on the full moon would grant a person an extra year of life. Morna herself had tasted the water with her mother on many occasions, but that hadn't stopped her mother from dying at the age of 79.
Despite the majesty of the pools, the tourist in front of her clipped along, not even bothering to glance into the crystal-clear waters. To Morna, she appeared lost in her thoughts. What was she up to?
They walked past groups of older tourists decked out in windbreakers and sunglasses, making the trek back to their cars. There was little in the way of accommodations on this part of Skryger Island, so the majority of the people that she saw were daytrippers, folks out for a quick bit of tourism between stops at old-fashioned pubs.
They crossed the single-paved road that circled around the perimeter of the island, one of the more forgettable and unpopulated islands in the Hebrides, and then headed down the narrow dirt track that would lead them to Brittleridge. As the sun sank behind the horizon, Morna watched the tourist enter the Brittle Inn, the wooden door slamming shut behind her. Morna shook her head at the woman and toyed with the idea of having a bite to eat at the inn. Instead, she pulled her jacket tighter about her and walked off to her own home, forgetting about the brown-skinned woman and her strange ways.
When she resumed her duties at the ruins the next day, there was no sign of the tourist.
