By: J. S. Watts
What secrets might the mist be hiding where the divide between years has been rubbed thin?
Detective Sergeant Comberton stared fixedly at the young, ginger-haired, PC standing in front of her. “I’m going to pretend I didn’t hear you say that, Norris, because I’m sure I can’t have. No self-respecting copper with half a brain would stand in front of me and say that this murder case might have a supernatural cause.”
Police Constable Norris shuffled his feet like an uncomfortable schoolboy and made Sharon Comberton reflect that, these days, even she felt coppers were getting younger. In fact, he was very young—probably no older than Matt would have been, had he not… but best not to go there.
Having satisfied herself that Norris was appropriately chastened, Comberton returned her attention to what was left of the blood stained corpse sprawled on the ground nearby. Its location was noteworthy, lying as it was in the graveyard of the village church, in the exact same spot a young American woman had been murdered twelve months previously.
“Nice place,” thought Comberton, “two murders in twelve months—this spot is becoming like one of those rural TV villages with a higher murder count than there are residents.”
In addition to its location, the other striking things about the body were its nakedness and the fact it was missing both hands, both feet and its head. Comberton didn’t need the on-call pathologist, for whom she and her detective inspector were impatiently waiting, to tell her that the man (at least there was enough of him left to tell he had been a man) had not been murdered where he was now lying. There wasn’t sufficient blood in the graveyard for it to have been the murder site. Indeed, beneath the last vestiges of frost and slowly fading morning mist, there didn’t seem to be any blood around the corpse at all.
Eventually the pathologist arrived and after undue deliberation confirmed the dead man had indeed been killed somewhere else. He wasn’t, however, prepared to pronounce on the precise cause of death until after the autopsy, as he could see no obvious cause of death on the body, “Other than the removal of his head and most of his extremities,” thought Comberton sourly.
* * *
The autopsy, once concluded, did not produce much further useful information from the police point of view. Comberton’s inspector remonstrated with the pathologist, but the latter was adamant.
“I can tell you what he didn’t die from and can confirm that the cause of death was sudden major blood loss. He may indeed have died from having his head amputated, as you keep telling me, but he might equally have died from a bullet to the head, immediately prior to its removal, or having his throat cut prior to the beheading, or any other number of blood-gushing causalities which I cannot evidence to my complete satisfaction without the whole corpse.
“I am therefore not prepared to be more precise than I have currently been. I can tell you that the body is badly bruised, indicating that he was beaten or in a fight prior to his death. I can also tell you that, shortly before he died, he ate a meagre meal of under-cooked rabbit and oatcake, which does not indicate fine dining.”
The investigation team was therefore left with an unidentified murder victim, inconclusive cause of death and no indication where the murder and dismemberment had taken place. Comberton’s inspector had half the team combing the village and adjacent fields for the murder site and the other half knocking on every door in the vicinity in the hope that someone had seen something. It soon became apparent that no one had seen anything and that this was not the most welcoming village in the county.
Sharon Comberton was tasked with overseeing the search for the murder location. Her PCs had checked every shed, barn, garage and outbuilding in and around the village and were now methodically scrutinising every expanse of open land in the locale, but as this was a rural area, it was like looking for a blade of grass in a field. Comberton doubted the value of the exercise. There was no guarantee the man hadn’t been murdered miles away and his body dumped. But orders were orders.
The search team had now progressed to the farmland at the north end of the village—plenty of open space and abandoned agricultural machinery that could easily remove body parts. Comberton could see PC Norris’s red hair bobbing up and down in the search line. She would have to keep an eye on that one. He was far too nervy and imaginative to make a good copper, in her opinion, but then, wouldn’t Matt… but enough of that. Best to focus on the murder, and Norris was a local lad, which might complicate things on the investigation: another thing not in his favour.
Beyond the search line and to the rear of a solitary house set back from the main Roman-straight road, Comberton could see a copse of old elm trees. The search hadn’t yet reached there and, partially out of boredom, partially in the hope of finding something of value, Comberton made her way over to the trees, picking her way carefully over the muddy ground and the brambles and dead nettle stalks that covered it. There was little sign of anyone other than Comberton herself having been there. The only footprints in the mud were her own and everything looked over-grown and untrampled, but in the middle of the trees was a clear, dark patch. Comberton walked over to it. The strong, sickly smell was the giveaway. The area stank like an end-of-day butcher’s, having been totally flattened and stained black by copious quantities of blood. Comberton paused, pleased with her success and appalled by the amount of blood. Butchery was a good word for it. She was sure she had found the murder site.
* * *
Forensic examination of the site confirmed the blood was the victim’s. There was evidence of arterial spray and of the blood having been intentionally daubed extensively round the area, but there was no proof of human presence, other than Comberton’s and the victim’s. No footprints, no tyre tracks, no marks, no nothing. Yet, the mutilated corpse had somehow found its way from the clearing to the graveyard. More questions. No answers.
Standing to one side of the bloody murder scene, Comberton caught sight of Norris looking incredibly young, pale and uncomfortable. She wondered whether she should go over to him, but Norris saw her watching him and made a beeline over to her.
“Sarge, I need to tell you something,” he blurted.
“Fire away, then.”
“You’re not going to like it.”
Comberton scowled, “You either need to tell me, or you don’t need. Liking doesn’t come into it.”
Norris swallowed hard. “The house back there, the old one standing on its own, was rented out to the American woman who was murdered last year. Before the murder she reported a peeping tom lurking in and around these trees, but we didn’t take her seriously. She came across as kind of flaky. After the murder and the vicar’s confession, everyone assumed it was him who had been in the woods, stalking her before he killed her. Down at the local station, we got into a lot of trouble over that. But what if it wasn’t him? This is a place with a lot of history and there have been sightings, unexplained occurrences for centuries…”
“Fine, stop right there, Constable Norris. The information about the house and the connection to last year’s murder might be useful. The more fanciful stuff you had better keep to yourself, right?”
Norris nodded, looked directly at Comberton, glanced away and then rapidly walked back up to the road. Comberton returned to staring at the blood-soaked ground whilst contemplating the kind of place where the village vicar turned out to be the blood-soaked murderer. Ghosts and wrong thinking she could do without, but the link to the previous murder, however macabre, was interesting and might explain why the body was dumped on the self same spot, if not how. Perhaps she should ask the Inspector to let her follow this thread up?
* * *
The Inspector was sufficiently desperate to say yes to Comberton’s request and she spent the next day reading through old case files. Events surrounding the previous murder had been odd.
The American victim had moved into the village three months before her death and almost immediately reported a peeping tom in the trees just beyond her garden, now the site of the most recent bloodbath. Local police found no evidence of a stalker and had labeled her unduly hysterical. She then started raising matters inappropriately with Parish Council officials, made further bizarre calls to the police and ended up by claiming her stalker was a Roman legionary. The local vicar apparently tried to befriend her, but, following a night time incident at the church, ended up bludgeoning her to death with a shovel. Her battered, blood stained and frost-frozen body had been found in the churchyard where the second corpse had now been abandoned. When arrested, the vicar admitted to the murder, but his explanation of events sent him to a secure psychiatric hospital rather than prison.
Yet again, Comberton found herself wondering what sort of place the village was, but other than the two locations within the village, there appeared to be nothing linking the murders of the woman and the headless corpse. Comberton was therefore drawn back to the physical sites.
* * *
On the anniversary of Matt’s death, a day on which she always needed distracting from herself, Comberton found herself back in the village graveyard. Not, perhaps the best location, all things considered, but like most old, rural graveyards, it was very green and gloomily attractive. The morning mist was still wisping between gravestones, adding an additional sense of mournfulness that, on this day of days, Comberton did not need. Despite her initial intentions, she did not stay long, but exited via the lych gate, then walked along the road towards the elm trees at the far end of the village.
The field and the copse were set back from the road, at the bottom of a slight incline. The road itself was clear of mist and the trees only looked vaguely hazy, but as Comberton walked down the slope she found the mist thickening with every step, so that by the time she arrived in the middle of the trees, she was wrapped in a pale, but distinctly opaque, surround of cloud. She glanced back up to the road, but could see nothing except tree shadows and fog. Perfect concealment if she were planning a murder, but you still had to get to the place and leave it afterwards, let alone relocate the corpse.
Comberton was considering possibilities when she heard a faint rustling from the area furthest away from the road. The rustling rapidly grew louder and Comberton realised she was no longer alone. She peered into the mist, which seemed much thicker than before, removing any trace of horizon or sense of perspective. The rustling gave way to snapping, thumping and crashing, but Comberton still couldn’t see anything and then, with no further warning, a huge pig broke into the clearing. It rushed straight at Comberton, giving her a close up view of brutal looking tusks and thick, hairy hide, and then, when it was almost on top of her, swerved and disappeared into the mist behind her.
She spun round, her heart pumping vigorously, but there was no sign of the pig and all sounds had been swallowed up by the mist as if they had never been. Except, of course, Comberton realised, it hadn’t actually been a pig. Pigs didn’t look like that, wild boars did, but they’d been extinct in England for how long? She hadn’t realised any had been reintroduced to the area. Perhaps it had gotten out from somewhere?
Still somewhat shaken from her close encounter with a wilder Britain than she had expected, Comberton started to walk back through the trees in the direction the boar had taken. Then she heard movement again and saw a man-sized shadow loom towards her. The figure stumbled, fell forward and, judging from the sounds she could hear, threw up. Moving forward cautiously, Comberton came across PC Norris, crouched, white and shaking at the foot of one of the elm trees.
“Don’t tell me you’ve been frightened by a big pig,” Comberton said.
“Sorry, Sarge,” Norris was clearly very shaken, despite the cold he was visibly sweating, “but I heard something crashing about and went to investigate and then this…” Norris held out an arrow towards Comberton.
“What the fuck?”
“It was fired at me, I swear, Sarge. Missed my head by millimetres.”
“Why do you think it was being fired at you and not something else—the boar, for example?”
“What boar? I told you I went to see what the noise was and this thing came at me at head height. Stuck straight into the tree behind me. He knew what he was doing.”
“He? Who’s he? How do you know it was a he?”
“The archer. Saw him. Afterwards. A crusty with a bow, his hair done funny and with lots of tats and I mean lots. All over his face. You know those pictures of Ancient Britons? He looked just like one of those.”
Comberton scowled. “You’re not trying to tell me you’ve seen an Ancient British ghost are you, Norris?”
“No way, Sarge. This was too bloody real.” He shakily shoved the jagged arrow towards her again. It was crudely made, but potentially lethal.
* * *
The manhunt that followed the incident failed to find anyone answering the description given by Norris, the wild boar seen by Comberton or any useful evidence whatsoever. Down at the station, lots of barbed jokes were bandied around about Cowboys and Indians and ghost pigs getting their own back for years of bacon sandwiches. Comberton didn’t like being lumped together with Norris as the butt of the workplace humour. She liked it even less when her inspector took her aside and asked her if the stress of the day’s anniversary might be getting to her and if she wanted any time off. She gave him an over emphatic no and, with the DI’s grudging approval, was up early the next day to visit the defrocked Reverend in the high security psychiatric hospital. The rest of the team continued with the essential routine elements of the murder enquiry.
Comberton decided that, notwithstanding his mental illness and his crime, she didn’t like the Reverend Bull. He was a large, self-opinionated man. A high-security hospital environment hadn’t subdued his ego or his opinions any and, initially at least, he seemed remarkably sane, which lost him any sympathy vote.
“She was a nasty little thief—an American fraud and interloper. All that fuss about stalkers was a distraction while she worked out how she was going to rob the church. She took advantage of my kindness and all I did was defend church property. In the process I happened to hit her.”
“Repeatedly, and with the blade end of a shovel.”
“I was making sure she didn’t get away. The eagle was antique and valuable. It had been part of the church for centuries and physically pre-dated it. Only I really knew what it was. It was a Roman Legion’s Eagle. Sacred then, as well as now and she was stealing it.”
“So if it was valuable enough to kill for, where is it now?”
“Ah...” Bull tapped his nose, but said nothing.
“What are you trying to tell me? It flew away?”
“Stupid woman, of course not. The dead came back for it. Her accomplice, the legionary, took it away.”
“A Roman soldier?” The reason Bull was in a psychiatric institution was now becoming clear.
“I just said. You should listen more. In the midst of the slaughter, he took it back into history with him where the divide was thin. Much good it was going to do him. His gods had abandoned him and he was going to die. He knew it, but he took the eagle just the same. The tribe had the Legion surrounded. They mutilated the bodies you know. Chopped them up for the local gods—hands, feet, head.”
He was clearly barking, but the description of the mutilated bodies was too close to the murder to let it go.
“What made them chop off the extremities, exactly?”
“Blood lust, most likely and sacrifice, especially those they considered special to the gods, like the body dug up over at Drayden the other year. I saw it emerge naked and headless from the pit and I knew. Ritualistic slaughter, said the archaeologists. Murder said the judge, but I was just defending my god and the sanctity of his eagle. A venerated object becomes a totem, a focus of power. The power had built up over the centuries and transferred from then to now, but the eagle flew back to its own world when the veil between times was thinnest and took the power with it. You’ll have to make a real sacrifice now if you want a miracle.”
The Reverend was clearly becoming agitated. His face was very flushed and damp with sweat, and he was starting to proclaim loudly whilst pointing directly at Comberton, “Then, I could have helped you. I had the power. Now, you will have to cross the divide yourself to bring life back to the beloved dead. It will need a huge sacrifice, I’m telling you, a huge and costly sacrifice.”
The nurse accompanying Reverend Bull indicated that the interview needed to come to a swift end and Comberton wasn’t sorry. The Reverend no longer seemed even vaguely sane and his last pronouncement had unsettled her surprisingly.
Despite that, or maybe because of it, Comberton decided to look into the Drayden reference to see if there might be any connections to the current murder. She thought she might just manage to convince her DI to let her.
* * *
It turned out that the Drayden corpse had been unearthed during an archaeological dig. It was potentially Celtic in origin and historians believed that the headless, handless and footless, naked body had been ritually murdered and buried. Comberton highlighted the similarities to the current murder to her inspector, but he wasn’t especially impressed and tartly suggested he could do with fewer “wild pig chases” and more progress on the case.
In a bad mood, Comberton strode out of the office and straight into PC Norris who was apparently loitering aimlessly in the corridor.
“What’s wrong with you?” snapped Comberton. “If you’ve nothing meaningful to do, I’ll soon find you something.” She realised she used to say that to Matt. Any other words died in her throat. She was starting to resent Norris.
“I wanted a word, Sarge, but not here. Somewhere private.”
Comberton followed Norris out into the car park and waited impatiently while he checked repeatedly to see if anyone was nearby. “Get on with it, Norris. I haven’t got all day,” she snapped again.
Norris twitched unhappily. “I think I’m being followed. Ever since that arrow was shot at me, there’s been someone on my tail. Not open like, but a waiting shadow in the morning mist, a darkness at night, movement out of the corner of my eye. There’s always someone there. It’s personal and constant and I don’t know what to do.”
Comberton automatically scanned the area herself. She couldn’t see anyone out of place. “There’s no one here now, Norris. Who’ve you mentioned this to?”
Norris shuffled, reminding her yet again of a small boy and things she didn’t want to be reminded of. “I mentioned it to PC Connor and some of the team, but they just laughed at me and so I’ve kept quiet until I saw you. I thought you’d understand.” He scrutinised the car park yet again for signs of his stalker.
Comberton wasn’t sure why he thought she’d be more understanding, but for all he was annoying, she wanted to feel sorry for the lad. He’d clearly worked himself up into a state over nothing. She couldn’t begin to imagine why anyone would stalk Norris and the fact that it was all corner of the eye stuff was indicative that almost certainly no one was, but telling him that wouldn’t help him any.
“Look, Norris,” she said as gently as she could. “Murder investigations are stressful things, especially when they are as bloody as this one and stress can make you imagine stuff. Why don’t you take a bit of leave and clear your head. Things will feel a bit better when you’re rested. You’ll see.” She walked away quickly before he could say anything else.
* * *
Comberton assumed Norris had taken her advice and put in for leave because she didn’t see him round the station for the next week or so. Not that she was paying that much attention. The murder investigation was going nowhere and her inspector was increasingly taking things out on her. Her own stress levels were growing and since the anniversary she had found herself fretting over Matt and issues she thought she’d left behind her. She was starting to hit the scotch again and praying that no one was noticing.
She had taken to driving through the village on the way to work in the hope she might see something, anything, to spark a new line of enquiry. She was desperate to be the one to come up with something. She was growing convinced that the inspector no longer thought she was pulling her weight. On one journey she was taken aback to see in the church graveyard both signs of major activity and young Norris, his head of red hair flaming like a summoning beacon. No one had told her anything was taking place. She stepped on the brake, swerved the car into the curb and went to investigate.
“What’s going on, Norris? Thought you were taking time out.”
“I am. I’m on leave like you said. I just thought I’d come down to have a look at the dig. They’re saying it might uncover something interesting.” Norris stood there picking randomly at his sleeve and Comberton thought he looked anything other than rested, but then again she probably didn’t look much better.
“Dig? What dig?”
“Archaeological. Here. They were doing some underpinning work on the church and came across some Roman brickwork. The specialists were called in and they think they’ve found some sort of shrine, maybe even a temple.”
“You’re interested in this sort of stuff?”
Norris looked uncomfortable. “Yeah. Growing up round here, there’s a lot of history always coming to the surface, what with the Roman road running through the village and the fact that there’s been a settlement here for centuries. We were always finding stuff as kids and it got me interested. It’s like the divide between here and then is thinner round here and the past is somehow closer. It plays with your mind, like.”
Sharon shook her head at Norris, partially at yet another of his flights of fantasy and partially because she’d heard something similar said by someone else, but she couldn’t for the life of her remember who. She had a feeling it was important, but was distracted by a wild shout from the dark excavation pit.
Comberton and Norris went over to the dig only to be confronted by yet another headless corpse with no hands or feet. Norris turned pale.
“Not feeling squeamish?” Comberton asked, but before Norris could answer her he glanced into the pit again and promptly passed out at her feet. The archaeologist standing at the bottom of the pit was holding up a severed skull, the last vestiges of red hair stuck to its scalp.
* * *
The archaeological verdict was that the skeleton had been a sacrifice, chosen for his once bright red hair as special to the war gods and ritually slaughtered over one thousand years earlier. This did not seem to make Norris any happier. He was seriously and inexplicably shaken, to the extent that he went to the doctor, strong tranquilisers were prescribed and he was placed on formal sick leave.
Comberton dismissed such weakness as further proof that the lad was not destined for a long career in the force and mentally wrote him off. She had more than enough issues of her own and didn’t need anybody else’s. She needed to keep a lid on her emotions. The murder case was no further forward, the inspector was still on her back big time and the apparent links to ancient ritual made no sense and were taking up her time unnecessarily, as far as the inspector was concerned. The echo between Norris’s comments and those of Reverend Bull had surfaced in her memory and was disturbing her. Bull’s comments about the “beloved dead” were not what she needed this close to Matt’s anniversary. She realised the scotch bottles at home were emptying more quickly than ever and she needed to be even more careful so that others didn’t notice. But of course, they did.
It wasn’t much more than a week before the inspector was taking Comberton aside and suggesting that she take some leave, in much the same way she had suggested Norris might do.
* * *
Stuck at home without the distraction of work, her mood spiraled steeply down and the scotch bottles emptied all the more quickly. The drink was supposed to muffle the bad memories and the black emotions that inevitably came with them, but it didn’t work. Comberton’s thoughts were hazy with booze, but in the depth of her self-induced mist the memories were still waiting, biding their time.
History wasn’t kind. Flashes of Matt as he had been. Fantasies of what he could have been, should have been. Images of bloody crimes no one should have had to witness, but which, of course, she had. Each had left a harsh scar. Then there were the deluded but damaging pronouncements of the Reverend Bull, demanding sacrifice in return for the beloved dead. What she wanted was for her beloved dead to be not dead, to be back with her. How had Bull known the way to worm so far under her already stretched and anguished skin?
Comberton tried to create an artificial distraction by focusing manically on the case she had in effect been thrown off. She could see the link between the recent murder and the ancient ritual sacrifices so clearly. She couldn’t understand why others couldn’t. She threw herself into researching the historic angle, whilst frantically trying to deny that it had been the deranged Bull who had first highlighted it.
There was a fair amount of material available on the topic, but it all said the same things, over and over again: ritual murder… removal of head, hands and feet… head sometimes buried with the body, sometimes not… red hair deemed to be a sign of life and vitality and worthy of the gods of war and death… a life sacrifice for life reclaimed or saved. The repetition became a necrotizing obsession and the words formed a mantra in Comberton’s head, generating their own dark mist, in which all sense of perspective was lost, until two phrases cut through the haze of information, mania and scotch fumes like a shock of sobriety: “where the veil between times is thinnest” and “ritual for restoring the beloved dead”—words which linked Comberton to a growing unvoiced hope and which meant that the distraction of the case was now part of her rapidly escalating problem.
What if the murder had been someone trying to perform a ritual to bring back the dead? First the theft of the totemic eagle and then, twelve months later, a real-life ritual sacrifice. If not for history it would be just superstition and superstitions didn’t work. But the boar was an anachronistic relic from the past and what about the arrow? History again and history was all too real. Had the ritual somehow worked? If it had worked, could it work again or would success prevent others from attempting the same in the near future? Had it failed and was there therefore still a slim chance for someone else to attempt the ritual before the murderer tried again? Comberton needed to know and soon, in case the rare possibility of restoring what she thought had been lost for good slipped through her fingers. It meant so much to her that logic, or lack of it, was irrelevant.
Frantically Comberton trawled the Internet for details of an expert on the subject she could ask deeper questions, but only one name ever cropped up: the Reverend O.V. Bull.
The possibility that her only way to the truth might be the ex-Reverend Bull ate into Comberton like cheap scotch into stomach lining. So she drank more and repeated her trawl of the Web, but nothing changed except her obsession, which grew the less new information there was to feed it. There seemed to be no way out of her self-induced fog and then Norris, unexpected and unannounced, turned up at her front door like a red-haired gift from the gods.
Comberton’s plan did not form instantaneously, but as she knocked back more and more scotch and listened to Norris drone on about his imagined problems and anxieties, including how his life wasn’t worth living, whilst totally oblivious of her own anguished issues, an idea began to take dark shape.
* * *
Norris made things especially easy. He was still nervously convinced he was being stalked and had now merged his sense of paranoia with his belief in the supernatural. He advised Comberton unhesitatingly and without embarrassment that his stalker was an Ancient Briton who had crossed between times. It didn’t take much persuasion on Comberton’s part to get him to take her to the locations where he believed the divide between times was thinnest.
Norris drove. Comberton was not in a fit state to. For the whole of their time together in the car he maintained an almost hysterical monologue about his beliefs and fears. Comberton clutched her bag to her stomach and sourly thought that, in truth, he had little to fret about and that she would soon find him something meaningful to be fearful of. Indeed, the more she thought about it and embraced her acid internal anger, the more the weak and whiney Norris exemplified the unfairness of the world. A boy with limitless potential, like Matt, was gone, whereas the neurotic and ineffectual Norris lived on. Wouldn’t the world be a better place if the two could be swapped?
Their first stop was the churchyard and the site of the archaeological dig. It was already bitingly cold, but the early evening light had not yet faded. Norris zipped up his padded jacket and added a personal grievance against the weather to his list of inconsequential woes. Comberton had not thought to bring an overcoat, but did not complain. There was no obvious sign of a weakening of time boundaries, whatever that might look like, and Norris, still grousing, drove them up the road to the old house and the copse that waited behind it.
As they walked down towards the trees where their murder victim had been carved up, dusk started to settle and the mist began its silent process of rising from the soil, swiftly transforming everything to a darkening and timeless grey. Comberton took this as a sign. Norris was jumpy and, as the mist quickly thickened, started seeing the shadow of his stalker behind every tree and bush. He was constantly glancing behind himself and back up the track. It was a moment’s work for Comberton to distract Norris long enough to stick her well-sharpened twelve inch carving knife into his soft stomach, drag it firmly sideways through his yielding flesh and guts and then pull it out in order to slash it across his throat with a surprisingly steady hand.
Norris, with little more than an animal grunt, fell backwards onto the flattened ground that still bore the stain of the previous butchery. His steaming blood now freshened and darkened the stain. Comberton fumbled for the flat, flask shaped bottle of scotch she had secreted in her bag, along with the carving knife, and took a long swig from it. Then, focusing on Matt, she stumbled out of the trees and into the now dark adjacent field where she’d last seen an old abandoned combine cutter bar. She took what she needed and used it to cut off Norris’s head, hands and feet. By now, she was covered in Norris’s warm, sticky blood and the whisky bottle was empty. The mantra of her recent frenzied research was still filling her head, but she felt empty and also decidedly nauseous.
The thick freezing fog that had hidden her bloody activities had more than chilled her, but the false warmth of the scotch prevented her from noticing that hypothermia was fast setting in. Exhausted, sick, needing another drink and confused as to what to do next to conclude the sacrifice, she sank down at the base of a large elm tree and promptly passed out. The mist grew thicker around her.
* * *
The next morning Comberton’s blood-saturated and frost-covered corpse was found slumped and frozen against a gravestone in the village churchyard, close to where the other two bodies had previously been found. Of Norris, there was no sign, but at this early stage in the morning no one was missing him.
Over in the archaeological department of the local university, however, a confused PhD student who had come into work early was trying to work out why the soil surrounding the one thousand year old corpse, found in the foundations of a local village church alongside its still red-haired skull, appeared to contain a corroded and aged, but still recognisable, metal zip of the type used on padded jackets in the twenty first century, but apparently manufactured over nine hundred years before its recorded invention.