Chapter 31

When I woke, it took me long seconds to remember where I was. The bedroom was half lit by the morning sun, which filtered between the dark curtains and the wall. The Mossberg was leaning against the bedside table next to the bed. The metal gleamed and the stock was polished. I touched the barrels with my fingertips. My old friend was in the shape of her life and ready to do what she did best, blowing the shit out of niners. The smell of bacon cooking drifted into the room from upstairs. I’m not sure if it was the smell of bacon or the excitement of renewing my search for Jennifer Booth which motivated me the most, but I leaped out of the bed and headed into the bathroom.

Powerful jets of hot water washed away all the sleepy fog from my mind. The ache in my muscles seemed to run away down the plughole, along with the dried blood and grime from my skin. The lemony soap bubbles invigorated me as they cleaned the filth from my body. I marvelled at the colour of the water as it flowed into the tray. It was hard to comprehend how much muck could come from one human being. I must have smelled like a dead donkey in a manure pile. The urge to shave the bristles from my head and face was almost unbearable. I had needed to keep as much of my face covered as possible but that day, I didn’t care. Using a disposable razor, I took the hair from my head and face. It felt amazing. I reluctantly stepped out of the shower and brushed my teeth at the sink.

When I walked back into the bedroom, I noticed that my clothes were gone, replaced with a clean pair of olive-green combats, fresh underwear and a black tee-shirt. My boots had a pair of new socks stuffed into the tops. Joseph was obviously organised to the point of being obsessive but I wasn’t going to complain. Looking and smelling like a member of the human race, I loaded the Mossberg and carried it upstairs following the intensifying smell of bacon.

“What’s that for?” Joseph nodded to the shotgun. “In case anyone steals your breakfast?”

“Force of habit,” I said sitting on a tall stool at a granite topped breakfast bar. He plonked a pint mug of coffee and a packet of menthols in front of me. “Thanks, kick-starters,” I said lighting one up and slurping the hot brew. I looked over at a pile of books, which were stacked up on the coffee table in the living room. Beneath them Joseph had spread out a map. There was a ruler and a compass next to some coloured pencils. “Looks like you’ve been busy. Thanks for the clothes, by the way.”

“No problem,” he slid a bacon sandwich across the worktop. “Once I got started, I couldn’t stop. There’s acres of stuff on the internet about your ley lines. Most of it is bullshit but there is some interesting stuff too.”

“I warned you about getting involved,” I said with a mouthful of butty. I washed it down with coffee and then took a drag on the menthol. Joseph shook his head as he watched me trying to shovel three things down my throat simultaneously. “Sorry but I’ve learned to eat in a hurry lately. I never know when it’s going to be my last meal.”

“Carry on,” he smiled, “I’ve been there myself, remember.”

“Yes, sorry. I know you have,” I swallowed before carrying on. “I did a lot of research on ley lines especially the ones on Anglesey. Some experts say they are burial mounds, others a place of sacrifice, while others believe they’re a source of energy, which can be channelled. Others say they are signposts for alien visitors. The information that I found pointed to the fact that there might be something in it.”

“Seriously?” he raised his eyebrows.

“Seriously,” I stuffed the remainder of the sandwich into my mouth. Chewing furiously, I walked over to the map. I studied the work that Joseph had done the previous night. “Ah, now then, you have made the exact same mistake that I did when I researched them. It took me weeks to see the mistake I’d made.”

“I’ve marked the lines exactly as they are plotted in all the information I found on the net.” He pointed to the books. “I checked them in these reference books too. They’re walking guides but they mention the standing stones on the island. I’ve plotted the lines precisely.” He looked offended. “There are no mistakes.”

“Okay, it’s not a mistake with the plotting on the island as such, it’s an oversight.”

“An oversight?”

“Yes.”

“There are no oversights.”

“There is one big one.”

“Where?”

“You have taken the ley lines and plotted them along the latitudes which follow the standing stones, right?”

“Yes.”

“And then you’ve plotted the lines east all the way across Snowdonia to the edge of the map, right?”

“What’s your point?”

“I did the same thing.”

“So what?”

“I didn’t finish the job and continue to plot the lines west in the other direction.”

“That’s the Irish Sea.”

“I know it is,” I smiled smugly. “Thanks for the geography lesson.”

“I still don’t get your point.”

“Watch this.” I took his ruler and continued one of the lay lines across the blue area of the map. Joseph frowned. “Bear with me,” I grinned and did likewise with a second lay line, then a third and then a fourth and fifth. Joseph’s eyes widened.

“Fucking hell,” he looked from the map to me and back again. “They all intersect in the sea near these islands. The Skerries?”

“The North coast of Anglesey lies on the main shipping route to Liverpool, which I’m sure you know was one of the biggest ports on the planet and at one time during the nineteenth century, thousands of ships passed the island on the way to Liverpool. The Skerries has had a lighthouse for as far back as shipping records go,” I explained and pointed to the islands. “Despite the lighthouse warning shipping, records show that in this area one mile to the west of the Skerries and a mile to the east of Lynas, where the lay lines intersect, over three hundred shipwrecks have been recorded and there are probably many, many more, which disappeared, but actually sank here.”

“More?” he asked incredulously. He was still digesting the news. “How would you know that there were more?”

“From the number of ships, which left their ports and never arrived in Liverpool but they were spotted rounding North Stack by the lighthouse keepers on South Stack. They kept logs of all passing vessels.”

“So they sank somewhere in this area?”

“Yep,” I sat back and nodded. “It surprised me too. I published some of it on my blog but the theory was dismissed as nonsense.”

“Coincidence?”

“I don’t do coincidence and you can’t refute the number of ships lost there.”

“So the area is jinxed because it’s at the intersection of ley lines?” He scoffed.

“Which came first,” I asked, “the chicken or the egg?”

“What?”

“Whoever built those standing stones built them in a linear pattern, which intersects at this point, right?”

“Right.”

“Maybe they were built as a warning that that area of the sea was incredibly dangerous,” I shrugged as I offered an explanation. “Imagine if the early sailors and fishermen were dying regularly in that area, so they pointed it out.”

“What is the other option?”

“That the area is a ley gate,” I laughed at the thought. “It’s the centre of some kind of mystical cosmic power and our ancestors on Anglesey knew how to map its flow and tap into it. The key to understanding their theories is the word ‘gate’,” I tried to make it as clear as I could, although it was a clear as mud to me too.

“Gate?” he frowned.

“Ley gate,” I sat back, “it implies that where ley lines intersect, there’s a gate, a portal, through which things that don’t belong here can pass. Evil things.”

“Like demons and dragons?” he chuckled.

“Who knows?”

“And this evil which comes through the gate makes ships sink?” Joseph looked at me as if I was mad.

“Look, ships have sunk there in the hundreds yet there has always been a lighthouse to warn them of the rocks. Why have so many ships sunk there and why did our ancestors think to plot their standing stones to intersect at that point?”

“You tell me.”

“Think about it,” I explained, “thousands of years ago somebody moved massive slabs of stone, which feasibly couldn’t be moved and they aligned them to point to one of the most dangerous areas in the sea. They are the facts, so you give me a reasonable explanation and I’ll take it.”

“I haven’t got an explanation.”

“Neither have I but lots of people seem to agree with the energy theory.”

“Do you think that there is something in it?”

“Who knows? Mediums pick up on the energy of the dead, right?”

“I suppose so.”

“Well, how many people have died in that part of the sea?”

“Hundreds.”

“More like thousands.”

“And the point is?”

“All those ‘souls’ died in a traumatic way, drowned at sea before their time.” I looked at Joseph to see if he was open to the concept. “Could there be a mass of bad or tortured energy concentrated in that area because of all the death?”

“It’s a bit of a stretch for me,” Joseph shook his head. “Do you believe that?”

“I don’t know,” I shrugged again, “but what I do know is that Jennifer Booth and her sicko friends think that there is.”

“Okay, let’s say she does believe that there is an ‘energy’ there,” Joseph sat down as he spoke. “What is she planning to do with it?”

“Feed on it to make her stronger, maybe or use it to open a door from one dimension to another.”

“Oh, for fuck’s sake!” Joseph couldn’t get his head around it. He put his head in his hands and laughed. “Come on, Conrad!”

“She was like a woman possessed at that farm,” I shrugged, “I’ve never fought anyone physically stronger. She threw me around like I was a rag doll. I shot her in the face with that Mossberg and she managed to leave there and survive?”

“I think you were drugged.”

“How?” I asked, “with what?”

“I’m not having this ‘doors to other dimensions shit’ okay.”

“I don’t blame you, but believe me when I tell you that there were others at that farm,” I frowned as I searched for words. “The room was empty one minute but when she attacked there were other things in the room. Evil, grotesque things. I could sense them, hear them and smell them. The room was heaving with......something.”

“It was hysteria,” he insisted. “Or hypnotism.”

“Have you ever seen the film The Exorcist?” I sat back as I spoke. It’s hard trying to convey an idea to a sceptical person when you’re not convinced by it yourself. Joseph nodded that he had but sighed as if he didn’t want to hear what I had to say. “A demon or devil comes through from another dimension and possesses the girl.”

“I don’t see the relevance.”

“What if there is another dimension, which we can’t comprehend?”

“I don’t believe that there is.”

“Okay then where does space end?”

“What?”

“Where does space end?” I sat forward again. “Does a fish comprehend that the surface of the sea is not the end of the universe?”

“What are you on about?”

“Answer my fucking question!” I snapped frustrated. “If you can’t even try to understand what we’re dealing with, then we’re fucked before we begin.”

“Okay,” he took a deep breath, “I don’t know what a fish thinks.”

“Don’t take the piss,” I smiled trying to calm things down. “The surface of the water is as far as a fish can go, yes?”

“Yes.”

“Birds cannot leave the atmosphere.”

“Okay.”

“But certain birds can go underwater for a while at least, but they have to return to the air eventually.”

“Yes,” he shook his head baffled.

“They physically cross from air to water to feed but they cannot stay there.”

“I’m lost.”

“We have explored space yet we cannot explain what is beyond it,” I tried my best to explain my view of things. “Where does it end and what is beyond it?”

“We don’t know.”

“Why don’t we know?”

“We just don’t.”

“No,” I insisted, “we don’t understand. We don’t understand because our minds work in three dimensions. Everything has a beginning and an end, full stop. That’s why we can’t explain space.”

“I can see what you’re trying to say, sort of,” he reluctantly nodded agreement.

“Everything has to be three dimensional for us to comprehend because that is how our brains are wired up but we know there must be an end to space and a beginning of something else because otherwise it doesn’t make any sense. We cannot comprehend infinity.”

“I follow so far.”

“What if there are parallel dimensions, which exist right here with us but they cannot co-exist in the same place at the same time?” He put his head in his hands as I spoke. “But there are certain places where energy and power allow one to cross over into the other like a bird diving for fish.”

“You’re really stretching my imagination now.”

“Have you ever filled a balloon with water and put a pin through the bottom without bursting it?”

Joseph laughed and nodded. “Yes I have so what?”

“There are only a few places on the surface of a water filled balloon where a metal pin can penetrate the membrane into the water without causing it to explode. And more to the point, it is a state which is unsustainable. It can only be maintained for a snapshot of time. When you remove the pin something catastrophic happens to the balloon.”

“Sadly, I am beginning to follow your point,” he grimaced.

“The pin crosses through a membrane into another dimension but remains in both simultaneously. Pick the wrong spot and the balloon will explode. A child couldn’t do it but we can because we know how to. Now what if Jennifer Booth, or more to the point, whatever possesses her knows how to penetrate the balloon into our world?”

“What if it does?”

“Then something from another dimension,” I held up my finger, “an evil dimension penetrates the membrane into Jennifer Booth. She is the water filled balloon and eventually when the balloon bursts and it always will, the entity finds another water filled balloon to penetrate. She is nothing more than a vessel, which it uses for a period of time before her body deteriorates and it has to move on.”

“And the ley lines?” he frowned.

“They’re like seams, strong points. The intersections are where we would pierce the balloon with the pin.”

“So to carry out this ceremony, they need to be near the bottom of the balloon, or near the intersections to cross over?” Joseph stood up and walked to the patio window. His hands were clasped together behind his back. He stood rigid like an officer inspecting his troops before battle. “Let’s say that I can’t accept that theory although I understand it. However, I’ll bear in mind that you do.”

“Okay, that’s fine by me.”

“You believe that the ceremony you interrupted at that farm gave her an unusual level of physical strength and allowed evil to seep through from wherever it lives into her making her stronger?”

“Yes, I do.”

“So if what we have discovered is correct,” Joseph turned to face me before continuing, “The ceremony involving you is just a prelim to the ‘feast of the beast’, which is going to be held at an intersection of lay lines on one of the most sacred days in the Satanic calendar?”

“Yes.”

“Why though?”

“Maybe at certain parts of the year, sun, moon and stars are all in the right place at the right time to facilitate this exchange,” I shrugged.

“Exchange?”

“Yes,” I explained. “Push a needle into a balloon, if some of the water seeps from the balloon then the atmosphere squashes the balloon. Let all the water out and the balloon becomes flat. Physics will not allow it to remain inflated. If they leave their dimension, then someone must replace their entity to maintain the equilibrium. They take one from here, me for instance, and one of them can cross momentarily. Everything in nature has a balance.”

“Which means that if you are correct, her ‘power’ and the amount of evil which could potentially be siphoned through, would be magnified in comparison to the ceremony you witnessed. She’ll become much stronger physically?”

“Yes.”

“If we get up close to them then we will be outnumbered, probably out gunned and potentially we could be overcome by a force, which in your experience was undeniably powerful.”

“Yes.”

“Which tells me that we have to do whatever we can to kill her from as far away from her as possible,” he said calmly. “If you are right, then we cannot risk getting too close to her or her people. We need to take her out from a distance.”

“I’m listening.”

“We identify where they will meet. We wait for them to arrive and then we blow them up.”

“You’re forgetting two things.”

“What?”

“The ceremony is all about sacrificing me.”

“I don’t get it.”

“The father of her child, blah, blah, blah,” I rambled. “If I don’t turn up, then will they meet at all?”

“That’s one thing.”

“What?”

“You said there were two things?”

“The baby,” I added. “What about the baby?”