He could brazen it out. Make something up. If they couldn’t read, they wouldn’t know, would they? Is that what Jeffries did, make something up?
He stopped and squinted at the writing. Something familiar. A word. Was it a word? He traced the writing with his finger, trying to spell it out. C, O, M. Something long. A, N. Something long, similar but not exactly like the other long letter. Company? Company, that was it. With that, the whole page seemed to unlock. He glanced over the page. It was English. Very old English, the s’s were f’s and the handwriting was hard to decipher, but he could read it. He breathed a sigh of relief before the thought, how was it English? crossed his mind, but the urmen were becoming restless. That was a question for another time. Here and there, he made out words: White and Virginia and Roanoke. On one page there even looked to be a date, 1588. But that couldn’t have been right, for any schoolboy who knew his dates of kings and queens knew that was the reign of Queen Elizabeth I.
Flanked by the broken halves of Croatoan’s Heart, he began to read aloud to the assembled clan, hesitating as he tried to make sense of the unfamiliar script. Perhaps it had no more significance than the Bible readings he had heard the Padre give during Church Parade. He tried to sound solemn and authoritarian.
“The rituals are complete. One has gone ahead to scout the way for the company. They will go to seek the mouth to the underworld, there to descend to the enclave of the dead and petition for our Lord and Master, Croatoan, or else seek to destroy the false god and free him, restoring the Fallen One to his rightful place. Those that aid him, we have been told, will be granted great boons, and this new world will be theirs to dwell on, in the sight of Croatoan.”
It wasn’t merely the words that sent a chill down Alfie’s spine. It was the fact that they were there at all. It was both an exciting and a horrifying discovery.
All at once, he was out of his depth. He had never felt at ease with Mathers’ duplicity in pretending to be messengers of the gods. He was just a mechanic from Nottingham. All this occult stuff was fine, if fanciful, contained between the covers of Cecil’s adventure story magazines. Give him his tank any day, its one-hundred-horsepower Daimler engine, its six-millimetre steel plate. He understood that. But this?
His brow creased as he gazed out over the pages of tightly-written text at the clan watching him beyond. Was it possible that these were the descendants of other earlier missing people? He looked up again at the people in shock, the book slipping from his hands, as the enormity of what he had just read sunk in.
It seemed a magical transformation had occurred with his reading. The tables had turned. He was no longer the magical being. They were.
“Who are you?” he asked, his voice barely a whisper.
Ranaman cocked his head and answered as if it were plain for all to see.
“We are the sons and daughters of Ruanach. Worshippers of Croatoan. We have long sought to ease his pain and we have been promised that Croatoan will return.”
“Promised? Promised by who?” he asked, though he feared he knew the answer.
“The one who came before. Jeffries.” Ranaman replied.
Ranaman stepped forward and took the closed book from Alfie, replacing it in its box, taking the responsibility from him once more, his part in the ritual done.
The hair on the back of Alfie’s neck began to prickle. “But if we’re not the first…” He tried to marshal his thoughts. “Your ancestors, did they not leave? Go back to where they came from?”
“Leave? Why? They sought a new world and were led to this place. They came a great distance seeking Croatoan, invoking his name. But he was tricked and defeated by GarSuleth and bound below in Skarra’s realm and they were lost, our new world taken from us by GarSuleth and its children.”
It wasn’t just his neck that prickled now; it was the hairs on his arms, too, as if an electric charge were building.
The air grew warm.
The men groaned, the women wailed, and Ranaman cried out.
“The Torment of Croatoan begins!”
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
THE ACRID SMELL of burning rubberised canvas filled Atkins’ nostrils as charred scraps of material from the burning balloon swirled round the cradle, leaving a greasy grey smear across the sky as they sank down into the crater. Right now, it was a moot point as to which would meet them first, the fire or the ground.
“I’m not sure I like the Royal Flying Corps,” Porgy confided to nobody in particular. “Have I got time to put in a transfer back to the Poor Bloody Infantry, sir?” he called over to Everson with a smirk.
“I think it’ll be granted sooner than either of us would like, Hopkiss,” said the Lieutenant grimly, gripping onto the sides of the cradle as they plunged towards the ground.
They were passing over the strip of discoloured vegetation. As the cradle twisted in the air, Atkins turned his head to keep it in sight, in an attempt to keep his bearings. Rising just above the treetops, near the centre of the crater, was some sort of narrow tower.
“Sir!” he said to Everson, pointing.
“I see it, Corporal.”
The balloon’s passing shadow triggered small explosions, like gunshots, as whipperwills snapped hungrily at it, like sixty-foot bullwhips. As they lashed into the sky, sections peeled back at their tips, opening like fleshy petals, to reveal flayed-red lamprey-like mouths, each one ready to tear and strip, snapping one after the other at the deflating balloon like chained dogs, before recoiling into the trees beneath.
Tonkins, the signaller, squeezed off several rounds at them, but they moved too fast and the bullets vanished harmlessly into the canopy.
“Never mind, lad,” said Corporal Riley.
The burning balloon was out of reach for the moment, but as it continued its inevitable descent towards the crater’s jungle canopy, it was clear it wouldn’t stay that way.
Several of the ropes suspending the cradle from the balloon burnt through, and the cradle dropped a few feet with a jerk and tipped precariously, causing yells of alarm and consternation from every quarter.
Porgy’s gorblimey slipped from his head.
“My cap!” groaned Porgy. “Bloody hell, the Quarterbloke’ll never give me another one.”
“Aye, the only excuse he’ll take for losing it is if you lost your bleedin’ head along with it!” agreed Mercy as they clung to the side of the swaying and now spinning cradle.
“Yes, well there’s still a chance of that,” retorted Gazette, as burning scraps fluttered down around them.
The canopy was rising up to meet them fast now. Something struck the underside of the balloon’s cradle, and again, and again, and they realised that they were now within reach of the whipperwills. Sensing wounded prey, the things began lashing out with greater ferocity, tearing at the wattle cradle, their fleshy petals opening as they snapped their small razor-sharp teeth.
Gutsy swung his meat cleaver at them. Everson slashed out with his sword, severing several whipperwills’ heads and sending them tumbling down to the treetops, only for their hungry brethren to snatch them out of midair.
A bigger specimen cracked up out of the canopy like a seaborne leviathan and tore at what remained of the blazing gasbag above. The flames licked at it and some sap or aqua vita within it ignited, fire consuming its entire length. It thrashed about the air like a fiery lash, until with a thunderous crack, it extinguished the flames and the scorched whipperwill crashed back into the leaves, leaving behind the faint smoky ghost of it hanging in the air.