AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Graves, Alexander Edward Thawley, passed away at home, Garvestone Hall, Norfolk, on 15th June 1993, after a long illness. Beloved son of Colonel and Mrs Edward Graves, and dearly missed brother of Phillipa. Private funeral. No flowers. Donations if wished to The Mental Health Foundation. ‘Say not the struggle naught availeth.’
As Strike would have expected, the carefully worded obituary concealed more than it revealed. The ‘long illness’ surely referred to mental health problems given the suggestion for donations, while the ‘private funeral’, for which no date was given, had presumably been held at Chapman Farm, where Graves had been buried according to the wish he’d stated in his will. Nevertheless, the obituary-writer had been determined to state that Garvestone Hall was ‘home’.
Strike Googled Garvestone Hall. Although it was a private residence, there were numerous pictures of the house online, due to its medieval origins. The stone mansion had hexagonal towers, rectangular leaded windows and spectacular gardens, which featured topiary, statuary, intricately laid-out flowerbeds and a small lake. The grounds, Strike read, were occasionally opened to the public to raise money for charity.
Exhaling nicotine vapour in the silent office, Strike wondered again how much money Graves, who according to Abigail had looked like a hobo, had left the girl he believed was his daughter.
The sky outside the office window was a deep, velvety black. Almost absent-mindedly, Strike Googled ‘drowned prophet UHC’.
The top hit led to the website of the UHC, but a number of idealised pictures of Daiyu Wace also appeared. Strike clicked on ‘images’ and scrolled slowly down through many identical pictures of Daiyu as she appeared in the Rupert Court Temple, with her white robes and her flying black hair, stylised waves trailing behind her.
Towards the bottom of the page, however, Strike saw a picture that caught his attention. This showed Daiyu as she’d looked in life, although in far more sinister form. The accomplished pencil and charcoal drawing had turned the rabbity face skeletal. Where there should have been eyes, there were empty sockets. The picture was taken from Pinterest. Strike clicked on the link.
The drawing had been posted by a user calling themselves Torment Town. The page had only twelve followers, which didn’t surprise Strike in the slightest. All Torment Town had posted were drawings that had the same nightmarish quality as the first.
A small, long-haired, naked child lay in the foetal position on the ground, face hidden, with two cloven feet standing either side. The image was surrounded by two hairy, clawed hands making a heart, a clear parody of the UHC symbol.
The same hairy hands formed their heart around a drawing of a naked man’s lower body, although the erect penis had been replaced by a spiked club.
A gagged woman was depicted with one of the clawed hands throttling her, the letters UHC drawn onto both dilated pupils.
Daiyu appeared repeatedly, sometimes only her face, sometimes full length, in a white dress that dripped water onto the floor around her bare feet. The eyeless, rabbity face stared in through windows, the dripping corpse floated across ceilings and peered out from between dark trees.
A loud bang made Strike start. A bird had hit the office window. For two seconds, he and the raven blinked at each other and then, in a blur of black feathers, it had gone.
Heart rate now slightly elevated, Strike returned his attention to the images on Torment Town’s page. He paused on the most complex picture yet: a meticulously rendered depiction of a group standing around a black five-sided pool. The figures around the pool were hooded, their faces in shadow, but Jonathan Wace’s face was illuminated.
Over the water hovered the spectral Daiyu, looking down at the water below, a sinister smile on her face. Where Daiyu’s reflection should have been, there was a different woman, floating on the surface of the water. She was fair haired and wore square-framed glasses, but like Daiyu she had no eyes, only empty sockets.
30
… a princess leads her maids-in-waiting like a shoal of fishes to her husband and thus gains his favour.
The I Ching or Book of Changes
The women in the dormitory were woken at 5 a.m. as usual by the ringing of the large copper bell on Robin’s fourth morning at Chapman Farm. After the same scant breakfast of watery porridge they’d eaten every day so far, new recruits were asked to remain in the dining hall, because their groups were to be reconfigured.
Every member of Fire Group other than Robin left to join other groups. Her new companions included the professor, Walter Fernsby, Amandeep Singh, who’d worn the Spiderman T-shirt in temple, and a young woman with short, spiky black hair called Vivienne.
‘’Owzit going?’ she said, on joining the others.
In spite of her best efforts to drop her aitches, Robin noticed, as Vivienne exchanged remarks with the others, that her accent was really irremediably upper middle class.
Robin was almost certain the newly formed groups were no longer randomly selected. Fire Group now seemed to consist only of university-educated people, most of whom clearly had money or came from well-off families. Metal Group, by contrast, contained some of the people who’d had most difficulty with daily tasks, including bespectacled, ginger-haired widow Marion Huxley, and a couple of recruits whom Robin had already heard complain of fatigue and hunger, like green-haired Penny Brown.
After the re-sorting of the groups, the day proceeded in the same way as the previous ones. Robin and the rest of Fire Group were ushered through a mixture of tasks, some physical, some spiritual. After feeding the pigs and putting fresh straw in the chickens’ nesting boxes, they were taken to their third lecture on church doctrine, which was conducted by Taio Wace, then had a chanting session in the temple, during which Robin, already tired, entered a pleasant, trance-like state which left her with a feeling of increased well-being. She could now recite Lokah Samastah Sukhino Bhavantu without needing to check the words or pronunciation.
After temple, they were led to a new crafting workshop.
‘Fire Group, called to service,’ said Becca Pirbright as they entered a slightly larger space than that in which the toy turtles had been made. The walls were hung with many different kinds of woven and plaited corn dollies: stars, crosses, hearts, spirals and figures, many of them finished with ribbons. In a far corner of the room, two church members – Robin recognised the woman who’d stood at the reception desk when they arrived, and the pregnant Wan – were working on a large straw sculpture. Piles of straw also lay on a long central table, in front of every seat. At the head of the table stood Mazu Wace in her long orange robes, with the mother-of-pearl fish around her neck, holding a leatherbound book.
‘N ho,’ she said, gesturing for Fire Group to take their seats.
There were fewer permanent church members seated at the table than at the turtle-making session. Among them was the teenage girl with long, fine mousey hair and large blue eyes whom Robin had already noticed. Robin deliberately selected a seat beside her.
‘As you know,’ said Mazu, ‘we sell our handiwork to raise funds for the church’s charitable projects. We have a long tradition of making corn dollies at Chapman Farm and grow our own straw specifically for this purpose. Today you’ll be making some simple Glory Plaits,’ said Mazu, walking to the wall and pointing at a flat, plaited corn dolly with wheat heads fanning out of the bottom. ‘Regular members will help, and once you’re working properly, I’ll read you today’s lesson.’
‘Hi,’ Robin said to the teenage girl beside her, as Mazu began leafing through the book, ‘I’m Rowena.’
