The Analyst by Brandon Rolfe

Author:Brandon Rolfe
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-1-909204-12-6
Publisher: Dolman Scott Publishing
Published: 2013-02-19T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 19

As Balchard lay back on the ottoman in the guest room, trying to marshal his thoughts, he was continually interrupted in his concentration, so that he raised his head from time to time to look around him. His earlier ruse of requesting adjournment for the night for the sake of rest, in order to conceal his inner anxiety from Blintook, was having little effect in allaying his uneasiness. A thick claustrophobic sense of evil pervaded from all around, like dense smoke emanating from a flameless fire, choking the mind but not the body. Voices gurgled and cackled in hellish mirth, not from beyond the walls, but from the very walls, themselves; the walls pulsed and bent inwards menacingly, as if alive, under the green satanic power glowing in the corners of the room. Balchard rose to peer closer, at which the supernatural effects died away. Pulling on his coat, he went along the passage, to let himself out by the small side door.

His weight sunk into the gravel, slowing his walk along the side of the building. The crunching beneath his feet emphasized the stillness of the night, from which all other life forms were curfewed this side of the darkness. He rounded the corner into the obscure entrance way, to be confronted by a legion of stalwart shapes clad in silver armour of moonlight splashed down their slender boles. There was a seeming rush from these, bent in readiness for combat with the nocturnal intruder, where the wind had pushed them over from time immemorial. Ignoring the martial threat of the trees, Balchard entered the wood. His mind swam fuzzily all the while, as he threaded his way with a drunken gait through the trees. His mind and body seemed to be functioning independently, the legs carrying him hither and thither with an apparent will of their own, leaving him only the choice of which trunk to try best not to bump into. Stunted growths appeared to come more and more across his stumbling path until he was able to realise that the stumps were too regular in shape to be tree trunks. He had strayed into a small burial ground. The crude stones jutted up at odd angles, like the decaying fangs of some giant beast lying dormant in the earth. The obvious extrusion of these graves, with their eternally damned souls, outside the sanctified soil of the church graveyard, was significantly sinister.

In a small clearing further amidst the trees, a silvered grass mound swelled up in a classical roll to meet the waxing moon in its silver ascent. Where countless victims had solemnly awaited the rise of the high priest’s dagger to signal their mounting the summit of the natural sacrificial altar, there now stood only one. Balchard stood at the foot of the mound, feeling within himself the tremors of association between that before him and the unhallowed ground of those buried behind him. A leathery bat flapped its way past overhead, to disappear into the church belfry that was steeped in its own leafy-leadened torpor behind the lacework of branches.

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