The Plague Stones Read online

  CONTENTS

  Cover

  Also available from James Brogden and Titan Books

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  1 Guardian

  2 Green Skull

  3 Bait Station

  4 Welcome

  5 Reporting In

  6 Toby

  7 The Dead Girl

  8 Hester April 1349

  9 Jobs for the Boys

  10 Witch Marks

  11 Goading the Ghost

  12 The Food Bank

  13 Tits On a Fish

  14 Hester May 1349

  15 History Lesson

  16 Hester May 1349

  17 Bread and Salt

  18 Hester May 1349

  19 The Fox and the Rat

  20 Emergency

  21 Hester Late May 1349

  22 Revelation

  23 Volunteer

  24 The Beating of the Bounds

  25 Garden Party

  26 The Parade of the Dead

  27 Pre-Determination

  28 The Cleansing

  29 The Pilgrim Badge

  30 Catastrophic Circumstances

  31 Remembrance

  32 Desecration

  33 Intrusion

  34 The Night Before

  35 The Morning After

  36 Reckonings

  37 Badass Motherfucker

  38 What We Invite In

  39 Safely Down

  Afterword & Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  Also Available from Titan Books

  THE

  PLAGUE

  STONES

  Also available from James Brogden and Titan Books

  Hekla’s Children

  The Hollow Tree

  THE

  PLAGUE

  STONES

  JAMES

  BROGDEN

  TITAN BOOKS

  The Plague Stones

  Print edition ISBN: 9781785659959

  E-book edition ISBN: 9781785659966

  Published by Titan Books

  A division of Titan Publishing Group Ltd

  144 Southwark Street, London SE1 0UP

  First edition: May 2019

  1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the

  product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance

  to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is

  entirely coincidental. The publisher does not have any control over and does not

  assume any responsibility for author or third-party websites or their content.

  Copyright © 2019 by James Brogden. All rights reserved.

  No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or

  transmitted, in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of

  the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other

  than that in which it is published and without a similar condition being imposed

  on the subsequent purchaser.

  A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library.

  FOR GRENFELL

  1

  GUARDIAN

  THE OLD WOMAN WAS NEAR DEATH, AND THE TRUSTEES had gathered about her bed to pay their respects. Although she was not a member of the Executive Committee, she had been custodian of Stone Cottage for nearly sixty years, and having coped with its unique requirements for so long demanded recognition. No private hospice could have provided better care than she had received during her last months here, in the place she had guarded so well; no expense had been spared. It was the least they could do, given what she had kept at bay for so long.

  The reverend’s prayers were a sonorous murmur set to the slow ticking of the clock on the mantel ‘—I will say of the Lord he is my refuge and my fortress my God in whom I trust surely he will save you from the fowler’s snare and from the deadly pestilence he will cover you with his feathers and under his wings thou shalt find refuge—’ even though none there really believed that it would do any good.

  The Trustees shuffled and sniffed. The director of environmental services, who had trained as a doctor in her youth, checked the old woman’s pulse. The machines had all been removed; she was beyond machines now.

  The chief executive cleared his throat. ‘Is she…?’

  Environmental Services shook her head. ‘Not yet.’

  ‘—take up the shield of faith with which thou mayst extinguish the flaming arrows of the evil one—’

  Unbelievably, the director of financial services actually yawned, and nudged the director of housing and community. ‘How are we progressing with the replacement?’ she whispered.

  Housing and Community made a so-so motion. ‘Slowly. She had very few living relatives, which is surprising given her age. We vetted the immediate circle but none met the profile to a high enough degree so we’ve been widening out to a lower co-efficient of relationship than we’d normally like, but what can one do? These are the times we live in.’

  ‘Has,’ murmured the chief executive.

  Housing and Community blinked. ‘I beg your pardon?’

  ‘You said she had few relatives. She’s not dead yet.’

  Housing and Community reddened, and was silent.

  Environmental Services looked up from her ministrations to the old woman, plainly unimpressed. ‘You’ve had six months to find a replacement,’ she said. ‘With no new custodian ready to step into her shoes we’re vulnerable. This is exactly the kind of slip-up which costs lives.’

  ‘There’s no need to be overly dramatic,’ replied the chief executive. ‘We’ve already been through this. The boundary will hold. It always has.’

  ‘But you know what happens when things become disrupted. When they change. There hasn’t been a new custodian in living memory! We’ve only got the reverend’s reassurances and to be brutally honest with you—’

  The old woman gasped suddenly – a dry croak issuing from a wizened throat – and her ancient claw of a hand clutched at the coverlet. The Trustees stiffened. After the gasp, a whisper, little more than the sound of dry leaves blowing across old tombstones:

  ‘She is here.’

  Someone made a small whimpering sound.

  ‘Control yourself,’ said the chief executive. He went to the drapes at the other end of the room and drew them aside. The others joined him, drawn by curiosity despite their better judgement – even the reverend, who knew better than most what was out there.

  ‘—as for the head of those that compass me about, let the mischief of their own lips cover them let burning coals fall upon them let them be cast into the fire into deep pits that they rise not up again—’

  The window overlooked the cottage’s rear garden. It was tidy and well kept, since the Trust had taken over maintenance of the property as its custodian had aged beyond the ability to take care of such things herself. Neatly groomed shrubbery and trim flowerbeds bordered a lawn as evenly green as a snooker table, in the centre of which sat the stone from which the cottage got its name. It was three feet high and roughly the shape of a canine tooth, its grey surface mottled with lichen, and so old that the markings that covered it had eroded away to faint grooves and hollows.

  Standing on the far side of it, glaring up at the house with burning, centuries-old hatred, was the dead girl.

  The reverend’s prayers died in her throat.

  ‘My God!’ said Financial Services. ‘Is that Her?’

  The chief executive shot her a withering look. ‘No, it’s the fucking tooth fairy.’

  She w
ore a simple woollen shift, much torn and stained, revealing emaciated limbs which were maggot-pale and blotched with the livid black-purple bruises of plague. Her bare toes and fingers were black with gangrene, and buboes bulged at Her throat. One had burst, and from the crater of ruined flesh beneath Her jaw its rot streaked Her front. The only things about Her which seemed to have any life were Her eyes, black and glittering as She stared up at the window.

  Environmental Services turned to the reverend. ‘You said we’d be safe,’ she pleaded.

  ‘I said that we simply don’t know how the death of the stone’s custodian will affect things, but that as long as the stone remains blessed the boundary should hold, and She shouldn’t be able to enter.’

  ‘Reverend?’ suggested the chief executive. ‘If you’d be so kind as to remind Her of that?’

  The reverend ahemmed and approached the window. ‘You have no power over this place,’ she said, her voice wavering just a little. ‘As it is said in the Book of Proverbs, do not move an ancient boundary stone set by your forefathers; do not move the ancient boundary or go into the fields of the fatherless. The blessing of the Lord Almighty is on this hallowed sentinel, which you may not profane. I command you to stay where you are bound!’

  The dead girl grinned, displaying a mouth full of teeth that were yellow as poison, black as death, and the same moment a scream came from the old woman in the bed behind them. The Trustees turned.

  A rat was sitting on her throat, eating her face.

  It had bitten into her cheek, and bright blood spattered the pillow and coverlet. Her frail fingers were in its fur, pulling and fluttering ineffectually as she screamed with a sound like cloth being torn. Several of the Trustees cried out in response. One fled the room, clutching her mouth. Housing and Community gave an inarticulate bellow of indignation and rushed at the creature with a raised fist, and it fled – but not immediately. It paused, glaring at him with the same glittering black hatred as the dead girl, a look which said No, I will not as clearly as a shout, and then it leapt from the bed and was gone.

  The old woman, former custodian of Stone Cottage, was dead with her head thrown back, eyes staring at the ceiling glassy with terror, teeth visible through the hole in her cheek. When the chief executive looked out of the window again, the dead girl was gone. Only the living remained, shocked and weeping.

  2

  GREEN SKULL

  HE SLAPPED ANOTHER CLIP INTO HIS MESH GUN AND popped up from cover to spray the Xenoan position with covering fire while the strike team surged forward, over and past him into the battle zone. Return fire from the aliens was fierce, tearing chunks off the carcass of the sky medusa that he was sheltering behind in roaring detonations of purple warp energy. Micro-fluctuations in local gravity pulled his own shots out of true but he compensated; not that it really mattered, since all that he had to do was keep the Xenos’ heads down until the strike team could take out their nest. A piece of shrapnel glanced off his left upper arm but the HUD indicated that the armour rating there was still in the green, so he ignored it and kept firing. His headset was a babble of voices yelling commands, whooping with battle lust, or cursing as they got fragged. Then a DNA grenade from one of the strike team exploded in a howling double-helix cloud of bio-flux and the squad commander (a kid from Japan called Masahito who must have been playing at breakfast, given the time difference) was screaming at them to go! Go! Go!

  There was a man standing in the kitchen doorway.

  Toby hadn’t seen him arrive or heard the back door open, and with a sudden liquid feeling of terror realised that his mum had told him to make sure the doors were locked, even though she and Dad would only be at the cinema for a couple of hours, because he knew what this neighbourhood was like, didn’t he? As she was saying it he’d already been switching on his Xbox and said yeah sure of course he wouldn’t forget, and he’d totally meant to, just as soon as this mission was completed – well, this or the one after it, anyway. And now there was a stranger in his home.

  The stranger was in jeans, trainers and a black full-face hoodie zipped right up to hide his identity behind the leering mask of a green skull. He had a long crowbar in his right hand, dangling almost casually.

  On the TV screen, Toby’s avatar had stopped midway across the battlefield and was being peppered with alien fire. His HUD revealed armour ratings sliding from green through amber and into the red while in his headset the tinny voice of someone thousands of miles away was yelling at him in fury: ‘What are you doing? What the fuck are you doing?’

  I think I’m being burgled, that’s what, he thought. His breath had stopped, caught up somewhere in the middle of his ribcage while his heart beat in a hollow vacuum of terror. Police. Call 999. That’s what you’re supposed to do, isn’t it? He was sitting on the settee with his feet up on the coffee table, and his phone only an inch away from his heels, but it might as well have been on an alien world. His avatar was down now, the screen colours muted to indicate that he was out of the fight.

  Green Skull stepped from the kitchen into the living room, looking around with all the ease and confidence of someone in a shop. ‘All right, kid?’ he asked. His voice was low, muffled by the hoodie. ‘Mum and Dad not in?’

  ‘Who…?’ Toby’s voice stuck dry in his throat. ‘What do you…?’

  The man moved so fast that Toby barely saw it, certainly too fast for him to get a hand up in defence as the crowbar arced towards him; it hit his upper arm and a jolt of pins and needles numbed him to the fingertips. He cowered on the settee, curled into a foetal ball and too stunned for the moment to even cry out.

  ‘Ask another fucking question and I’ll smash your fucking head in, all right? I’m going to ask you again: are your mum and dad in?’

  ‘No.’

  Green Skull nodded and backed off a bit. ‘Good. I already knew that, anyway. Watched them go. But it’s good that you’re honest with me. You might just get out of this okay.’ He turned and saw the TV screen, and gave a little laugh. ‘Hey, I love this game. This is a sick game. Have you made it to the medusa armada yet?’

  ‘Um, uh, no…’ Toby’s arm was waking up in agony. He thought it might be broken, and he could feel a wet, prickling heat at the corners of his eyes. He blinked it away savagely. He would not cry. He might scream and beg and bleed but he absolutely would not cry.

  ‘Fucking sick as, man. You’ll love it.’ Green Skull pointed the end of his crowbar at the frozen avatar on the screen. ‘You think you’re a badass motherfucker like this guy?’

  ‘Um, I don’t know…’ He felt his airway clench in the first warning spasms of an asthma attack, and realised with horror that his inhaler was lying on the floor of his bedroom.

  ‘Hmm.’ The crowbar swung to point at Toby’s phone where it lay next to the discarded game controller. ‘That your phone?’

  Toby hauled in a wheezing breath. ‘Um, yes…’

  The crowbar whistled down, shattering the phone and gouging into the table underneath. It was only a cheap flat-pack thing with about as much structural integrity as a wet cardboard box, and the crowbar went straight through it. Toby cried out and shrank back as Green Skull continued to smash at the wreckage until it was an unrecognisable pile of chipboard and birch veneer and his phone was completely destroyed.

  The man stepped back, panting a little. ‘If you think maybe you’re a badass and you make this go hard I will fuck you up in ways you can’t imagine. You do exactly as I say, and you’ll see Mummy and Daddy again. You get me?’

  Toby nodded, chest heaving. His airway felt like it had narrowed down to the width of a pinhole, and his lungs were burning. ‘Please…’ he gasped. ‘Please… I need… inhaler…’

  Green Skull peered closer at him. ‘Oh, fucking hell,’ he said. ‘You’re not having a fucking asthma attack, are you?’

  Toby nodded, wheezing.

  ‘Fuck!’ the man spat. He turned away and smashed at the wall in frustration, gouging ragged tears in the thin plaster
. ‘Why does nobody ever tell me this shit?’ He spun back to Toby and held the end of the crowbar an inch from his face. ‘You better not be fucking with me.’

  Toby shook his head, blinking back tears of panic which he couldn’t prevent any longer. This was his worst nightmare. Having a stranger break into his home and threaten him was shocking, as mad as aliens landing, but the fear of suffering an asthma attack without his inhaler went bone deep and right back to his earliest memories of visits to the hospital, of his mum’s frantic worry, of his dad’s thinly burning anger at having to raise his son in a place like this.

  The crowbar dropped away. ‘Where is it, then?’ asked Green Skull. ‘Your inhaler?’

  ‘… Bedroom…’

  Green Skull waved the crowbar at the door. ‘Go on then. But I’m right behind you, badass.’

  Toby scrambled up from the sofa and lurched for the hallway. A pathetically optimistic part of him hoped that the neighbours might have heard the table being smashed up; the walls were so thin that he could usually hear them watching soap operas and arguing, which seemed to be their two main hobbies. But he knew that even if they were in, and even if they had heard anything, and even if they thought something bad was happening in Toby’s home, they wouldn’t so much as knock on the door to ask if everything was okay, never mind call the police. He wasn’t even sure what their names were.

  In his bedroom he scrabbled around one-handed on the floor amidst the clutter of clothes and schoolbooks, until he found his inhaler, jammed the nozzle into his mouth and fired off a puff of salbutamol, and immediately felt the clenching in his chest begin to loosen up.

  ‘Better?’ Green Skull was standing in the bedroom doorway.

  Toby nodded.

  Green Skull grunted and cocked his head, considering the mess and the football posters on the walls. ‘Huh,’ he said. ‘Villa fan. Good job. If you were Blues I’d’ve had to kill you.’ He laughed like this was the most hilarious thing he’d ever heard. ‘How old are you, kid?’ he asked.

  ‘What…?’

  ‘Oi!’ That earned him another tap with the crowbar, not as hard as the first one, but Toby jerked as if electrocuted. ‘I warned you about that, didn’t I? How fucking old are you?’