Whilst futilely studying the outer void his thoughts turned to other concerns which had been like spiteful fey eunuchs, prodding at him with an incessantness, at whose insistence he could not wait to begin the journey he was now about. His sister more than ever before had need to depend on him and for that reason he was now travelling northwards. He had received intelligence, a missive from his estranged mother, that she, his sister, was in dire condition. The lexeme she had reprised throughout the letter, the unremitting theme that had imprinted itself on his psyche and which he saw whenever he took a moment to close his eyes were the words; “Do not wait,” and, ”she fails fast.” He would be there to comfort her and allow her spirit no regrets as it passed on to the greater unknown. He would not say it, but by the way he would look into her eyes she would come to understand that he meant to see her again when his accounts had also been tallied. It agonized him that he would have to rest for the night and not continue, as he had planned, to walk as far as he could manage until a better mode of transport became available and he had to placate himself with the reason that he would not lose much time if, as early as possible, he found motorised transport.

He had drifted in out of cognisance but now Edward felt something of himself return (and another part of him be left behind). The first thing he recognised was the crisp odour of the unconstrained climate out of doors and he wondered that he should be anywhere but in the guest room at the Grange Fell. It had been like the briefest pause since he had momentarily reposed on the bed yet, there was at the same time an undeniable sense of having taken part in dreams vast, containing momentous corridors of psychology. Had there been another with him? It was an unreasonable thought and perhaps on other nights, when the essence of the nether didn't seem to linger upon the glades, he should have felt it the merest nothing to discard it out of hand. Alas he could not shake it and what was more felt that he had been governed like any bit of loose string, fondled and toyed with and knew not how he had managed to break free. There was one facet of this lingering confusion which troubled him with the greatest ardency; In the deep, deep darkness into which he had been thoughtlessly cast he felt that he had peeked into a slip of knowledge which no human mind should have to bear. A fissure in the real which let him see into the after and there, with widened eyes, he had caught sight of the sort of secret which upon hearing you would give anything to return. Edward suppressed the recollection, he was not ready to face it again yet. It was too much, and even in denial it fingered him with taloned hands and made him muse whether he could, with loving familiarity, hold eye contact with his sister as she peered through him and on to the abyss.

From the dim precipices of the ebon monolith, Arthur lurked, nay rather he cowed and wondered at which signal he would venture forth his challenge to the crone. He watched her as she clutched at her breast, unheeding those about her and giving her whole to the racking jubilance of anticipation. He thought she had about her the rancid stench of unholy rites and were it not for the palsied fright which had petrified him and kept him still, lest he draw her attention, he would have denounced it most verily. ‘Abomination!’ Arthur thought and it seemed to seep from every pore of earth and stone in the vicinity and crowded round with an awful closeness, yet despite his misgivings and the veracity he felt to try and defer the will of the hag thereby, he remained thoroughly paralysed. Would he just watch? Arthur wasn’t even sure anymore, he couldn’t possibly, he thought, and it was an unparalleled disconcert that perhaps he might and what stopped him from acting now before the blood offering began? Natheless the brash winds chilled his nerve and filled his head with winsome enchantments that commended him for his staying put and he dozed and watched and did not trouble himself to act.

Edward tried to lift himself from the prostrate position he had assumed, but he was experiencing a dismaying apoplexy which left his limbs ignorant of his will to move them and he trapped inside no better than a cadaver. The doping was potent and still infiltrated his veins and Millen would have been so very gleeful had she known the sublime torment she had caused Edward to inculcate him with unheeding ligaments. Though it was instead that she watched with certain pangs of disappointment, rightly judging her trickery had gone awry and may not after all cause Demdike the trouble she had hoped. Giving way to his own helplessness Edward instead looked around for where assistance might perchance recommend itself and to gather what he could of the place he had, by unknowing translocation, arrived at. His sight alighted upon the bent statue of the withered heretic and he might have immediately called out to her had he not been struck with a muddy sense that there was jade wrongness to her. She looked at him with all the enthrallment of a youthful lover, hot and steady as the sphinx and it deeply unsettled Edward, who also noted how she idly groped at some object underneath her vest. But there was no avoiding beseeching her in lieu of the stupor that his life’s anchor had undergone and he set aside the perturbations he felt and asked her,

“I’m sorry, can you help me? I don’t know what’s happened or how I came to be here but I can’t move. If you have a phone could you please ring the ambulance?” And he noted the flicker of astonishment that passed over her creased countenance but which, as suddenly as it appeared, vanished and became replaced instead by a narrowing of her eyes which made her seem a thorough shrew.

“How is it you can talk? Can’t you move? What’s the matter?” She almost barked the questions in her consternation and it was sadly unfortunate for Edward that he mistook her fluster for concern.

“I don’t know, only that my head is swimming and I can’t make any motion to stand. All I can think of is that perhaps I damaged my spine whilst sleepwalking which makes not the slightest bit of sense as I’ve never walked whilst sleeping before. Please can you help me?”

Upon hearing this intelligence her dry confidence returned and she viewed him once more as a simple commodity that she had procured for their amusing. He too suspected that there was a sense of discontinuity between her actions, her response and now the return of her lusty gaze and wondered if she did not mean to assist him at all; if, in fact, it wasn’t at her directing he had been brought to this current predicament. It would not be long until he garnered the unpleasant truth of his speculations and come to reckon upon the err he had committed in revealing to her his haplessness. She approached him with soft steps, disregarding all further of his attempts to inspire her pity, and brought the knife with which she had come prepared for the disembowelling from without of her garments. Allowing him full view as she brandished it with the ire of heresy and he might have found the scene incomprehensible were it not for the signals he had already divined for himself. He watched her with the absolute numbing shock that the calf feels as its hind quarters are torn by the claw and tooth of ravenous man eaters and which causes it to abandon all further struggles, or hope for anything but a swift end; yet he could not dismiss the image of his sister, bereft at her deathbed. Demdike knelt beside him and though he talked now in pleas remained entirely insensible to his words, only eying the fleshy aperture she had revealed by lifting his shirt, the soft abdomen which had no benefit of shielding bone.

“E-enough!” It was Arthur who had faintly stammered this interruption, but the guile of it from one whom should be entirely defeated gave Demdike enough pause to aver her attention. “I somehow thought that thur might be somethin’ decent left in yah but as I watched from ‘ere an’ saw ‘ow yah looked set for butchery I can’t believe I could be so soft. Aye, stupid for not thinking thee the foulest… (though I still can’t whilst yah kneel above the lad that I was part in sendin’.)”

She immediately saw the pistol which he held and that weaved unsteadily in his nervous grip and perceived the turmoil that still raged inside him, the as yet unresolved question of whether he could stand fast by his resolution. “Have you come too Art to bathe in the cesspit?”

“To put an end to you more like, an’ teck that of misself back which I surrendered in ever lettin’ a mongrel dog like yahself ‘ave ‘er way.” Though the words he spoke were strong, the delivery was revealing in how it quavered.

“Oh, come now! Surrendered? Hardly! What is it… is this the fear of the grave in you? Yellow swine! Do not think to make amends with trifling appeasements. Believe when I say that your remorse is utterly pointless. If you had seen the secret vestiges that I have been shown, that cannot even be writ in forgotten places, you would not involve yourself with pointless dalliances.”

Occupying the attention of all from upon its grassy plinth, towered the stone needle Blackhaw, piercing the ambient amber of the night sky with an imposing figure. The placid lunar host was no exception and also seemed to draw near it in shushed reverence and crowned its brow with an opulent halo. It reposed itself in silence as if paying remembrance to the long deceased interred beneath its burial mound and even the night owl would not raise its voice to disturb the soliloquy. All that was heard was the rush of the wind that worried the leaves of unseen trees and you might think that too could only be at the behest of that stoic monolith.

Like a dire tyrant it strangled the small voices and held the wanderings of the field mouse and the opportunist fox. Beneath its grim sentinel the folk of West Craven felt cruelly oppressed but if they did not revere it they held their tongues and spoke not unkindly of its overreaching walls. And amongst them rumour abounded and those that hearkened to it would shudder and avow to spurn its proximity lest the evil there be tempted. They need only look to the way it straddled the skyline and commanded all the other things underfoot. Those natural or unnatural, man, bird or beast; Each paid their respects to its deathly foreboding. Even the moon became but an opal in its crown and bestowed it a dazzling halo as beautiful as it was ominous. Besides the name Blackhaw it had been called other things and most oft was it named a seat of power and the repose of an ancient king whose judgements bore no comprehending.