Prophecy

by Peter James

Genres: Psychological Thrillers; High-tech & Sci-fi Thrillers

Synopsis

A game that turns to a nightmare ...

Non Omnis Moriar
I shall not altogether die

A young boy watches his mother die. A sadistic man dies in agony. Drunk students play with a Ouija board in a damp cellar. Can bricks and mortar retain imprints of the emotions experienced within them?

Frannie is delighted when a chance meeting with a handsome man and his son leads to a romance. The fact that the relationship is marred by gruesome tragedies, she dismisses as an unsettling coincidence. But eventually she can no longer ignore the fact that she is the only thing linking these horrible events. Is it a murderous practical joke?

Or worse...?

'James just gets better and better' Independent on Sunday

'Britain's answer to Stephen King and Michael Crichton.' Sunday Telegraph

Read more from the multi-million copy bestselling author of the Roy Grace novels:

Possession
Dreamer
Sweet Heart
Twilight
Prophecy
Host
Alchemist
Denial
The Truth
Faith

* Each Peter James novel can be read as a standalone*

Release date: November 4, 2010

Publisher: Orion Publishing Group

Print pages: 384

Sample

26th March, 1652

The man and boy walked along the London street trying to keep clear of the gutter, the man hurrying, clutching the boy with sharp, bony fingers, turning down one dark alley then another, like a rat that has learned its way through a maze.

The boy was confused and uncertain; he did not know who the man was and did not like him. His mother and the man had talked in low voices and his mother had not kissed him or looked him in the eye when the man had taken him away. They had walked for a long time through the failing light and the rain, and he was tired and hungry. And becoming afraid.

After a while they stopped in the rear yard of a large house and the man knocked loudly. The door opened a few inches and dark, suspicious eyes peered out. ‘Come in,’ a woman said and the door opened wider. The man pushed the boy ahead of him into the kitchen.

The woman frightened the boy. She was tall, dressed in a black gown, and had a skeletal face with eyes that seemed to scold him.

‘How many years has he?’

‘Eight,’ the man said.

‘He stinks.’

‘He needs a wash, that’s all.’

The woman studied the boy carefully. He had fair curls that were unkempt and matted, large blue eyes and a snub nose; his lips were drawn sullenly down, and his clothes were little more than grimy rags; his feet were bare. ‘Wait here,’ she said.

The boy stood gazing at the stone floor, aware of the flames in the hearth and the pot above it from which came an acrid, unpleasant smell.

After a few moments the door opened and the woman came back in, followed by a tall man with a limp. He was wearing a gold, full-length robe, and had a cruel, vain face framed with a carefully trimmed beard. He stood in the doorway and smiled approvingly at the boy. ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘You have done well.’

He came closer to the boy, dragging his club-foot across the floor with a scrape, and stood still again, admiring him. ‘Very good.’

The boy was impressed by the man’s robe and by his noble appearance. The man moved closer, then in one fast movement tore the clothes off the boy, letting them drop around his ankles.

The boy looked at him in shock. The nobleman took a step towards him and laid a hand on his shoulder. The boy whipped his head around, bit the man’s wrist hard and bolted for the door on the far side of the kitchen.

The man who had brought him grabbed him by his hair and held him tightly. The nobleman roared with laughter.

‘He is fine and spirited. You have done very well, for a change.’

‘Thank you, my Lord.’

‘Yes,’ he said. He eyed the boy’s body with mounting satisfaction. ‘I will reward –’ He broke off as a commotion beyond the kitchen disturbed him. He frowned; they were early. Much too early. They were not due for at least two hours yet, surely? He turned, staring through the open door and down the passageway.

A man in a tall black hat, a high white collar and a black coat over tight, ribboned breeches strode through the doorway. He was followed by a group of soldiers wearing the red coats, grey breeches and waist sashes of the Parliamentarian Army.

His grey eyes scanned the room then fixed on the nobleman. He spoke with a humourless smile. ‘Good evening, Francis,’ he said. ‘Have I interrupted some sport?’

‘What do you mean by this intrusion, Thomas?’ The nobleman stared with a vexed expression at the soldiers who were clustered inside the door; their faces beneath their buff leather hats carried an air of intent that disturbed him.

The man in the black hat looked at the woman and the rat-faced man beside her. ‘Who brought this child?’ When they remained silent, his voice became hard and stern. ‘Who brought him?’

‘’Twas I,’ the rat-faced man said.

‘Clothe him and take him back.’ And then, to the woman, ‘How many servants are here in the house now?’

The woman glanced at her master as if for approval to speak.

The nobleman’s vexation was tempered by uncertainty. ‘Thomas, I’ll not have this. Take your men and leave forthwith.’

The man in the black hat ignored him and continued to stare at the woman. ‘I want all the servants to be gone immediately and not return until curfew time. Understand?’ He turned and nodded at the soldiers.

They moved forwards and seized the nobleman’s arms. His expression turned to fury. ‘Thomas – my brother, man! For God’s sake! What do you think you are doing?’

‘For God? For God’s sake?’ his brother echoed mockingly. ‘What dost thou know of God whom thou hast abandoned these five and twenty years?’ He led the way out of the door and down a passageway into a fine hall with a black-and-white tiled floor, candles in ornate sconces on the walls and gilt furniture. The soldiers, headed by their sergeant, frogmarched the robed nobleman, ignoring, as his brother did, his protestations.

They went downstairs into a dark, evil-smelling cellar and halted at a door outside which a candle burned. Thomas jangled a key tauntingly at his brother, unlocked the door and led the way into a huge cellar chamber.

A massive fire blazed in a hearth beneath a brick flue on the far wall, the echoes of its cracking and spitting resounding like gunshots around the brick walls and flagstone floor. There were stone tablets fixed to the walls, some containing five-pointed stars, others squares of numbers. Skulls and bones, human and animal, were laid out on shelves between lit black candles.

On a raised dais like an altar at the far end was a bed covered with tasselled cloth. There were massive black candles at each corner and, beyond, a leather-bound book lay on a lectern.

The man in the black hat nodded at his brother, whilst the soldiers stared round in awe and horror. ‘The fires of Hell already lit, my Lord?’

‘I’ll have no more of these games, Thomas. What do you want?’

‘’Tis no game, Francis, I assure you. None but that of your own making. I must depart, for I’ve a long way to go before dark. I’ll take my leave of you, if you’ll forgive me. Sergeant Proudlove will attend your needs; a good man by all accounts and a father of three young boys.’

He nodded to the sergeant who had a blunt face with a broad, flat nose and dull eyes, and walked out. Ignoring the shouts of his brother, he closed the door of the chamber behind him.

‘Like to sport with young boys, your Lordship?’ the sergeant said.

As the nobleman looked at him, and at each of the deadpan faces of the other six soldiers, the heat of his anger began to turn into the cold uncertainty of fear. ‘Your intrusion is intolerable,’ he said stiffly.

‘We has but only one more intrusion to make and we’lst be gone, my Lord.’ The sergeant grinned and several of the other soldiers let out coarse sniggers. Then he nodded and they gripped their prey tighter.

‘Unhand me at once, I say! What do you mean by all this?’

The sergeant pointed to the bed. The soldiers pulled the nobleman over and thrust him face down on to it. The sergeant removed his waist sash and tied it across Francis’ mouth as a gag, yanking it so tightly that there was a grunt of pain. Then he carefully eased up the gold robe, exposing the nobleman’s naked, bony backside. Francis began to struggle harder, grunting louder. The soldiers moved as if they had done this before, four of them each using his own body weight to pin down an arm or a leg, the other two sitting on the small of his back. ‘Careful not to bruise him,’ the sergeant said.

He walked slowly across to the fire, knelt and picked up the poker then ambled back to the front of the bed and held the poker up so that Francis could see it. ‘Thou enjoyest sporting with backsides, let’s see how thou enjoyest this, my Lord.’

The nobleman’s eyes widened; the cruelness of them was gone now, replaced with a look of pleading. He mumbled desperately and incoherently through the gag.

The sergeant removed from inside his jacket a slim hollow ox-horn and checked that the poker would slide freely through it. Then he placed his hands on his captive’s buttocks, which were slippery with the perspiration of fear, and pushed them apart, locating with his eyes the circular orifice of the anus. Using some of his own spittle he lubricated the end of the ox-horn, then again located the orifice and slowly but firmly inserted the horn, easing it in further and further.

‘Gently does it, my Lord,’ he said. ‘Wouldn’t want to hurt you.’

There was a guffaw from the soldiers. The nobleman struggled, his buttocks twitching fiercely, but the sergeant continued pushing the tube in for several inches until only the tip was still showing.

A low whine of fear escaped through the gag. Rivulets of sweat ran down the small of the victim’s back. Sergeant Proudlove carried the poker across to the fire and prodded the tip deep into the burning coals. The nobleman grunted, trying to speak, to call out to him, but the sergeant stood in steadfast silence, watching the poker, carefully pulling on a thick gauntlet.

After a few minutes he removed the poker. The last twelve inches of the tip were glowing red and white hot. He walked around and held it up in front of the nobleman’s face. ‘Ready, my Lord?’

The nobleman’s eyes skittered as if they had broken loose in their mountings. Another, longer, whine of fear came through the gag, then another. He tried to speak, choked on his own saliva and coughed, then tried frantically to speak again. He writhed and thrashed, throwing one soldier off his back on to the floor, and pulling an arm free. A soldier grabbed it again, pinned it down and the other climbed back on to him, holding him down grimly. The sergeant thrust the poker back into the coals, holding it for some seconds with his gloved hand. The nobleman whined again, then again.

The sergeant removed the poker, walked up to him, gripped the hollow horn, which had slid out a couple of inches, carefully inserted the red-hot poker into the end of it as if he was locating his sword into his scabbard, then slid it in, pushing firmly and grimly.

There was a sharp hiss and bubbling sound as it burned through the soft rectal flesh, and the sudden sweet smell of roasting meat.

A convulsion of agony bulged every muscle of the nobleman’s body and a scream tore free of the gag and bounced around the room like an unleashed demon; it came back at the soldiers from the ceiling, from the walls, from the floor: a screeching banshee that became louder every second as the sergeant pushed the poker relentlessly, holding it with both hands, twisting it, working it further and further in, forcing it up through the rectum, the colon, tearing through the peritoneum, melting and cauterizing a passage through the liver, gall-bladder and pancreas; through muscles, tendons, gristle, piercing the stomach wall, stirring the nobleman’s bowels and organs like a giant pudding until the poker was in up to the handle.

The victim arched backwards, scattering all six of the soldiers. His neck twisted like a serpent, his head almost turning completely backwards as if his neck was broken. He stared the sergeant full in the eye and for a moment the sergeant thought he was going to clamber off the bed. Then the nobleman’s mouth contorted as if it were melting, and let out a low, barely audible moan of agony; slowly this began to rise into a howl, becoming louder and louder until, in its crescendo, it seemed to detach itself from the writhing, almost inhuman, object on the bed and explode in an independent ball of energy.

The soldiers stood back, covering their ears now, unable to bear the sound that threatened to shatter the insides of their own heads. Even the sergeant released his grip and covered his ears.

Long after the poker had cooled and the nobleman lay motionless in his own slime and vomit, his fingernails embedded into the palms of his hands, the scream remained, echoing back at them as if it would never fade.

26th March, 1988

The father and son walked along the London pavement in the warmth of the spring mid-morning sunshine. The father ambled at a leisurely stride; a tall man in his late thirties, in an unbuttoned Harris Tweed coat, whose thoughts seemed to be elsewhere, as if he was pondering the cosmos above him rather than concentrating on his immediate environs.

He had a strong, open face, with handsome features and an amiable, if rather absent-minded, expression. His brown hair was parted high and was a little long, covering the tips of his ears and the top of his collar. His bearing was distinctly aristocratic, but in spite of his City suit he looked more like an academic than someone who fitted into a business community.

The five-year-old boy had his mother’s looks: short ginger curls, a serious, freckled face, wide, innocent green eyes. He was wearing a tiny corduroy jacket, grey flannel shorts, grey knee-length socks and polished black shoes. He wished his father would walk faster; this part of London did not interest him – except for the Dungeon and the Tower, and the Docklands train, and they had already done those. The thought of the shop in Regent Street filled him with an excitement he could barely contain, and the prospect of the tube train they were going to take to it was something he looked forward to also, but now that they had left the boring office where he had had to wait for an hour with nothing much to read, his father seemed in no hurry and he panicked for a moment.

‘Daddy, we are going to Hamleys, aren’t we? You promised.’

‘Hamleys?’ The father stared at his son as if he had momentarily forgotten him.

‘You promised!’

‘Righty ho, suppose we’d better head there, then.’

The boy looked at his father, never sure when he was joking and when he was serious. ‘Is this the right way?’

‘We’ve got to wait for Mummy.’

The boy’s face fell. ‘Where is she?’

‘At the hairdresser’s. She’s coming to my office at half past twelve. That’s in twenty minutes.’

‘That’s not for ages! Where are we going now?’

‘I have to pick up Mummy’s wedding bracelet from the mender.’

The boy’s face fell further. ‘You said we were going to Hamleys.’

‘We’re going to have lunch with Mummy, then we’re going to Hamleys.’

‘I want to go now! You promised!’ The boy was sobbing.

They were blocking a busy pavement, being jostled by passers-by. There was an alley-way beside them, with a café a short distance down on the right. The father pulled his fractious son past an employment bureau, a travel agent, a heel bar and a few other shops, then stopped outside a dingy, unprepossessing sandwich bar with words above it, in twelve-inch-high dayglo letters, two of which were missing: SANDW CH S LUIGI CAFE. Four small suction cups held a white plastic menu against the inside of the window. EAT IN OR TAKE AWAY was printed along the bottom.

‘Look, they have milkshakes,’ the father said. ‘Let’s have one.’

A small queue stood at the counter and all but one of the tiny handful of tables were taken. There was a strong smell of coffee and of frying food; a dying fly fizzed and crackled in the mesh of an ultraviolet trap. Two posters, discoloured with age, one of Amalfi and one of Naples, were stuck to the back wall.

His father propelled his charge to the empty table and sat him down. The boy placed his fists on the table. ‘You promised! You promised – you –’ The boy was silent suddenly and a strange look came into his eyes, a mixture of both fear and recognition as he stared past his father at the counter.

His father turned his head, surprised, failing to see what he was looking at. Behind the counter a thin, unshaven man in his fifties greeted a customer with a cheery: ‘Hi, how y’doin? What y’gonna ’ave today?’ Next to him, a short, plump woman with lifeless black hair and a haggard, drained face, was buttering bread. There was a sharp ping and a girl in a white apron removed a dish from the microwave.

‘Chocolate milkshake?’ the father suggested, pulling out a handkerchief and wiping the tears from his son’s face. He went to the counter and bought a milkshake and an espresso.

The boy concentrated on his drink, his tantrum forgotten. Soon he was spooning the dregs from the bottom of the glass, and then he became absorbed in scooping up the last of the froth with a straw.

When they left the café and were walking back down the alley into the street, he asked, ‘Are we meeting Mummy, now?’

‘Yes, for lunch. Then we’re going to Hamleys, and then the Planetarium. You want to see the stars, don’t you?’

The boy nodded dubiously.

In the distance, they both heard a siren; it sounded like a bag of stones being swirled through the air.

‘Daddy, why does Mummy always go to the hairdresser every time we come to London?’

‘Because she likes to look nice,’ he was told.

They walked on for a moment in silence. The shops here contained nothing to distract the boy. Stationery. Men’s clothes. Masonic regalia. A bank. A silversmith.

The swishing of the siren was coming closer and the boy heard the roar of an engine. They stopped, waiting for the lights to change to cross the road. A cyclist pedalled across, wearing a crash-helmet, his face covered in a smog mask which the boy thought made him look frightening. Then he saw a woman with short red hair on the other side of the road, and for a moment he thought it was his mother and tugged excitedly on his father’s hand, wanting to pull him across the road to greet her. Until he realized she was a stranger. His mother had long hair.

The siren was still coming closer. The boy looked up at his father and tugged his sleeve. ‘Daddy, do you think I should have my hair done in London?’

The father tousled his son’s curls fondly. ‘Like to come to Trumper’s with me next time I go?’

The boy nodded, waited until his father was looking away, slid a hand up and flattened his hair down again. Then he looked across the road at the woman with red hair. She looked like his mother again now. It was his mother! It was. His heart leapt, then her hair blew in a gust, and it wasn’t; it was someone quite different.

The lights changed to green, and the boy ran forward. Something jerked him back, holding his collar, a sharp yank. There was the roar of an engine, a shadow bearing down, the siren deafening now. The red-haired woman was halfway out in the road. His mother? Not his mother? She was staring at him, her mouth open. She was trying to run backwards now.

Tyres screamed. A shadow crossed, blocked his view for an instant. A van with two young men in it braking furiously, slewing across the road. Going to hit the woman.

‘Mummy!’ he screamed.

The woman was splayed out on the van’s bonnet. It was careering across the road, mounting the pavement. A man in a business suit dived out of its path. A traffic-light post snapped and the coloured lights shattered on to the road. Then came an explosion like a bomb as the van, with the woman still on the bonnet, smashed through the plate-glass window of a bookshop.

The woman seemed to elongate then disappear. For an instant the entire surroundings seemed paralysed. In the silence there was nothing but the sound of breaking glass. The boy saw a chunk of window fall. He heard a scream, followed by another. Doors slamming. A siren winding down. Policemen leaping out of a car. Doors of the van opening: one easily, one with difficulty, the man inside forcing it. The van’s engine was still running.

‘Mummy!’

The boy broke free of his father’s grip and ran in terror across the road, through the crowd that was forming, pushing his way, sidestepping the opening door of the van. Another pane of glass crashed down. Blood. Books scattered everywhere. A poster lay on the ground, covered in blood. An assistant was standing in the shop, hand over her mouth, screaming. The boy stared in the direction she was looking. His mouth opened but no sound came out. The woman’s body lay on the floor, blood jetting intermittently from her neck. Red bubbles lay on the grey carpet tiles. A rubber mask with hair attached lay nearby, leaking blood into a fallen dumpbin of paperbacks.

Then he realized it wasn’t a rubber mask. It was his mother’s head.

August 1991

Summer had finally come to London a week ago after two months of almost continuous rain, and already the grass in the parks was parched. Seven days of heat seemed to have drawn every last drop of moisture from the soil – from the pavements, from the cement in the eternal building works – and dust that was loose and weightless hung like a permanent haze in the air. Frannie Monsanto had breathed it in, washed it out of her hair at night. She felt it now, clinging like pollen to her skin, which was already sticky with perspiration.

Normally Frannie’s Mediterranean genes reacted automatically to sunshine, flooding her with a deep sense of well-being. But at work today she had been glad of the coolness of the basement vault of the Museum, and she was thankful to be heading away from the claustrophobic oven of the city and en route to catch a train up to the Yorkshire countryside.

The rush-hour tube was crowded and she felt faintly ridiculous holding the double bass, her overnight suitcase wedged between her legs. Air blasted her face through the open windows: hot, rank draughts that smelled of soot and something more unpleasant, reminiscent of unwashed feet, as the carriage rocked and screamed through a long stretch of darkness.

Frannie was twenty-five, with attractive Latin looks and a slender figure that she kept well toned by twice-weekly aerobics, and by swimming fifty lengths on Sunday mornings at her local pool. Like many Latins, her family had a tendency towards fatness in middle age, and Frannie was determined never to let that happen to her, the way she was determined about many things in life.

Capriciousness sometimes broke through her barrier of reserve and, on rarer occasions, a fiery temper; but mostly Frannie applied herself with single-minded quietness and dedication to her work. She did not consider herself academic, or intellectual, and had to compensate by sheer slog. That was how she had got into university in the first place, and how she had got her degree in Archaeology and Anthropology. Frannie would have been pleased just to have scraped a third and had surprised herself by getting an upper second. She had scarcely been able to believe her good fortune when she had been offered a post as a research assistant at the British Museum within weeks of leaving university, where she had remained since.

She had wispy chestnut-brown hair that was clipped to each side of her head and rested on her shoulders, a straight nose, intelligent olive eyes and an expressive, sensual mouth prone to smiling, although at heart she was a serious girl. At five feet four inches, she wished she was a little taller, but by and large she was happy about her appearance.

She was wearing Nike trainers, blue jeans, an orange T-shirt and a black cotton jacket. Slung over her arm was a large untreated leather handbag she had bought in Naples four years previously on a family visit, and which was now comfortably hammered from its daily use. Frannie was not particularly interested in clothes and loathed shopping for them. In any event, archaeology did not pay well and she was saving as hard as she could to buy a small flat of her own and get out of the crummy place she rented. Jeans were fine for her work and she lived in them most of the time, except when she had a smart date.

She had had no such date for a while. It had been over six months since her relationship with her last boyfriend had ended and, to her surprise, she was really enjoying her freedom. She was reading a lot, catching up on movies, going to exhibitions.

It would not last, she knew. Something intrinsically excited her about men, and sex was something she enjoyed deeply.

‘Dreaming of nothing in particular?’ said an advertisement on a panel in front of her.

A lanky youth with goofy front teeth stood opposite her. He looked at her face, down at the double bass, then back at her again. She caught his eye, stared back, and he looked away hastily. The train swayed and she nearly lost her balance, bumped into a large man in a singlet, with tattoos on his arms, and the double bass rocked precariously. She was already regretting having so readily agreed to bring it.

It belonged to Meredith Minns, a fellow Archaeology student at the University of London, with whom she had shared a room for their last year there. Meredith had wavered all that year between becoming a professional archaeologist or musician, then had fallen in love with a farmer and was now living in North Yorkshire, had produced two children, one of whom Frannie was a godmother to, and seemed content being a farmer’s wife.

When she had invited Frannie up to stay, she had asked if she would mind collecting the instrument from a man who was repairing it in Covent Garden. Meredith had told her to take a taxi and she would pay, but Frannie did not like squandering money, neither her own nor anyone else’s, and she had decided when she collected it that although it was bulky it was not heavy, and she could manage it on the tube. Now she was beginning to realize she had been a bit optimistic.

The train was slowing and she gripped the grab-handle harder, lurching towards the goofy-toothed youth. Bright lights slid past the window as they came into a station. She saw the sign KING’S CROSS, and the train halted. She lugged her case and the double bass out, along the platform and on to the escalator.

On the station concourse, long lines stretched back from the ticket offices and the platform gates. Commuters hurried, some trying impossibly to sprint through the crowds.

People clambered over suitcases; a toothless old lady halted her luggage trolley, lips chomping impatiently, waiting for Frannie to move out of her path. But Frannie had not noticed her; she was standing, trying to fathom out the departures board. YORK, she saw, 17.34. PLATFORM 3. She looked around for a luggage trolley but could not see one, and hefted her double bass and suitcase over to a queue at the ticket offices. An announcement rang out. Beads of perspiration trickled down her neck. She bought her ticket, then queued again at the platform gate. The train was coming in now, and the Tannoy announced: ‘Arrival of the 14.52 from York. British Rail apologizes for the late arrival of this train.’

She saw carriage doors opening in line before the train had stopped moving, and the empty platform erupted in seconds into a surging wall of people. Frannie heard a shout and a small boy ran past the ticket inspector and headlong into the mêlée, followed by a harassed-looking man. Frannie gripped her ticket in her teeth, picked up her case and slid the double bass forward, stopped, repeated the procedure until she had reached the gate, then handed the ticket to the inspector.

He clipped it without looking at it, distracted by a colleague, and handed it back. She struggled forwards, the double bass getting heavier by the moment, got a few yards down the platform then stopped for a rest. Somewhere in front of her she heard a child shouting.

‘No! I don’t want to! I don’t want to!’

The sound rang out above the clattering of feet. Several people glanced around.

‘I hate you!’

The crowd was thinning and she could now see a boy of about eight – the boy who had run through the barrier a few minutes before – fighting to free himself from the grip of the man who had been chasing him and who was pulling him down the platform towards the gate.

‘Let me go, let me –’ As they reached Frannie, the boy suddenly stopped shouting and stared at her intently. Frannie felt a strange sense of recognition, as if she had seen him before somewhere. The man looked familiar also. In his mid-thirties, she estimated. Tall, a handsome, distinctive face; brown hair parted high up; he reminded her a little of the movie actor Harrison Ford and she. . .