A Gathering of Twine Read online

  Danielle frowned. “He bought an island?”

  Freeman nodded. “Uh-huh. In cash.”

  “That’s some windfall. What about Anna and Christopher?”

  “It turned out that the house in Falkland was only rented. They went to Russia first, and then the US where they stayed in Seattle for a few years. After that, they moved around a lot, and I lost track of them both. The boy did come back to England to complete his Further Education. Youngest ever graduate in a Masters in Politics, Law, and Economics. But he moved on, and lived in California, working as a lobbyist, until they declared independence. Then I lost track of him too.”

  “Rooksby and Kethron?”

  “Rooksby is still wanted on a wounding charge, but he was never seen again. As for Kethron... well no-one saw him driving the van. He was interviewed but never charged. He finished the job of filling in the mine, got promoted to the parent company and still works for Corvus today. He did not want to talk to me. Corax is still going, but it’s half the size it was when Ryan was working there. Given the economic climate for the last twenty years, that is hardly surprising. Corvus went on to diversify. Today they manufacture the majority of the electronics for Net Station and even dabble in some software once in a while. They’ve even been known to pick up one or two military contracts in their time.”

  “Military contracts?”

  “They acquired a small pharmaceutical company that had a CIA contract in nineteen-forty-eight, and have been growing it ever since.”

  Danielle looked the old man. “There’s more to that story, isn’t there?”

  Freeman said nothing but continued looking at his publisher.

  “What about Irene? Or Charlie? What was happening there?” Danielle continued.

  Freeman smiled. “You do like to jump ahead. We’ll come to her later.”

  “Come on. Tell me now. She’s the same as whatever Anna is, isn’t she?”

  “Patience my dear.”

  “Ok. What about the pendants?”

  “You held one. Well, one like it.”

  “That thing? That’s it? That was what came up from those graves?”

  “Well no. Mine came from a temple in Japan – a colleague sent it to me, although I cannot explain why such intricate craftsmanship was replicated hundreds of years and thousands of miles apart. But it’s identical to the ones that Ryan brought up. His rescuer still has them in the box.”

  “So who was it that came up the escalators? And how did he know Ryan was in trouble?”

  “Have a guess.”

  “Celus?”

  “Nope.”

  “Well, it can’t have been George. He would have been too old to wrestle anyone to the ground. The son – Devon? Or the grandson?”

  “Not even close.”

  “I give up. Who?”

  “John Lennox.”

  Danielle was stunned. “What?”

  “It was John Lennox,” Freeman repeated.

  “The sleaze-ball reporter?”

  “Yup.”

  “But why... how did he get there?”

  “After he was picked up by the police, following his reappearance from Sumerland, he was interviewed – that’s where that account came from - and then he quit the BBC and got a quickie divorce. The police still have a cold case on Murphy King. After the breakup of his marriage, Lennox disappeared for a couple of years. But he popped up again a year or so before meeting Ryan, and became a priest.”

  “You’re joking, right?”

  “No. He took orders.”

  “Where? Who would have him?”

  “Well, that is where things get interesting. A little-known Christian sect called the Céli Dé. They had a small but notable following in Ireland and Scotland about twelve hundred years ago, but then got absorbed by other factions. As far as I can tell, today there are only a handful of practitioners left. And John Lennox is one. He has a small ministry in Dunfermline and is allowed to preach a couple of mornings a week at the abbey. He just happened to be going through the airport that day. I think he recognised something in Ryan. That he had been touched by the same thing he had… and stepped in.”

  “That doesn’t sit right,” said Danielle. “You said that there is no such thing as coincidence. There’s more to it than that.”

  Freeman smiled knowingly. “There certainly is. Despite its relatively small size, the Céli Dé has significant business holdings. Valued in the trillions.”

  “What do they do with it? They certainly don’t use it to raise their profile.”

  “They don’t operate the business themselves, but rather make awards and grants from the income. The charity is known as the Chuldees Trust, which is just an Anglicisation of Céli Dé. The principal company the money is moved through is The Accipiter Corporation.”

  “Isn’t that the company that funded Tate’s dig at Maiden Castle?”

  “Tate’s first dig. A bit of a coincidence, eh?”

  Danielle’s eyes widened. “There was a second dig?”

  “Oh yes. But again, you’re jumping ahead.”

  “What is Accipiter? Sounds vaguely Freemason-y.”

  “No. But someone was clever enough to make it look like them. Their registered address is even on Great Queen Street.”

  Danielle loved the ingenuity of it. “Clever. A secret society pretending to be a secret society. So what happened to Ryan after Lennox found him?”

  “Wherever it was that Lennox was going, he cancelled it there and then. He took Ryan back to his flat and got him a job as a cleaner at the Abbey. He still works there three days a week, and the rest of the time he works for Lennox.”

  “Doing what?”

  “Mostly PA-type stuff. Diary management. Making sure the bills get paid. A bit of research...”

  Danielle’s brow furrowed. “Researching what?”

  Freeman smiled “You’re jumping ahead again. Right now, that is not the pressing issue. You have overlooked something important from Lennox’s story.”

  Danielle thought for a moment. “What?”

  Freeman placed a small plastic frame on the table. “That is the film badge that Lionel Orton gave John Lennox. Lionel was just doing his job at the time, and he didn’t realise how important it would be. You see, a regular film badge gets sent away to determine how much radiation it has been exposed to. Have a look at the LED readout.”

  Danielle leaned forward, not wanting to know how Freeman had acquired the film badge, and took the piece of plastic between her fingers. “Minus two-thousand-three-hundred-and-twenty-three?”

  “That thing should absorb radiation. It should be a positive number. Not a negative,” Freeman said.

  Danielle put it back down on the table. “You’re going to tell me it’s not broken or malfunctioning, aren’t you?”

  “Correct. But this film badge can actually trap particles of radiation that can be analysed later.”

  “Let me guess. Something that had never been seen before?”

  Freeman laughed. “Far from it. It’s a form of naturally occurring background radiation. There are hot spots all over the world of course, like Cornwall and Aberdeen which are high in radon. But that is because of the geology of the area. The rock types in the ground. This…this is something different. And it is rarely ever captured in the concentration that Lennox stumbled on. We’ve known of its existence for decades from observable effects on other materials, but it is only in the last few years that the scientists have been able to actually measure it in any meaningful way. However, its source remains a complete mystery.”

  Danielle could almost guess what was coming next. “You said hot spots, right? Let me guess. The Lomond Paps. Maiden Castle. Paternoster House. Edinburgh Airport.”

  Freeman laughed again. “Very good. There are of course many more. And not just on this planet, but throughout our solar system. Mars and the asteroid belt have levels many times higher than here on Earth. Later, I’ll show you that it occurs throughout our galaxy if not
the entire universe.”

  Danielle could feel that a point was being made, but she could not see it. “So if it’s so common, why is it so important?”

  “Radiation particles get emitted from a decaying element. This... well it’s an energised particle, but no-one can understand what element it came from. Energised particles... their vibration decreases over time. It’s like driving a car – take your foot off the accelerator and you’ll slow down until you stop. Right?”

  “Yes.”

  “Except this particle – Khronusium – doesn’t. It will slow down, but then it will speed back up again, and then start slowing down again. But it never actually stops.”

  “Like it is being re-energised?”

  “Exactly,” Freeman smiled.

  Danielle thought for a moment. “The light above Paternoster House?”

  “It can’t be proved, but very likely. Of course, our history, both modern and ancient, is riddled with tales of lights in the sky. It is difficult to tell for certain what can be attributed to this Khronusium and what is down... to other things.”

  “Over-eager imaginations?”

  “Possibly.”

  Danielle considered this. “What about Ryan’s vision. At that standing stone. Did he see George?”

  Freeman held up his hands. “I’m not certain. I can make an educated guess, but that will have to come later. We need to build to that.”

  Danielle sighed. “So what does this account prove?” she said eventually.

  “Two things; firstly words have power,” Freeman answered. “That’s why Ryan Hyde could not leave of his own accord. The Anna-Creature made him agree with her from the outset… well, to all sorts of things; that she was his wife and he loved her and he was faithful. I have no doubt that her real behaviour was far more sinister than Ryan relayed, but whatever force of domination he was under prevented him from seeing the truth. It is almost as if, by agreeing, the victim’s local reality becomes warped. Everyone else is unaffected unless they agree too.”

  Danielle was unconvinced. “That’s a bit of leap. He was weak and an alcoholic. What’s your second point?”

  “Fine fine,” Freeman replied. “There is another story later on that will validate this particular hypothesis. My second point is that The Raven Men are already here. What Dennis King found under Lomond Pap in Falkland…”

  Danielle frowned. “Hang on, wasn’t that where Anna Hyde moved the family too?”

  Freeman smiled and nodded. “Coincidence? I doubt it. Anyway, my point is that they are already here. Dennis King probably found one of their hatcheries… but Kethron and Rooksby and Anna’s friend, Irene…”

  Danielle interrupted again. “You’re not going to tell me that was Irene Tate, are you?”

  Freeman shrugged. “I can’t say for certain. But the fact is that they are here, and the image from King’s camera showed thousands of them. A whole army who are slowly making their way through to our world at the behest of whatever it was that Harry Gordon saw in the sky.”

  Danielle could see the strands beginning to weave together. As insubstantial as each piece seemed on its own, the whole was growing in both substance and weight. “Ok,” she said eventually. “Let’s assume that Sumerland is real. Let’s assume that all of your sources who claimed that they crossed over really did, and let’s assume that there is something on the other side sending through these Raven Men of yours. What does any of this have to do with George Tate? How does he fit into this?”

  “Don’t you see?” Freeman replied, leaning forward with an urgency that belied his age. “Tate leaves a wake behind him. And people get caught up in it, often without knowing that it is even him, and then... well, you can see that their lives take a right turn. His actions at Paternoster led to Murphy King’s death, John Lennox’ religious conversion, Anna Hyde, Ryan Hyde… the list goes on. All of them have been affected by Tate, even if they don’t know it is him. Do you understand?”

  Danielle thought for a moment. “Sort of… this is The Twine that the disciplinary panel found in George’s notes at The British Museum? What Celus was looking for in the cave? What The Raven Men were running from in Harry Gordon’s vision?”

  Freeman nodded. “Tate is… something. He calls it a Twine, but I don’t know what it is. But his story weaves through so many others… and no one can deny his effect.”

  Danielle found herself agreeing and on reflex tried to rationalise the evidence. “Other than Paternoster House, can you link George directly to any other sightings of strange lights?”

  “Oh yes - several. Let me start with a contentious one. But I warn you, this one is a real humdinger.”

  Danielle loved the old man’s turn of phrase. “Go on,” she smiled.

  “The Jonestown Massacre.”

  Danielle was impassive for a moment. “Never heard of it.”

  Freeman was incredulous. “Honestly?”

  Danielle’s response was cool. “Honestly.”

  “In nineteen-seventy-eight,” Freeman began, “more than nine hundred US citizens committed suicide at a commune in what was then Guyana. It remained the single worst loss of civilian life until nine-eleven, and still the third worst today.”

  “You’ve been to South America? You broke through the quarantine?”

  Freeman shook his head. “No. There was a formal investigation held in the US, and I managed to get hold of a copy of the report. The appendices are full of eyewitness accounts, wills, and some recorded last testaments of those who died there.”

  “And George Tate was there?”

  “Celus definitely. And another man, who matches George’s description, was with him. We know for a fact that George was on annual leave from the Maiden Castle dig at the time and that he was in Guyana. The night before the suicides, a super-massive Borealis was seen over the area. It is a matter of public record that aircraft were diverted around it. You’ll be unsurprised to learn that even today, not a single piece of electrical equipment works in the area of Jonestown,” he said, pulling a roll of magnetic tape from his satchel.

  “What is that?” Danielle asked.

  “It’s a cassette… oh never mind. It’s what was used before the Digital Information Service. Anyway, the day after the light display over Jonestown... well I’ll let the dead tell this one.”

  Freeman pressed the play button and the sound of the tape hiss filled the room.

  CHAPTER 9

  Falling visions and rising voices, burn behind my eyes,

  Fractured sight and creeping shadows, an enemy in disguise.

  Reality turns and the mirror breaks, mainline the mainstream,

  Living up is a living lie, an echo from a dream.

  “In Search” by Even The Lost. © G & L Tate 1978

  Saturday November 18th 1978

  There is a click as the recording mechanism engages. For a moment there is nothing to hear and then comes the sound of distant voices and people moving about.

  “Is it on?” a woman asks. She sounds strained as though she has cried until her throat is raw.

  “Uh-huh,” a man replies, sounding gruff and weary. “It’s recording.”

  The woman begins. “My name is Isabelle Maria Fernandez-Pitman – Izzy to my friends - and I’ve been a resident of Peoples Temple Agricultural Project – more commonly known as Jonestown – for the last three years. Within the next few hours, I shall be no more, extinguished by my own hand.

  “I go to my fate freely, voluntarily, and of my accord, as do my two children. I don’t know how long we have until They get here. Maybe hours. At best a day. I won’t let them take me or the children alive. I know what they will do to us.

  “I’m certain that there’ll be an investigation, and that we’ll be written off as communists, or druggies, or paedophiles, or some other folk-devil the government wants us to be. If you’ve been reading the Press, you’ll not be surprised by this, but I ask that you accept this recording as my last testament.

  The people of
Jonestown aren’t evil. After the revelations of last night, we know that we were set up from the beginning. We are responsible. But we are not to blame. The Man is coming. He’ll be here soon with his guns, and he’ll try to take our children and if we fight he’ll put us down like dogs. Better to go out by our own hand than his.

  We never meant for it to come to this. We’re all so very sorry. We didn’t mean it. We believed that our work was for the greater Glory of God. None of us realised that we’d fallen so far.

  It’d be easy to blame our leader, Dad - Jim Jones as you know him - but I honestly believe that he’s been deceived as much as the rest of us. We don’t condemn him. You probably think that it is creepy that we call him Dad. But it is just an affectionate name for him and is no different than ‘Vicar’ or ‘Reverend’.

  It’s difficult to know where to start. We all have different stories that begin at different times, and so I’ll settle for telling mine. A number of my companions are recording similar statements, and it’s my fervent wish that the combined whole provides some illumination.

  It was the summer of seventy-one that I came to Guyana, as a nurse and a missionary, with my husband, Randall Pitman. He’d been a chaplain at Kirtland Air Base, but had left after becoming disillusioned with the establishment. I don’t know where he is now. If he’s lucky, he’ll be dead.

  I was born and raised in Los Lunas, New Mexico. I met Randall in the summer of sixty-seven, and I know what you are thinking; a little catholic girl, a repressed USAF Chaplain and the hedonism of The Summer of Love. But that was not Randall and me. That summer was what happened to other folks. Those on the coast and those heathen European types. Ours was a simpler relationship. My younger sister knew his brother, a college grad who had hopes of going on to read physics at MIT. He was a sweet kid. Green as they come, but sweet all the same. So a double-date was arranged, and that, as they say, was that. Randall and I stuck. We were married the next Fall, and a few months after that Randall left the Air Force to join The San Clemente Catholic Church as an outreach worker.