'And it's to the southeast, past the ancient ruins,' said Doyle.
'Correct once again,' said Larry.
'Where Prince Eddy was likely taken from the train station,' added Sparks. 'And adjacent to Ravenscar is the tract of land General Drummond purchased from Lord Nicholson.'
'We must go there immediately, Jack,' said Doyle.
'Tomorrow's business,' said Sparks, looking out the window at the falling snow. 'Tonight we pay a visit to the ruins of Whitby Abbey.'
'You can't be serious—in this weather?' asked Stoker, 'Your attendance is not required, Mr. Stoker,' said Sparks, picking up the shotgun. 'However, I should like to borrow
your gun.'
Barry, all this while, had been taking the opportunity to size up Eileen as she smoked her cigarette, towering a good five inches above him.
'I've seen you someplace before, haven't I?' he said with
a confident grin.
Eileen cocked an amused eyebrow at the little man. Perhaps Barry's reputation is not overstated after all, thought Doyle.
Armed with lanterns, a shotgun, one pistol, and five sets of snowshoes procured from the inn, Sparks, Doyle, the brothers, and Eileen—Stoker having elected to exercise the better part of valor—set out in the dark for the ruins of Whitby Abbey. The bulk of the storm had passed, and the wind had expired; snow fell straight down and more gently now, to depths in excess of a foot and a half. Thick clouds obscured the moon. Smoke poured uniformly from the chimneys of the huddled houses they passed; curtains drawn, almost no light escaping to the ill-defined streets. The night was broken by nothing but the soft crunch of snowshoes on fresh powder and the vaporous columns of their breath. Navigation was problematic at best; the travelers felt sealed in a mute, hermetic sphere of white.
Slogging up the hill demanded patience and stamina. Sparks took the point, consulting a compass to maintain their bearings against the sheer cliffs to their left. Barry and Larry kept a rear guard with the other lanterns, while Doyle walked beside Eileen in the middle. She wore pants, boots, and a coat borrowed from Sparks's wardrobe. Her stride was long, steady, and brisk, and the climb seemed dismayingly less arduous to her than to Doyle himself, who welcomed each of Sparks's frequent pauses as an opportunity to reclaim his
wind.
Half an hour passed before they reached the cold, dark contour of Goresthorpe Abbey; no change in its lack of occupancy was evident. A formation of curious rectangular shapes studded the snowfield before them. Doyle realized it was the
heads of the cemetery's gravestones peering out of the drifts. Following the turn of the rectory grounds, they moved through a stand of trees and were soon confronted by the craggy black outline of the ancient ruins looming on the crown of the hill above. As devoid of life as its sister building below, the old sepulcher emanated a visceral menace considerably more threatening than life's mere absence.
'Nasty-looking piece of business,' said Doyle quietly.
'All the better to strike fear in the hearts of poor, ignorant parishioners with, my dear,' answered Eileen in kind.
Sparks waved them forward, and they attacked the final leg of the ascent. The slope was steeper here, and it more than once required the collective efforts of the group to pull each other up and over the sharpest inclines. With the last of these banks surmounted, they found themselves on a flat plane level with the ruins. Their lamps bled a pallid light on the crumbling walls, which were black and harrowed with age. Its doors and windows had long since been ravaged by time, and in many areas even the roof had fallen victim, but the overall impression imparted by what remained of the abbey was one of tremendous sturdiness and power. A slow circum-ambulation of the structure revealed both its impressive scope and its builders' fantastic indulgence of detail. Every ledge, cornice, and lintel was adorned with nightmarish Gothic statuary, embodying every imaginable species of night-dweller: kobold, incubus, basilisk, and hydra, lich, ogre, hippogriff, gremlin, and gargoyle. This fearsome menagerie had suffered far fewer insults from the passing centuries than the walls they swarmed over, each now patiently collecting a mantle of snow that did nothing to diminish their dread presence. Placed here to ward off demons, not to welcome them, remembered Doyle from his history books. Or so one hoped. He couldn't keep from regularly glancing over his shoulder to see if any of the creatures' dead eyes were tracking them.
Sparks brought them back around the ruins to their starting roint, completing the loop of their footprints in the snow, railing away in either direction into darkness.
'Shall we have a look inside?' asked Sparks.
No answer came, but when Sparks walked through the pen doorway, no one lingered behind. Because of the regaining irregular ribs of roofing, snow had not gathered to the same depths inside. They removed their snowshoes, leaning them against a wall. Sparks led them into the next room, a grand, vaulted rectangular space with uniform rows of broken stone running across the floor. A raised deck at the far end of the nave identified the room's original function.
'This was the church,' said Sparks.
Sparks moved forward toward the altar. Larry and Barry fanned out with their lanterns, and the room grew more evenly illuminated. Snow continued to fall through the open ceiling. The air felt as dense and ponderous as the glaze on a
frozen lake.
'There used to be witches used this place for sport,' said
Larry.
'You mean nuns,' corrected Barry.
'Nuns wot had lost their way is wot he said.'
'Feller told us in some pub,' said Barry to Doyle and Eileen—mostly Eileen.
'That's wot he said. Whole convents' worth, the lot of 'em, went chronic, over to the other side. Devil dodgers one day, consortin' with the Prince of Darkness the next. That's why people put the torch to the place.'
'People from the village?' asked Doyle.
'That's right,' said Larry. 'Took matters in their own hands. Killed and tortured and otherwise beat the devil right out of them nuns, right here in this room, that's what we heard.'
'Tommyrot,' said Eileen.
'That's the jimjams,' agreed Barry. 'The fella was wonky
wit' gin.'
'I'm not sayin' it's the virgin Gospel, I'm just sayin' it's
what he—'
'Bring the lanterns!' shouted Sparks.
Barry and Larry scurried to the front of the cathedral, bearing the light. Doyle and Eileen quickly followed. Sparks was standing over a closed and weather-beaten crate lying in the altar area on a loose pile of dirt.
'What's that then?' asked Larry.
'It's a coffin, idn't it?' said Barry.
Doyle thought of Stoker's account of the old sailor's story and the night cargo he saw brought ashore from the ship.
'The nails securing the lid have been removed,' said Sparks, kneeling down with one of the lanterns.
'Didn't the old man say they brought two coffins up here?' said Doyle.
'Yes,' said Sparks, looking at the wood.
'So what's inside the bloody thing?' said Eileen.
'Only one way to find that out, isn't there, Miss Temple?' said Sparks, and he reached for the lid.
As Sparks's hand made contact with the wood, a chilling howl went up from just outside the building: the cry of a wolf, almost certainly, but the timbre lower, more guttural than any Doyle had ever heard. They froze as the sound echoed away.
'That was very close,' whispered Doyle.
