Savage Spirits - Chapter Two

Armed with the all-important file and the vital information it contained Max and Stephanie set out on the 70 mile drive to Midhope Rectory, the home of Ms Amelia Bank-Craven.
After quickly browsing the file and phoning again, a weekend stay had been pre-arranged. Stephanie had succumbed to Max's badgering and eventually consented to, what she considered to be, a fool hardy and ill-fated arrangement.

However, after hastily weighing the pro's and con's and employing her intimate knowledge of Max's whims and irritatingly frequent distractions, she decided to sacrifice one weekend that would exhaust his obsessive eagerness and clear his mind, to concentrate on the more pressing matters at hand.

It was a double-edged challenge on her part and could easily swing either way, but, ultimately it was a risk she was willing to take, though in truth, it was clearly a decision governed by necessity rather than choice.
Already the winter sun was sinking low in the sky and darkness was approaching, emphasized by the thick, heavy rain clouds being urged ever closer by a strengthening wind.

"How much further?" Stephanie asked, fidgeting uncomfortably in her seat, she hated car journeys, especially when Max was at the wheel. Has she had pointed out on far too many occasions, 'it brings out the monster in you Max!'
"Not too far. Only twenty miles or so."
"What!" Twenty miles!"
"Relax! It's main roads and carriageways from here on. We'll be there in no time."

"I'm regretting this already!" she whispered, diverting her gaze to the passenger window and faking interest in the passing scenery.
Even through the shroud of semi-darkness Stephanie could observe and appreciate the ever urbanized landscape. The number of red brick building and the shinny silver-grey corrugated panels of industrial units were being replaced with increasing expanses of hilly, open pastures and dense woodland. Whatever the weekend was to produce, it would at the very least be a welcome two-day break from the stressful hustle and bustle of city life.

"Ok, once we turn off at the next junction, Midhope is just two miles down that road.
"Great! I can hardly wait." Stephanie made no attempt to hide her sarcasm.
"Are you going to be like this all weekend?"
"What do you mean?"
"You know what I mean ... Ready to bite my head off every time I open my mouth."
Stephanie afforded him a wry smile as she began her defensive reply. "I'm sorry, Max. You know how I hate traveling. Once we get there, I'll be just as ready as you are to start partying."

"There you go again!"
"Now what have I said."
Max said nothing, a mere shake of his head in mock disgust was all he could muster to signify the obvious, she had out-witted him to his usual reluctant state of resignation. And the rest of the journey passed in silence.

"That's the Rectory there!" Max finally announced, with some excited, which unsurprisingly, Stephanie did not share;
"Oh fantastic! We have to spend two nights in that dump?"
"Ok, I admit it's a bit run-down..."
"Run-down! Max, its derelict!"
"I think you're exaggerating a bit, as usual. It could use a lick of paint and a little TLC maybe, but other than that."

"I don't know about TLC, Max. I think a JCB would be more fitting.
"The old dear lives there alone. It can't be easy for her."
"At last we agree on something." Stephanie laughed mockingly. "It can't be easy for anyone to live in a wreck like that, despite what age they are."

For a moment the two visitors sat in the car parked alongside the once magnificent ornate gateway, attempting to soak up the atmosphere of their temporary accommodation. This was a long practiced tradition for Max, in particular.

He insisted that just a few moments spent in quiet contemplation on arrival at a location allowed him open his 'essential channels' up and make a crucial connection with the energies that were contained within.

On this occasion it was different ... very different! Almost before he steered the car onto over-grown driveway he was bombarded by a seething barrage of r aging energies. Some were weak and invoked sadness within him that he struggled to contain, though these were quickly demoted to unreachable distance by much stronger anger fueled energies that demanded his notice. He had experienced such extreme emotions before, more times than he cared to remember and as a consequence had learned to shield himself from their torturous influence.

However, what concerned him most were the dense black voids that drifted and blocked out any form of conscious response, other than absolute terror. Only once before had he experienced such abject horror, such absolute consumption of his senses, that being way back in a part of his past he had long since relegated to the deepest and most secure corners of his subconscious where they remained, only attempting escape in his darkest night mares.

"Are you alright, Max?"
He said nothing.
"Max! What's wrong?"
Still he said nothing. He sat motionless, pale and rigid. His ashen, expressionless face stared through the windshield, fixed with unblinking eyes on the dismal facade of Midhope Rectory.
"Max. You're scarring me ... say something." Stephanie pleaded, her voice showing the imminent panic welling inside her gut. "I knew it was a mistake coming here."
Without acknowledgment of his companions concerns, Max opened his door and slide slowly out on to the long grass that had eaten away the thin tarmac.
"Where are you going?"

He paused only to close the door with a slow effortless sweep of his arm. Then he walked a few steps forward before taking up statuesque station within the brilliant beam of the headlight that cut its way into darkness. His massive shadow projected from ground to gutter on the Rectory's sad frontage.
Stephanie's response was one silenced by painful fear.
Only when Max turned slowly and his marble-like eyes caught in the beam of light could she move, let alone herself shallow utterances of absolute shock.
"Oh my God! Max!" She yelled and made an instinctive lunge from her seat, stumbling insanely through the darkness to throw her arms around him. "Come back! Max ... listen to me ... shut it out!"

She expended no effort, none was needed. When her arms locked around him the shackles that held him instantly vanished. The blackness were defeated as the first rays of sunlight impaling the dark rule of night.
"She needs us Steff ... she needs our help!" Max exclaimed in an exhausted whisper.
To try to dissuade him would have been foolish, and foolish she was not. To stop him would be impossible she knew this to be so. But to join him and stand true as she had so often in the past was something that she doubted. Her loyalty was unquestioned, her faith in him strong, but still something nagged, the innate grasp of reality have saved her before, and would do again, strength and courage had been aspects she had seldom needed to call on to assure her survival. Now more than ever she felt victim of their desertion.

"We can't do this alone, Max," she began to sadly confess. Whatever is here is too strong for us."
"I know Steff ... believe me, I know." Max paused and pulled in a painful gasp of air. The tightness in his chest resisted its passage, until, at last, like a drowning man escaping his watery grave he coughed and gasped and the resistance was gone. "I can't walk away now!"
Together they turned and faced up the drive. Neither offered reasons why they should go on or with withdraw. They simply took step after step in mutual agreement, resigned to their fate and whatever lay in wait.