[Sequoia] Read online

  AUTHOR’S NOTE

  PROLOGUE

  ONE

  TWO

  THREE

  FOUR

  FIVE

  SIX

  SEVEN

  EIGHT

  NINE

  TEN

  ELEVEN

  TWELVE

  THIRTEEN

  FOURTEEN

  FIFTEEN

  SIXTEEN

  SEVENTEEN

  EIGHTEEN

  NINETEEN

  TWENTY

  TWENTY-ONE

  TWENTY-TWO

  TWENTY-THREE

  TWENTY-FOUR

  TWENTY-FIVE

  TWENTY-SIX

  TWENTY-SEVEN

  TWENTY-EIGHT

  TWENTY-NINE

  THIRTY

  THIRTY-ONE

  THIRTY-TWO

  THIRTY-THREE

  THIRTY-FOUR

  THIRTY-FIVE

  THIRTY-SIX

  THIRTY-SEVEN

  THIRTY-EIGHT

  THIRTY-NINE

  FORTY

  FORTY-ONE

  FORTY-TWO

  FORTY-THREE

  FORTY-FOUR

  FORTY-FIVE

  FORTY-SIX

  FORTY-SEVEN

  FORTY-EIGHT

  FORTY-NINE

  FIFTY

  FIFTY-ONE

  FIFTY-TWO

  FIFTY-THREE

  FIFTY-FOUR

  FIFTY-FIVE

  FIFTY-SIX

  FIFTY-SEVEN

  CODEX SAMPLE

  EXODUS

  COPYRIGHT © 2014 ADRIAN DAWSON

  The right of Adrian Dawson to be identified as the Author

  of the Work has been asserted by him in accordance with

  the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

  Published in Great Britain in 2014 by

  QUERKEE

  www.querkee.com

  Apart from any use permitted in under UK copyright law, this publication may not be reproduced, stored, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means, without prior permission in writing of the publishers or, in the case of reprographic production, in accordance with the terms of licenses issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency.

  [Sequoia] is quite possibly a work of fiction.

  Cataloguing in Publication Data is available from the British Library.

  Falling in your, falling in your arms

  Fish on a line, learns to live on dry land

  Thrown back again to drown

  Kinder with poison

  Than pushed down a well - or a face burnt to hell

  Feel the cruel stones breaking her bones

  Dead before born

  Swimming Horses

  © Siouxsie and the Banshees

  Writers: Robert Smith, Steve Severin, Siouxsie Sioux, Budgie

  AUTHOR’S NOTE

  First of all, let me offer heartfelt thanks and a debt of gratitude to Malcolm Gaskill whose amazing book “Witchfinders: A Seventeenth Century English Tragedy” gave me a phenomenal insight into the lives of those accused of witchcraft in the 1600s. Unfortunately, illness kept me from meeting Malcolm in person but his work speaks for itself. If you find any of the witchcraft accusations or procedures in this novel intriguing, then might I suggest you seek out his book and relish it, as I did. Thank you also to Arthur for some truly invaluable input along the way, but most of all thank you to Kellie… for way too many reasons to list.

  You are my Rachael.

  Let me also say that if you have not yet read Sequence, then you should. Partly because, according to the author (me) and The Times newspaper (who voted it one of the Top 5 Thrillers of 2011), it is a cracking good read, and partly because, whilst you will get much of [Sequoia], you will not get it all. Your jigsaw will be missing some pieces. And that’s never pleasant, is it? You end up with kittens missing an eye.

  The second point is that parts of this novel are set in a time prior to England changing from the Julian to the Gregorian calendar. To avoid confusion, all dates have been converted and are effectively Gregorian or ‘New Style’ dates.

  The final point I would like to address is in answer to the question which has constantly surrounded me during the creation of [Sequoia] - why the brackets, Adey? They look silly. Well, let me tell you...

  The whole Sequence debacle, and it is a debacle, will be brought to its logical conclusion in the forthcoming Sequitur (sɛkwɨtər/; Latin: a logical conclusion to all that came before), but I just want to step to one side a little first and deal with something that often makes my blood bubble like soup. I’ve been known to growl.

  Be it film, book or that rapidly descending reality joke that television is becoming, the thing I really don’t like is that the writers often choose to omit the one thing that is so vital to any story: consequence. Buildings blow up, bridges collapse and entire blocks of cities are destroyed as one superhero chases another (or some giant lizard) wildly across town and, if it does not suit the narrative, then we never get to see the consequences. But people died! Probably lots of them. And we never even touch on the aftermath? Not buying it, sorry. When a building blows up with people in it (as indeed happened in Sequence), then there are consequences to be had and, to the people involved, those consequences are huge. Indeed, in all major events it is rarely the event itself that is the real issue at all. I mean, who cares if there is an earthquake (now there’s a misnomer) of magnitude 9.8 on the surface of Mars? No-one got hurt. No harm, no foul.

  No, the ‘marsquake’ is not the issue, nor the explosion, the car crash or the building collapse. It never is. The consequences are the issue. The consequences are the story.

  So, let me step to one side from this whole Sequence-Sequitur thing I seem to have conjured up over too many sleepless nights (now do you see why I added the brackets?) and show you the consequences of what those idiots in Sequence actually did. Let me show you just how many lives their vain and egregious attempts to play God actually destroyed. Then, in Sequitur, we’ll see if we can’t get back to dealing with them personally. I mean, there are still some left. Not many, but the ones that are left need some form of comeuppance, right? Don’t even get me started on the ones you don’t know about yet. They’re just nasty.

  Anyway, consequences can be painful. That’s my point. They can destroy lives many times over.

  Welcome to [Sequoia].

  Enjoy.

  Adrian Dawson

  November 2013

  PROLOGUE

  Friday, July 21, 1645.

  Manningtree, Essex, England.

  It wasn’t until she finally opened her eyes that she realised for certain that she was going to die.

  Within minutes.

  Her ears had been the first to wake; scooping familiarity and sending it to a hollow mind which almost begged the eyes to follow suit. The chorus of baying and screams, of which her own voice had long been one of the more vocal, echoed through a head that felt empty and remote, forming a beat more powerful than the drummers who had heralded the victorious as they took the proud march back from Naseby, their heads held high to catch every last scent of victory the air might carry.

  The sound now forcing its way inside her was not that of certain victory, yet it carried with it an air of imminent triumph. Indeed, on previous occasions such as these, in this very square, victory had felt hollow by comparison. A vacuum - if such a heretical, godless thing could exist. The end result was always the same; one more malefactor swaying limply from the hemp as the wind blew away the cheers as swiftly as it had a life. The lives of the crowd, meanwhile, the jeerers and the cheerers, the screamers and the shriekers, just... carried on. No searing light from above to congratulate them on their godly deed and no cleansing wind of change to cool their still-sweating skin. Nothing.
Just life; tough as that life was.

  Which could only mean one thing... there were more. Indeed, there were probably lots more. They might even here now, among the throng; hiding in plain sight. More to watch, more to search and more to prick. More to swim and more to judge.

  More, inevitably, to hang.

  It had always felt so right. So wholesome, pure and so... glorious.

  And yet, for the very first time in her life: so very, very wrong. She had felt as though she were at a party, dancing in a thick crowd, but over a matter of just a few minutes, that crowd had turned ugly.

  Eventually her eyes started to open. Gently at first, as even the first strains of daylight cut like shards, but slowly the swirling mass of shapes came into view; a sea of colour turbulently riding atop a dark storm. Bodies pushed hard against each other as they fought to get close enough to her to convince themselves that this was all their doing, that they alone had saved the world from the darkness which crept into their midst as the end of days drew near. The jeers came in waves, crashing hard against the rocky thoughts which were already starting to form.

  She had seen it so many times, and she had loved it. She had lived for it. It had become a part of who she was.

  Some would prod, some would strike with sticks and some would throw the putrid contents of their dunny buckets and cackle loudly. And some, like she herself once had, would spit. She had done it because she knew, just knew, that one day her pious spittle would do what the law - save for the treasonable offence of killing one’s husband - would no longer permit: it would burn the flesh of the heretics and make them scream. It would sear through their heinous mask of skin and burn away the the evil which lurked within.

  It was starting to rain. Just spots for now, and they were warm, but they were also big, her skin felt raw and they hurt as they hit. As they built and ran to earth they carved harsh lines through the dirt in her face, making her look all the more depraved.

  As the half-opened eyes began to focus and she saw what the raging sea truly was: an angry, snarling, jostling crowd, she could also see - for the first time - why things had felt so wrong this time. Every venomous eye was there as it should be, casting judgment as surely as they cast stones and spittle. Mary Parkin; washer woman with whom she had jostled shoulders many times against a witch; Martha Saunders to whom she had given a piglet not a year past; and the saturnine John Cutler who had long suspected that the scurrilous Anne West had borne the cause of his son’s death, but was not blessed with enough of God’s strength to prosecute.

  All eyes were there to reap their share of the glory and carry it righteously home. The only eyes that were missing today... were hers. And these others were not casting hatred with her, as they had done so many times before; they were casting it... at her.

  As she was pushed, pulled, dragged, scratched and torn through the waves of bodies like flotsam on a violent tide, she could feel an unforgiving grip around her ankles and hear the rattle reminiscent of a gaoler’s keys, a clear sign that she had been manacled. It impeded her stride, though she felt her stride was not of her doing much anyway and she stumbled with alarming and painful regularity. Each time she was immediately heaved near-upright by rough hands and pushed once more into the squall.

  As feeling seeped like molasses through the rest of her body she became aware of a fresh pain, as though a thousand pins were cutting deep into her throat. Though she could not see it, and though she never would, this young ragged girl was wearing a scarf of thorns. Sharp thorns which dug deeper and harder with every push, prod and poke. Blood ran through dirt toward her chest, her clothes already torn from the wrenching she felt in all directions.

  Those who prodded or hit only ever did so with a stick or a reed, as punishment for what had been done to Jesus himself, never with flesh or finger. Evil was, after all, that most vile of diseases; more consuming than tuberculosis; more disgusting than the pox. Worse, one might not even know one had caught such an ague as there would be no ring of roses, no blood in the sputum and no rasping coughs to keep the household awake throughout the dying days. Evil was imperceptible in form and it hid its dark infection in the shadows of the mind, stripping away the love for ones neighbour on which her Puritan beliefs were founded. There was only one cure for such evil and that was to send it back to the depths from which it had risen; something that could only be achieved by permanently destroying the vessel in which it had sailed.

  Love thy neighbour, certainly, but only if thy neighbour was pure of heart and clean of soul.

  Lay waste the flotilla of the evil.

  In an irony that she could barely find space in her frantic mind to perceive, she prayed that this was some mistake... some trial of faith that her God; the true God, was allowing her to see before he lifted her to his bosom and thanked her for her resolve. And then, just as she thought such thoughts and never daring to fully believe them, the shackles from her ankles seemed to fall away and her feet did indeed begin to lift from the earth. Suddenly, she felt as though she were floating toward heaven itself. She wanted to stretch her arms out, as her Lord might once have done, and await God’s embrace but there was no strength left in her blood.

  It did not take long for her to realise the kind of hell she was about to inhabit.

  This was no lift of glory, she realised. She could feel from the force thrust upon, around and about her that her body was being raised not as one might elevate a conqueror, but rather as one might elevate the conquered. She had seen heads sliced clean from the body, crimson still pouring from ragged necks as they were paraded into the village from a nearby skirmish. They were held high for all to see, violently thrown from side to side with unabated anger; vile icons held aloft.

  And that was how it felt. How she felt.

  Within a few seconds, those who had dared lay hands upon her and raise her had removed them again and she was back on her feet; higher now. She felt something solid, a bar perhaps, on which her heels were perched, but with her body still weak it offered little support. It seemed as though all that she was - all that she had ever been - had risen from her belly and gathered around the pain in her throat, its volume impairing her ability to breathe. For this reason, when she tried to speak, and then to cry out, nothing came.

  Something had gone wrong. Terribly wrong. She was not supposed to be here. This was not how she was destined to meet her God, but the hatred in the eyes of those screaming and spitting up at her told her in an instant they they neither knew or cared little. Only one man might know and - if, please God, he were here - he might be her one and only chance at salvation.

  As if to douse any flickers of hope she might feel, the heavens suddenly opened further against her and the rain started to pour. Dark, thick drops which threw themselves at her skin and made her clothes and body feel twice the weight.

  She mustered all the force her body might allow and slowly raised her head against the rain; the thorns tearing her skin and long strands of matted red hair sticking to eyes already darkened from the filth which clung like black scabs to her face. As she narrowed her eyes to focus, the mists in her head not yet cleared, she took on the appearance the crowd had long been expecting: evil coming to the fore. She, in their eyes, was scouring the crowd and seethingly condemning each and every soul among them.

  Eventually she found her prize through the veil of rain: Matthew, the man whose word was as close to God as many of the lesser villagers might ever come, standing away in the distance. He drifted in and out of focus, but from the shape of his hat and beard she was certain it was he. Matthew did not try witches such as she and nor did he condemn them; that was a task for those who filled his purse. Matthew merely confirmed what all had suspected already and, by his confirmation, sent the wretched to a fitting end. Accordingly, he stood on the periphery of the crowd, slightly raised (though she could not see how, a small barrel was often his device of choice) and watched. From half shadow, he too scoured the crowd, a gentle smirk carving a cruel arc through
the beard. Eventually, fate intervened and their eyes crossed paths. Again she tried to speak and again she failed, so instead she pleaded to him with her eyes; begging with all that she found. She expected him to see the error in an instant, to spot the good amongst the foul as surely as he spotted the malevolent among the gracious, but he did not.

  Instead, the smirk grew wider.

  Once the ladder was kicked, so would his purse.

  She opened her mouth, cracked lips still sticky with the most unholy concoction of blood, saliva and excrement and took a deep rasping inward breath. When it was released, it would form just one word; his name in her voice and... if his eyes could not know who she was... then his ears surely would. Like Matthew the Apostle he would hear the word and spread it with great testimony. She, the blessed, would be saved. A raise of his hand and a stern word would bring a conclusive halt to proceedings, his unerring authority still riding with him, and she would be lowered - gently - back to the earth on which she belonged.

  She would meet her God, but it would not be for many a day.

  As the inward air started to slow and her lungs were filled so tightly that she thought her chest might burst, she prepared to scream.

  The crowd, as though to listen, fell silent...

  “Matth...”

  And she fell. Not all the way to earth, but far enough for the tight hemp she now felt surrounding the thorns to pull tighter still, crushing each and every spike hard into her throat. It gripped her windpipe tight in its fist and stopped the word dead before it had even dared to cut the air. Huge droplets of water flicked to earth from her body.

  She moved her feet, unsure if by twitch or by design, and found nothing below them. She was neither on earth nor in heaven but caught in that realm which lies between; the realm inhabited by bats at night and by ravens by day.

  The word, like the ladder, was gone. With it, her chance of life.

  Swiftly, her breath felt weaker and her body weaker still.

  As the crowd instantly started to cheer once more, she gradually felt... nothing. Not even feel the cold relief of hands tugging at her ankles; family or friends desperately trying to shorten the suffering of those they loved. She had no-one in this world because no-one knew who she was. To them, she was a stranger from another place; a usurper. When they looked at her now they saw someone - something - that they did not, and could not, possibly comprehend.