Twelve Days Read online

  Twelve Days

  Paul Williams

  Copyright © 2019 Paul Williams

  The right of Paul Williams to be identified as the Author of the Work has been asserted by him in accordance Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

  First published in 2019 by Bloodhound Books

  Apart from any use permitted under UK copyright law, this publication may only be

  reproduced, stored, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means, with prior permission in writing of the publisher or, in the case of reprographic production, in accordance with the terms of licences issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency.

  All characters in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

  www.bloodhoundbooks.com

  Print ISBN 978-1-913419-12-7

  Contents

  1. A partridge in a pear tree

  2. Two turtle doves

  3. Three French hens

  4. Four calling birds

  5. Five golden rings

  6. Six geese a-laying

  7. Seven swans a-swimming

  8. Eight maids a-milking

  9. Nine ladies dancing

  10. Ten lords a-leaping

  11. Eleven pipers piping

  12. Twelve drummers drumming

  Epilogue

  Acknowledgements

  A note from the publisher

  Love crime, thriller and mystery books?

  You will also enjoy:

  1

  A partridge in a pear tree

  Castello di Rocca stood on the edge of a chasm. I stared at the dark windows, the heavy stone, the turrets. Castles like this had been built in the Middle Ages to look menacing to enemies, to inspire fear.

  I looked back. Just cloud and fog now, as if the world behind me had been swallowed up.

  ‘Benvenuti nella casa propria del diavolo.’

  ‘Who lives here?’ I asked the driver.

  ‘A mad old man. He lets out the castle to the odd mazzo di turisti.’ The driver punctuated his sentences with hand movements, nerve-racking because he kept taking his hands off the wheel, even on tight bends, to make his point. ‘Usually they come to see the torture instruments. But the museo is closed in winter. Number one tourist attraction in Reggio Emilia in summer. Signor Rossi collects instruments of torture.’

  It wasn’t the thought of a castle full of contraptions of torment that worried me. The more intriguing question was why the Reverend James Miller had picked this remote castle for a reunion of the chosen.

  If it were not for Suzanne, I wouldn’t be here. Nothing else could have dragged me to meet these people again: the preacher who destroyed my childhood, and his surrounding group of gloating, smug hypocrites. But Suzanne was coming. For years I tried to obliterate her from my mind, outrun her, but that was impossible. The media had slathered her image over billboards and magazines; she waltzed across movie and television sets and her latest hairstyle, her daring dress at the Oscars, her new facelift were the subjects of whole articles written in women’s magazines.

  Seeing her again, I hoped, might lay ghosts to rest.

  The Fiat Uno squeezed through a narrow passage between sheer rocks. Boulders looked poised to fall from the top. The sky pressed down.

  ‘A storm is coming. Look!’ The driver took both hands off the wheel to indicate the heavy low clouds.

  I pulled at the neck of my sweater. ‘Is this the only way in? The only road to the castle?’

  ‘Si, signore.’

  He pointed up the road, and I noticed the mark on his left hand. The driver saw me staring and explained. ‘La volgia. Birthmark.’

  ‘I thought it was a tattoo.’ The rough brown patch of skin was shaped like the hourglass silhouette of a woman’s mid-section; dark hair grew out of it.

  He laughed. ‘The woman of my life. You have a woman in your life?’

  ‘No.’ I had no woman in my life. I had women in my life. A series of deflections, look-a-likes, bad copies. Trying to eradicate a prototype that had been written into my neural networks.

  Her.

  The Fiat Uno rounded one last bend and the castle rose before me, stretching into the cloud. I considered that perhaps this was not the optimum place to be trapped for twelve days with the remnants of what I now considered to be a cult.

  Lichen clung to walls, turrets and crenulations. At this elevation, I could see why the castle had been built here; an impressive giant stone citadel dominating the medieval landscape and the Enza River valley below that isolated itself from the outside world. ‘How do they get supplies? Food? Drink? Mangia. Bere.’

  ‘That’s my job, don’t you worry. I’m the concierge. I will take good care of you. Plenty food, how you call it… pernice. I brought everything.’

  ‘And wine, I hope.’

  ‘Instruction from your padrone – no alcohol.’

  So much for celebrating Christmas and the new year. This was the Reverend James Miller’s doing. He had never tolerated alcohol, smoking or dancing in the congregation at Joyful Resurrection. Every Sunday as teens, we listened to his black and white morality. I wondered if he had softened his extremist views. Probably not. I leaned back against the seat, attempted to relax whilst considering that each bend in the road might be the last thing I saw.

  The Twelve, we once called ourselves.

  The driver parked on gravel in front of a wide entrance hall. He got out and opened the car door for me.

  ‘Grazie. Quanta costa?’ I almost didn’t want to know the answer, because it was Christmas Day and I assumed the price of my ride would be inflated accordingly.

  ‘No, no. All paid for by the signore.’

  We shook hands and I felt the texture of the birthmark. ‘Drive carefully… looks like a snowstorm is brewing.’

  ‘Buon Natale!’

  Dark snow clouds sagged over the valley, with every moment increasing the chance of a white Christmas. I wrapped myself in my coat, took a deep breath of freezing air and stepped into the past.

  The sense of unease in the pit of my stomach could not be ignored. But now that I was here, there was nothing to do but crunch through a thin layer of ice and snow to the entrance. Below-zero air froze my sinuses as I knocked and then pushed on the heavy door, which swung open on creaking hinges.

  ‘Rafe. Merry Christmas! You’re looking good. Still as young as ever.’

  ‘Merry Christmas to you too, Reverend James.’

  I called him Reverend because that is what he had trained us to do as teen converts in his church, the Church of the Joyful Resurrection, out of respect for his office, he had told us. But now the name stuck in my throat. ‘Reverend’ was a descriptor, not a title, and by insisting on it as a title showed that this pastor lacked appropriate boundaries, lacked respect for the power balance within the church, and had arrogantly invented his own title. But the habit stuck.

  The Reverend James Miller had aged well. He was cleanly shaven, and his bald head shone. ‘Been a long time. A long time. How are you?’ He didn’t wait for a response.

  He ushered me in. A Christmas tree stood in the centre of a tall-ceilinged room, and two men with their backs to me pulled decorations out of a box and strung them up on the branches. Christmas lights flashed on and off. Two women hunched over a nativity scene, arranging the figures under the tree. I was surprised. Reverend James had never allowed Christmas trees in our church, considering them pagan symbols. Maybe he had softened his views. A ‘Merry Christmas’ banner hung between two large chandeliers. A fire roared in a large grate, and a mirror the size of the entire wall on the opposite side reflected the glitter and lights. I felt thankful for the warmth. My apprehension eased, for a moment.

  The giant mirro
r reflected everything back, doubling the movements of the small group gathered there. I watched myself walk by. My clothes were too casual for the occasion: black Levi jeans, black Levi shirt, university sweater, a heavy black overcoat. The others were dressed for a dinner party. But then I remembered that they always dressed up like this for church and holy days – men in suits and ties, women in long, high-necked dresses.

  One man decorating the tree turned. ‘It’s Rafe! Hey, Rafe!’

  ‘Hi, Glen. How are you?’

  ‘Rafe, you old devil, you! You still have all your hair.’

  He put the long string of lights down and reached out his hand. To tell the truth, I hardly recognised the thin man with the crew cut, starched shirt, grey pants and shiny shoes whom I had once thought of as my friend. I say ‘friend’, but even then we had been competitive in our studies, in sports, popularity, and, of course, women. ‘Merry Christmas, Rafe. You look well.’

  I wanted to say the same, but Glen’s face, arms and hands bore scars. Skin lesions and what looked like skin grafts crossed his nose, his cheeks. But I smoothed over my surprise at his appearance. ‘You too.’

  ‘After a career in the military, I think I’m pretty fit. Not as fit as you. You haven’t aged at all,’ he said. And then, looking cautiously around him, Glen lowered his voice. ‘Hey, I know you’ve just arrived – and I don’t know if I’ll get another chance to say this – but would you come up to my room after supper? I need to talk to you.’ He gave an anxious glance around the room.

  ‘Sure.’ I said. ‘So where have they put us?’

  ‘He’s cooped you all up in little cells where the monks used to live. Men and women separated, as usual. But there are ten of us, so someone has to sleep in the old tower room. I didn’t want to, but no one else wants to be alone up there.’ He pointed to a dark stairwell in the corner of the room.

  ‘I’ll take the tower room if you want. I don’t care.’

  ‘It’s okay. I’m a loner by nature.’ Glen turned. ‘Hey, Mike! You remember Mike?’

  ‘How would I not remember one of The Twelve?’

  Mike the machine; fit, tanned and bristling with energy. I shook his hand and he gripped mine firmly – too firmly, as if he still had something to prove. ‘Hey, Mike.’

  ‘I’m good, man, really good.’

  ‘You still doing that fitness instructor and tour guide stuff?’ I asked.

  ‘Yep. And add mountaineer to that. Climbed them all. Everest. Kilimanjaro. Annapurna. Mont Blanc.’ Mike wore his arrogance comfortably. Even back then, he had presented himself as way better than anyone else, and you had to believe it too. But now he looked worn, as if he had driven his body too hard over the years.

  ‘Glen,’ Mike said. ‘You still a military man?’

  ‘Retired. Good thing about the military, you can retire early. Lot of burnout.’

  Mike nodded. ‘What about you, Rafe? Still writing those controversial books?’

  I pulled out the dog-eared paperback author’s copy from my large overcoat pocket. I had been looking over it on the plane to add any changes for yet another print run in the UK. Gaudy red cover, dripping with blood. God is Dead. ‘It’s selling well. International bestseller, as you must know. Already into its fifth edition. So lots of travel and no rest for the wicked, I’m afraid.’

  Glen shook his head, then looked about him again. ‘Not a good time, Rafey. For a title like that. It’s Christmas Day.’

  I returned it to my pocket, perversely enjoying the discomfort I could see on their faces.

  Mike turned to welcome another of The Twelve; a large man I for the life of me didn’t recognise. He looked like a character in a Roald Dahl novel who had eaten too much chocolate and was about to burst.

  ‘Hey, Rafe, it’s Stephen, Stephen Smith.’

  Stephen. Of course. We had clashed badly in the past over my questioning of the cult’s truth. He still looked sour, but smiled broadly at me. All forgiven, apparently. We shook hands cold-fish style. Stephen was pasty-skinned, pampered, complacent. A look that said he had never suffered in his life. Never had to transform himself, pull himself out of the sludge of real life or wrestle with self-worth. He had been born into money. If it was easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than a rich man to enter heaven, Stephen would be on the outside of the pearly gates for eternity.

  Glen clapped Stephen on the back. ‘Stephen here’s done the best of all of us.’

  ‘Really?’ After all, I was an international bestselling author. Suzanne was a Hollywood star.

  Stephen waved a pudgy hand in the air. ‘Finance. Stocks. Investment banking.’

  ‘The nerd of the class,’ said Glen, ‘always has the last laugh.’

  Status, money, career. The way we introduced ourselves. Hi, I’m Rafe, backslider, atheist, writer of heretical books, university professor.

  To tell the truth, I thought I might probably have enjoyed eating live cockroaches more than endure these reintroductions. I had run from these people for a reason. But, I reconciled, I – like the other men, I guessed – had come back for a reason. A single one.

  And I wondered how Reverend James had financed this whole retreat. We had all been sent first-class air tickets. Stephen must have had a hand in it. I was sure of it, the way he was basking in self-adulation.

  ‘Would you like a drink, Rafe?’ Stephen poured sparkling apple juice into a champagne glass and passed it to me. ‘It was quite a miracle how this all happened. A few of us old stalwarts got chatting, met Reverend James, and we realised that this is what God wanted.’

  The Twelve always gave credit to God for everything good. And for things that went wrong? Well, Satan’s fault. Their world views were watertight. So comforting. The world divided into the saved and the damned. If only life were that simple.

  ‘Glen, you said there’d only be ten of us. Who’s not coming?’ I asked.

  Glen shook his head. ‘You didn’t know? About Sean Philips and Jack Davies?’

  Sean and Jack were the two dissenters who had left Joyful Resurrection shortly after I did.

  ‘Sad, very sad,’ Mike said. ‘They were each killed in a car crash. Horrible. But sort of obvious that once outside the protection of God, anything can happen.’

  I bit my lip. This was one of those statements I would never allow my undergraduates to get away with, based as it was on false premises. But I shut up. For now. I had to remember I was back in the old cult. They still believed in that shit. All of it.

  ‘Which is why it’s important that the remainder of us meet up,’ Glen added.

  ‘Exactly,’ Stephen said. ‘We’re glad you could be here.’

  I smiled. Enjoyed my own lie for a moment. ‘I wouldn’t have missed it for anything.’

  ‘Praise the Lord,’ said Stephen. ‘I’m sure Reverend James is pleased to have you here.’

  A clatter and a smash made us all turn to the Christmas tree. A woman was untangling a green line of lights and had dropped some red and green baubles, which splintered into a thousand pieces. ‘Sorry, guys.’

  ‘Hey,’ I said, and lowered my head to speak in Stephen’s ear. ‘Is that Alison Jones?’

  Her glasses were still huge, with lenses that made her eyes look surprised the whole time. High neckline, thick, shapeless skirt to her ankles. Thin-lipped, she held out a limp hand but would not hug me. Girls and boys didn’t touch or hug, back then. The distance between the sexes needed to be maintained as strictly as the demilitarised zone between the two Koreas.

  Clinging to Alison’s arm was none other than Reverend James’ wife, Linda, as small, frail and beautiful – and ice cold – as ever. She wore a formal long skirt and a long-sleeved blouse that buttoned to her neck. The Ice Queen, we used to call her. I made the mistake of embracing her: she pulled back from me with haste. ‘Good to see you,’ she said.

  ‘And Danny! Haven’t seen you forever. Merry Christmas!’

  Dark-haired and tanned, Danny Wilson hadn’t changed eith
er since he was a school kid. Still looked like a troll with those heavy eyebrows. Still stuttered. But he had done well for himself too, as a car mechanic. Fingernails black. Greasy hair. Family of five. ‘M-merry Christmas, brother,’ he said. ‘I have p-p-prayed for this moment. Are you well in the Lord?’

  ‘I’m well, Danny, but not in the Lord.’

  He looked puzzled. And like Glen had done, he looked about him as if someone was listening.

  Someone was. Reverend James stood behind me, placed his hand on my shoulder. ‘Emily Barnes is held up at the station in Reggio,’ he said. ‘I’ve ordered a taxi to fetch her. She’ll be here shortly. Then we’re all present and accounted for.’

  ‘So Suzanne is here?’ I said.

  ‘Oh yes,’ said Reverend James. ‘She’s in her room, I believe.’

  So here we were again: Glen, Mike, Stephen, Alison, Danny, Rafe. Emily to come and Suzanne to make an appearance. Reverend James and Linda. Ten of the original Twelve. Reverend James had intended an elite group in the Church, twelve apostles to lead the flock, to go out into the world and spread the faith. We had all made a pact, a vow to keep the faith.

  I had broken that. My bestselling book was a radical damnation of James Miller and his Church of the Joyful Resurrection. I had likely infuriated them all. Some, I’m sure, hated me.

  ‘Ladies and gentlemen!’ Reverend James clapped his hands. ‘Gather round! Huddle up! We are now on retreat.’ He held up a straw basket. ‘Remember to please deposit all your electronic devices here.’

  ‘No way,’ said Mike.

  ‘There’s no reception anyway,’ said Danny, placing his laptop and cell phone in the basket. ‘I’ve been t-trying.’

  When he called it a retreat, a cutting off from the outside world, he was not kidding.