No Rest for the Wicked: Part Five

Sparrowhawk looked up at the gaunt ruins, the wind blowing through he golden hair. She was silent for a very long time. Ms. Madison sighed, moving closer to the masked girl.

"This used to be Tolholme Priory," Sparrowhawk ignored Ms. Madison, her voice soft, full of foreboding. "It was the home of the Viscounts St. Martyn, the sort of thing your pal Lady Sylvia might have known. The last one was a pretty weird guy. He was into Satanism and things. He kidnapped a couple of kids from a minor public school in order to sacrifice them to the devil. I joined up with a couple of pals to find out what had happened, and we ended up running Lord St. Martyn to ground here, doing something pretty blasphemous in the chapel - it was still consecrated, you see..."

"Devil-worship?" Ms. Madison laughed scornfully. "Here in England, you can't..."

"More than you know, Lynette..." Sparrowhawk sighed. "Have you heard of Houghton on the Hill?"

"No," Ms. Madison shook her head, "should I?"

"Houghton on the Hill," Sparrowhawk explained, "is a place in Norfolk. It used to be a village, but in 1933 the church was deserted. Due to the events of the war, the church was simply forgotten, it was allowed to become overgrown with brambles. People just forgot it existed. Most importantly, the church was never formally deconsecrated. When a member of the local Women's Institute discovered the church in the summer of 1992, she found the church full of the signs of evil rituals. Bodies had been dug up, and there were signs of sacrifices, maybe even human ones. And this was in the middle of rural England. Just because a thing seems fantasic doesn't mean it's impossible. Of course, for the really big ceremonies, these people need consecrated ground, so they don't happen often. this place had a private chapel, and that made it an ideal place for this sort of foul nastiness. Look around you - how remote is this?"

"Okay..." Ms. Madison looked unconvinced, "so what happened here after you found what was going on here?"

"Look around you..." Sparrowhawk indicated the few shattered ruins. "I broke up the cult, most of them were killed when some really weird stuff went down. Viscount St. Martyn disappeared, and the house came down soon after, as no-one would live there. The demolition stopped after a couple of really odd accidents."

"No..." Ms. Madison shook her head. "This place has been like this for decades."

"You ... you're right," Sparrowhawk looked Ms. Madison in the eyes. "You see, these events took place in 1962."