The Black Alchemist: A Terrifying True Story Page 4

  6.

  Bernard closing

  the door of

  Lullington church.

  Eventually, the final group of visitors left, giving us the site to ourselves for the first time.

  Taking advantage of the situation, I walked briskly into the church and knelt down in front of the altar, leaving the door open so that Bernard could see what I was doing. Perhaps he might be able to work better on his own.

  Closing my eyes, I tried mentally to open up to the site and ask for help with our quest. Could anyone tell us why we had been led here?

  For five minutes I contemplated the situation, hoping Bernard would now be given some sort of message. Suddenly, there were footsteps behind me.

  ‘Come on. Let’s go,’ Bernard said, his voice echoing as he stood in the doorway. ‘There’s another group of visitors coming up the path, but I think I know now what’s going on. You’d better take this.’

  Turning around, I took hold of a muddy length of polished stone about eight inches long, blue-grey in colour, and clearly shaped to look like a spearhead. Along two of its three faces were lines of what appeared to be magical symbols.

  Where did this come from?

  ‘By the stone foundations, over there,’ he said, nodding his head towards the clump of stone and mortar, some fifteen or so yards away.

  ‘After you knelt down and started attuning I appeared to receive a boost of energy. It allowed me to pinpoint exactly where it was hidden. I found it just below the earth on one side.’

  He stopped to touch and rub his forehead. ‘Come on, let’s go. I don’t feel very well.’

  7. Bernard at the foundations holding the spearhead. Was the person, or persons, responsible for burying the stone spearhead also responsible for the ‘black magic’ he felt was going on here?

  ‘Yes, but I’ll tell you what else I picked up when we get away from here.’ Hold on. There was no way I was going to leave this place until he had shown me exactly where the spearhead was found.

  Bernard reluctantly agreed, and so, only after he had posed at the spot for several photos did we finally leave, having been in the churchyard for something like an hour.

  ‘I really don’t feel very well,’ Bernard complained, as we began the short drive back to Wilmington Priory.

  I suggested he let me know if he wanted to be sick.

  Five minutes down the road he asked me to stop the car. As I jammed on the brakes, he opened the door, leapt out quickly and vomited repeatedly on the roadside.

  I felt somewhat guilty. It was my fault he was in this state. We should have left straight away, as he had requested, and not remained there to take unnecessary photographs. I also realised we should have carried out some kind of protection ritual. This would have strengthened his aura and provided the psychic with adequate protection against any external influences of an undesirable nature.

  As Bernard walked back to the car, and the journey continued, I realised something of significance. The stone spearhead Bernard had discovered was quite obviously the ‘head’ that Ogmor had told us to find and remove. It was not a stag’s head, but a spearhead. So we were meant to have found it. Yet for what reason?

  The answer seemed to lie in the fact that the spearhead had been placed in the ground as some kind of fixing marker to, in some way, seal the intentions of an occult ritual—the ‘black magic’ Bernard had picked up on as soon as we had arrived. Yet its presence had left a rather nasty aftertaste at Lullington, the reason why Ogmor wanted us to remove this ritually charged artefact.

  Yet how did all this relate to the legend of Peredur, the Castle of the Chessboard and the removal of the stag’s head? And what about our quest to find the Stave of Nizar? That morning we had journeyed to the Sussex Downs in an attempt to locate an ancient Egyptian ceremonial staff possessed by the monks of Wilmington Priory. Instead, we had ended up getting involved in a psychic quest to remove a stone object from a secluded churchyard.

  None of this made sense. Not yet, at least.

  Back at the priory Bernard strolled off to clean himself up. When he returned I made him go through an aura-building visualisation in an attempt to help him regain some of his lost vital energy. It seemed to do the trick, and so, sitting on the grass in the late afternoon sun, he finally revealed what had happened as his hand had made contact with the inscribed stone spearhead.

  ‘It was placed there,’ he started, ‘by just one man, working alone. And done as part of a ritual of some sort, when the sun was low. I could see shadows being cast across the churchyard.

  ‘The person who put it there, he was quite tall, and wore a black cowled robe. Its floppy hood concealing his face.’

  8. The Lullington stone spearhead at Wilmington Priory. What else did he see?

  ‘He used the stone foundations as some kind of makeshift altar, I would say. And built a magic circle using a dagger and a yellow cord that he took from around his waste.

  ‘It was at this point that the spearhead was left. Sealing and intensifying the ritual’s purpose.’

  But why do this at Lullington?

  Bernard shook his head. ‘No idea. All I know is that it left a nasty taste at the place.’ He paused before adding: ‘I get the feeling this person’s into some pretty dark practices.’

  When did all this occur? Was it recent?

  ‘Some time ago, I should think,’ was all he could say.

  ‘Can we go now?’ he asked, clearly wanting to leave the area. ‘I think we’ve had enough fun for one day, don’t you?’ He stood up and began to make his way back to the car. I followed behind.

  Reluctantly, I had to accept that our questing activities really were over for the day. There was always the chance we could return at some point to continue the search for the Stave of Nizar.

  That was if he could face coming back.

  ‘Maybe,’ was the only word he could muster.

  5 The Stag’s Head

  Saturday, 1st June, 1985. A howling wind tore violently through a copse of tall, spindly trees on top of the mound-like hillock on which Bernard now found himself in a state of confusion and fear. The pitch black helped conceal the location. There was a clearing and it looked like Lullington again, although he could not be sure.

  Glancing towards the ground, his eyes beheld a disturbing sight—hundreds of black scavenger birds, rooks it seemed, desperately flapping their wings in a state of chaotic frenzy, unable to fly. Then an even more obscene sight greeted him— three silhouetted figures in black cowled robes stood silent and motionless in the centre of the clearing. In the hands of the middle figure was a huge, black Calvary cross, some six feet in height, held before him as if to mock and mimic the very symbol of the Christian faith.

  The whole scene reeked of evil and Bernard was not going to stay. He had to return to the security and protection of his home before he was drawn too deeply into this macabre ritual. His mind’s eye lifted from the mound before darkness enveloped him.

  Twisting and turning in his sleep, Bernard regained consciousness and opened his eyes. The more familiar surroundings of the bedroom calmed him. Yet the imagery and feelings of the curious dream were too strong to ignore. He would only be drawn back—back to that place. No, he could not return to sleep. He would have to get up. It was the only way.

  Trying not to wake his wife, he slid out of bed and quietly left the room. Downstairs, he lit a cigarette and put the kettle on for a cup of coffee. His nerves needed calming, he told himself.

  Where was this mound he had witnessed? He sensed it was situated within a copse of tall, spindly trees. It felt like Lullington. But he had seen no church. So was it there?

  Something told him that the disturbing sight of the black scavenger birds was a clue. They were rooks, he was sure of it, and the mound’s name was the Rookery. Yes, the Rookery. That was it. Perhaps Andy would be able to find it.

  Pouring out the boiling water, he thought about the three men in the black cowled robes. Who were they? Was one
of them the cowled figure he had seen planting the stone spearhead in Lullington churchyard? If so, who were the other two? He could provide no answers. In fact, he was not even sure if he had witnessed a real event, or whether the dream was symbolic—a portent perhaps of things to come.

  Baffled, tired and confused, Bernard stubbed out his cigarette and scribbled down a few notes, before finishing his coffee and tiptoeing back upstairs. Climbing into bed, he noted the time. It was 4.25 am.

  Tuesday, 4th June. It was now five days since Bernard had discovered the inscribed stone spearhead, which I had easily identified as a piece of grey shale, naturally polished by the actions of the sea, and picked up most probably on a beach somewhere in the south of England. Yet the meaning of its unique magical symbols eluded me. Nowhere had I been able to find any similar characters used in occult practices. However, somebody would surely recognise them. But who?

  I had an idea. If anyone could decipher them, it would be Nigel Pennick, the Cambridge-based author of a number of books on ancient mysteries and pagan traditions. Nigel had been studying magical alphabets for many years, so perhaps he had come across similar symbols on his travels.

  From a call box I briefly explained to Nigel what had happened and he agreed to see me later that day.

  Within the hour I was travelling on the M11 motorway towards the university city of Cambridge with the precious artefact by my side.

  The bearded author, who bore the distinct likeness of a Victorian scholar, sat in his cramped study listening patiently as I related the extraordinary tale of how the spearhead had come into my possession. Prudence Jones, a flame-haired woman, whose speciality was Norse and Teutonic pagan mysteries, joined us for the discussion.

  I am not sure whether either of them actually believed the story. However, both studied the stone spearhead and attempted to associate its strange symbols with known magical alphabets. So, were they familiar?

  ‘I’m not sure,’ was Nigel’s initial response to my pressing question. After stroking his long beard, he pulled a small booklet, one of his own, towards him. ‘Some of the characters seem to resemble certain letters in a Bardic alphabet adopted by the pseudo-Druids of the eighteenth century. They probably derive from a much older written language of British origin.

  9. The Lullington spearhead with its carved symbols underneath. ‘Yet not enough of the characters match to allow any kind of translation,’ he admitted, reaching for some notepaper. ‘However, we shall see what we have.’

  I waited expectantly as Nigel jotted down peculiar-looking letters between a few broken lines, where the character could not be interpreted, almost like a game of hangman. Yet, in conclusion, none of it made sense. Only a few letters matched, no real words.

  I felt a little disappointed, and Nigel seemed concerned. He kept referring to a book he possessed. It mentioned many of the sites I had spoken about. Eventually, his curiosity overtook him and he left the room in search of the book in question. Minutes later he returned clutching a copy of The Wilmington Giant, written by historical writer Rodney Castleden and published two years earlier.

  ‘Here it is,’ he said, beginning to flick through its pages. ‘The book is about the mysteries surrounding the Long Man of Wilmington, and I’m sure it mentions Lullington church.’

  I looked on patiently as he scanned its index for any references relevant to our debate.

  ‘Ah, here we are,’ he announced, handing me the book. ‘Lots of entries for Lullington and Burlough Castle.’

  Most of them were in one particular chapter, appropriately entitled ‘The Quest’. It began with a brief history of Wilmington Priory, which, I found, included an account of its rather unorthodox religious history.

  Yet it was Rodney Castleden’s reference to an extraordinary article entitled ‘The Long Man of Wilmington’, published in 1932 within the Sussex County Magazine, that really took my attention. Written by a historian named S. F. Annett, it linked the landscape around Wilmington with an episode in the Welsh medieval Grail romance named Peredur—in particular the hero’s visit to the Castle of the Chessboard.

  According to Annett, Peredur, while on a quest comes upon the Castle of the Chessboard, also known as the Castle of Wonders, which is devoid of any inhabitants. Here he is challenged to a game of chess by a board able to play by itself. Peredur plays, loses, and in a fit of rage throws the chessboard into a nearby ‘river’. A maiden then appears who tells Peredur to make good his injury by going to a ‘nearby wood’ and beheading a white stag (Annett specifies a ‘white hart’) that frequents the place.

  The Welsh hero then hunts, kills and beheads the stag, following which a mysterious knight appears who seizes the head and carries it off. As punishment for his failure, Peredur is dispatched to a mound ‘beneath which is a carved man’ and, once there, recites a spell. This triggers the appearance of a huge ‘black man’, ready to do battle. The hero defeats this spectral figure, who disappears back into the mound. Even more remarkable is Annett’s suggestion that the Castle of the Chessboard is, as Ogmor had implied, Burlough Castle, while the ‘nearby wood’, where Peredur hunts, kills and beheads the white stag, is the wooded grove surrounding Lullington church!

  Why the author of this article should have wished to link a specific area of East Sussex with an episode in a medieval Grail romance seemed a complete mystery. Perhaps Annett had been a keen admirer of the Peredur story and so came to see some kind of mythical association with the area in which he lived (the medieval city of Winchester in neighbouring Hampshire features in Grail romances).

  With all this in mind, had Annett been inspired to write his article based on some ancient mythical association between Lullington and a white stag? If so, had Bernard, through his communication with Ogmor, picked up on this same geomythical theme? Alternatively, had Bernard simply picked up on Annett’s own thoughts on the matter?

  More pressingly, had the sinister, black cowled figure seen by Bernard burying the spearhead in Lullington churchyard deliberately chosen this site because he himself had read Annett’s 1932 article (or indeed Rodney Castleden’s book The Wilmington Giant)? Perhaps he had seen the reference to the beheading of the white stag and the releasing of a ‘black man’, and decided to use the sites involved because of their association with the Peredur story. Had he substituted a spearhead for a stag’s head for this very reason? Curiously, the name ‘Peredur’ is said by some scholars to mean ‘steel spear’,5 something that might well have been known to the occultist responsible for concealing the spearhead.

  All this brought to mind a more worrying implication. In the Peredur story, the hero beheads a white stag. A mysterious knight then appears who seizes the head and carries it off. Could the cowled occultist have set up his dark ritual in the full belief that, by some strange quirk of fate, someone, i.e. us, would come along and, in similar with the ‘mysterious knight’ of the tale, make off with the ‘head’? Did this in turn trigger the appearance of the ‘black man’ from the mound, like some kind of dark apparition rising from the grave? It was an eerie thought, but for some reason it made sense.

  The index to Rodney Castleden’s book showed that on page 45 there was a reference to a place called the Rookery in the hamlet of Milton Street. Turning to the page in question, I found it to be the location of Bernard’s disturbing nightmare. It was described as a ‘strange wooded mound’ just south of Burlough Castle.

  Like Burlough, very little is known about the Rookery’s age and past usage. Some local historians believe it to be the site of a small chapel built in 1315 under the direction of the prior of Wilmington by a man named Paganus de Capella, lord of Milton Court, on whose estate the mound was situated. Formerly, the curious hillock had been a rookery, hence its name, although the birds had departed when a past owner of Milton Court had decided to chop down the trees. New ones now grew on the spot, although the rooks have never returned.

  What had seemed like the simple retrieval of a charged ritual artefact, employed as a fixi
ng marker by some shady occultist, was now taking on a much more complex role. Just who was this man, and why had our paths crossed? Whatever the answer, a link had been forged, and this might now prove difficult to break.

  6 First Matter

  Monday, 10th June. In the busy, but somewhat familiar surroundings of The Griffin pub in Danbury, where Bernard and I met to discuss our questing activities, the psychic joined me clasping two pints of beer, bitter for me and Guinness for him. It was our first get together since the visit to Lullington the previous month.

  After only a short while, our conversation turned to the disturbing events of that fateful day and, hoping he might psychometrise the stone spearhead, I brought out and placed the offending object on the table before us. The last time Bernard had touched it in Lullington churchyard, he had picked up a considerable amount about the mysterious occultist who had concealed it as part of some dark ritual. It had also made Bernard physically sick. Even though I had since doused the spearhead with holy water to dissipate its ritualistic charge, I hoped it still retained enough residual energy for him to be able to tell me a little more about the man behind its concealment, that’s if he was up for it, of course.

  A little reluctantly, and with some hesitation, Bernard accepted my request. So after rolling the stone spearhead around in his fingers for a minute or two, he looked up and sighed. ‘Well, it still retains a mild negative feel about it. Do you want any scribbles?’ he asked, pulling a notepad across the table. ‘Scribbles’ was his term for automatic writing inspired by a mental connection with an object or chosen subject.

  Naturally I did, so handed him a pen and waited for a response. Sitting quietly amid the hustle and bustle of the comfortable, yet noisy pub surrounds, he cleared his mind and waited. A few moments later words were scrawled, almost involuntary, across the notepaper. I read them upside down: