Saxonhurst Secrets Read online

  Published by Xcite Books Ltd – 2012

  ISBN 9781908262691

  Copyright © Justine Elyot 2012

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, electrostatic, magnetic tape, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the written permission of the publishers: Xcite Books, Suite 11769, 2nd Floor, 145-157 St John Street, London EC1V 4PY

  This is a work of fiction. Names and characters are the product of the author’s imagination and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  Other titles by Justine Elyot

  Chapter One

  WHAT EXACTLY IT was that drew him out of the vicarage study and into the unseasonably warm April air was never clear to Adam Flint. One minute he was unpacking a crate of theological texts, lining them up in neat subsections along the dark wood shelving. The next, he was sweating and giddy, inhabited by the most powerful urge to get outside and be part of the village springtime.

  ‘What’s this? Some kind of spring fever?’ He spoke to himself, a habit he had got into over the years of rehearsing rhetorical questions for his sermons. Nobody else ever gave him properly satisfactory answers besides. ‘Well, a bit of fresh air, what’s the harm?’

  But if somebody had been there to answer that question, before he grabbed the old-fashioned hat and walking cane he liked to affect, despite his being only 31, perhaps he would have stayed indoors. What was the harm? He would know soon enough.

  Saxonhurst certainly didn’t look like the outpost of godlessness he’d been led to expect. The circle of honey-coloured cottages nestled around the church had all the correct bucolic fixtures and fittings – flowery trellises up the walls, diamond-paned windows, thatched roofs. He breathed in the aroma of hyacinths, the sweetness steadying him somewhat, bringing him back to his senses. There was nothing odd or sinister about this place. It was simply a village that had fallen prey to the common 21st century syndrome of entitled materialism and the consequent atrophy of faith. They were good people who looked after their homes, capable of redemption.

  From the corner of his eye, he caught the twitch of a lace curtain. A black cat ran across his path by the National Trust pub. The strong feeling that he should be walking out toward the arable farms on the northern outskirts of the village overwhelmed him, turning his footsteps away from the recreation ground and the infants’ school, along a narrower lane.

  The cottages soon gave way to acres of polytunnels housing tomato plants and courgettes. On his left loomed the ruins of Palmer’s Barn, where local legend had it that a man had killed a girl then hanged himself. He almost fell over the wishing well, hidden by weeds, as his curious eye outlined instead the brutal skeleton of the mythic building. It looked evil and brooding. Perhaps he should perform a consecration there, bring the grace of the redeemer to that burnt-out wreck. Or perhaps he should just write to the council and suggest its demolition. What was the good of keeping it there, a reminder of wickedness past? It couldn’t be good for village spirits.

  When he tried to tear away his gaze and move forward, toward the endless fields of bright yellow rape and the hills beyond, he found that he couldn’t. The blackened timbers held him in thrall, calling to him. This way. It’s this way.

  He hacked a path through brambles and weeds with his walking cane, struggling slowly towards the barn. And then he heard voices, a male shout, some laughter, a high-pitched female shriek that reminded him of a siren’s song.

  There were people behind the barn. Parishioners, he supposed, on a picnic, or maybe some truanting schoolchildren. Whatever they were up to, it sounded rowdy, bacchanalian even. Adam’s eyebrow twitched, a sign that the devil was present and close. He moved forward into the shadow of the barn.

  He stopped.

  Six men, burly young fellows who shone with physical health and strength, chased a woman through the bushy green wheat. It was clear that she was enjoying herself, whooping and laughing as she dodged their great lunging hands. It could be a simple game of chase under the spring sunshine. Except that the men were all painted green and she was completely naked.

  Each of the six male players wore goat horns on his head, and each sported a loincloth, beneath which obvious signs of erection were visible. But they were of mere peripheral interest to Adam, who watched with unflinching fascination the figure of the young woman as she twisted and wove through the wheat, eluding her swains at each turn. She was the most beautiful thing he had ever seen. Her hair cascaded down to the dimple at the top of her buttocks, which were full and round, like her swaying breasts. Wanton lips curved in a smile that revealed a wide gap between her front teeth, seeming to invite kissing. Her eyes glittered with sensuality and joy. She was a devil. She had to be.

  One man roared in triumph, his fingers closing around her upper arm. She tumbled down with him into the greenery, rolling over and over while the remaining players crowded around, punching the air or beating their chests.

  Between the tunnels of their legs, Adam caught sight of the couple kissing fiercely as they struggled. Despite the girl’s resistance, it seemed clear that she was a willing participant in whatever this was. It wasn’t until the man lifted his loincloth and roughly spread his partner’s legs that Adam thought about intervening.

  ‘Fornication,’ he whispered. ‘Sin. The devil.’

  The man’s cock – which was still pink, unlike the rest of him – slid easily into the girl’s shining sex. There was a cheer, then some kind of odd chant, the words of which Adam couldn’t make out.

  If he could have made them out, perhaps he wouldn’t have heard them anyway, for the rush and drum of blood in his ears.

  ‘Sin.’ He fumbled with the fly of his trousers. ‘Fornication.’ He put a hand on his cock, feeling its heat and rigid tension. ‘The devil.’ He began to stroke it in rhythm with the man’s thrusts into that beautiful witch’s tight cunt.

  ‘Depravity.’

  She arched her back, mewling and spluttering, then her fingers slipped between those plump lower lips of hers and set to work. Her flesh was white as pearls amid the green; she looked as if the merest hint of pressure would bruise her.

  ‘Bruise her.’ He threw back his head, panting, his blood filled with wild red heat.

  There was a grunt from the male sinner, and then he rose, his cock departing that obscenely gorgeous body.

  She sat up, propped on one elbow, pouting.

  ‘Oi, Jake Summers, I ain’t done yet.’

  Adam’s hand stilled on his cock. He felt shooting pains in his wrist from the speed at which he’d been masturbating. His fingers were numb. What would happen now?

  ‘Just as well we’re here, then.’

  A second man dropped on to his knees in front of her, exposing his willing cock for her approval.

  She smiled and pushed him back by his shoulders until he sprawled on the ground. Straddling him with pale thighs, she crept up his body until her pussy hovered over his shaft. Her hair drifted along the green-painted chest.

  ‘Must tickle,’ whispered Adam, imagining it.

  Life returned to his hand and he stroked himself all the harder, watching the girl lower herself over her second lover and rotate her sinuous hips.

  The chant started up again. The first man, now flaccid and regaining his breath on the ground, tried to join in but his efforts were half-hearted at best.

  The girl fucked her man hard, tossing her hair, tightening her arse muscles, giving him the ride of his life. Her orgasm came first, a shrill sound like sorrowing birdsong. It hastened Adam’s own finish, his seed landing on the burnt ground in the barn’s long shadow.

  He fe
ll to his knees and put his forehead to the blackened tufts of grass. His hat rolled off his head and lay to one side while Adam poured forth silent, self-loathing lamentation.

  Punish my sin, Lord. I am weak.

  Lusty cries from beyond his crouching figure suggested that the girl was now on to her third lover. He shut his eyes, listening to the growls, the savagely spoken obscenities, the chanting and the thud thud thud.

  ‘Fuck me raw,’ she said, her voice now harsh and ragged. ‘Fuck me, you pussy. Proper, like a man, not like a bloody boy.’

  When Adam looked up, she was on to her fourth, on her hands and knees, getting fucked from behind. He wanted to find his feet and get out of there before his soul turned to ashes, but he couldn’t get up, couldn’t look away.

  Lord, no Lord, please …

  He groaned out loud, feeling his cock twitch again. For a second, he feared that the revellers might hear him, but they were far too involved with their ritual, cheering on their mate as he slammed hard into the girl’s cunt, driving her face and her arms deeper into the dirt with each thrust, finally smacking her bum as he filled her with her fourth helping of spunk.

  Surely she couldn’t take two more?

  Adam lay on his belly on the ground, trying to ignore his cock’s insistent cries for attention as it hardened painfully against the earth.

  Don’t touch it. Don’t let the devil win.

  But the fifth man sat down amidst the wheat, pulling her on to his lap, kissing her and fondling her breasts for a long time, apparently knowing that she needed a break. Her nipples were ripe and dark red as cherries. When the fifth man put them in his mouth and sucked, Adam half expected juice to ooze from them. While he attended to her tits, the sixth man nuzzled up behind her and began to kiss and lick the back of her neck. Her face melted into pleasure, her body stretching and arching like a cat’s. Adam could barely breathe, watching her heavy eyelids fall, the thick, black lashes fluttering against her cheeks. Her lips were beestung, kissed into swollenness. She ran the tip of her tongue along them, leaning back to offer her breasts even more blatantly than before. She stroked the fifth man’s cock while he teased her nipples, pushed her bottom back against the sixth and ground it into his pelvis.

  ‘Whore.’

  Adam’s eyes filled with tears. He couldn’t fight arousal as powerful as this. The devil was going to win again. Her skin was damp and shining with sap. Brown streaks from the earth adorned her like primitive tattoos. She was a creature made of sex, a nymph of some kind. She had to be. No human woman could take six lovers, one by one, the way she did.

  While she eased herself onto the fifth man’s cock, Adam began to hump the ground. It didn’t count if he didn’t touch it himself. It wasn’t the same.

  When the sixth man parted her buttocks and pushed his fingers, lubricated with her own juices, into the tight pucker between them, Adam uttered a strangled cry.

  ‘Wanton bitch on heat. Strumpet. Harlot.’

  His legs kicked behind him with each rough motion on the ground. His fingers curled in his hair, yanking at it. He was almost blind with sweat, the bodies of the lovers blurring before him.

  But they weren’t so blurred that he couldn’t make out the long, thick cock of the sixth man gliding inside the girl’s bottom even as she bounced up and down on the fifth. A sight he should never have seen, wickedness, depravity …

  ‘Filth.’ His pants filled with warm liquid, the evidence of his guilt.

  When the lovers came, one, then two, then three all within a minute of each other, he was sobbing with his face in a patch of scrubby grass.

  ‘Fuck me, Evie,’ someone said. ‘You get dirtier by the day. We’ll have to find a number seven for next year.’

  Her laughter was raucous and free.

  ‘Maybe make it Charlie Stack. He’s filling out nicely.’

  ‘Well, I can’t see as Robin Goodfellow has anything to complain about there. We should have an even better harvest this year.’

  ‘Lush.’ Evie. That was her name. ‘Come on then, what we waiting for? I’m gasping for a drink. Is the pub open yet?’

  Adam held his breath, maintaining his prone position under what remained of the barn’s eaves. Surely they would see him as they passed? His career in this place was over before it had begun.

  But the heavy footsteps of the men paraded by him at a distance of mere feet without the passing of any remark. Her lighter tread came last. He smelled her, her scent stronger than that of the parched grass that tickled his nose. Such an aroma, of vegetation and sex, each element as strong as the other. Adam felt a kind of dissolving in his stomach. That fragrance would stay with him forever.

  Their careless voices faded, shouts and giggles flying up into the sunshine.

  They hadn’t even dressed before they left.

  Adam waited a long time, maybe ten minutes after the final distant yell, before lifting his face and squinting out at the scene of the dissipation. His head ached and the bright green wheat giving way to the brilliant yellow of the rape beyond and the overarching gleam of the sun was too much. He returned to the comfortless dark of the ground.

  Had it, in fact, really happened?

  The hammering at his temples led him to hope that perhaps this was some kind of vision, a hallucination brought on by many sleepless nights praying that his ministry in Saxonhurst might soften the hearts of the villagers and bring them back to the church.

  ‘And I had no breakfast,’ he murmured into the scrappy tufts, before braving another look up. ‘Lord, are you showing me something? Are you showing me the challenge I have to face? People steeped in sin, needing your humble proxy to help them on to the true path? Is that it, Lord?’

  He pushed himself back onto unsteady knees. The shameful chill of the slime in his pants almost made him fall face-first in prostration once more.

  ‘Forgive me, Father,’ he whispered. It was a dream, one of those that the devil puffed into his brain with his demonic bellows. He couldn’t be held accountable for what happened in his sleep.

  He rose to his feet and dusted himself off. After shaking some life into his cramped limbs, he took a few steps down to where “it” had happened. The vision. The hallucination.

  The wheat lay flat in patches.

  ‘No,’ muttered Adam. ‘No, this is for some other reason. It was already flat when I arrived here. Village kids playing at making crop circles. That’s all.’

  Retrieving his hat and putting it back on his dusty head, he looked up at the ragged outline of the ruined barn. It seemed to him to have a human quality of malevolence, as if the spirit of the long-ago killer inhabited its dead wood.

  He would stay away from this place in future. And he would write that letter to the council.

  His walk back to the vicarage was accompanied by bitter thoughts. He knew why the diocese had appointed him to this backwoods parish – they were embarrassed by his old-school evangelism and this was effective banishment. True, Saxonhurst, with its infamously empty pews, was only one of three villages under his pastoral care and the other two had stronger congregations, but there it remained. He was exiled, in what the clerical grapevine called “the most godless village in England”.

  In an attempt to put a positive spin on the appointment, he had told himself that it was his unique blend of moral strengths that had led to him being chosen for the role. God moved in mysterious ways, and His purpose would soon become clear. And what a coup it would be for him, if he could transform the moribund church attendance and have the pews full by Christmas.

  His step grew sprightlier as he began to plot his campaign. He would need a big opening event, something that would lure the villagers by appealing to their baser natures. Something with prizes, perhaps, or some kind of silly talent contest, since they were so popular these days. A youth club, of course, and perhaps a parent and toddler group.

  By the time he reached the heart of the village, he was too preoccupied to even think of peering into the pub win
dows to check for green men and naked women. He turned the corner into the vicarage grounds, enjoying the crunch of gravel beneath his feet and the sweet smells of the flowers in the borders. Birdsong and the swish of leaves in the light breeze conferred a glow of well-being that lasted through the door and into the living room.

  Which was not empty.

  ‘Visitor for you, Reverend,’ called his housekeeper, Mrs Witts, from the kitchen.

  ‘So I gather. Good morning.’

  The visitor sat on a chair, in that kind of folded-up stance that suggested she was trying to take up as little space as possible.

  On seeing Adam, she rose and held out a hand.

  ‘Good morning, Reverend. I’m Julia Shields.’

  Her hand was cold and thin, like the rest of her. She was pale to the point of translucence, from her colourless hair downward.

  ‘I’m pleased to meet you, Ms Shields.’ Shaking the hand was like shaking frigid air. ‘What can I do for you?’

  ‘Oh, I just wanted to welcome you to Saxonhurst,’ she said, smiling tightly. Withdrawing her hand from Adam’s, she began a slow excursion around the room, picking up ornaments and putting them down as she went. ‘It’s a long time since I visited this house. I used to come here, as a child.’

  ‘Did you? You’re born and bred in the village?’

  ‘Yes. Actually, I’m the lady of the manor.’

  ‘The lady of the manor? Well, I’m honoured.’

  Adam felt foolish, wrong-footed somehow. This woman’s motives were veiled in mystery and something about her filled him with profound unease. Talking to her reminded him of trying to talk to girls he fancied back at school – all the conversation flew from his head, leaving him with awkward remnants of words.

  ‘You should be. Nobody ever visited the last vicar. You’re much younger than him.’

  She turned from examination of a watercolour of the church over the fireplace and gave Adam a piercing glare.

  ‘I’m 31,’ he said, wanting to kick himself for sounding so gauche.