The Raggedy Man

Extracts from the Personal Diary of St John Cartwright-Fiennes

Saturday January 7^th:

I went up to town to visit the College of Antiquaries. Jules wasn't keen; she reckoned it was a waste of money. However it is a good place to start looking for people who might employ me as a dowser. If I can get the right clients I could make some sensible money. Lots of archaeological digs waste enormous amounts of time and money digging trenches in the wrong place. In a couple of days I could do a dowsing survey that could save thousands.

The main lecture was by Dr Roland Treadle for Oxford University archaeology department. He is open-minded enough to seriously consider ill-understood phenomena. Depressingly, but unsurprisingly, the dogmatic science establishment has it in for him, otherwise he would be a professor by now.

His talk was on ley-lines. He noted that Silbury Hill isn't actually on the North-South Avebury line. This inevitably provoked an argument between the "ley-lines don't exist" mob and the "everything is on a ley-line" mob. I asked if he had considered dowsing for it. Ley-line energy is easily detectable. (Good thing Jules wasn't there or I would have had a derisive comment about people who need dowsing rods to find ley-lines.) The very mention of dowsing produced the usual scoffing. Regrettably this included Dr. Durham who is another one of established archaeologists who might be a potential client. It is difficult to argue convincingly with the scoffers as so many self-professed dowsers are useless. The problem is any criticism is taken as equally valid for all dowsers.

Afterwards I had a chat with Dr Treadle. He would be interested in the results but doesn't have the funding to pay for it. Typical! Still if I can establish what I can do, I may get some work next time he has a dig. No commission, no lift home, so I will have to take the bus. Walked to Victoria and was dropped in Swindon in the early hours. I had walked half way to Avebury before I could get a lift, finally got home at about dawn.

Sunday January 8^th:

Slept all morning; got up at about mid-day. Decided to go to Silbury to check out Dr. Treadle's theory. I found he is right. The ley-line passes about 250 yards east of the hill. While I was there I thought I would check out the Hill as much as I could. The problem is that English Heritage are getting extremely unreasonable about access to the site; those idiots Ossebaard and Janssen should have realised that people like EH would use them as a pretext for keeping everyone out. I had a wander around and found that the security fence was broken down in a couple of places. I would have been reluctant to climb or damage the fence, but if I could just walk in... Unfortunately there were some EH security about. Specifically I was approached by this jobsworth woman who wouldn't let me in. Said if they let one person in they would have to let everyone in. I wasn't going to anyway but I considered coming back at night. However I will have to wait for full moon. Using a torch would be too easy to spot.

In the meantime, I dowsed round outside the fence and found a weak energy field. I would like to survey it properly, and without a security guard following me. I don't generally suffer from people's negative vibes but you can't be too careful.

Monday January 9^th:

I was in the shop seeing if any of our jewellery had sold (not much chance at this time of year) when I saw Dr Treadle, examining some of the standing stones. We discussed the dowsing results. He was interested but wouldn't talk about what he was doing.

Tuesday January 10^th early morning:

Woken in the middle of the night by Jules. She was sure she had heard someone screaming on the ley-line. She knew (and she tends to be right about these things) that something terrible had happened on the ley-line. I knew that she was either going to be fretting about what had happened if I didn't investigate or about me if I did. Either way I wasn't going to get any sleep, so I decided to get to the bottom of it. Jules didn't know how far it was but was sure it was south of us on the ley-line.

I set out south staying as close to the ley-line as possible. A few hundred yards north of the A4, the ley-line crossed the Kennett. The closest I could stay was along the east bank. Then I heard a mobile phone ringing across the river, I looked and I saw something moving but I only had the vaguest idea of what. I ran on towards the A4 to use its bridge to cross the river.

In the car park on the other side, I was surprised to meet Dr Durham and Dr. Eliza Jamieson. I had also seen Dr. Jamieson at the Archaeological Society but hadn't been introduced. They were looking for Dr. Treadle who they reckoned was in trouble. They had received a distress SOS message that read, "Li its comin fr me thing frm silbury hij cant escape unless it cant swim". I told them what I had heard and seen. We carried the best search of the area that we could in the dark. We found some fragments of a strange off-white material and Dr. Treadle's wallet. In the wallet there was a print-out about Silbury Hill with some of Dr. Treadle's notes.

While we were discussing all of this in their car, we had a visitation from EH storm-troopers.

Tuesday January 10^th:

Visited early in the morning by the jobsworth from Silbury, Barbara Smythe, who felt that my having been in their holy car-park in the night allowed her to get heavy with me. Jules and I decided to go and have a look in the field where we found the wallet. This time walked down the west bank of the Kennett to be on the right side of the river. Jules was making pretty heavily weather of the walk until very close when she could get onto the ley-line. She always feels better on ley-lines. We met up with Durham and Jamieson there. We didn't find very much more, but there were some signs of a struggle; the prognosis for Treadle is not good.

Wednesday January 11^th:

Met with Durham and Jamieson in the pub. They are planning to do some investigating after lunch. They have managed to persuade the hotel manager to let them have the papers from Treadle's room. He was obviously doing some researches around Silbury Hill. He also seemed to be very interested in local reports of big cats. They were going to have a pub lunch. I naturally went home to have lunch with Jules.

After lunch we went off for a wider search around a number of sites near Treadle's disappearance including West Kennett Longbarrow. We had a tour around these without finding very much, and then ran into a guy who is researching big cat sightings, Tim Gorman. Tim had been in contact with Treadle as well.

On the way back to the car park we were delayed by Jamieson taking an undue interest in a mildly deranged tramp, (and the tramp taking an unhealthy interest in her). Eventually it was getting dark when we got back to the car park. (Problem as I had promised Jules I would be back before dark.) In the car park, Durham thought she saw a strange creature of some sort in the corner of the car park.

Durham got a dirty phone call: all she could hear was a garbled and guttural gibberish. The caller obviously has a serious speech impediment but he was using Treadle's phone.

Thursday January 12^th:

The local newspapers report a body pulled from the Kennet near Marlborough. Didn't seem too significant at the time but became relevant later.

Durham and Jamieson have talked to some vet living Charlton way. He couldn't really help much except to say the local sheep and cattle killings weren't like anything he's seen, despite what the papers say. (Apparently he wasn't too happy with some newspaper article that implied he'd definitely identified a dead deer as the remains of a big cat's dinner.)

We met up with Tim Gorman late in the day and went off to inspect his cameras. They have motion sensors, and had taken some photos. There is no sign of any cat, but the camera seems to have caught a photograph of Treadle! Either something very odd is going on or someone is pulling a particularly bizarre hoax. It was getting dark but we set off to investigate.

Durham got another phone call: this time it sounded sort of like Treadle only with the world's worst strep infection. He said, "I thank you for your concern. I have been gravely ill, I am feeling much better now. 'Tekeli-li'. Please do not trouble yourselves any further. I shall be in touch soon."

We found some odd tracks at the site, and tried to follow them. We were approaching the town from the south when we spotted "Treadle", except that he was clearly too fat to be Treadle, we set off after him at some speed. In the dark, I slipped on some slime and twisted my wrist as I fell. Jamieson rushed ahead and caught up with "Treadle" and discovered that it was some form of creature. At that moment we heard gun fire - it seems Jamieson had a gun and started shooting at Treadle. This did not seem to have any real effect on it, but nevertheless it left at speed after knocking the gun out of Jamieson's hand and injuring her in the process. The creature was far too dangerous to pursue in the dark so we retired hurt. Jules bound a "healing crystal" into a bandage on my wrist but it'll be a while before I can use it properly.

It seems that Jamieson and Durham are working for some government agency, which is how Jamieson got the gun. I really don't want Jules to know about any of this. Jamieson got a call from her HQ: apparently the headless, skinned body pulled from the Kennet this morning was Treadle's!

Friday January 13^th:

We went back to the scene of the confrontation with the dowsing rods. My wrist was making it damned awkward, but I was sure I would be able to find Jamieson's gun if it was still there. In fact, we found it quite easily. There was a lot of the slime around and we were sure it had come from the creature. It was easily detected by dowsing; the problem was the creature had not left a continuous trail. Nevertheless by a mixture of guess-work and dowsing, we managed to track it back to a nearby barrow. This is not one of the tourism sites so it is a long narrow overgrown mound. It took some time, but I finally managed to locate where it was holed up (literally). We confirmed that it was there by phoning Treadle's mobile phone. The phone rang in the hole.

We pulled out a bundle of clothing wrapped round Treadle's head but it was too dangerous to tackle ourselves so we reluctantly let Durham and Jamieson call in their heavy squad. Maybe I should have been forewarned with Jamieson having a gun, but still I was appalled. I had thought that they might use machine guns, but I never expected high explosives. This was an invaluable archaeological site, and they blew an enormous hole in it.