Creeping Terror by Justin Richards Page B

find. There are a few line drawings, like this one of the tower.’
    He held it up, but it was too far away for the others to see any detail.
    Oblivious to this, Growl went on, ‘Now, it’s interesting, as this would appear to show the tower as it was before the Puritans vandalised it. But more of that in a moment.’
    He turned to another page of the printout. ‘We do learn a few interesting things, though I doubt they are relevant. But did you know that one of the graves in the churchyard is arranged north–south, rather than the traditional east–west that the other graves follow?’
    ‘So what?’ Sam said, though no one but Ben could hear her.
    ‘Why is that important?’ Ben asked.
    ‘It quite possibly isn’t important at all,’ Growl admitted. ‘But let us now turn our attention to the name of this village.’
    ‘Templeton,’ Rupam said.
    ‘And why do you suppose it is called that?’ There was no reply, so Growl continued, ‘I’ll tell you. It’s because the Knights Templar had a temple here. Oh, a long time ago, and all trace of it has long since gone. No one is even sure quite where it was, though there are several mentions in the history of a “Temple of the Holy Crystal”. But, more to the point, where you find the Knights Templar, it is not unusual to find the Memento Mori.’
    Ben had heard of the Knights Templar long ago. More recently he had heard of the Memento Mori too. They were a secret order of priestly knights that answered directly to the Vatican – to the Pope. They fought against the powers of darkness – rather like the School of Night did now. The order had been dissolved in the early eighteenth century, but while they existed they were a powerful secret force for the Church.
    ‘Memento Mori knights were buried facing north,’ Knight said. ‘Are you telling us that one of them is buried in the churchyard?’
    ‘It’s an interesting connection, isn’t it?’
    ‘They were buried facing north so that they would not go straight to Heaven,’ Rupam said, quoting – Ben guessed – from one of Growl’s own lectures. ‘That way they could guide others through limbo to paradise.’
    ‘It was also a sign that the knight’s work on earth was unfinished,’ Growl said, nodding his appreciation of Rupam’s comment. ‘Not all the knights of the Memento Mori were buried in this way, but many of them were if they had fallen in battle.’
    ‘There was a battle here?’ Gemma said, seeming interested for the first time.
    ‘Not a conventional battle. But a spiritual one perhaps. And, as I say, it may not be significant. Rather more pertinent, I suspect, is the fact that the church is built on a pagan site. That’s not unusual, of course. In fact there is a story about why the tower is separate from the church that relates back to the legend.’
    ‘Rupam told us,’ Gemma said. ‘The Devil moved the tower.’
    ‘Quite so. Well, in the legend.’
    ‘As you say,’ Knight interrupted, ‘it isn’t unusual for churches to be built on sites associated with earlier gods and religions.’
    ‘Ah, but this site, where the church is now, wasassociated with the very fertility of the land, with the rites of spring. I believe we’re dealing with the Green Man. It’s a surprisingly modern term in literature – just seventy years old in fact – but the ideas go back into the depths of time. To all intents and purposes this is where ancient people worshipped him. The Green Man was a personification of nature itself … the god representing earth and vegetation and the seasons, if you like.’
    ‘Beware the green,’ Knight said.
    ‘The pub’s called the Green Man,’ Ben realised. ‘I thought it was, like, Robin Hood.’
    The sunlight on the desk in front of him was making a dappled pattern, illuminating some of the papers spread out there, leaving others in shadow.
    ‘But the pub’s much older than that,’ Maria pointed out.
    ‘True. That’s because the name was around for a