Hanging Hen

It was the summer of 1955 when the Professor found the bones.

They were buried at the site of the ancient hamlet, Hanging Hen.

Despite old and persistent rumours of strange occurrences, the site had been excavated on and off since 1950, when the ageing Professor, desperate to get out of the main City campus for good, where he'd been accused of abuse by both staff and students, had hastily issued an international call for archeologists to volunteer during the long summers at Hanging Hen dig.

It was funded as part of a national post-war effort to preserve and celebrate what was left and perhaps uncover something new and meaningful after the ravages of the Forties. 

Many archeologists and students heeded the call and a camp was established in the old farm complex adjacent to the site. It was kitted out with bunks for men and a separate unit for women, who were just entering the field and making their own mark on archeology, much to the annoyance of an old world chauvinist like the Professor.

The camp evolved over time. Now that rationing was over, a rudimentary but adequate kitchen was installed for catering up to fifty volunteers, together with separate washing and toileting facilities. A further barn was made into a clothes washing and drying room. A recreational wing was added including a black and white TV, wireless, table tennis table, board games, chess sets, settees, armchairs, a writing area and a library with a single dial telephone. A small first aid room completed the lay out.

Over the years, as capacity was reached, these facilities were improved to offer the international volunteers as pleasant a stay as possible over the four summer months from June to September.

A small contingent remained all year round to do repairs, lag pipes, keep the place heated during the winter and prepare the camp for the new season. This team was lead by Reginald, who had been with the Professor since the beginning and who had in fact grown up in the village next to Hanging Hen and had never set foot out of the area ever. Reginald's presence had helped the endeavour to be accepted by the natives early on, who were nervous about the what the excavations might disturb.

The Professor relied heavily on Reginald with his local knowledge and connections but really resented the fact and treated him like a half-witted yokel. He always introduced him to the new recruits each year as their very own village idiot, an insult, which humiliated Reginald to the core but he kept his anger buried deep like the festering bones of Hanging Hen.

The main dig was outdoors in the undulating acres next to the farm and exhibit stores and cleaning tents were positioned around the site. These were large open canvas marquees and gazebos filled with wide tables, sinks, brushes, rags, bags, tags, pencils, disinfectant, bowls, crates, boxes, shelving, trowels, spades, wheelbarrows, ladders and opticals such as magnifiers and microscopes. More detailed forensics could be carried out in the Prof's own lab within the farm complex.

So when the Professor found the bones in the summer of 1955, the project was already a well-oiled machine and prepared for such an incredible find of potentially global significance. It was the ambitious Prof's Goldilocks moment.

However, it was in fact Reginald who first pointed out the buried irons to the dig team. 

He had been restocking the main refreshment tent with jugs of cold orange cordial, essential for the crews in the late summer heat, when he noticed a brown rod in the excavation nearest him. The rod was vertical and located in the lower terrace that had been dug out. It stood in shadow and had not been noticed before, largely because the volunteer allocated to that spot, Keef, had his eye on his own buried prizes, the ample pair of treasures belonging to Gertrude, the Bavarian post-grad, who, like Keef, was on a university placement that summer. 

He knew she was the Prof's summer floozy but he could still oggle couldn't he. 

Damn, how she fawned over the old man, seemingly his most ardent fan, a fact the Professor had exploited many times during the long hot nights in his private dorm and, having followed her there and watched, Keef realised Gertrude was there under duress, a fact which he knew all about and one he was keen to take advantage of to boost his mark.

Reginald pointed out the buried item to Keef and retreated back into the shade of the tent.

"Find! We've found something! Professor!"

The usual languid steady clattering of trowels tapping soil stopped dead, as all eyes swiveled to where the shout had come from from. As the site contained several large excavations at different depths, many volunteers had heard the call but could not see beyond their own dig. They waited to hear what happened next.

The Professor, sleeves rolled up and wide-brimmed straw hat protecting him from the blistering sun, ran up his nearest ladder, heart pounding and out onto the lawn. 

"Here Prof! We've found something here!" Shouted the young archeologist again.

"What is it?" Blustered the don clambering down another ladder.

"I don't know. It looks like a iron bar buried in the soil. Reginald saw it first."

The Prof scoffed irritably at the mention of Reginald and stared at the artefact.

" Give me that!" He snarled, snatching the trowel from the young man's hand.

Excitedly the old professor scraped away the dried material surrounding the object and quickly discovered further bars equally spaced. They were about 3 feet tall and braced with crossbars top and bottom. Further digging revealed similar bars at right angles on both sides.

" By Jove, it's a cage!"

An air of excitement had swept through the compound and virtually all fifty volunteers had stopped what they were doing and had encircled this particular dig site, all wildly curious as to what the barred item was that the boss had unearthed. All mention of Reginald's initial find was now forgotten and the Professor took centre stage and oversaw the whole thing.

With the Prof busy, Keef, overcome with undergrad zeal, picked up the hose, increased the flow and began to blast the artefact.

"What the fuck are you doing you stupid fool! That's too much force! Turn the damn thing off you complete moron!" Screamed the Professor, slapping the young man across the face and knocking him off balance.

Keef fell face down in the slurry of mud. 

Splat!

He rose slowly, completely caked, totally humiliated in front of his peers. He stood and glared directly at his mentor with undeniable malice.

"I know about you!" Blurted Keef and walked off.

Momentarily disconcerted, his cheeks reddening in the uncomfortable silence, which had descended over the site, the Prof rallied and picked a team to see the work through. The young buxom German called Gertrude was in. Keef wasn't and he knew it. He'd wandered off to the refreshments tent.

"You OK young fella?" Asked Reginald, who was filling the shelves.

"Yeah, I suppose. I'm just sick of that old fucker embarrassing me in front of everyone. I don't know why he does it! But I know what he's really up to!" Replied Keef taking a bottle of lemonade.

"He's a mean old bastard, that's for sure! No regard for anyone else's feelings whatsoever on his way to the top. He'll use us, insult us, ditch us. Doesn't bother the old cunt. As long as he gets there, we don't matter! One day he'll get his comeuppance!" Growled Reginald, gripping a chair tightly.

Keef noticed the old retainer's knuckles had turned white and were shaking.

"Sorry about that. It's one of those days. Here, take a bottle for later too." Said Reginald calming down.

Keef thought better of telling him about the Prof's nocturnal exploits just yet and wandered warily back to the action.

Back at the dig, after a concerted effort and under the Prof's watchful eye, Gertrude and several others worked in sync at both sides.

The old boss couldn't help noticing Gertrude's wet T-shirt after he secretly sprayed her with the hose. Aroused, he imagined her slavish body entirely at his disposal that evening, just like one of his fossils. He could do anything he wanted. Her placement grades depended on it and she knew it.

He grinned.

After an hour the buried object was fully revealed.

It was a heavy iron medieval cage around 3 by 4 feet, with one side hinged and barred shut. 

Nothing inside the cage could be seen as it was filled with dried earth. A hosepipe was used to dislodge this, each pile being carefully sieved until the inner space was more or less cleared. 

Only a large mound of debris was left in the centre of the cage floor, which was decked with timber in an amazingly good state of repair.

Gertrude opened the cage door, when the Prof pushed her angrily out of the way.

"Stop, you damn dumkopf! If anyone's going to open it it'll be me, the leader!' he yelled.

But Gertrude had already opened the cage and the old man's push sent her flying through the opening and onto the mound inside. She landed on it face down, her chest heaving into the loose material. It was then she felt a warm sensation come over her and she was sure that the pile had somehow sensed her fall and softened it, as if it meant her no harm.

In a rage, the Prof grabbed Gertrude, 

"Get out of there you ridiculous Hausfrau!" He roared, absolutely hell-bent on being the only one to finally discover what was being kept in the Hanging Hen cage.

Gertrude glared at the old man, her face bright red with contempt for him.

The Professor, shrugging her off, knelt down by the mound and began to diligently wash away the stones and silt with a brush and bucket of water.

"What is it?" He wondered, the prospect of sudden fame in the scientific community sending a frisson of elation up and down his spine.

"A bear? A wolf? The find of the century? It's such a complete mystery." He mused.

Slowly, the constant brushing with water slicked away the sediment and gradually a form began to emerge ...

the bones of a huge ...

Humanoid!

It was curled up in a foetal position, it's arms high and hands covering its skull, as if protecting itself from its rude exposure.

"My God!" Exclaimed the Prof.

"Mein Gott!" Echoed Gertrude stood behind him.

The half hundred volunteers standing around the perimeter of the dig were equally awed by the sight of the giant imprisoned skeleton and an unsettling and mysterious aura descended over the whole dig, a miasma of terrifying thoughts materialising in the fifty minds; glimpses of mad cruelty and a cowering hominid bludgeoned to a pulp by a feudal mob. These atrocities would darken their dreams for days.

Then the fifty all turned their heads in unison and stared at the skeleton, transfixed, mouths open, as if under a spell.

Coming to, mutters of "Jesus!", "Christ!" And "monster" Swept the circle like Chinese whispers, punctuated by loud and frightened gasps.

The old Prof, unusually nervous; the pregnant atmosphere palpably swelling, stooped to look closer at the dreadful remains. 

The skeleton was at least seven feet tall, with huge forearms and thigh bones, a curved spine and a small, prehistoric head.

He kept this final thought to himself, as he realized that this could well be the find of his life, if not of British archeology outright.

The Prof wasn't going to share the limelight with anyone. Not Keef, not Gertrude, no matter how much she blew his alpenhorn and certainly not that idiot Reginald, who'd by rights, seen it first.

No, this was his ticket to bigger and better things. Maybe the Emeritus Chair at Oxford or even Director of Anthropology at the Smithsonian in the States.

The sky was the limit. He just had to keep complete control of the find.

"Empty the bucket Gertrude. Bitte!" He snapped with obvious condescension. 

"Fetch the biggest wheelbarrow and make it snappy Keef!" He commanded.

"You, Reginald, do something useful and get me a cold orange juice. It's damn thirsty work making huge discoveries!" He ordered the local with unfettered meanness, a streak now not unnoticed by the assembled volunteers after today's cruel outbursts. 

Loudly directing a small team the Prof had them lift the skeleton onto a stretcher balanced on top of the barrow. Secured in situ, it was wheeled gingerly up the myriad of ramps, which took you to ground level. There the bones were laid out on the main table of the marquee out of the blinding sun and ready for further study. 

Once curtained off the Prof, entranced by the relic, sent everyone out and told them to leave him alone with his find for the rest of the afternoon, an instruction they welcomed, the more distance between them and the thing from the cage the better.

He emerged that evening and entered the main rec room grinning and wringing his hands like a pools winner. The mood in the rec was oddly morose, the unwelcome aura of the bones permeating the whole place.

"You look pleased Professor. Is the fossil a good one?" Asked Suzuki, a new Doctorate student just in that afternoon from Tokyo University

The old man stopped making himself a coffee and stared at the new girl. She was petit, well-endowed and hypnotically pretty. 

"It is indeed a good one my dear. And who might you be?" He beamed at this potential new quarry.

"Suzuki Miko from Tokyo."

"Well Suzuki Miko from Tokyo, why don't you come and see the artefact for yourself!"

"Oh yes please!" She gushed, unaware of the Prof's growing arousal.

"Righto. Meet me at my private quarters at 8pm sharp!"

The old don strolled off, a further spring in his step and Suzuki made herself an Ovaltine smiling.

Keef sloped over, hands in his pockets and said, "Be careful new girl. The Prof's an old lech and you'll be licking his shoes for him before you know it!"

"I don't know what you mean!" Protested Suzuki.

"He'll have his way with you Suzy! He's already done it with other girls on the dig. Ask Gertrude!" 

"Rubbish! Besides, I can take care of myself. And my name's Suzuki, not Suzy!"

Suzuki took her hot drink and went to watch TV with the rest of the crew. A creepy Play for Today about possession was on.

At 8pm Suzuki knocked on the Prof's private room.

"Enter!"

"Hi Professor, you said to come over and see the artefact."

"Of course my dear. It's over here in my personal lab. I had Reginald move the fossil whilst you were in the rec area a couple of hours ago. Have you met Reginald the village idiot?"

"Yes actually. I have. I just spoke to him on my way here. A charming man," replied the young girl.

"Really? So he's still hanging round is he!"

The old don then escorted Suzuki to a large forensic table, where a wide sheet was covering something long.

The Prof removed the sheet with a flourish like a seasoned showman.

"Tada!"

Suzuki was amazed.

Laid out in the table was the skeleton of a seven foot humanoid, it's bones massive with a skull front-loaded with a jutting jaw. 

"Wow, it looks Neanderthal! Maybe older! And it's a female. It's sensational, a primitive human in a medieval village. They would have been so scared of it, so much bigger and fearsome than they were. I dread to think how they caught it and caged it up. What atrocity befell this prehistoric being. But maybe there's a clue Professor. See here, the most fascinating but awful thing, the huge neatly drilled hole in her skull! Oh my God! That's surgical!"

"I agree with your unusually insightful observations my dear. I'm trully impressed! you know your anthropology!"

"Oh yes, I'm doing my PhD on prehistoric surgery, which I think was more far advanced than we currently think. I'm still looking for that special case to publish my paper on but I may have found it. If I could just take a detailed look at that hole ......"

"Ah! Well. Yes. So! You plan to publish? When would that be young Missy?"

"This Autumn."

"Oh!" Snorted the Prof quickly covering up the skull, realising that here before him was a rival for the scientific greatness only he deserved.

"Why have you re-covered the head?" Asked the girl.

"Ah, well you see, I'm not quite ready to show you that again just yet. It requires further careful and unique study by me personally. But of course there is a way you can fast-track your involvement my dear. It may well prove productive for both of us! We could jointly publish!" Explained the old man rubbing his hands together.

"What do you mean?" Replied Suzuki.

"Take off your clothes and we can discuss it further! A joint endeavour so to speak!"

"What? You must be joking!" 

"No my deary, I'm deadly serious! Come over here my little geisha. I've fixed us both a drink."

The lecherous Prof revealed two conical lab flasks containing cocktails each garnished with a slice of lime.

"Forget it Professor! This cheesy schtick may work on your undergrads but not me! I was warned about you and I can see why, you sleazy old git!"

"What did you call me?"

"A proper sleazy old bastard!"

With a speed that belied his aging frame, the old don was on the hapless girl before she could react. 

Holding her close to his face, he growled at her like a mad dog. She spat at him.

"You'll regret that you Japanese tart!"

"You're history you old perv. I'll tell everyone what you really are and you'll be ruined. You won't be publishing anything!"

"Really!"

With an uncannily swift movement the old don produced a syringe out of nowhere and jabbed Suzuki in the neck.

The sedative kicked in immediately and he got to work. 

First giving her a good beating for the hell of it, the old lech stripped her of her clothing and under the cover of darkness he transported her to the dig site using Reginald's barrow. Here he dumped her in the cage found earlier in the day. He then gave Suzuki another dose of sedative, a dose he knew full well to be lethal and left her there to die. The final touch to the murder was to frame Reginald further for it by putting all the girl's clothes in his personal locker, for which the old man had had a key cut at the start of the project for just such an occasion.

The next day was a blur of police activity at the complex. Panda cars filled the small car park and the Chief Inspector, having been contacted by the Japanese Ambassador in London, was on site. Suzuki Miko was well connected in her homeland.

"Who was the last person to see the girl alive?" The Chief asked the Prof. 

"I understand that it was our caretaker Reginald, who lives in the village, but he does have a private locker here near the dig. He's down there now."

The Prof smiled widely as Reginald was arrested for the murder of the Japanese student and driven away.

As the panda pulled off Reginald stared at the Professor and mouthed four clear words.

"I will get you!"

The old don simply waved his long-serving dogsbody goodbye and went to get a drink. He'd celebrate later when he demanded some close attention from that German slut Gertrude.

That night, with Gertrude over in his rooms but visibly shaken by what had happened to Suzuki, the Professor gave her a special tonic he'd concocted to steady her nerves. Avoiding his familiar amorous advances, she felt unexpectedly giddy and danced around his lab like a whirling dervish. 

"Be careful Gertrude! The specimen!"

"Oh, you mean old Stone Age here! Ha ha, what a body! And what's this?"

Gertrude saw the big neat hole in the skull's top and placed her fist inside, opening it up like a flower.

Suddenly she felt something grab her hand. Something held her fingers tightly inside the skull and she screamed so loudly that the old man's blood ran cold.

No sooner had it started, she stopped her screaming and stood bolt upright, seemingly taller and bulkier. She spoke in a monotone voice peppered with short grunts.

"Thanks for having me over Professor. I have to go now!"

Gertrude walked out of the room into the night and straight to her dorm. 

She had been possessed by the angry spirit of the prehistoric woman laid out in the lab.

Gertrude dreamt of crazed villagers hunting her down, abusing her, throwing her in a small cage and much much worse. 

The old man was thoroughly perplexed by the Bavarian girl's off-kilter antics, but deciding it was the drowsy tonic he'd mixed, he put his mind at ease, poured himself a Scotch and went to bed fantasising about Gertrude and Suzuki with him in his bed, another creature standing tall and fierce in the shadows.

It was around 3am when Gertrude quietly woke Keef in the men's bunkhouse.

"Ruhig! Quiet! Come Keef. Komme mit mir. Bitte!" She implored in her same strange staccato monotone.

They tip-toed through the dead of night to the Prof's quarters. Incredibly Reginald was waiting for them too. He'd escaped from the Police Station that evening and made his way back to the dig, his mind a vortex of revenge.

The three of them nodded as if a secret pact had been struck and using the master keys entered the building. 

Sneaking into the Professor's bedroom, they were shocked and frightened to see who appeared to be Suzuki. She was meant to be dead! Only it wasn't her physically, it was her furious spectre, returned to seek terrible revenge on her murderer and the man who had robbed her of her young promising life. 

Her death was the midwife of her heinous wrath.

The spectral girl nodded to the others, the pact now four-fold, each possessed by a fugue of unspeakable hatred.

Reginald held the sleeping man down, whilst Suzuki's ghost straddled him and spoke softly in his ear.

"I'm back Professor!"

The old man woke with a start and saw the  Japanese phantom glaring in his face, her dead eyes leering at him, her mouth widening grotesquely, as if to consume his entire head.

He writhed and screamed loudly at the apparition, but Reginald held fast and roughly muffled his cries.

The four of them dragged the old man onto the huge steel table, where he was forced to lie directly next to the relict skeleton. He was then tied down with thick straps for some as yet unknowable rite.

When the Professor stopped shaking and heaving, his four accusers were stood near his head looking down into his confused face.

"Wha - what are you going to do to me?"

"Oh, nothing you wouldn't have done to us Prof! Some abject humiliation to begin with!" Explained Reginald ominously.

"And some sexual degradation du Schwein!" Added Gertrude. 

"And a little cruelty!" Said Keef.

"And some grievous bodily harm!" Whispered Suzuki in his ear.

He twisted his head quickly to face her but found himself looking at the huge hole in the side of the giant's skull. 

Suddenly and the point at which the Professor's mind slipped slowly into madness, the primitive turned it's cracking neck to stare straight into his eyes.

He shrieked in terror and as if under a spell witnessed the horrendous moment she, the giant Neanderthal, was held down violently by the villagers of Hanging Hen and, whilst very much awake, her head drilled into, the massive bit tearing away flesh and bone until it squelched through the soft giving grey matter buried deep inside.

Waking from his horrific nightmare he screamed like he'd never done before as the cold unyielding steel of a huge power drill-bit bored into his own head, the screwed auger easily piercing the thin crown of bone and removing a circle of his cranium about five inches across.

"It's time we took back those grand thoughts you had Professor," warned Reginald.

"Those thoughts about us!" Echoed Keef and Gertrude.

"In fact, all your miserable thoughts you sick old murdering bastard!" Howled Suzuki as she, the first of them, forced her spectral fist deep into the hole in his head and grasped a clump of his shaking brain, which she then removed, placed in her trembling mouth and chewed ravenously.

"Mmmm! It's like pudding!" Smiled Suzuki, licking her lips, at which the other three delved excitedly into the Professor's head and consumed the entire contents of his membranous skull.

A giant prehistoric female standing by the excavation was the the last thing the old Professor ever saw, through his dangling left eyeball in Gertrude's fingers.

With his head destroyed, he was watched by the hateful glares of Hanging Hen's fifty volunteers, who had surrounded the dig, their mouths screaming for vengeance as the medieval mob had done a thousand years earlier.

Aware of the assembly, Gertrude and Suzuki's spectre threw the old man violently into the iron cage, where he lay curled up and unmoving.

His loose left eye ended as the optic nerve lengthened and snapped. 

"Mmmm! Delicious!" Said Gertrude as she popped it in her mouth and slammed the cage door shut, a raucous cheer of frenzied satisfaction spreading like a wave throughout the leaping crowd encircling Hanging Hen.