The Darkness Rising

by David Stuart Davies

  Tim surreptitiously turned and glanced at him. He was sitting erect, looking directly ahead at the road. His movements were stiff and mechanical—like a robot. The face registered no emotion, except the eyes and they were bright and glittering and, thought Tim, did not, in some crazy way, go with the face.

  The warmth of the heater and the easy steady motion of the car made him feel drowsy. This was understandable: he had slept badly the night before and was very tired. But somehow, he didn’t want to fall asleep. Not in the presence of this man.

  Instinctively, he did not feel safe.

  He blinked his eyes rapidly as though to shake off the heavy weight which was pressing down on his eyelids. He shifted his position in the seat in order to make himself less comfortable. His movement caught the attention of Rob Moore and he turned to look at the boy. The face was immobile, motionless, almost like the face of a...Tim's mind searched for a suitable comparison, a simile as his English teacher would have said. A face like a... like a waxwork figure. He remembered being taken by his mother to the Chamber of Horrors at Madame Tussauds in London. He was thrilled and a little bit frightened by those gruesome mannequins. Here was one come to life. Only the eyes were real and they glittered darkly at him. He could not avoid their gaze—their hypnotic gaze.

  He began to feel very strange indeed. The weights were even heavier on his eyelids now. He was losing the battle to keep awake; and the noise of the car engine began to fade away as though someone was controlling a volume switch.

  Tim fought the overwhelming tiredness he felt but inexorably the eyelids began flicker downwards. Turning to Rob Moore again, it seemed to him now as though he were looking down a long tunnel at his face. The eyes appeared to have changed: they were without pupils now and completely black—a shiny viscous black, like a rippling oil slick.

  As his own lids closed, shutting out the real world, Tim did not sink into sleep. He thought not anyway. He just felt as though he had been transferred to a dark, silent world. A soft velvet almost tangible blackness enveloped him. However, he didn’t feel frightened; on the contrary he felt very relaxed.

  Little specks of light like stars flickered across his vision and then one star remained, growing brighter, larger. It wasn’t a pure brightness for there were shadows on its surface—distinguishable shadows. As it grew, getting nearer to Tim or at least as it seemed to get nearer to him because in that black void, distance could not be judged, the star revealed itself to be a face.

  It was the face of Rob Moore. The dead pan face with the glittery eyes.

  And then something strange happened to the face. The features rippled and as though the waxwork figure had come too close to the heat, the face began to melt and then blend, forming another face. A more familiar face.

  The face of his father.

  ‘Hello, Timothy,’ the face said, in the rough familiar tones the boy knew.

  ‘Dad,’ he heard himself, say while realising that he had not actually spoken.

  ‘You see, I was good as my word. I said that I would come back.’

  ‘But... you can't come back. You're...’ He didn't want to use that word. Dead.

  ‘Here I am. I have come back. Trust me. I am your father. You are my flesh and blood—part of me. And I live again. I have come back for you and your mother. You are both mine.’

  There was no warmth in this statement and Tim felt no joy in hearing it. In this weird dream-state where reality had no place, he still could not believe what he had been told. He knew his father was dead.

  The face before him smiled and the eyes twinkled.

  ‘Everything is fine, Tim. There will be no further upset. I'm back to stay. I'm back to look after you.’

  This time the voice seemed to penetrate deeper into Tim's brain, feeling its way along the winding convolutions, soothing and numbing as it went. A warmth filtered through Tim, relaxing him and easing away reason. There was no pressure any more. He believed. He believed his father. Gently and serenely he succumbed to the illusion and just before he sank happily into the darkness once more, the thoughts were seeded in his mind.

  The car pulled up sharply at some traffic lights. Tim was jerked forward and awoke.

  ‘Sorry about that,’ said Rob Moore. ‘I didn't expect them to change so quickly.’ He turned and smiled at the boy.

  Timothy smiled back and replied, dreamily: ‘That's all right, Dad.’

  ***

  David sat in his car looking at Crabtree's house. It looked like an ordinary house in an ordinary street. Both the street and house looked dingy and run-down—but ordinary. The green door with peeling paint appeared innocent and bland. It was here that Kate came last night in search of her dead husband. What travesties had taken place inside that shabby dwelling David could only guess and he wouldn’t trust his imagination that far: he wanted to know the truth.

  Slowly and purposefully, he got out of the car, locked it and approached the house. After a split second's hesitation, he knocked. The noise resounded hollowly down the hall fading into the house.

  There was no response.

  He knocked again: harder and longer.

  A cold breeze blew down the deserted street stirring up shreds of litter in the gutter. Only faintly could he hear the traffic from a nearby road—the real world. It seemed distant and alien here.

  Again, there was no response to his knock. He looked in at the grime-streaked windows, but the curtains were drawn. At this time of day? It was after one. He was growing angry now. He wasn’t going away until he knew all about last night.

  He flipped open the letter box and peered into the murky hallway. There was no sign of life. He called out through the open flap, his voice ringing against the bare walls. In angry frustration he grasped the door handle and turned it violently. To his surprise the door swung open. It hadn’t been locked.

  He walked in quickly, closing the door behind him and found that he was standing on a litter of morning mail. Perhaps Crabtree was still in bed. David picked up one of the letters and examined the envelope. This was the right address, all right—the same one that had been on the card he'd found in Kate's handbag.

  Dropping the letter to the floor, he ventured further into the house. There was something about the place that upset him. Was it the unnatural silence, the gloom of the place, or the smell. Yes, it was the smell. It was an all-pervading aroma. He couldn't attach a name to it; he only knew it turned his stomach.

  As he pushed open the door of the sitting room, a strange sight met his eyes. This was the room at the front of the house with its curtains drawn. The only illumination was the meagre fire struggling for its life in the grate. In an armchair by the fire, sitting bolt upright was a pale faced little man. A mousey middle-aged woman sat hunched up at his feet, her head on his lap. She was murmuring something to the man, but David could not make out the words.

  At the sound of his entrance, the woman slowly lifted her head and looked at him. However there was no surprise in her dull eyes which surveyed him through this pebble glasses.

  ‘Hello,’ she said, with a child-like lilt in her voice. ‘It's so nice of you to come.’

  ‘Mrs Crabtree?’

  The woman hesitated slightly before replying. ‘Yes, that's right. I'm Mrs Crabtree, and this,’ she turned to the little man, ‘is Arthur. Mr Crabtree, my husband. Say hello, Arthur.’

  David came a few steps forward and then stopped abruptly. Looking at the chalk-white face of Arthur Crabtree, grotesquely animated by the flickering flames, he could see from the vacant gorgon stare and the slack gaping mouth that the man was dead. He grasped the podgy hand. It had the chill of dead meat. He felt for a pulse. There was none.

  David found himself stating the obvious. ‘He's dead’.

  The woman just smiled. ‘Oh no, sir. No. You've got that wrong. He's just resting. He'll be all right after he's had his little nap. Won't you Arthur dear?’ She kissed the dead man's fingers.

  David shook his head in disbelief. This
was like a scene from some suburban bedlam. The woman was obviously mentally unbalanced. Whether this was as a result of the man's death or not he didn't know, but at the present moment he was aware that there was no point in trying to reason with her.

  ‘Just resting. He'll be his old self soon; you'll see, sir. Won't you, Arthur?’ The pale white face with the dead eyes stared blankly back at her.

  The woman then turned, smiling, to David. ‘He deserves his rest. He's had a tiring night, but it was worth it. He made contact again; real contact.’

  ‘Contact?’ said David, his pulse quickening.

  ‘With the other side. With those who have passed over.’

  ‘Who did he contact?’ asked David more brusquely than he intended.

  ‘Arthur will be alright after his little nap, you'll see.’

  ‘Who did Arthur contact last night?’

  The woman looked blankly at him.

  ‘Was it Michael Barlow? Mrs Barlow's husband? I know she had an appointment here at seven thirty last night.’

  At the mention of Kate's name, the woman's features clouded. ‘Mrs Barlow,’ she repeated slowly as if resurrecting a fragment from her long forgotten past.

  ‘Yes. Yes. Mrs Barlow,’ David urged. ‘She was here last night.’ The woman nodded. David felt his stomach turn. He had been right then. But oh he wished he hadn't.

  The woman shivered. Memories she hoped she'd buried flickered into her brain returned to her. ‘Cold,’ she said. ‘I'm cold.’ She threw her arms around herself and began to rock gently backwards and forwards.

  ‘Yes, it is a little chilly. I'll put some more coal on the fire for you,’ said David, humouring her. He had to get some sense out of the woman if he could. There would be no help forthcoming from Arthur Crabtree.

  Yellow tongues of fire flared up as he emptied a shovel of coal into the grate. Grotesque shadows leapt around the room as though in response to the renewed vigour of the fire.

  ‘Is that better?’

  The woman nodded mutely and gave David a timid smile.

  ‘Now then, will you tell me what happened here last night?’ The woman's face turned sour again and she turned away from him.

  ‘Please tell me, Mrs Crabtree. I've got to know.’ He knelt down by her and took her hand.

  She gazed up at him and a gentle smile touched her lips. ‘It was to be an important meeting. You see Arthur had really made contact. There was no fooling this time: he really had made contact. He was so excited that after all these years his power had come back to him.’

  ‘Who did he make contact with?’

  She seemed not to have heard David's urgent plea and carried on talking as though he hadn't spoken. She was really talking to herself.

  ‘He was worried, too. Arthur was. The contact was very powerful and he thought it might be too strong for him to handle. But he couldn't deny its request you see.’ She smiled again as she gazed down into the fire. ‘He needed to prove to himself that he could still do it. After all these years of faking it and pretending, here was a chance to show that he could do it for real. The Power had come back to him. But he was worried. He didn't say as much, but I knew, a wife can always tell. She knows these things.’

  She dropped her head on her chest and lapsed into silence. David waited a few moments before prompting her.

  ‘Tell me what happened?’

  She heard these words faintly as they broke through the confusion of her own thoughts. ‘What happened? Arthur made contact. He made contact with the woman’s husband.’

  David suddenly felt nauseous and found he could hardly breathe. God, I wish I could wake up, he told himself. This is all a bad dream. He did not want to believe what he was hearing. But he did. Crabtree had contacted Michael Barlow from beyond the grave and now Crabtree was dead and Kate was in Intensive Care. It was a fucking living nightmare. And then he remembered what Rob Moore had said the day before: ‘My waking moments are like a dream and those damned nightmares are the reality.’ It seemed that he too had been sucked into this dark realm.

  Rather more roughly than he intended, he grasped the woman by the shoulders and shook her. ‘Tell me exactly what went on here last night.’

  She did not seem to notice his harshness and replied softly to his demand. ‘I told you Arthur made contact.’

  With Michael Barlow, Mrs Barlow's husband?’

  Her eyes widened. ‘Yes, that's right.’

  ‘What did he say?’

  ‘Say?’

  ‘Yes, what was his message?’

  ‘He said he wanted... Life. That's all. He wanted Life.’

  Jesus Christ. ‘What else did he say? He must have said more.’

  She turned away from him to face the fire. ‘He didn't say anything else—he just …came back.’

  ‘Came back,’ he reiterated, not daring to comprehend what she meant. Those two simple everyday words had the Devil's curse on them.

  ‘Arthur opened the channel for him to return, you see.’ As she spoke these words, it was as though she was reminded again how it had really been—the hideous truth that she had pushed into the farthest corner of her mind, hoping to forget about it for ever. She threw herself into the dead man's lap and sobbed. ‘No. No. Arthur dear.’ Her voice trailed away into a tearful whisper.

  Struggling to make sense of this crazy woman's words, David realised that the situation was far blacker than he could fully comprehend. Although her story presented an impossible scenario ripped from the page of a horror novel, the facts contrived to support this surreal fantasy. However, his logic rebelled against such nonsense. He might allow for the possibility of spirit messages, telepathic contact of some kind with the bereaved which provided the 'medium' with a rich source of data from which he could concoct a convincing message from the other side. But dead men did not come back to life. They did not walk again.

  He looked at the pallid face of Arthur Crabtree. It was obvious that the séance had been too much for him. Kate was clearly too intelligent a woman to be easily fooled and he'd had to pull out all the stops to present a convincing performance. The strain had been too much and he must have suffered some kind of heart attack.

  It was as simple as that. Wasn't it? WASN'T IT?

  And of course Crabtree's sudden death is what upset Kate. Not some daft message from Michael. It was the shock of Crabtree's demise that had caused Kate to drive so erratically.

  David almost smiled with relief as the clear rational explanation of events formed in his mind, expelling all macabre thoughts of walking corpses and such like.

  ‘Look Mrs Crabtree, will you allow me to ring for a doctor? I do think your husband should be seen to,’ he said as gently as he could, putting his hand on her shoulder.

  She turned her tear-stained face to David. Her eyes seemed to have lost that remote quality; the mistiness and the faraway look had disappeared. Her features were now relaxed and a slight smile touched her lips.

  ‘I'm all right now. It's all been a bit of a shock, you understand, but I assure you that I'm perfectly all right now. I loved him so much, you see. It's painful to lose one you love, you know.’

  David knew.

  ‘You've been very kind,’ she continued, ‘but I would prefer to ring the doctor myself. He is my husband.’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘If you'll leave me now, I'd like to spend a few minutes alone with him before I ring. A few last private moments together.’

  David knew there was no point in opposing her on this. There was nothing further he could do here, so he may as well leave. He had at least put the missing pieces of the puzzle together and although the completed picture was far from pleasant, at least now he knew.

  ‘I’ll leave you in peace then,’ he replied gently, getting up.

  As he reached the door, he turned back and said, ‘I'm sorry.’

  But the woman did not really hear him; she was staring into the dead face of the man she loved. Closing the door on this pathetic tableau, David l
eft the house.

  After some moments, Jean Wilson spoke. ‘You're cold, Arthur. Very cold. So am I, my dear. We could do with some more warmth. I think I'd better build a bigger fire, eh?’

  Although Arthur Crabtree did not reply, she knew that he agreed with her.

  She emptied the contents of the magazine rack onto the coals and began to stuff anything flammable into the grate, piling up fuel around the hearth. The flames blazed, crackled and stretched. Sparks became airborne, landing on the rug. Jean Wilson seemed oblivious of the growing conflagration or the spark that landed on the hem of her long floral dress. She remained immobile, sitting at Crabtree’s feet, her eyes shining in the glare of the flames.

  TEN

  The letter ‘t’ in Vista had somehow gone missing and the sign now read. Vis a Hotel’. That little idiosyncrasy fell in with the rest of the hotel's appearance: it looked all right, but there seemed to be something missing.

  Fragments of Rob Moore' memory still clung to the mind that now inhabited the body and it was these that faintly remembered the hotel, conveying the information to the new brain. Something to do with bringing a secretary here for an illicit night of passion. A smile crossed Rob's features. The memory was useful. It did suggest that the hotel was used to shady customers involved in a no-questions-asked room booking and that was ideal. Just what he wanted.

  It was a grey day; looking out to sea it was difficult to determine where the sky met the water. The promenade in this unfashionable end of Brighton was deserted. It was like Doomsday.

  ‘Just wait here, Timothy,’ he said. ‘I won't be long.’

  ‘Yes,’ the boy said mechanically.

  Rob Moore got out of the car, shivered as the winter cold hit him, and crossed the road to the hotel.

  The reception hall was quite smart with a plastic potted palm, but there was in the air the aroma of over-cooked vegetables that permeate such establishments.