Darkfall

by Stephen Laws

  “Rohmer?”

  Rohmer turned back from the window to look at Duvall.

  “Come on, Rohmer. If that thing really is dead, I think we should take the chance.”

  “That Darkfall lightning on the windows . . .” began Gilbert.

  “We don’t know for sure that it’ll strike,” said Duvall. “If that thing’s dead, isn’t it worth taking the risk to get away from here?”

  “It was always the intention that we stay through the Darkfall and monitor the activity,” said Rohmer.

  “To hell with that!” snapped Duvall. “After everything that’s happened, we can’t stay here.”

  “Rohmer,” said Cardiff quietly. “You don’t want to leave, do you?”

  Rohmer smiled his infuriating smile.

  “I bet you don’t have official clearances,” continued Cardiff. “Something about this entire operation never rang true for me from the start. Bringing your own people in here, your own scientists . . . and not telling them, not briefing them. There was something else going on in your mind, wasn’t there? Something that has nothing to do with your Darkfall Units. Isn’t that right?”

  “We can’t leave,” replied Rohmer. “You heard Gilbert. The lightning . . .”

  “I think he’s right,” said Duvall, standing. “You’ve been acting bloody peculiar for months now.”

  “We’re staying,” said Rohmer. “That’s an order.”

  “What do you say?” said Duvall, turning to Cardiff, looking for a new leader.

  Cardiff looked at Jimmy and Barbara.

  “Whatever you say,” said Jimmy in response to Cardiff’s unspoken question. “I suppose we’re with you.”

  “We’ll risk it,” said Cardiff. “It’s better than staying here, making a mistake, and getting sucked into the wall. But you have to decide for yourself, Duvall. I have no jurisdiction over you.” But Duvall was already on his feet and heading for the office door. All except Rohmer and Gilbert climbed carefully to their feet. Another thunderclap exploded above, ringing their ears. The secondary blast was louder still. Gilbert reacted to the shock of it; reacted to the shuddering he felt in the floor, and to the fact that the others were moving away now, towards Duvall and the blocked office door. He looked back to Rohmer, still looking out of the window.

  “Rohmer. What’s wrong with you? Why don’t you . . . ?”

  “You’re a scientist, Gilbert,” replied Rohmer. “But you’re blind.”

  “What is the point in staying here? My equipment is in the basement, people are dead and . . .”

  “There are so many things you don’t know. Things you need to learn. Things I could teach you.”

  “I’m going with them.” Gilbert waited for some response from Rohmer. There was none. Lightning seemed to reflect from the windows in his eyes, and to Gilbert it seemed as if Rohmer was possessed of some inner, terrifying power. He scrambled to his feet to join the others.

  Duvall was carefully pulling the cabinet aside from the door when Jimmy reached him and began to help. Duvall stopped momentarily when Barbara and Cardiff drew level.

  “You’re sure it’s dead,” he said flatly.

  “I told you. I could feel its presence, and now I can’t. It was dying.”

  “Come on,” said Jimmy, and began to tug at the cabinet again. Duvall rejoined his efforts and the edge of the cabinet caught against one of the floor tiles making a long, keening screech. They paused. Thunder rolled and grumbled beyond, and the eerie blue glow from the overhead strip lights flickered momentarily. And now the cabinet was pushed aside.

  Duvall licked his lips, looked at Cardiff . . . and pulled open the door.

  There was nothing in the corridor beyond.

  Duvall could see the two elevator doors, and directly opposite to him, the door marked: ‘Stairs’, through which they had dashed. It had swung back on its spring-loading, and was closed again. Duvall looked back at Cardiff.

  “Give me the gun.”

  Gilbert joined them now. Cardiff looked at him, nodded, and then turned back to Duvall. “No offence,” he said. “But I don’t trust you around guns.” He slipped past Duvall and into the corridor.

  Cardiff paused at the stairwell door. They couldn’t see his face, so he raised his eyes heavenward, gritted his teeth, and gave a small prayer.

  Then he slowly began to open the staircase door.

  SEVEN

  Cardiff slowly pushed at the door, widening the thin jet-black wedge. Lightning flickered, and that blackness beyond the door was momentarily lit up. Shadows danced and jumped. Cardiff licked his lips, heart hammering. He could feel the storm wind and rain gusting down the ground-floor corridor and into the stairwell. Was that thing behind the door somewhere, waiting? Gigantic, monstrous and powerful; waiting on the stairs for him to open the door wide, so that it could seize him, drag him away and do to him what it had done to Pearce?

  Something inhuman bellowed and roared in the stairwell.

  Cardiff froze in fear.

  But the stabbing pain in his eardrums was almost welcome, as the roaring subsided to a grumbling, faraway avalanche and he realised that it was only the sound of the storm.

  Body slick with sweat, despite the chill that had descended on the office block, Cardiff pushed the door open further, keeping the gun well in front of him.

  “I can see it . . .” he whispered to the others.

  It was down below, lying on the stairs. And Cardiff could see what had happened. The filing cabinet was dented and torn, shoved to one side at the foot of the stairs, and the thing had crawled out from beneath it, trying to crawl up the stairs after them. Its monstrous supine silhouette was clearly visible on the stairs. And in death, the thing had shrunk to the size that Cardiff remembered from when it was first discovered in the wrecked car.

  Cardiff moved out on to the landing, still keeping the gun well in front of him, and ready to use it if the thing should show any signs of stirring. He paused, turning back to Barbara and the others as they moved tentatively out on to the landing to join him.

  “Barbara, are you sure about this?”

  “Honestly, Mr Cardiff. I could feel it before. But now there’s nothing. I can’t hear it inside anymore.”

  Cardiff looked back down the stairs again. “We’ve got to be sure.”

  He began a slow and careful descent, stopping only once to turn back and whisper over the grumbling of the Darkfall: “Keep that door open . . . in case I have to come back quickly. And stay well back.”

  Another careful step.

  Jesus Christ, let it be dead.

  Another step. Thunder rumbled and echoed in the stairwell.

  I don’t want to . . . die? Is that what you were thinking? After all this time, when you didn’t care whether you lived or died? Are you saying you want to live, Cardiff?

  Another step. Lightning flickered in the ragged aperture where the ground-floor staircase door had been. The shadows around the thing undulated, giving it the appearance of life. Cardiff hesitated. There was no more movement. Now he could see that it was lying face down.

  Are you saying this bloody nightmare has changed you? Given you a taste for life? Well, Cardiff . . . I’ll go to hell.

  “Probably,” Cardiff mouthed, naked fear making him tremble as he reached the step above the thing.

  It had shrunk, back to something that approximated the size of a human being. But he recognised the abominably shredded and mutated head, and the bloodstained and distorted arms that ended in claws which could never have been human. The thing was wearing clothing still; shreds of fabric still clung to it and were somehow interwoven with the grey and leprous flesh.

  Cardiff nudged at that swollen head with his shoe. With horror, he felt it give. But the thing did not move. He braced his hand on the staircase rail at his left and looked around him into the shadows. The stairwell itself was twenty feet or so below. He took a deep breath, wedged his shoe under that head and began to heave the thing over on to its front, bra
cing his hand against the railing. It was a difficult job. The thing seemed glued to the staircase. Cardiff braced his gloved gun-hand against the wall on his right. Now, with both hands braced, he slid his foot further under the thing’s head and upper shoulder . . . and heaved again.

  It slid messily over and Cardiff stood quickly back, gun at the ready.

  But the thing was dead.

  He waited . . . and then stepped down to look closer. The monstrously distorted face was somehow different, and Cardiff edged around to look still closer at it.

  Two yellow and glazed eyes flickered open. Cardiff shrank back against the staircase. But now he could see that the thing was hardly a threat. It had been split open from neck to crotch. Indeterminate grey and fibrous innards pulsated in the darkness. Those hellish cataract-eyes blinked and Cardiff thought: Eyes? How can it have eyes? I shot out its only eye . . .

  And then the thing spoke.

  “For God’s sake, Cardiff,” it croaked. “Help me . . .”

  It weakly raised one ravaged and shredded arm towards him. And, at last, Cardiff could see that the mutated horror on the stairs was not the thing from the wrecked car, not the thing that had been Barbara’s brother from 1964.

  It was Farley Peters, the journalist.

  Moreover, it was the thing that Farley Peters had become. The thing which had been imprisoned in the corridor walls and which had gibbered and clutched at them with insane and monstrous hunger.

  Farley Peters—no longer imprisoned. No longer in that wall. And with his body gutted and ready for . . .

  “For Christ’s sake, get away from there, Cardiff!” shouted Jimmy from the landing, the voices of Duvall and Barbara joining in frantic chorus. Cardiff spun from Peters to look at them. They were waving frantically, and Cardiff was now aware with sudden terror of the massively looming shadow from the stairwell, on the other side of the stair-rail. And all he could do now was to turn in horror as that bellowing, roaring shape lunged with an encrusted claw through the metal stair-rails, which bent and squealed.

  Talons closed through the lapels of his jacket, his shirt and his flesh.

  A roaring, dripping maw yawned with monstrous hunger.

  It dragged Cardiff to it, through the bending metal of the stair-rail..

  EIGHT

  “You bitch!” yelled Duvall.

  He lashed out hard at Barbara with the back of his hand. The blow caught her on the cheek and she fell against Gilbert. They both staggered back out into the corridor. Before Jimmy could react, Duvall had brought his hand around again and hit him squarely on the jaw. Jimmy went down, grabbing at the stair-rail for support. The staircase was filled with the sounds of bellowing, screaming and thrashing shadows as Duvall burst back through the door after Barbara. She was leaning against the corridor wall, stunned. Gilbert looked on helplessly. The door snapped shut behind Duvall as he came, muffling the hideous sounds from below.

  “You knew! Didn’t you?”

  Duvall seized her by the hair, dragging her away from the wall.

  “No, don’t . . .” said Gilbert ineffectually.

  “You knew that thing wasn’t dead,” continued Duvall. “You wanted to trick us into believing that it was!” And Duvall emphasised his rage in that last word with another blow to Barbara’s face. The shock and force of it sent her reeling back against the wall once more. Panicking again, Gilbert yanked open the door to the office from whicl1they’d just come and slipped inside. Barbara tried to follow, but Duvall slammed the door against her and she cried out in pain as he pulled it open again, grabbed her arm and threw her into the office. Barbara’s foot skidded and she fell to the floor in the “corridor” between the hessian screens. “I knew it all along. Knew it!” snapped Duvall . . . and leaned down to take the monster by the throat and throttle the life out of it.

  In the next instant, Jimmy had shoulder-charged him from behind.

  Both men hurtled on over the top of Barbara in a tangle of limbs, crashing to the office floor. Jimmy was still on top, still conscious of not wanting any flesh contact with the floor. He aimed a blow at the back of Duvall’s head. Duvall felt it coming and twisted. Jimmy’s fist skimmed his cheek. Duvall lashed backwards, but Jimmy had leapt to his feet, colliding with one of the hessian screens. It toppled over to the floor with a flat whap! and Jimmy backed off into the centre of the office as Duvall scrambled to his feet at last. Gilbert had scurried back to Rohmer and Jimmy could see that Rohmer was still sitting on the desk near the back double-doors where they had left him. Whether he was still staring out of the window at the storm or watching them made no difference. Because Duvall had risen to his feet and was loo king hard at Jimmy, nodding his head. “Right,” he said, almost too quietly to be heard. “Right, Devlin. You’ve been lucky, very lucky. That’s twice. But let’s just see what your streetwise, closing-time training can do.”

  And Jimmy knew that this time he was in serious trouble.

  Lightning was flickering at the windows, casting those crazy shadows beneath the dim electric-blue of the strip lights as Duvall advanced towards him. Behind Duvall, Jimmy could see that Barbara was pulling herself to her feet. He looked around him for some sort of weapon, backing off as Duvall walked slowly towards him. Now that slow stroll was picking up speed and grim purpose as Jimmy grabbed at a wire “In” tray full of papers. He scooped it up from the desk and threw it into Duvall’s face. But Duvall smacked it dismissively aside and jabbed two steel-hard fingers at the base of Jimmy’s throat with a cold and precise disdain. The pain was excruciating, and choking. Instantly, it seemed, he couldn’t breathe and as his hands flew to his throat, Duvall swung up his right arm so that the point of his elbow hit Jimmy squarely in the face. Blood jetted from his nostrils and Jimmy went backwards over a desk, taking a computer console with him. Its glass screen shattered on the floor, and Jimmy struggled to rise. But now Duvall had the time, the training, the balance and the strength to deliver a kick to Jimmy’s midriff; a controlled kick that had all of Duvall’s force behind it, from the hip. Air whooshed from Jimmy’s lungs and he somersaulted again, slamming hard against another desk and sliding to the floor.

  There was a grim smile on Duvall’s face as he advanced.

  Jimmy saw him coming through blurred vision and wished that he could get to his feet, but he couldn’t move. There was a curious connection now in his mind between the time that Sergeant Barry Lawrence had knocked him silly in the pub and this new blurring of his mind. It’s all a dream, Barbara had said to him. And now he knew what this was all about. He was in a dream. It was his dream. His nightmare. When he woke up, he’d be lying on the floor of the boozer, and Sergeant Lawrence would be lifting him to his feet, dragging him outside to the panda car. None of this nightmare stuff had happened. How could it have happened? As this dream-man called Duvall advanced towards him in slow motion, Jimmy’s dream-brain raced, providing answers with utter certainty. Cardiff was still one of the bastards who had put him away, not someone who had been duped by a fellow officer with false evidence, certainly not someone he had come to respect. And the dream-woman called Barbara from I964? She wasn’t real either. How could she be? Just a fantasy based around Pamela, based around her old songs. And representing someone he had wanted Pamela to be.

  The dream-man called Duvall seized Jimmy around the neck in a way which was surely too painful to be a dream and yanked him to his feet, throwing him on to a desk. When the pain lanced into his back, the shock of it made him cry out loud . . . and he knew that he hadn’t been dreaming. Duvall was still holding him by the throat.

  “A lesson to be learned here, Devlin,” he said through gritted teeth as he raised his other hand in front of Jimmy’s face. Those two steel-hard fingers would blind him. “Just call it the advantages of a public school education . . .”

  Jimmy could not fight back. He resorted to his only hopeless defence . . . and screwed his eyes shut.

  Something cracked and shuddered.

  I’m blind! Am I bl
ind? he screamed in his mind.

  But no . . . he was able to open his eyes. And he could see.

  He could see that Duvall’s eyes were screwed shut in pain as he loomed over him. He could feel Duvall’s grip on his throat relaxing, could see Duvall’s poised hand lowering. And he watched as Duvall staggered away from him, his weight gone. Behind him, as he staggered from view, Jimmy saw Barbara standing with the neck of a broken whisky bottle in her hand, seized from one of the Christmas party tables. She had smashed it over Duvall’s head from behind. And now Jimmy had taken her hand as she hauled him back from the desk and. . .

  . . . and she pulled Jimmy to his feet. Her face was hurting badly where Duvall had hit her, and she could hardly believe that a dream could be so realistic. Except that now, she realised, this could not possibly be a dream. But also not reality. Certainly not reality as she knew it. Now she knew what was right. She knew who to trust and who not to trust. And she had dragged herself to her feet again and watched as the man called Duvall had sadistically begun to kill the boy who had protected her. The other man had also tried to protect her. But the other man—Mr Cardiff—was dead. The nightmare thing, the thing they had said was her brother (but she knew that this was impossible) had killed him on the staircase. The monster called Duvall wanted her dead. And when the only remaining one within this living real-nightmare dream who felt real to her was threatened, she had to act.

  She had taken that whisky bottle from a nearby table and brought it down with as much strength as she could muster on Duvall’s head. He had staggered away, head soaked in whisky and shoulders glittering with a new dandruff of broken glass as Barbara pulled Jimmy Devlin back from the desk and . . .

  . . . Duvall lunged back again, in an utter and consuming rage. Uncontrolled and dazed, he seized the rim of the desk and heaved with a burst of anger. Barbara screamed and dragged Jimmy away as the desk flipped over to the floor with a crash. Jimmy was a heavy weight in her hands. He slumped to the floor and she tried to drag him clear.