by Ian Woodhead
She sighed and rang his number, almost throwing the phone into the canal when she heard some automated voice informing her that her call could not be connected. There was nothing else for it; Chelsea would just have to walk back into the village. Home was out of the question but there was still the Dog and Duck. A few drinks and a hot meal would soon sort her out. She’d probably look like a drowned rat by the time she got the to the pub, but she didn’t really give a shit.
Chelsea pulled up her coat hood and climbed the steps back up to the road. If she kept a good pace, it wouldn’t take more than twenty minutes to reach the village. She walked past the sheep sheltering under a bush and hoped the stupid woolly thing died of a cold. Chelsea hated her life, she hated her family, her boyfriend, the crap internet connection and most of all, she hated the fucking rain.
The incessant stream of rain blocked out most of the other sounds, but even that could not stop her from hearing a sudden animal scream blasting out from just behind her. Chelsea spun around; she dashed to the other side of the road and felt the gorge rise up when she saw a large wet crimson mess spread out across the grass verge. Fragments of meat clung to the wooden fence behind the bush and she saw ropes of gore hanging off the foliage.
“Oh my fucking god!” she gasped. “What had just happened here?” That sensation of helpless fear that she’d done so well in staying suppressed now flooded through her body and tried to turn Chelsea into a shivering pile of boneless meat, demanding that she just lay under that bush, curl up in a tight ball and close her eyes.
With a will power that surprised even her, Chelsea turned back to face the road, trying to tell herself that she hadn’t seen several moving lumps just under the soil. Chelsea knew she had though, like rats under a blanket, all crowding around that red mess, sucking on the blood as it soaked into the ground.
“Shut the fuck up!” she screamed, “There was nothing there!” She ran into the middle of the road without looking back. If she did see anything under the earth, Chelsea just knew that her mind would snap like an overstretched elastic band.
Chelsea skidded to a halt once she figured that she was a safe distance from whatever the fuck she saw. She hurried to the edge of the road, just in case. It would be just her luck for some oncoming lorry to smash into her; at least it would be quick. The bastards always used this stretch of road like a racetrack when it pissed it down. She dared herself to look behind her. Not that was very reassuring; this downpour had reduced visibility down to practically nothing.
Through the rain, Chelsea saw a vague shape slowly coming towards her. Fear gripped her as the shape took human form. In her panicked dash, Chelsea had assumed that the things under the earth had killed and ripped that sheep to pieces. What if she had it all wrong, what if the shape coming towards her had been responsible?
She couldn’t move, her feet refused to shift from the wet road. That thing was going to rip her into bits and there was fuck all she could do about it. A huge scream built up in her chest, the momentum carried it up her throat. She saw a monstrous wet, human face, the contorted features bunched together in fury. Chelsea shrieked out in terror, knowing that she had taken her last breath.
A pair of thick arms reached out through the thick rain and wrapped around her waist, pulling her body into the embrace of a large warm body. “Come on, Chelsea; will you calm it down for crying out fucking loud. It’s me. Look, it’s your Sammie.”
Relief flooded through her body and she broke down in his arms, sobbing uncontrollably. “What the fuck is happening to me? I can’t think straight, I feel like my drink has been fucking spiked.”
Samuel pulled her up and took Chelsea to the side of the road. “You’re not drugged, sweetie. This fucked up scared rabbit sensation has got into nearly everybody, including me.” Samuel pushed her soaked hair away from her eye then leaned down to kiss her. “Just hush and calm that beating heart, baby,” he whispered after breaking away. “Come on,” he said, grabbing her hand then pulling Chelsea back up the road.
“Where are we going?”
“There’s a good reason why I wanted to meet you here.”
She saw not one trace of that sheep was left on the foliage; she wondered if Samuel had seen any of the stuff. He led her up to his car then walked her past it. “Baby, what are you doing?”
“Can you not see it?” he asked pointing to a large structure across the road.
“You mean the McMahon house?” She shivered. “Of course I see it.” Chelsea passed the place on the way to the bridge. She even stopped to watch a couple of pigeons walking along the top floor windowsill. Every kid in Colbeck knew about this place. Three decades ago, a husband, took his shotgun and blew away his three kids and wife before turning the gun on himself. To this day, nobody knew why he had done it. Until they opened the caverns, this had been the village’s only money-spinner.
“You brought me all the way out here to look at that?”
He shook his head. “Don’t be fucking stupid, come and look what we have, sweetie.”
The path to the front of the house had disappeared under weeds decades ago. The trampling of nosey tourists and generations of village kids had created a new path that cut through what used to be the lawn. Chelsea saw that the boards covering the ground floor windows were missing. She was sure the boards were still nailed over the windows when she passed the place an hour ago.
“We’re just a short walk from the village border now, Chelsea.”
She nodded, not really listening. Chelsea was just happy that he was with her and that she’d been able to push away that irrational fear that almost pulled her apart at the seams. Samuel led Chelsea over the crushed and flattened weeds, over to the first window.
“Both Karl and Alex are inside. They’ve got the fear as well. It was their idea to break into the house, neither of them wanted to stay inside the car while I looked for you.” He approached the window. “Are you still there?” He shouted.
Chelsea tentatively waved as Alex pushed his head through the opening. He saw Chelsea and smiled.
“Hey there, doll. I’m glad you’re okay.”
Did she have that haunted expression etched on her face as well? Alex looked as though he’d just seen Dennis McMahon kills his family with his own two eyes. When Karl came over, Chelsea saw that he looked no better.
“Is he okay?” asked Samuel.
“Yeah,” Karl replied. “He crawled under a table and hasn’t come out yet.”
“Let’s get this show on the road then, guys.” He took Chelsea’s hand. “Come on, Sweetie. I’ve got something to tell you.”
“Wait, who’s hiding under the table? What are you three up to?”
“Do you remember when the guy from the greengrocer’s split up with his wife last year and got pissed up in the Dog and Gun?”
“Of course I do,” she replied. “It was the only interesting thing that happened last year.” Poor Mr Harlan drowned his sorrows in a few shots of single malt before trying to wreck the pub.
“As per usual, our only resident copper jumped to the rescue and calmed him down.”
At well over six foot and built like the side of a barn door, not many villagers would be foolish enough to pick a fight with Darren Huggins. “Wait, are you saying that Darren is in there as well?”
Samuel nodded. “The fear took hold of him pretty bad. We found him on the other side of the village, trying to escape.” He took her back over the bridge and walked along the road until they reached the village border.
The rain had finally stopped. “Samuel, I’m wet and cold. Can we just go home? I don’t even know what we’re doing here.” Chelsea shivered and wondered if he’d mind if they sat in the car, just for a few minutes.
He squeezed her hand. “We’ll go after this, sweetie. I promise.” He nodded back “towards the house. “Look they’re here now.”
She gasped at the sight of the two men carrying the huge stumbling wreck between them. Samuel’s friends were a picture of
health compared to him. “What’s happened to him?” His face and both his hands were covered in bruises and dried blood. “Oh fuck, no, Samuel, please tell me you lot haven’t done that to him?”
“No,” he replied. “He’s done that to himself.” Samuel nodded over to Alex. “Okay, boys, we’re close enough, let him go.”
They released Darren and jumped back as the man roared and raced towards Chelsea and Samuel.”
“Relax,” he said, comforting her. “It’s not us he running for.”
Darren ran past them and suddenly bounced back as though he’d just smashed into a thick glass window. He fell back onto the road and lay still.
“What the fuck happened?”
Samuel walked her past his body with his hand out in front of him. He stopped dead and sighed. “Babes, we’re trapped in here,” he said, turning and taking Chelsea’s hand. He pulled it over to meet his.
“That is not possible,” she gasped when her hand smacked against an invisible wall.
“Possible or not, it’s happened and we’re trapped in Colbeck.”
“I don’t understand any of this,” she sobbed.
Samuel led her back to the car. He opened the door and let her climb into the back seat. He went around the other side and climbed in beside her. She watched the other man roll Darren towards the verge before they made their way back to the car. Her boyfriend squeezed her leg.
“We are all scared because some fucking bastard has gone and killed us all. There was this thing lying dormant in the caverns, it’s been there for centuries and some cunt decided to let it out.” He turned and gazed into her eyes. “We all belong to it, Sweetie, every local can feel its touch.” He banged his fist against his chest. “We can feel it right here. “As soon as the sun goes in, that monstrous fucker is going to come for us, its going to come for us all.”
Chelsea listened to his words and just knew they were true. She watched the other two men climb into the front of the car.
“Baby, the strangers are not affected.” He looked out of the window. “If we round them all up and offer them to this thing, it might delay our capture.” He turned to stare at her. “I do have an idea you see, I think we can stop it.”
“How?”
“I’m not sure you’ll like it though.” He sighed. “You see, it was your stupid brother who let this bastard out and my plan involves him.”
“I don’t care what happens to him,” she spat.
Chapter Thirteen
He felt so uncomfortable under the combined stares of the other three adults sitting around the breakfast table. Dan knew that none of them bore him any malice. His parents had already explained that they already knew it was not his fault, and there could have been no alternative outcome.
Alison held his hand under the table; her proximity helped to ward off some of that helpless feeling of fright. “Could I have another coffee, mum?”
His dad leaned across the table. “Are you sure that you understand what I’ve just said to you?”
“Yeah,” he replied, sighing. “As far as the rest of the villagers are concerned, this is all my fault.” His mum placed her hands on his shoulders. He saw her smile at Alison. “Dad, can you please tell me what’s going on? I feel like I’m going out of my mind here.”
His dad took a sip of his drink. It didn’t surprise Dan to see a shot glass full of his last Christmas present from Chelsea. Alcohol hadn’t passed his dad’s lips for over two years. Dan had not been all that shocked that his sister had bought him a bottle of cheap brandy, not when Dan knew that the sly bitch was rather partial to brandy. Nobody had said anything about his sister’s absence. It surprised Dan to find that he hoped she was okay.
“Colbeck village is in the middle of nowhere. This fact, we already know. I’m sure every teen in the village doesn’t stop bitching about our remote location. I know I did when I was your age, and so did your mum.” He took another sip and grimaced. “Christ, this stuff really does taste like paint stripper. Do you see this bruise on my forehead? I got that last night. I was in your sister’s bedroom, standing on a chair and fixing up that shelf she has been nagging about for the last three weeks. As soon as you released that creature from the caverns, all these forgotten racial memories rushed into my head. I fell off and cracked my skull on Chelsea’s footboard.”
His mother placed a drink in front of him. She then poured some of his father’s brandy into the cup. “You’re going to need that.” She dug her fingers into his shoulders. “I’m so sorry, darling. I really am.”
“We are his property, Dan, his livestock. Every local born in Colbeck belongs to the master. He’s been sleeping for a thousand years and now he’s awake and he needs to feed.” His dad grabbed his glass with both hands and poured the rest of the liquid down his throat. “If we’re lucky we have a couple more days left to enjoy our lives.”
“What then, dad?” Deep down, he knew that his dad spoke the truth but, unlike him, Dan refused to believe that all was lost. There was no way that he would give up without a fight.
“Once he has you, he infects you, Dan, he injects something that changes you into lesser versions of him. Once he’s enthralled us, he’ll head back to the caverns, taking his livestock with him. With his taint running through your veins, dying from old age is no longer an option. The master will spend the next thousand years feeding on us.”
“How do you know all this?” Alison asked.
He shrugged. “Like I said, all these weird memories rushed into my head. It like I was actually there, back when the master awoke. I saw him take and feed on our ancestors.” He shivered. “Oh, Christ, I really do wish I had some fucking whisky.”
“But this monster can’t take all of us, can he?” Alison frowned. “I mean, if that was the case, how are we here?”
“A farmer doesn’t send all his livestock for slaughter, honey. He keeps the strongest back to replenish the herd.” His mother sighed. “That’s what must have happened a thousand years ago. I’m sure the same will happen this time as well.”
His mum sat down beside his father and poured a shot of brandy into her cup. She looked as though she had aged twenty years since he last saw her this morning.
“So that’s it then, is it, mum? We just all give up, lie on our backs and wait for this fucking monster to collect our bodies and put us between two slices of bread? Okay, so this thing ate our ancestors. That was centuries ago. The best weapon that those savages had was a crossbow and a spear. This bastard wouldn’t stand a chance against a tank or an assault rifle.”
His father nodded. “I’m sure you’re right there, son. Trouble is, do you have a tank hidden under your bed? I’m sure your mum would have noticed when she cleaned out your bedroom on Monday.”
“I’m not going to give up!” he snapped, jumping to his feet. “There must be some way of taking down this thing.”
Alison reached into her pocket, pulled out her phone and placed it on the table. “Most of us have a mobile,” she said, looking at Dan. “Our village can seem a bit backward at times but modern technology hasn’t completely forgotten Colbeck.” She scrolled down on her address book and stopped at a name right at the bottom. “I used to go to school with Donna Brightman. Her family moved to Leeds ten years ago. They weren’t from around here so they wouldn’t be infected.” Her finger just hovered over the call icon. “No matter what I do, I just cannot call her. Like there’s an invisible barrier between me and the call icon.”
Dan reached down and found that he could not press it either. “That’s just not possible.” He looked over at his parents expecting them to have ‘I told you so’ smirks plastered over their faces. Instead, all he saw was misery.
Alison slid her phone towards him. “Maybe there was something in the caverns that will help kill this thing,” she said. “Here you go, Dan. These are the photos I took.”
Unlike Dan, Alison’s phone had a top of the range camera built in. The pictures she had taken were so clear, it almost f
elt as though he was standing right next to that pile of bones. He enlarged the picture, focussing on a small skull, lying on the ground, a distance away from the other bones.
Dan’s eyes began to close, he felt the image grow, pulling him closer. His surroundings disappeared, all he saw was the rough rock surrounding him.
He sat, with the others, at the back of the cavern, watching the master seal up the chamber. Benedict shivered, he clamped his teeth together to stop them chattering. No matter how tight he pulled the woollen cloak around his thin body or how close he got to the rest of the flock, Benedict just could not warm up.
A collective groan of despair rose from the other eighteen survivors as their last glimpse of daylight vanished forever. Benedict closed his eyes, fell back against the floor and opened his mouth, feeling the howl of hopelessness blast out of his throat. All the others followed his lead. The background noise abruptly ceased, it took him a few more moments to realise that only he was making any sound. Benedict’s eyes snapped open and found eighteen pairs of lantern red eyes glaring at him.
Despite the complete lack of any light, he had no problem seeing the others or their master slowly threading his way towards him.
“You are now amongst friends.” He said. The master got down on one knee, bringing himself down to Benedict’s level. “There is no need to cry now, you’re safe here.” The man pointed at four of the men standing behind him, they scurried over to him. “Take a limb each and spread him.”
He struggled, screamed and tried to bite any of them who got too close to his slavering jaws. “Put me down!” he cried. The men continued their instructions in silence, fearfully glancing towards the master who gave them muted encouragement. They lifted him off the floor and kept him secured whilst holding Benedict’s arms and legs. “You said I would be safe!”
The master leaned over his body and used the sharp claws at the ends of his fingers to cut away the clothes. “So I did,” he replied. “You, my friend are the lucky one. Your agony will only last you for a few weeks. It will take me that time to reduce your flesh to a few gnawed clean bones. I want you to spare a thought for the ones you leave behind, Benedict. They will live with the knowledge that this is all they have to look forward to.”
