Flesh and Blood

by Nick Gifford

  All of them were blank, like the war memorial that stood above the Bay at Bathside. Some of the graves were marked with shrivelled, decaying flowers. Others were bare, the earth around them disturbed, as if animals had been digging.

  The wrought iron fence enclosing the dead families from 1898 was caked in rust.

  Matt went closer.

  Not rust, he saw: it was a deeper red, the red of dried blood. The stones within were bare, just like all the others.

  Just then, Matt heard a scratching sound, a scraping: fingernails on stone. One of the six slabs started to move, vibrating as some unseen force wrestled with it from below.

  Matt backed away and the movement subsided, the scraping sounds ceased.

  He tugged the heavy door by its iron-ring handle. Inside, the church offered cool refuge from the muggy, stormy heat of the day. He slid into a pew and closed his eyes. He had to think, he had to get things straight in his mind.

  The family talent: it was a special sensitivity, an ability to form a mental bridge between the two realms. But he had been entirely swallowed up by Alternity! How could he hope to form such a link when he was wholly trapped in one of the realms? He had nowhere to form a bridge to... He was just an ordinary person. Trapped.

  No wonder the house had lost its special atmosphere: he was not sensitive to the Way from this side.

  He remembered the tramp’s words: Nobody gets out of here... this is all there is.

  He heard a sound from the far end of the church. There was somebody down there. Hiding? Spying on him? He remembered all the staring faces from behind the windows of the village’s houses. Had they come after him?

  It was the vicar: the one Carol had called David, the one who had waited for Matt in the hospital garden with tales of madness and the Devil.

  The man gave a slight start when he saw Matt sitting in the church. Then he came along the central aisle towards him. He smiled. “We don’t have many visitors these days,” he said. “Faith is such a rare thing here. Even the young don’t swallow our tall stories any more.”

  Matt stared at him. And then, slowly, he started to smile.

  The vicar raised his eyebrows, clearly confused by Matt’s expression.

  Matt stood quickly and turned towards the door. “Sorry,” he said. “I’ve got to go.”

  “I wouldn’t if I were you,” said the vicar. “They’re waiting outside. You’re new here, aren’t you? They don’t like your sort, you see. They hate you. They associate you with all that they’ve lost. They want nothing more than to get out of this damnable place, yet you and your kind keep them here. You keep them trapped.”

  The vicar’s voice had become steadily shriller. “You can wait here. Really, you can wait here. Stay with me – go on, you’ll be much better off with me!”

  And then Matt saw that he was carrying something small, glinting in the dim light of the church’s interior. A knife of some sort.

  Matt ran to the door and pushed it open.

  They were waiting in the churchyard, ghoulish faces all turned towards the door, waiting for Matt to emerge. Old ladies with broken bottles in their hands, children with hammers or sticks, a large black dog straining at its leash. A young mother, clutching a baby to her bare breast, held a machete in her free hand.

  Matt darted through jostling headstones and found the small path that led around to the back of the church.

  He came to a high stone wall, a row of plaques at its foot – these still bore names, he saw, and then he remembered: the cremated. Ashes, Gramps had said. There’s no way back from ashes.

  Why wasn’t the crowd following, he wondered suddenly? What were they waiting for?

  And then he heard the scratching again. And he felt the vibrations in the ground beneath his feet. He was standing by a small, plain headstone and now he could see the ground bulging upwards.

  He backed away.

  There was an abrupt tearing sound and the ground burst open. A figure pushed its way free of the loose soil.

  A man.

  Halfway out of the ground, he stopped and brushed soil from his face.

  The man was young, dressed in black. He had a white collar around his neck. He was a vicar!

  Back when Gramps had been young there had been a vicar: a strong man. An evil man. Gramps had defeated him – had he been trapped in Alternity as punishment?

  Was this man the Reverend Harold Allbright?

  The vicar looked at Matt and smiled crookedly. “Ah,” he said, in a rich, deep voice. “How nice: a Wareden. It’s been such a long wait.”

  As he started to pull himself free from the ground, Matt turned and ran.

  At the front of the church they were still waiting.

  He had no way to turn. He stepped out into a pool of sunlight that had suddenly broken through the clouds.

  He recounted the first vicar’s words in his mind – even the young – determined to lodge them there. He had to hold onto that thought. No matter what they did to him.

  The dog got to him first. It broke free from its owner and came bounding towards Matt, teeth bared, drooling white foam. He felt those hard white teeth closing on his throat as he fell back towards the church and then he felt nothing at all.

  ~

  He could hear gulls, mewing in the distance. People laughing. He could smell the fresh briny smell of the sea.

  He opened his eyes, saw sand and shingle in front of his face. He was lying on the beach.

  He knew better now than to hope he had escaped. He raised a hand to his neck, suddenly remembering the dog’s attack.

  The tramp was a short distance away, watching him, chuckling. “Believe me yet?”

  He ignored him, climbed to his feet and brushed the sand from his clothes. He knew what he had to do. He hurried up to the Promenade. As before, everybody stopped and stared at him. He tried to ignore them.

  He paused at the memorial. He had to work out how he was going to do this. Death might have lost meaning here, but pain had not. Instinctively, he reached for his throat again, and thought of that dog.

  Vince was still working on his car. He had an aerosol can and a rag and he kept spraying a small patch on the driver’s door, then rubbing it vigorously with his rag. Spraying and rubbing, spraying and rubbing.

  But his eyes weren’t on his work, they were continually flitting from side to side, watching. Waiting.

  Matt backed away. He could play the waiting game too.

  ~

  Time didn’t seem to be passing. The sun stayed high in the sky, hidden mostly behind the heavy blanket of clouds. And Vince remained at the front of the house. Matt waited a short distance up an alleyway, as far out of sight as he could manage. Every so often he emerged and peered along the street to see Vince still there.

  What if Vince never moved from that spot? It was a possibility he had to consider.

  He went deeper into the alleyway. He knew there wasn’t a back way into his Aunt’s garden, but what if...?

  The alleyway was enclosed by high, rendered walls, and cluttered at regular intervals by green wheelybins. A number of tall wooden doors were set into the wall. He approached the last of these, pushed at it, and passed through into an overgrown garden. He looked around, but nobody seemed to be aware of him, there were no staring faces at the windows.

  He crossed the garden and clambered over a wooden fence. He tried to recall the view from the box room window so that he could work out where he was.

  He headed across the garden, ignoring the sudden gasp of surprise from an elderly man who had been spraying his roses. He pulled himself up on the next high wall and was relieved to see that the garden was empty. He saw the small patch of short grass where Mike had been mowing and shuddered in sudden recollection.

  He swung himself over the wall and landed in a crouch in a large patch of summer bedding.

  At the back door he paused.

  The kitchen was empty. He went inside.

  There was a sound from the dining r
oom, so he hurried through into the hallway before he was noticed. He could hear the sound of a computer game from the living room.

  He stepped across to the door and peered inside. A single head was just visible over the sofa: Kirsty. He took a deep breath and stepped into the room, shutting the door gently behind him and leaning on it.

  “Cousin Matthew!”

  He turned. Tina was standing in the corner by a bookshelf. Smiling.

  Kirsty looked up from where she was sitting on the floor. She glanced from her sister to Matt and back again, looking puzzled, a little frightened. “Tina?” she said. “Why are you looking at Matt like that?”

  Matt backed away from the older girl.

  She was coming towards him, still smiling. She didn’t have any weapons, but then, Matt realised grimly, she didn’t look as if she needed any. She looked as if she was preparing to rip him limb from limb...

  And slowly.

  Matt raised his arms in front of himself, trying to prepare for another attack.

  Just then a large vase smashed over Tina’s head.

  For an instant it looked as if the older girl would not react. She blinked, straightened a little, blinked again. And then she slumped to the floor, blood seeping through her straight brown hair.

  Matt stared aghast at Kirsty, who was now standing on the sofa, wiping her hands down her front. She looked apologetic.

  She glanced at Matt, then looked away. In a very quiet voice she said, “I hate it when she gets like that. She knows I hate it.”

  She straightened, then stepped down from the sofa. In a stronger voice, she said, “She’ll be back, though. She never leaves me alone for long.”

  Matt made himself think. He had to stay in control. “Kirsty,” he said. “I need your help. I’m trapped here. I can’t get out.”

  She looked puzzled.

  “The bridge, Kirsty! You can make the bridge in your mind.” He stepped towards her and placed a hand gently on her arm to try to reassure her. “Kirsty, please. Remember the poems that Gramps taught us – the ones that close the doors in our minds. You can use them to open doors, too. I need you to open a door for me, Kirsty, to let me back through. You’re still out there in the real world, Kirsty – it’s just a part of you that’s here with me. You can still form that bridge.”

  She still looked confused, frightened by his intensity.

  “Never the doors of the righteous be breached,” he recited at her. “Go on. Please, Kirsty: say the words.”

  Hesitantly, she recited the poem for him. Immediately, he felt the words’ calming influence spreading, a bond forging itself between Kirsty and himself.

  A dark shadow fell across the window.

  Vince.

  “The words have the power, Kirsty,” Matt pleaded. “Use them to open the door. Swap them around, reverse them. Just keep saying them!”

  The window burst inwards and a bloody fist tangled in the net curtains.

  Kirsty gasped and turned to the window.

  “Please, Kirsty.”

  “Never the shield of our minds be breached, shine shadow, where light had concealed,” she said.

  “Protect us from evil, protect us from fear.” Once she had started the words came cascading out.

  They repeated the last line together: “Shine shadow, where light had concealed!” Immediately, Kirsty started to repeat the distorted poem, mixing its words up even further.

  There was a grunt from beyond the shattered window. Vince was staring curiously at his bloodied fist. Then he wiped it down his front and started to clamber into the room.

  And, suddenly, the air shifted and an intense heat descended.

  “Go on!” cried Matt, at his chanting cousin.

  A disc formed, hanging in the air about two metres in front of Kirsty.

  Matt lunged towards it and suddenly the shimmering disc folded itself around him, engulfing him. An intense dizziness washed over him, and he fell forward onto his knees, struggling to remain conscious.

  Part Four

  The Reckoning

  15 Missing

  His body was aching, his limbs felt heavy. It was as if a great weight was pressing him down into the hard floor, making every breath a gargantuan effort.

  His eyes started to adjust to the darkness: an irregular assortment of shapes all around him, a horizontal line of light somewhere above him. The air smelt musty, unused.

  He was in the basement of his grandparents’ house. He should have known that this was where he would reappear – he had foolishly expected to emerge in his aunt’s house at Bathside, but the Way was here.

  He felt consciousness starting to seep away.

  “Never the doors of the righteous be breached,” he gasped, gaining strength with every word.

  “The minds of the pure are our shield.” He forced himself into a sitting position. The dark shapes he could see were the stacked boxes and bags, the horizontal line was the light seeping under the door at the top of the basement stairs.

  “Protect us from evil, protect us from fear,

  “Shine light where the shadow concealed.”

  He stood, then staggered towards the stairs and climbed them on all fours.

  At the top, he stood again, dragged the door open and toppled out into the hallway, savouring the sudden bright sunlight.

  He was alone in the house, he felt certain. Vince must have left him – perhaps he had even fled in panic at the sight of the Way opening up and Matt being engulfed.

  He wasn’t sorry to be alone. He felt weak and confused. He needed to gather himself, to work out what had happened. But in a strange way, he realised, he felt strong, too. He had confronted Alternity and mastered it, he had learnt to control the family talent.

  Was that really why Vince had pushed him into going through with it? To help him confront and master this thing? Perhaps it was just the morbid curiosity of the outsider. In a way Vince was very much like Tina – an ungifted, ordinary individual on the edges of something special. Perhaps he had simply wanted to see what would happen.

  But he remembered his grandfather’s and the tramp’s warnings about how Alternity could reach out to weak minds and use them to try to open the Way... Was that why Vince was so drawn to this place? Was he a mere puppet controlled by dark forces?

  Matt went through to the kitchen and tried the taps, but the water had been turned off. He glanced at the back door and was momentarily surprised to see that the glass was not broken... but that had been in Alternity...

  He shuddered, then rubbed at his face. He had to get a grip on himself.

  He found some tonic water in a cupboard and drank deeply, despite the bitter after-taste. He took the key from its shelf just inside the back door and let himself out. The side of the house was in shadow and for a moment his brain didn’t recognise the slumped shape at the foot of the wall.

  A body.

  It was a man’s body.

  Matt stepped back into the kitchen doorway.

  It was the young vicar. His face was covered in dried blood ... his big glasses lay a short distance away, smashed.

  Had he failed to break free, after all? Was this still the gruesome half-world between reality and Alternity? He remembered the crowd of villagers lined up in the churchyard, armed with assorted sticks, machetes, broken bottles. Had they turned on the young vicar once they had despatched Matt?

  He tried to calm down, to think things through in a rational way. He thought of the Way Kirsty had opened up for him: passing through it had been identical to the first time he had passed through the Way, so why would it merely return him to Alternity? He looked at the intact glass in the back door, then outside to the high blue sky.

  He shook his head.

  This wasn’t Alternity. It didn’t feel like Alternity.

  He stepped outside again and approached the vicar.

  He was breathing! He was alive!

  Matt crouched and pulled at the man’s dog collar, trying to loosen it.

&n
bsp; In response to his touch, the vicar flinched weakly, then opened his eyes.

  Matt jerked away, convinced the eyes would be red and staring, but they were grey, watery, unfocused.

  The vicar opened his mouth a crack. “I... I need help,” he croaked. “It... hurts.”

  “Okay,” said Matt. “I’ll get help.”

  The vicar seized his wrist, stopping Matt from rising. “I... felt something,” he said. “Something here. Stan Wareden asked me to watch over his house, so I came. I felt something. Calling to me. The Devil was calling to me... I tried to resist... but I had to come... so weak...”

  Matt worked his way free, disturbed by the vicar’s words. Had the vicar really detected something happening with the Way? Had his exploits had some wider effect? He remembered the warnings about the dangers posed by any seepage through the Way... the graves in the churchyard. Had his activities weakened the Way somehow? Had Alternity been reaching out through a weakness he had forged?

  He went inside and lifted the telephone from its rest, half-expecting the line to be dead. The dialling tone hummed in his ear and he keyed 999. “Ambulance, please,” he said. “I need an ambulance.”

  ~

  “We’ve been looking for you. You’ve caused us a lot of trouble. Your mum’s been worried sick.”

  The man had introduced himself as Detective Sergeant Cooper. He was a dark-haired man with a moustache and he was wearing a suit that didn’t quite fit the broad shape of his body.

  Matt leaned back against the door-frame. He was exhausted. He’d been to his own private hell and back. And now he was being told off by a policeman who didn’t have the faintest idea about what really went on in this village, this house.

  Out in the drive, Sergeant Cooper’s colleague watched as the paramedics eased the vicar into the ambulance. Cooper had parked his car in the road.

  “You could at least have called her to say you were all right.”

  Matt didn’t understand. “What day is it?” he asked.

  Cooper looked at him strangely. “Wednesday,” he said. “The 20th.”

  Matt stared at him. “I... I lost track,” he said. He had been missing for a whole week.