by Paul Starkey
Felix scooted away from the door as fast as a cat from a hot tin roof, stepping past them, putting them between him and the door.
Oh well, thought Tyrell, safer over there. He knelt by Cheung’s side. “You ok?”
Somehow Cheung managed a nod.
“I think he is,” said Chalice looking up, Tyrell saw a smudge of tears at the corner of one eye. “I can’t see any bleeding. We went down pretty heavy but,” she looked down and smiled. “Painful though it was, I don’t think it did any more damage than was already done. The more I think about it the more I think the knife isn’t embedded deep enough for major damage.”
“Hope…you’re…” Cheung couldn’t finish the sentence. He coughed again.
Tyrell glanced back. Felix was standing by the corner of the table, ankles crossed, fingers nervously stroking the table top, eyes furtively scanning backwards and forwards. “Felix, do me a favour and grab a bottle of tonic water out of the globe.”
Felix moved a lot more slowly now he didn’t feel his own life was on the line. Teenagers, thought Tyrell, knowing he’d likely have been as frustrating back at Felix’s age. At least the kid returned with the right drink, Tyrell had feared he’d bring a bottle of scotch.
Tyrell looked at Chalice as she gave Cheung a drink. “Ibex is gone,” he said, annoyance and frustration in his voice.
“No he isn’t.” said Felix, and they both looked his way.
“What?” said Chalice.
“He isn’t gone, well not gone outside. Last time I saw him he was running upstairs.”
Tyrell looked at Chalice, and wondered if the predatory smile now on her lips was mirrored on his own...
Chapter Forty five
Stupid, Quintus, really stupid, he thought, even as he fired. He saw the muzzle flash, but didn’t really see the path of the bullet. He knew he hadn’t missed though, his aim was good enough at this range, and the bullet should have hit the wolf in the head.
Except it was still coming, they were still coming. It didn’t speed its approach, didn’t howl or make any real show of understanding that the man ahead had tried to hurt it. The wolf’s companion though, the man who walked beside it, the man whose features were coming into focus now, showing the flat rustic look of a farmer, well he was smiling like he was in on the joke.
Felix just stood there, eyes wide; amazed he wasn’t dead. The wolf was taking the lead now, its front paws stepping over the threshold of the door. Reason told Ibex that if a bullet could pass so easily through the phantom before him, then so should he be able to. He could run through the ghosts, out into the night and make good his escape.
Except he couldn’t. It would have been impossible for him to explain the feeling that washed over him, that sense of unease and terror that seemed to precede the spectral forms walking towards him like the leading edge of a storm. And like a storm he felt his hackles rise, felt his skin crawl as if lightning was on the way rather than something less mundane.
A miasma of despair was surrounding him. He tried to take a step forwards but his legs wouldn’t obey. Whatever his mind might think about these things, his body was reacting on a baser level. Like a cave dweller faced by an eclipse for the first time, Quintus Armstrong gave in to what thousands of years of evolution had failed to eradicate from his very DNA.
He turned and ran.
It made no sense, but moving, even the act of turning his back on the phantoms, seemed to break whatever spell had held him in its thrall. His legs still felt leaden, but he willed them to move, and they grudgingly acquiesced, and with each step they seemed to loosen further.
He had three options, and no real time to stop and ponder them. To his right was the drawing room door—he wouldn’t be able to open it, besides Chalice and co were inside—to his left the doorway that led to the main body of the house. Straight ahead was the stairs.
Probably because it involved the least amount of conscious thought, Ibex ran up the stairs. Even as he reached the first landing, his feet hammering the stairs as he went, he realised his error, but he also knew he wasn’t about to turn around. He veered left and took the second staircase without slowing, hand grabbing for the banister to pull himself along even as he took the stairs two at a time.
As he emerged onto the landing proper, grateful that Chalice had left lights burning throughout the house, he finally allowed himself to pause, to collect his thoughts. Still he didn’t look back though.
He should head to his right, along the corridor that he knew led to another staircase down, as well as several rooms that might serve as potential hiding places, but something made him pause. To his left, beyond the empty landing, was the door to the master bedroom. The doorway he and the others had passed through not that long ago on their way to investigate the screams of poor Lucy. The door that had been left firmly closed.
The door that was now wide open.
He could see very little beyond the threshold. No lights burned inside. Despite this, some curious urge took hold of him, and he stepped towards the room. He loosely aimed the gun in his direction of travel, more out of habit than any real thought of defence.
He tried to rationalise his actions. He was going to rifle Brendan’s body, strip it of ammunition, of money and credit cards, additional supplies for the escape he would surely still make. This made little sense if he gave it more than a moment’s thought. He doubted the man was carrying much cash, and any cards would be as useless as his own. As for ammunition…he had no plans for a shootout. The gun was useful only as a last resort, or to perhaps to threaten some passing motorist if he could ever get out of this house.
Still he walked towards the bedroom, slowly, hesitantly, as if some part of him knew it was a bad idea and still had some measure of control, though only enough to slow him down, not enough to stop him.
Finally he cast his eyes back towards the head of the stairs, part of him wary of seeing the ghostly wolf appear, even though somehow he knew that the spectres had decided to leave him alone for now, that they had something else planned for him.
Another two steps and he’d be at the door, another two after that and he’d be inside, enveloped by the darkness. He took the first two steps, but then, finally, his willpower returned and he paused. He peered into the gloom but could see nothing. His ears strained but he could hear nothing besides the rain outside. No ragged breathing from the darkness, no sound of paws on the stairs.
But still he couldn’t shake the feeling that there was someone inside, something in the darkness staring at him.
“Get the hell out of here,” he muttered to himself, as if saying the words might actually prompt him to obey.
He didn’t move.
And then he heard it, a shuffling sound from within the room that stopped for a few seconds then resumed. Shuffle…silence…shuffle…silence….
There was a light switch just inside the doorway, he recalled. He wouldn’t even have to step inside the room, just reach in and flick a switch and then he’d be able to see whoever, whatever, was in there.
In spite of everything he’d seen, encountered here at White Wolf House, Ibex was still reluctant to turn his back on a lifetime of reason. He reached into the darkness, eager to shine the glaring light of rationality onto his paranoid fears.
He couldn’t shake the feeling that his fingers were going to touch something wet and sticky, or that someone, something, would grab his hand and yank him into that darkness to some cold unspeakable death.
His fingers touched the reassuring solidity of the wall. Now was the light switch up or down? He moved his hand both ways, the pistol now in his left hand. Where was it where…
The shuffling sound resumed, closer now. As silence fell once more his fingers found the switch. The noise sounded again, the rustling of something dragging along the floor, so close now that he imagined it must be just inside the darkness. He debated not turning on the light. Maybe it would be better not to know, but, for all his faults (as others might see them) Quint
us Armstrong had never truly been a coward.
He flicked the switch.
Light flooded the bedroom, and there, face down on the floor, lay the body of Brendan Fox, still buck naked from the waist down apart from his socks. The body wasn’t moving. It looked like it had been placed there, positioned like some artistic installation; Dead man with no trousers.
The sight should have been darkly humorous, but Quintus found nothing to smile about.
Fox’s hands were outstretched, dead blue fingers curled into talons, the tips embedded in the carpet, as if the man—the dead man—had been dragging himself towards the doorway, and there was a red trail leading from the bed, to back up the impossible that Ibex knew was all too real.
The corpse was perhaps a foot away from the doorway, another few inches after that and those fingers would have been in range to grab at his ankles. Ibex didn’t even try to explain this as a rational occurrence, he was beyond such things. He raised the gun and pointed it at the back of the Brendan’s head. Bullet to the brain, wasn’t that how one stopped a zombie?
He didn’t fire. Instead he began walking backwards, never taking his eyes off the prone form, expecting it to come alive at any moment. As he passed the head of the staircase he tensed, but however much he feared something coming up the stairs at him, he feared Brendan Fox’s reanimated corpse more.
And somehow he knew that whilst he stared at it, it couldn’t move.
Eventually he backed into the opposite door. Still he wouldn’t look away, wouldn’t turn his attention towards the door. Instead he reached back with his free hand and fumbled for the door handle. It turned, but would the door open…
It did.
Breathing steady, calm now, Ibex pulled open the door and stepped through; trusting to luck that there was no danger on the other side. Once through the door he closed it behind him, keeping his eyes on the doorway to the master bedroom until he could see it no more.
In the moments between losing sight of the body, but before the door clicked into the frame, he heard something begin to shuffle once more…
Chapter Forty six
Cogs whirred, thoughts spun, she considered tactics, proposals, counter proposals…but in the end it came down to the unavoidable.
“Tom, we need to leave you here.”
He actually took it quite well. “I understand,” he said. “Go, get out while you can.”
She smiled, shook her head. “I think you misunderstood me, Captain Oates. John and I have to leave you here while we go after Ibex.” She looked up. “We are going after him, right?”
Tyrell didn’t look sure, but he nodded anyway.
Chalice turned her attention back to Cheung. “You won’t be alone for long, and I don’t think you have anything to fear from the house.”
He forced a smile. “Can’t rightly do anything about, it even if it does mean me harm,” he said.
“Maybe not; but even if the house is no threat, well there’s always the possibility that Ibex will get past us, double back on you, so you’ll need this.” And she inverted the Beretta in her hand and placed it in his palm. The gun had had quite a night, Cheung’s was the fourth hand to touch it, and it had already played its part in the death of one person.
He took the gun, an automatic response she figured, but he was already shaking his head, trying to hand it back. “You…you need this.”
“I think you’re forgetting something,” she responded. She’d propped the Uzi against the wall when they’d come back into the room and age ago, now she retrieved it. There were 32 rounds in the magazine, plus two spares, 96 rounds in all. She would stick to short bursts as she’d been trained all those years ago, and if needs be she could go to semi-automatic, use it as a carbine. It would still be plenty of a match for Ibex who, at best had fifteen bullets.
Cheung looked up at the Uzi in her hands, then down at the Beretta clutched in his bloodied right fist. “I suddenly feel very insecure. You know, normally I’d deplore overkill but…”
“But in Quintus Armstrong’s case I think we’re all willing to make an exception,” Tyrell finished for him.
Cheung nodded.
“I can stay with him,” said Felix.
Chalice had almost forgotten he was there. Since letting them know that Ibex was still in the house, the youngster had been quiet as the proverbial church mouse. She stepped over to him now. Slinging the Uzi’s over her shoulder she let it hang by her side, then reached out and gently clasped Felix’s shoulder. “It was a very brave thing you did,” she said. “Coming back inside when you could have run. I wanted you to know that, and I’ll make sure your parents know that too.”
She wasn’t surprised when he went red, when his gaze dropped to his shoes. “I just wanted to help,” he said self-consciously.
“I know.” She gave his shoulder a squeeze and he looked up, his pupils seemed huge, and Chalice almost smiled as she realised he probably thought of her as quite the MILF. “But remember this; coming back like that has probably saved Tom’s life. But he’ll be ok on his own. I need for you to go outside, need you to raise the alarm. Police, ambulance…hell, call the coastguard, I don’t care who comes as long as they come.”
Felix frowned. “Why don’t we all go? I can open the door, you can carry him and…”
“Won’t work, Felix. Tom’s in a lot of pain, it was a struggle just to get him to the door last time. Carrying him further…it isn’t possible. And even if it were, you said yourself, you were able to step outside, but something prevented Quintus from following.”
His brow furrowed further. “It was like he saw something, I mean I looked around and there was nothing there, nobody. But he looked like there was. Weird huh?”
“The house wouldn’t allow him to leave, I have to accept that it will do the same with me and John, but if we can secure Quintus, and if the cavalry turn up in force, then I’m willing to bet whatever’s going on here will dissipate like early morning fog.” It was all lies of course. First off, securing Ibex wasn’t an option. From here on in it was terminate on sight. And while she might like to believe that the supernatural forces at work here would crumble before a few flashing blue lights, somehow she doubted this place would be satisfied with the blood of just three guilty souls tonight.
She looked at Tyrell. “Ready?”
He’d grown pale again. “No, but let’s do this anyway.”
She dropped into a crouch beside Cheung again. One way or another she knew this would be the last time she saw him. “Ok, Tom. I know it’ll be hard, but try and stay awake, help will be here soon.”
He nodded, chin set determinedly now. “Don’t worry, hurts too much to pass out. If I feel like I’m drifting off, I’ll waggle the knife.” A wan smile. “That’ll keep me conscious.”
“And I always figured you for the serious type, not a joker.” She narrowed her gaze. “If Ibex gets past us, if he doubles back…”
Cheung hefted the gun. “Right between the eyes,” he said.
She started to stand but he raised his free hand. “Wait. Before you go…I just wanted to know, what did you do that was so bad?”
She looked at him for a moment. Considered lying, considered telling him she’d explain later. “I killed the man I loved,” she said simply, and without another word she stood and headed towards the door. No time for further goodbyes.
* * *
Felix opened the door in one quick jerk, grateful, she suspected, that it opened inward so he wouldn’t be in line of fire. Chalice was crouched down on one knee, Uzi to her shoulder, ready to perforate anyone in the hallway. Tyrell stood against the wall beside the door, on the opposite side to Felix.
“I see nothing,” she whispered. In truth she couldn’t see the whole area, but somehow she doubted Ibex would be lying in wait, his priority would be to get out of the house as fast as he could with his skin intact.
She stood and walked slowly towards the open doorway, veering to her right as she neared it so that the wall
provided some cover. Back to the open door now she looked at Tyrell. “I’ll go high, you go low. Ok?”
He nodded. The SIG was clasped tightly in both fists, held so that the barrel almost rested against his cheek.
“On three. One…two…three!”
She moved the quicker, ducking out into the hallway, eyes swiftly taking in every corner of the hallway, Uzi tracking, finger ready on the trigger. Tyrell was a handful of seconds behind her, pistol outstretched in a Weaver stance now, right arm straight, left bent at the elbow. Memory was a curious thing, he’d forgotten so much, but he’d likely never forget how to hold a gun properly.
The front door was closed. The opposite door to the rest of the house was closed. The air was cold, silent. She stood up and took a few steps, cursing the parquet floor as her shoes echoed against it. There was no furtiveness to her gaze now; the area was clear except for the staircase so she focused on that.
Nothing and no one.
Tyrell moved up beside her. “Why’d he go upstairs?” he asked. “Why not head for the back door?”
She shrugged. “Maybe he wasn’t thinking straight. Maybe he saw something else over by that far door. Who knows?” She took a deep breath. “You ok here for a second?”
“Sure,” he replied, though she noted a distinct pause before he responded.
She left him guarding the staircase and stepped back into the drawing room. Cheung was still awake she was glad to see. She gave him a thumbs up then turned her attention to Felix, who was stood with his back to the wall doing his best to try and meld with the wallpaper like some kind of human chameleon.
“It’s ok, he’s nowhere in sight. Come on.”
Felix nodded and followed her back out into the hallway like an obedient puppy. Tyrell was where she’d left him, gun aimed up the stairs, ready to fire if he saw anyone…anything, heading his way.
“Ok, Felix. You know what you have to do, right?”
He nodded. “Yeah, get outside then use my phone, driving out of the grounds if needs be so I can get a signal. Then I call for an ambulance and police. Say there’s been a shooting.”
