Darkwells

by R. A Humphry

  The three of them struggled through the rain from street light to street light until the long road to Darkwells stretched out before them. Sean quickened the pace, grateful for the watery moonlight that reflected in dull grey against the crunching gravel and the faint warm light that hovered on the path in the distance. They passed the slick and shining statues which seemed to be glowing softly golden. They were like a beacon in the darkness and were what Sean had seen from the road. How did they manage that? He wondered, thinking that it must be something to do with fibre optics.

  The thick steel gate was locked, barring the arch that led into the courtyard. Sean swore kicked at the gate, which rang out with a metallic groan. He whirled and peered out into the night, and was startled when he saw a limping figure hurrying across the wide open space. Was that Henry?

  Before he could call out, his father pushed him aside. “Move over, lad, I’ll open this.” Sean obeyed and watched as his dad, who had been holding a long crowbar this whole time, casually snapped the padlock off its lock with suspicious ease. “Right, let’s get under a bloody roof, shall we?”

  Sean followed them into the courtyard and they found cover in an arcade of columns. The emptiness of the usually bustling grounds spooked Sean. His father rattled a couple of doors hoping to be able to get inside but they were locked tight. They found the furthest corner from the rain and huddled together for warmth. Sean tried Kim’s mobile again, as he had been doing without any success for the whole walk.

  “Are you going to tell us what this is about, son?” His father asked him. “Are you in some sort of trouble? Gang trouble?”

  Sean was about to shake his head and deny it but then thought better of it. It was a way out, at least. A way to maybe keep them here until morning. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I got a warning that we were in danger and this is the safest place for miles.” The lie of omission came easy but stung nonetheless.

  His father nodded with grim, understanding eyes. “We’re here for you lad, you don’t forget it. Now, you better go fetch Kim as she’s not going to answer you, is she?”

  Sean nodded and got to his feet.

  #

  It was a disgrace how unfit he was. He had covered the distance between Darkwells and Kim’s little flat in Glastonbury at a dead run. His lungs burned and his vision blurred. He noticed that Kim’s light was on in the bedroom and he pushed himself the final few yards down the street to the door. He fumbled with his keys and then hammered up the stairs.

  Kim sat at her kitchen table staring at her phone as he entered. She glared at him and then hurled her phone at his face and he only just ducked under it. “You shit!” she raged as she attacked him. “You are going to drive me crazy! I hate you!”

  As Sean covered his face and absorbed the blows he reflected that he probably deserved this. He had a very bad habit of making the people closest to him suffer when things went wrong. Kim had not had it easy and before he left he had said some very hurtful things. “I’m sorry, Kim – I really am?”

  “How many times you think that is going to work? After what you said? I’ve had it up to here, Sean, I tell you, up to here.”

  “Kim, we don’t have time.”

  “Oh, we never have time to talk about me, do we? We never have time to think about my feelings.”

  “Kim! Please! This is important. It’s about Heather.”

  This brought a reaction and Kim pulled away, her face concerned. “Is she alright?”

  “I don’t know. She… It’s difficult to explain. It’ll sound crazy.”

  #

  And so Sean told her, as well as he was able, about Heather’s ghostly warning. He tried to capture exactly how eerie it all was. “Something was not right about her, Kim, believe me. I don’t know why but I think she was genuinely warning us. I think we shouldn’t ignore it. Even if it is just a night. God. I hope I look a complete tool tomorrow morning and I’ll go and get my head checked. But… can you do this? For us? For me? My folks are already at the school. Please just come.”

  Kim sat in silence for a moment. “What about Molly? About Heather’s mum? Won’t she be worried? Shouldn’t she come as well?”

  Sean thought about it. “We can get her on the way. We can swing around the canal and pick her up.”

  “Alright, Sean. I’ll come; but we are going to talk.”

  #

  Sean was not prepared for what they faced as they rounded the corner on the towpath and came face to face with the still burning wreckage that used to be The Black Swan. He had to hold Kim back as she yelped and tried to hare off towards the boat. He held Kim back because he spotted Molly Evynstone.

  She was sat cross legged in front of the bonfire that was her old home. She was illuminated by the red and yellow and orange hues that rippled off the canal and hissed in the easing rain. She was sat in a hastily strewn circle of salt and wore a crown of holly on her head. Her eyes were closed and she was chanting softly to herself, oblivious to the fire, the rain and her sodden clothes.

  “Molly?” Kim asked cautiously. “Mrs Evynstone?”

  Molly’s eyes flicked open and she gasped. She started to say something but Sean lost it. In the distance he heard the most awful sound. It was a howling. It touched some deep horror in him, something that had lurked from when his ancestors’ ancestors cowered in trees.

  “Get in the circle!” Molly was screaming at them. “It’s starting!”

  Kim approached Heather’s mother like she would a wild animal. “Molly, we need to go. We need to get to Darkwells. Where is Heather? What happened to your boat?”

  “She’s gone!” Molly wailed, rocking, her hands furiously twisting branches of holly in her hands, not looking at the couple. “I wasn’t there and she’s lost to us, just as I saw, so long ago. Oh Jack, Oh Jack you were right. You were right.”

  And then Sean heard it, piping from the woods. It was a flute and it spoke to every facet of his being. It was the song of the woods and of time; of paths un-taken and people he was never brave enough to become. Come to me, it sang. Come and see.

  “Don’t listen!” Molly shrieked as Kim started up the path. Sean hardly noticed that his feet were following. Then Molly was amongst them, thrusting the rough holly crowns on their heads and dragging them into the circle of salt. “The music is death,” she panted.

  As the crown touched his skin the fluting changed and turned into wails and moans of the dying, or so it seemed to Sean. There was an ugliness to the sound that made him want to block up his ears and scream. What the fuck is happening?

  “The fair folk are coming, the faeries are coming,” Molly said, rocking again.

  “Darkwells,” Sean croaked as he helped Kim sit up in the circle. “We have to get to Darkwells. Heather told us too.”

  Molly looked up to him with red, swollen eyes. “How? The folk are all around us.”

  And Sean saw that she was right. Pale white figures bounded and cavorted along the towpath. They danced around the circle, never breaking it but gathering around in heavier numbers. His mind reeled. What are these things? Kim sobbed in his arms. He thought about making a break for it, about trying to draw them away chasing him to give the women a chance when he heard, above the horrible music of death, the sound of distant fire-alarms going off from Darkwells. The monsters all stilled then turned and moved off as one into the trees.

  “Now! Let’s move!” Sean said, dragging the two women with him.

  #

  A more terrifying few minutes Sean had never experienced. The abominations were everywhere, moving through the trees with terrible speed and grace all heading the same way, all heading to the same destination.

  Molly tore off a low branch of a yew as they ran and handed it to Sean. It wasn’t long before he had to use it, batting away a curious faerie with a roar of rage and terror. They ran on and then they were clear of the trees and onto the Darkwells grounds.

  The students were streaming from the houses and into the inner courtyard. Thr
ee golden figures blazed and a pack of monstrous animals loped off dragging a screaming boy. Sean kept running and then he saw a hawk launch into the sky with a piercing scream and the golden figures were off.

  They joined the lines of Darkwells students with remarkably little comment and were soon in the grounds. Sean noticed that the whole place was domed with a shimmering ceiling. The paths glowed and there seemed to be something electric in the walls. His parents were where he left them and they welcomed Molly and Kim very frightened now.

  The faeries started their assault a short while later. The pale figures slammed against the closed gate and pounded against the shimmering dome from the sky. The blindness that had affected the Darkwells students affected them no longer and they screamed and cowered. The faeries struck again and again but it was clear that there was no way in for them. Sean looked about him in amazement. He expected the students to be wild with fear and terror. He expected them to cower in groups or rush about aimlessly. He did not expect them to sit in neat class groups and actually listen to their prefects, who, despite their clear terror, did their best to keep people calm. Housemasters and teachers strode around giving orders and somehow the supernatural assault did not seem so unmanageable.

  “What about the people?” Molly asked. “What about all the people in the town?”

  “The police?” Kim asked.

  Sean shook his head with Molly, who responded. “No, they’ll not know what to do. They are helpless.”

  “Not helpless,” Sean said standing. He knew what it was he was supposed to do.

  Chapter Thirty Two: Evacuation

  The Darkwells masters did not listen to him. They did not listen to his pleas and demands for action and Sean was not surprised. He tried the boys next, shrugging of the adults attempts to shoo him away. “Are you just going to leave these people?” Sean asked the prefects one by one, who all stared at him. “Are we going to just sit here? Is that what you want to remember in your old age? That you lived safe when you could have helped?”

  It was no use. These were not the brave English schoolboys of the fables. These were the princes of privilege who thought it natural that they should be spared while others suffer, that the lifeboats were for the rich only. They didn’t care what horrors lay outside the gate, so long as it didn’t affect them. They didn’t want others taking up their space.

  “I am going. When I come back, you open that gate, you hear me? You open it or so help me god I’ll burn this school to the ground.” Sean turned from the staring faces and headed for the gate between Lingua and Arithmetic. As he walked he felt a tugging on his sleeve.

  He looked over and saw one of Henry’s little mates, the Asian lad he had seen with him who never came to the pub, Fawad. “I’ll come,” he said. “I’ll help.” And then more and more of them arrived. Prefects and rugby players, musicians and troublemakers. The brave ones and the stupid ones and the ones who remembered a sense of duty. Sean looked over his little group and his heart wanted to break.

  He got them to work straight away, gathering holly from the bushes by the ruins and the well. Breaking branches from the yew trees. Sean saw that his father was in the middle of a heated argument with half the faculty, waving his crowbar around.

  “We run from house to house, alright? Keep out of sight, and gather up as much holly from the ruins over there as you can. Put it over your ears and then make everyone you meet wear them as well, O.K.? If you meet one of those things you can do two things: hit them with a yew branch or toss salt in a circle and stand in it until they go away. Nothing else, understand? You grab people, you bring them here. That’s all. We don’t want heroes.”

  #

  Sean was the first out. The faeries were swarming the front gate and pounding at the dome but they did not seem aware of the side entrance. He waved the others through and then set out at a dead run gripping his branch with white knuckles. The group of Darkwells boys followed close behind.

  They caught the first group of people as they were walking in a dazed line up the orange lit street. Mothers holding toddlers hands. Fathers in boxers and shirts. They moved to the tunes of flutes and stumbled towards the woods and towards their ends. Darkwells fell on them in a terrified screaming mass, thrusting the holly on their heads and dragging them away with all their childish strength. Confused minutes passed and Sean saw how lucky they had been. These students were persuasive and lucid and clear. They ushered the frightened people along and spontaneously a system was generated. The older boys and girls sprinted ahead and knocked on doors and windows, explaining, pleading, and showing. The younger ones guided the convinced groups back on quicksilver feet.

  Sean pushed ahead as a scout, ever watchful for tall pale figures or troublemaker townies. He was under no illusions that the danger lay in both directions this night and he forced himself to be ready for it.

  More and more houses were emptied out. More and more people were put on the conveyor to Darkwells and Sean dared to hope that it would be easy, that they would be left alone. But of course they were not left alone.

  He saw them before anyone else. This was a different type of faerie. The ones they had come across had been distracted and focused elsewhere, as if some greater battle were taking place, some greater quarry was there to be chased. These ones were lucid and aware and were heading straight for the conveyor of the younger kids. Sean didn’t think but ran at them screaming, waving his yew branch. He made enough noise for the younger kids to see the danger and scatter.

  The nearest faerie caught the branch on the first swing and then tossed Sean across the street and into a shop-front window which cracked and splintered against his back. He fell to the pavement in a heavy heap. He could hear the prefects screaming now, urging the Darkwells kids to scatter and fall back to the school. “Oh god, oh god,” he heard a voice call out, but wasn’t sure if it was his or one of the others. The pale form loomed over him then picked him up with a hand as strong as oak roots.

  Sean choked and wriggled in thin air. He stared into the things eyes. Its empty, alien eyes. He didn’t feel afraid, he felt furious. He felt terrible surging anger at his helplessness. How could this be? How could they allow such things to be? He spat at the faerie who spoke to its companions in a strange, clicking language that sounded to Sean like the rasping of locusts. Heather you stupid bitch, he thought, what have you done?

  The end was coming. Once squeeze and his windpipe would be crushed. Sean’s life was not one he cared to go over. It was a patchwork of wasted promise. Of betrayed hope and potential. He felt robbed somehow. He saw the person him might have been – the person he always casually assumed he would become and yet never seemed to get around to doing so. It was always a little too hard to do the things he knew he should do. It was always easier to start tomorrow. He closed his eyes. At least he had done this much. At least he had saved some people.

  He opened his eyes and saw a searing white vertical slash appear in the street behind the faeries. Out of the slash a man appeared in full combat fatigues looking down the sight of his machine gun, like in every Special Forces movie Sean had ever seen. The man saw Sean and casually unleashed two volleys of gunfire into the faerie that held him up. Trrat tat, Trrat tat. The faerie crumpled to the ground and Sean rolled free gasping. The other faeries turned on the gunman and battle commenced.

  Sean pulled himself up against the shattered shop front and watched as the soldier put down five of the abominations with appalling efficiency and calm. It was like watching a video game. Once the last one was down the man walked over to Sean and put out a hand and pulled down his mask. It was Henry’s driver, his butler. It was the famous Watkins that Heather had introduced to Sean once, stood next to the Phantom in his ridiculous chauffeur hat. Sean took the man’s hand and Watkins shouted: “Coast is clear Mr. Ewitan,” into a radio at his chest.

  Five more figures poured through the slash in the air. They were young men, all black and wearing African tribal clothes. As soon as they were
through they took up a ululating cry and started dancing and stamping in the street.

  “Sean, isn’t it?” Watkins asked as he looked down the scope of his rifle down one side of the street then the other. Sean nodded mutely. “We saw what you were doing in the mirror and the apprentices insisted that we helped. I hope we are in time. Here,” he said, reaching behind him to his heavy pack and handing Sean what he recognised as an SA80 machine gun, “there is ammo in the belt. Careful with it, you don’t want to shoot people. Only the fey. Be sure.”

  Sean took the gun with shaking hands. “I don’t know how…”

  “Yes you do. If a typical squaddie in the British army can figure it out, so can you. Come on, we need to press them back if your evacuation is to work.” With that Watkins was off down the street, already firing. Trrat tat, Trrat tat, Trrat tat, Trrat tat.

  #

  Sean found that firing a gun on his console and firing it in real life were very different propositions. Most of it had to do with the terror he had to overcome. He was escorting one of the Queen’s girls who had surged ahead. She was a red-headed girl who Sean recognised from Heather’s photographs of her Elizabeth costume. The girl was escorting a taxi driver and his wife and young daughter from the far edge of town when they were waylaid. She had kept her head and deployed the salt circle when Sean had found her. The faeries were clustered thick around the circle, waiting for the salt to dissolve into the wet ground, aware that the girl had only a limited supply in her shaker.

  His first shots had gone high and left and he had been shocked at how the gun kicked against his shoulder. This got the faeries attention and they started to swarm towards him. The next burst caught the group at chest level and Sean kept firing in short bursts. The faeries screamed and dropped and then ran. He kept shooting at them until the gun clicked empty. He somehow discharged the magazine and reloaded with shaking hands.