Darke

by Matt Hilton

  ‘I’m so sorry,’ Kerry said. ‘I’m so sorry I didn’t make it in time to save you, Hayley.’

  Morosely, she averted her gaze from the missing girl’s shrouded remains. Only Girl had not returned to a grave. She stood nearby, her hair obscuring her features as usual, but for once she didn’t dart to concealment. Her mouth also worked silently, and Kerry was certain she said thank you. But for what she didn’t know. She hadn’t brought closure to Girl, or to her sister: perhaps it was because she’d given final rest to all those other lost girls. She stared at the spirit for guidance, and Girl lifted a finger and pointed towards the crumbling mansion. She darted, but for a few metres only. She paused, then beckoned urgently before streaking away between the trees, and without question, Kerry followed.

  50

  She limped along the cracked and distorted path towards the large door she’d entered through earlier. Her duffel coat, and her phone, lay around the corner at the side of the house. To get to them she must either scale a wall shrouded under brambles and stinging nettles, or go all the way around the building and face the thickets back there: she didn’t want to retrace her steps through the decrepit building. But Girl was adamant that was where she must go. When Kerry paused, to seek a path to her right, Girl swept back to her, so close that she could make out the blurred image of a face beneath the straggly hair. Girl’s fingers plucked at her, moth’s wings fluttering on her skin, then jabbed a hand at the door, then upward.

  Kerry nodded. As much as she hated to re-enter the Fell Man’s lair, she must. She went after Girl who flitted through the gap she’d forced open earlier, and into the reception vestibule, kicking aside some recently dislodged plaster that partly blocked her way. She entered into the twilit hall, the rotting carpet and spongy wood underfoot again, and saw the partly collapsed stairs and sagging bannister of before, and the electrical cables leading to the upper floors. The generator rumbled on, in the basement’s anteroom below. Kerry briefly pictured the dank place, those ancient TV’s and videocassettes — and more importantly what was recorded on them — and was on the verge of vomiting. She peered at the cables, her brow screwed in understanding.

  Girl beckoned her from the half-landing above.

  The pain flaring from her broken arm was almost as nauseating as what she dreaded finding above. She wasn’t fit to scale the collapsing stairs, but she ascended any way. She kept to the edge of each riser nearest the wall, where hopefully the stairs would retain some support. The entire staircase groaned and creaked underfoot, but she didn’t pause. If they fell, she would fall, and there was little to do about it, so finding stable footing above was more important than worrying. At the half-landing she paused to check on Girl. She signalled from the next floor above. Kerry limped up stairs a tad firmer underfoot, and stepped thankfully onto the next landing. Overhead, she could see the sky through the wide rents in the ceiling and roof. It was as grey as ever. Water dripped everywhere. But only until she turned and loped along a corridor to the left. The corridor was dry, and the cables snaked along it at floor level and under a sturdy-looking door at the far end. Girl was a dim shape against it.

  Kerry halted. What the hell was beyond that door, and did she really want to see?

  Girl dematerialized through the solid door, and made up Kerry’s mind. She approached, tentative, and stood a moment, hoping to hear the sirens of her responding colleagues. Instead she heard the faintest of muffled cries, and it came from inside the room before her.

  The door wasn’t locked. It swung open on oiled hinges, and at first Kerry had no idea what she’d found. There was a wall of blackness directly in front of her. Absurdly, she thought she’d entered some netherworld, the hellish domain of the bogeyman, the actual lair of the Fell Man, but she was only partially correct. The blackness wasn’t some devilish netherworld, but a massive ream of cloth suspended from the ceiling. When she reached for it, she found a slit in the cloth, and teased it apart, and stepped through the gap into the room beyond. Similar drop cloths had been fixed to conceal the other walls, and they had twofold purpose. The thick drapery would deaden any noise from within the room, and also disguise the location so that it would never be identified by anyone observing what was filmed in there. The electrical cables she’d followed led to a power board, in which was plugged other snaking cables, one of them a LAN to a laptop computer sitting on the floor. There were modern video cameras mounted on tripods, five of them in total, all surrounding a double bed. There was no bedding on the stained mattress, but it wasn’t empty.

  Girl knelt on the bed, bent over another young girl dressed only in a vest and knickers. The girl was spread-eagled, hands and feet secured by dog collars and leads to shackle rings bolted to the floor boards at the bed’s four corners. She was gagged with a length of cloth that was fixed in place with silver duct tape, and her eyes were closed. Girl’s fingertips danced gently over the child’s face, and as if in response to her touch, the other child’s lashes flickered and then snapped open, her gaze immediately fixed on Kerry. Courtney Bell stiffened in shock, and again she made a keening cry, muffled by the gag.

  ‘Courtney…it’s OK,’ said Kerry, holding out her good hand. ‘I’m a police officer, I’m here to help you.’

  Courtney writhed on the bed, the leather dog collars nipping into her flesh. Judging by the rawness of her wrists and ankles, she had fought her restraints on previous occasions. Kerry groped to the edge of the bed, and put one knee on it. Girl slipped behind her, but was a present shadow over her shoulder.

  ‘It’s OK, Courtney. Stop, you’ll hurt yourself. Let me help you.’

  Courtney sagged, and fresh tears spilled down cheeks already marked by dried tear tracks. She moaned through her gag again, but this time in desperate hope. For the briefest of instants, Sally’s features juxtaposed over Courtney’s, and Kerry’s heart hitched in her chest, then bloomed with warmth. The child’s resemblance to her sister was merely facile, but enough that Kerry’s spirit soared. She knew the child wasn’t Sally, but if she’d to fight the monster all over again, she would die to protect her.

  ‘I promise you,’ Kerry whispered as she worked to loosen the collar on Courtney’s left wrist. ‘You’re safe now. Safe. I won’t let anyone hurt you, Courtney. I promise you…’ She continued soothing the child while she worked next at Courtney’s ankles. It was a struggle with only one good hand, but once her feet were loose, Courtney kicked up the bed, and reached to un-cinch her right hand. Once free, Courtney lunged to hug her saviour. Kerry croaked at the agony that exploded from her broken arm, but didn’t withdraw: having the girl’s small arms wrapped around her was a wonderful feeling. Kerry murmured platitudes, smoothed Courtney’s hair back from her face, then gently helped her peel the duct tape away. She spat out the wadded cloth, even as her eyes grew wide.

  ‘He’s going to come back,’ Courtney wheezed in alarm.

  ‘It’s OK,’ Kerry assured her. ‘He…he can’t hurt you anymore.’

  ‘He can. He can. He warned me to keep quiet, because the show was about to begin.’ She stared in accusation at the nearest video camera. Kerry followed her prompt and saw a steady red light on its front. Every camera she glanced at bore a steady red light. They were all recording…all of their images being relayed live to a despicable audience!

  She was tempted to kick them all over, and grind the video cameras to broken components beneath her heels, but the camera array and computer was evidence of the Fell Man’s awful enterprise. Instead, she wrapped her good arm around Courtney and dragged her off the bed, swearing savagely at however many sick-minded bastards sat at the other ends of the live broadcast. Cradling Courtney against her chest, she rushed for the gap in the drop cloth, and the door beyond. Each step brought a flash of pain through her injured arm, but she ignored it. She only wanted Courtney out of that terrible place.

  Fog billowed along the corridor towards them.

  They both coughed at the noxious stink carried with it, and a qualm of fear
speared Kerry. It wasn’t fog…it was smoke! Yellow reflections writhed on the walls at the head of the staircase.

  Kerry was stunned at the absurdity. How could a house so sodden burn? How had a fire ever started where the fuel was damp wood and musty cloth? One thing she was certain of, an electrical short wasn’t to blame, because the cameras were recording and there was power to the laptop too. She could also hear, or maybe feel, the rumble of the distant generator.

  Forget how the bloody fire started; find a way out!

  ‘We can’t go that way, Courtney,’ she said, steering the child back the direction they’d just come. ‘We have to find another way.’

  ‘There’s no way out!’ Courtney yelped, and dug in her heels as Kerry tried to urge her towards the room they’d fled from.

  ‘There has to be a window…something.’

  ‘No. They’re nailed shut. Boarded up. I know. I tried to get out before.’

  ‘Shit!’

  Peering back at the staircase, Kerry wondered if there was any hope of making it down. Already flames were leaping towards the hole in the roof, drawn by an updraft. The wet beams overhead sizzled, steam adding to the smoke. Escape in that direction was impossible.

  ‘Another room then…’ They had passed doors in the corridor. Some of them hanging off their hinges: Kerry recalled the windows all being smashed when viewed from outside. The room adapted as the Fell Man’s film studio could have been boarded up, but not the others. There had to be a room the monster used when he wasn’t torturing his victims. ‘This way!’

  Abruptly Girl was before her, both hands up to halt them. She swept around Kerry, gesticulating at a corner to the left of the room where Courtney had been held. Kerry hadn’t noticed the second corridor when following Girl into the room earlier, and had been too busy rushing to get Courtney out when exiting.

  It was a short corridor, barely ten feet long, and it accessed a second staircase in much better condition than the one currently blazing. Back when servants cared for the Brandreths, they would have used the unobtrusive set to gain access to the quarters on the second floor. They were apparently the stairs the Fell Man had employed when coming and going from his torture room. All the wreckage had been cleared from the steps.

  ‘Down there.’ Smoke rolled towards them. ‘Down, down, down,’ Kerry repeated, pressing Courtney before her. At first the girl was fearful of meeting the Fell Man on his way back but the choking smoke and sparks curled over them, and she clattered down the stairs on bare feet. Kerry hobbled after her, unsteady, cringing every step in pain. They exited into another corridor, where they passed a series of small, derelict rooms, but paid them no notice. Weak daylight marked the edges of an outer door at the far end. ‘Go, go, go.’

  The door was held shut only by a simple latch. Courtney snapped it open and shoved open the door, and both of them almost fell out into the weed-choked rear yard. Bramble thickets reared overhead, but a route had been hacked clear alongside the back of the house. They stumbled along it together, Kerry again cradling Courtney against her, this time as much to help hold her up as support the child. They staggered out onto the track alongside the house, and Kerry spotted her duffel coat and phone where she had dumped them.

  No sign of the panel van.

  How? The Fell Man was dead. He couldn’t have survived the wound to his neck, or being left submerged in muddy water in the pond. How could he have returned to escape in the van or…shit!...set the fire that would obliterate the evidence of his crimes? Flames fed by accelerants were racing through the building from the basement’s anteroom, where the taped evidence of Girl’s abuse was being destroyed, and they would destroy the chamber where Courtney had been held as well. How could a dead man have set that fire?

  As a child, Kerry believed the Fell Man was a supernatural creature, as an adult, and detective, she’d come to realise he was a monster, but of the human variety. Now she wasn’t as certain any more.

  She snatched up her phone and stabbed 999, hollering into it while leading Courtney to safety around the far side of the pond. Behind them the burning house roared furiously as joists collapsed and walls tumbled down. At a safe distance, they stopped to wait for the responding emergency services, and they peered back at what was now a conflagration. They shouldn’t be difficult to locate now, because the plume of black smoke rising from the burning ruins was stark against the looming fells. Girl stood between them and the fire, unmoving for a change even though directly ahead of Kerry. She remained insubstantial, but her stance could be easily defined. She watched the fire consume the horrid place of her death with her head tilted back in satisfaction. Then she turned around and peered at Kerry from under her straggly hair, and her mouth made a tight grimace before she offered a brief nod. She dematerialized, but her leaving wasn’t the same as when the other girl’s showed Kerry their lonely resting places. Girl wasn’t finished with her yet.

  Neither was Kerry finished with the Fell Man.

  After…

  Kerry spent the next three nights recuperating in a private room at the Cumberland Infirmary. From her elevated window she had a commanding view over the Victorian canal basin, and the River Eden, as well as the northern ramparts of Carlisle Castle, but she rarely had time to enjoy the vista. When she wasn’t answering questions from CID, doctors and nurses tended to her, or she slept. She’d suffered a litany of injuries, some more serious than others. Bumps, bruises, scratches and ligament strains. Two of the fingers on her left hand needed resetting after their dislocation when she fell into the basement, and the subsequent smash of the spade to her forearm required surgery to repair both the radius and ulna bones. Stitches to her scalp where the spade had glanced off her skull. More worrisome for her doctors was the concussion she’d suffered after her tumble down the stairs, and — initially — the threat of secondary drowning after inhaling so much pond water. After the latter was ruled out, she was on infection alert, and also at the risk of contracting pneumonia. She was pumped full of antibiotics to stave them off and was kept under observation.

  She felt like crap and looked much worse. Her face was swollen out of shape, and she’d swear somebody had used a rasp on her tongue and throat. It even hurt to blink. Her eye colouration had given one junior doctor pause for thought, until she assured him her heterochromia was a birth defect. It was only after she caught a glimpse in a mirror that she realised her amber eye was also completely bloodshot: she avoided mirrors after that. Not that she cared too much about herself. She asked about Courtney Bell, who was safe and back in the loving care of her family. She wept for Hayley McGhee and all the other children she’d been unable to save: being hailed a heroine meant little when so many children had been raped and murdered for the pleasure of a pay-per-view audience. And she asked about the Fell Man.

  Carl Brandreth — scion of the original landowners — was dead. The police had discovered his corpse face down in the mire where she’d left him; he’d bled to death from the neck wound. Brandreth wasn’t the Fell Man; he was a Fell Man. In her heart Kerry had known he wasn’t the only culprit, even as she fought to the death with him. She only had to recall what she’d witnessed as a child — the Fell Man must have had a companion, because how could he have dragged a girl back to the house and followed them to Penrith in the Land Rover at the same time? The hulking Carl Brandreth was not the bearded monster that snatched Sally from the grounds of the castle. He was not the brain behind the abductions, but a dumb brute happy to supply his crumbling home as a remote location where the children could be held and to do the dirty, clean-up work afterwards. And obviously, it was the other bearded man that’d set the house ablaze to cover up the evidence of their crimes, leaving behind Brandreth as his scapegoat, and then made off in the panel van while Kerry and Courtney perished in the flames. The van hadn’t been found, and as yet there was no clue to the bearded Fell Man’s identity. Investigators were sifting through the burnt wreckage of the house on the fells, and there was a major operation un
derway to exhume the graves — on land and in water — of the victims. The general consensus was that the Fell Man was legion: the tools of a vile paedophile ring whose reach stretched as widely as the Dark Web did, where untraceable Bitcoins were swapped to enjoy the most vile form of entertainment. In its original sense, fell meant wicked or evil, and it was true, fell men and women were numerous. Cut off one head and another sprang up like the mythical hydra. If she could, she’d fight them all with the same determination as she had Carl Brandreth, but if she had to she’d make do with hunting and finding only one: the bearded man. He had killed Sally and he had killed Girl.

  Siobhan Darke paid a visit. She was in her late fifties, but looked ten years older: her once vivid red hair was now predominantly white, but tinted yellow at the temples from smoking too many hand-rolled cigarettes, and her complexion blotchy rather than freckled. Kerry had hoped to avoid her mam, but now the woman was there, she experienced a burst of affection, and it worked like one of those wondrous placebos Doctor Ron once mentioned to her. Siobhan told her she loved her baby girl, and they held each other for a time, before Siobhan then made an excuse to leave…and asked if Kerry could ‘see her right with a few quid to help pay her rent’. Kerry gave her the contents of her purse — recovered along with her handbag from the hire car she’d abandoned on the fells — in full knowledge that her mam’s rent was paid directly to the housing association through her benefits. Siobhan wouldn’t make it past the convenience store opposite the infirmary without buying alcohol, but Kerry didn’t begrudge her a conciliatory drink. Sally’s remains were still missing, and closure was denied to their mother too. Gary Darke, her dad, never showed face, but then that wasn’t unexpected.