A smell - putrid now, decaying, salty blood and sulphur - permeated the air.
Keep looking ahead at the road - each millisecond more is another moment of life….don’t look around…don’t look…
The presence was squelching - shape-shifting - into a recognisable form. Kristy’s side vision deciphered an old hag with ancient, tissue-thin skin and heavy, gnarled features. She knew the look in the woman’s eyes would be older than time itself, and if she met that look the car would go off the road in a heartbeat.
This was a journey she could never relate to another living soul. No one would believe her. Imagine trying to describe it at a dinner party - a few shudders, some more wine-pouring, meaningful glances exchanged - another psychiatrist having a breakdown…Especially since most of her friends were doctors. Well, all of them. How terrible to be thought mad when you were supposed to be saner than sane. To experience what seems real but cannot be. To have to lock all this inside because you can never tell.
Lock what inside? What was this?
The temptation to look at her passenger grew stronger with every passing second, the pull like a magnet.
Don’t look round - whatever you do, Kristy - do not look…
That voice - it was her late father’s…
And then the sharp descent began. The Audi’s headlights picked out the rear-lights of a truck. The belt of fog broke, and ahead lay the metropolis - a basin lit with yellow lights.
The temperature shot up. And the presence evaporated.
***
Real fear. Well if that’s what she’d gone to find, that’s what she’d got.
She parked, locked up and then quickly ran up the steps to her apartment block, not daring to look over her shoulder. On entering, she walked briskly from room to room switching on all the lights, then poured herself a double scotch from the bottle kept only for Christmas.
And then another.
Only a scalding bath and turning up the heating full pelt, managed to thaw the chill, which had permeated through her to her bones. Afterwards, she curled up on the sofa in a fleece dressing gown, hugging herself and knocking back another glass of whisky. If she had been terrified out of her wits at Woodsend - a grown woman with a rational mind and no religious beliefs - then imagine growing up there! Imagine being a small child.
In an effort to rationalise her fears, she finally gave in and let her mind rake over what had happened. Maybe fear had bred fear and there was really nothing to justify suspicions of any mal-practice? Intuition and facts must be distinguished from one another.
Beyond ‘Woodpecker Cottage, the path had twisted and turned so there was no chance of knowing which direction you faced. Some of the old tree trunks had peculiar markings on them and she’d taken a few snaps on her phone. It would be best to come back in daylight but hopefully the flash had caught the impressions. Then a little way ahead were lights from another cottage. She decided to walk towards it, thinking it likely there’d be a driveway out to the main road.
Indeed there had been a driveway - a muddy track rutted by 4x4 wheels by the look of it, and who could blame them needing a truck - it probably got so boggy out here. But not knowing whether to turn left or right she’d punted on a right. By then the fog was as thick as a blanket and progress was halting. So into the rutted track she plodded, cringing as her boots splattered with mud. She’d soon be on the road, though, and mud would brush off when it dried. How stupid she’d been to come out here - honestly, really!
The torchlight bobbed up and down, not illuminating much, and it soon became apparent the forest was growing ever quieter, closing around her in a hooded cloak. Not even a hoot from the owl. A velvet-muffled night without a sign of life. After a few more minutes though, came a stab of realisation: she was heading the wrong way! After all, if this track was leading to Ravenshill then it should have been possible to hear the main road traffic by now.
She stopped. About to do a u-turn. But the torch had picked something out. Ahead were white, wrought-iron railings, which appeared to enclose a patch of ground. She walked up to the periphery and peered through, mildly surprised to see a tiny graveyard. Ancient, moss-covered Celtic crosses, some of them leaning at an angle, others having crumbled many years before, marked each burial plot. It must have been used for the Woodsend villagers many years ago, she assumed. It definitely didn’t look as though the place was visited anymore, though.
Whatever, it was one hell of an eerie place. Really creepy. About to back track once and for all however, something else caught in the hazy beam of the torch: on the other side of the little cemetery was what looked like a set of ruins.
Fascination taking over, Kristy picked her way over through the thicket and noted with astonishment and not a little glee, what appeared to be the ruins of an abbey. Well, well - the little place had real history! Just wait til she shared this back at work!
Maybe they could come out here in the summer for a team picnic? Find out a bit more? God, how enchanting! So who…
“Looking for something, dear?”
The nasally, sharp male voice came from over her shoulder.
She swung round, torchlight shining into another’s.
She shielded her eyes. “Oh hello, sorry, no - I um…”
“Only this is private property, duck!”
“Is it? What - the ruins? I didn’t realise.”
“Not wise for a young lady to be out here in the dark on her own like this. You are alone, aren’t you?”
“Pardon?”
It was then the disembodied voice revealed its owner as he stepped forwards a matter of inches from her face. Way too close. The permeation of cheap aftershave, oddly familiar, and strong garlic breath, caused her to stumble backwards as mesmerised, she’d found herself looking into the coldest blue eyes imaginable. On a sub-conscious level she took in the details, while recalling with a degree of panic, that she hadn’t told anyone where she was going.
No one knows where you are…
He had white hair and a distinctive widow’s peak. Late fifties/early sixties at a guess. Slight build but wiry. Lizard skin. The eyes held her stunned gaze. Enjoyment, she realised with a jack hammer to the heart: the man was enjoying her fear.
His cold eyes began to sparkle in direct contrast to her own depletion of energy. Such power - feeding off her fear like a vampire drawing blood.
In an instant she’d become a child again. A child caught doing something naughty. Who would be punished and deservedly so. She scrambled around for the vestiges of her adulthood, her status…“Look, I..I…I’m so sorry…”
Behind her, in the density of the woods, a humming noise - or was it drumming? A feeling that someone else was coming. Or had been summoned? Which? Should she call out?
She dared not take her eyes from the man in front of her. What to do? Decide, Kristy, you have a second at best…
His glance flicked to a place over her shoulder - so there was someone about to join them - it wasn’t her imagination!
Something else - her glance noted something in his right hand - he was holding something. OhmyGod!
Too late - he’d seen her reaction. The glacial blue expression hardened to flint as recognition passed between them. And in that fractured second she took off and ran for all she was worth.
Keeping to the tyre-rutted track, she reasoned in her adrenalin-saturated state that if she’d taken the wrong direction first time then this must, had to be, the right one. Would she ever get out of here? Every breath sliced hard into her lungs, leg muscles screaming.
Were there footsteps behind?
Just keep running. Faster and faster and faster…
To her right now, lights - a cottage - lots of lights - maybe caravans? The drive opened out like an estuary and a wider, flattened track, dimly lit from the camp, for that’s what it seemed like, some kind of camp….lay straight ahead.
The pain seared like a knife through her chest as she gasped and lunged for each gulp of oxygen. Then ahe
ad, thank God, lay the glistening tarmac of a road. She risked a look over her shoulder.
No one.
At the end of the track she doubled over, stitch in her side, gasping for breath.
Don’t look back.
She had to keep going. Anyone of them, because he was undoubtedly not alone, could still waylay her. So wheezing painfully, leg muscles weak beneath her, she stumbled into the middle of the glistening lane, hopefully Ravenshill - footsteps echoing deadly, as shrouded in fog, she hurried as best she could to the car.
It stood as a white charger next to the black, gurgling river
Almost there. Almost safe.
Almost.
Inside. Central locking on. Ignition fired. And then came the blinding, horrible connection of subconscious to conscious - the realisation of what he’d been holding. That man had been holding a black cross.
***
Chapter 13
Later the same evening: Doncaster Royal Infirmary
Becky opened her eyes and stared at the small guy sitting on the plastic visitor’s chair next to her hospital bed.
Small was an understatement. He was minute. His legs swung to and fro about six inches from the floor, and the top of his bowler hat only just levelled with the back of the chair. Without him speaking she knew his name was Chester. Perhaps she’d heard that while unconscious? They said your hearing was the last thing to go and the first to come back in these situations.
Chester had his head cocked to one side in an enquiring tilt. An old guy with deeply wrinkled skin tinged with jaundice. “Good morning, Becky. How are ya?”
She stared.
Chester examined his finger nails. “You had a good night? That’s good - excellent. Feeling better, huh? More like talking, huh?”
Becky blinked and blinked again. Okay, so she’d taken a bump on the head, passed out, and been prescribed heavy duty painkillers. But this was no dream. She could freaking see him!
Long ago, a student friend had taken some dodgy E’s after a few too many pints of snakebite. On the way home he’d been jumping out of his skin - screaming as imaginary pythons slithered up from the drains, and grizzly bears leapt out from lamp posts. Those hallucinations, he’d said later, were so real! He’d known they weren’t but they’d still scared him half to death.
She thought about that: surely you were only psychotic if you actually believed the hallucinations were real and not simply images your brain was conjuring up for entertainment? And only bona fide crackers, out of your tree, and in deep shit - to use a technical term - if you answered them back? So, then - all she had to do was accept little Chester was a hallucination and not respond? And she would be fine.
“Ah, that’s what you’re thinking is it?” said Chester, springing off the orange, plastic chair and onto her bed as adeptly as a tree monkey.
He crawled on all fours up the bedclothes until he was sitting within arms reach. He smelled overpoweringly of urine and sulphur.
Becky’s brain chipped in with the added possibility of an olfactory hallucination, along with auditory. She really ought to see a doctor about this. Smiled at her own joke. An Alice in Wonderland experience after a head injury - maybe she should sit back and enjoy it?
“Best thing, Lady,” Chester agreed. “Enjoy the ride! Hey - that nurse, whassername - Kelly? Hey, she’s sure got a fat arse!” He cackled as the staff nurse, Kelly, entered the side ward to check Becky’s observation chart. Craned his neck to give her the once over. “She sure got to the pork pies first!”
Despite herself, Becky snickered.
“Hey,” said Chester. “Her arse is so big it follows her round like a separate person! She keeps whipping round to see whose followin’ her! Ha ha!”
Becky said, “Shh….stop it!”
Kelly looked up. “Ooh, sorry Becky. I didn’t realise you were awake. How are you feeling today?”
“I’m fine,” said Becky, trying not to giggle as Chester did a cheap imitation of Kelly waddling over to peer into her face. Behind the nurse he wiggled his butt and the more he messed around the more Becky struggled to control her laughter.
Once Kelly had left the room, the pair of them doubled over in hysterics. “Hey - you and me - we have some fun, don’t we? Hey, you and me, Becky?”
She nodded and wiped the tears from her eyes. Maybe this head injury business wasn’t so bad, after all?
“And hey,” Chester added. “You make out you’ve gone a bit…” and here he did what she’d normally hate, pointing his finger to his temple and rotating it… “ya know…loopy-loo…you can get loads of time off work! You don’t have to wait at that bus stop in the dark no more, or get up at five in the morning. Hey - we can have some fun, Becky. Whadya say?”
“Yeah,” she said. “Let’s make the most of it Chester.”
She’d worked hard all her life. Why not?
***
The following day:
Noel arrived as daylight faded, the new moon cutting a scythe in a granite sky streaked with ice blue .
Becky woke with a jump.
He seemed to fill the room with his broad shoulders and biker leathers. He ruffled his dark hair into a rooster look and pulled up the orange chair.
“How you doing, Becks?”
She smiled sleepily. “Good. Brilliant techni-coloured dreams with surround sound and 3D effects. Better than the cinema. I think it must be the analgesics.”
He frowned. “You’re only on a bit of codeine.”
“Feels like I’m on diamorph!”
“That good? I could do with a bit of that. Anyway, here’s the news - I had a chat with Kelly and she says they couldn’t find any problems on the scan, and your neuro-tests are fine too. You’re a bit sleepy but that’s to be expected. You should be going home tomorrow.”
A flash of annoyance shot through her. “You’d think she’d discuss it with me, first.”
Again Noel frowned. “She said she did and you agreed - you even said you’d arranged a lift home.”
“I did?”
Shit! Can’t remember that!
He nodded. “I’m pleased for you. Relieved too. To be honest I’ll be glad to have you back at work because it’s all going tits up without you.”
From somewhere inside her head came a mocking, whingeing voice, ‘Oh poor me, I can’t cope…ooh dear….boo hoo…diddums…’
“In what way?”
“Well Jack locked himself in his office, for one thing. He’s completely lost it, Becks. Just the most bizarre behaviour. Anyway, after he barricaded himself in his office, Isaac and Claire called in the crisis team, and the board suspended him. They’re saying it’s a breakdown. It’s awful - it’s really shaken everyone up. Obviously he can’t go near the patients until he’s better.
“Anyway, he was sectioned but discharged shortly after, and now he’s at his holiday home in Hathersage. He probably just needs a few weeks off, poor sod. That session with Ruby must have seriously taken it out of him. I hope he’s going to be okay, I really do. ”
“That’s terrible.”
“I know. I wish you could remember what happened when he did the hypnosis because it does all seem to stem from that.”
She shook her head. “I just can’t. Only what I said before about having lost all sense of time and being unable to move. I came to the conclusion he must have hypnotised me too!”
Noel nodded. “That would make sense. But it still doesn’t explain what happened to Jack!”
“Well hopefully he won’t be off work too long. I suppose Claire will manage in the meantime. I’ll be back in a few days as well.”
“Hope so. Oh - Kristy Silver came to see Ruby this afternoon. Apparently she wants to take over Ruby’s management as soon as possible and I think Isaac’s in agreement, as well be might be with a work load like his, and Claire out of her depth. Personally I think Kristy’s out to make her own name - put herself centre stage!”
Chester was sitting in the sink in the corner of the
room, shaking his head sorrowfully. “That bitch is trouble, Becky - you godda put a stop to this! You need to get out of here!”
“Kristy Silver? Taking over Ruby?”
He nodded.“ Mmm. Claire phoned her. Something to do with a similar case that turned out to be D.I.D. Her client came from the same village where Ruby tried to murder that poor sod with a kitchen knife… ”
Becky threw back the covers. “I’m not having this. That woman’s stirring up all sorts of trouble just so she can write more articles for the press. That’s all Ruby is to her, you know - an interesting case! She could really traumatise Ruby if she brings out all those alters: kids protect themselves like that for a reason - if whatever happened to her as a child is revealed to her she won’t be able to handle it. They should leave well alone.”
“I thought you wanted the trauma to be unlocked and treated? What’s changed?”
“I think Ruby is doing fine, getting better at her own pace. I’ve had time to think that’s all - sometimes certain things are simply best forgotten. There‘s loads of evidence now to support not uncovering lost memories, you know? It can do more harm than good!”
“Not if those stored memories are damaging the person - taking up space in the form of multiple alters so the individual doesn’t know who they are, so they can’t function or cope with life!”
Noel put his hand on her forearm but Becky threw it off, reaching for her jeans at the exact moment Kelly came in. “What’s going on?”
Noel shook his head. “I’m not sure. Becky seems a bit confused.”
“I am not confused. I just want to get out of here - I have to stop Kristy from hurting Ruby.”
Kelly bustled in and took the jeans off her. “Becky, you can go home tomorrow. Right now it’s getting late and you’re still on strong painkillers. Try and relax.”
Reluctantly, Becky acquiesced while Kelly tucked her in, peering into her face with concern.
Suddenly a voice shouted nastily, “What are you looking at, Fat Arse?”
Kelly’s jaw dropped and Becky realised she’d been the one to speak. Her stomach clutched inwardly in shock.
Father of Lies Page 10
