Jack remained staring across the extensive lawns, at the frost, which spread like icing on a cake; at the grand, sweeping firs tipped with glitter as day sank into evening, and a crescent moon hung like a scythe in the lightly starred sky. This had once been a country estate for a wealthy family, whose parties popped and tinkled with champagne and music, whose furniture gleamed with beeswax while fires crackled in every room. Now the corridors echoed with wailing lost souls, and black shapes oozed under doorways.
So people who came here had money, which made not a jot of difference because a mad house was a mad house. Except they had wild salmon and asparagus on the menu instead of a gristly cottage pie. A knot formed in his throat at the thought of food. When had he last managed a bite of anything? Tracing down his ribs, each bird-like bone protruded like a toothpick.
Sometimes, increasingly rarely now, a flickering thought became his own, and panic set in. What had happened? What was real and what imagined? Was that really himself banging his head repeatedly on the floor - blood matting like jam on his forehead? His own body being thrown from its warm bed in the dead of night, smashing and crumpling against the wall like a broken doll? A far distant fragment played with his waking dreams, of trying to get his fists to stop hitting his wife in the ambulance. Yet those fists had continued pummelling into her soft, white face, her throat, her protruding belly - even as she lay on the floor and sticky dark blood dripped from her mouth and pooled around her thighs … A tear swelled and plopped down his cheek at the exact same moment a raucous cackle erupted from within. It was happening again. His eyes darted from side to side. It was coming…
As always, it started with electric shocks. No leaping around, more a kind of hot-whisky-burning-through-veins feeling, neuroceptors frying, sparks tingling all over his body; followed by a creeping, knowing intelligence easing its way under his skin, before sliding into his brain.
Above the sink, the crack in the mirror widened and groaned, and shadows crept along the walls. He pressed the emergency buzzer. By now the nursing staff knew what to do. He’d be tied to the bed again, sedated, put out of conscious misery for as long as it took.
Good-bye, Jack. See you later.
No way, pal. You’ve got a special visitor coming tomorrow and we‘re excited. Don’t think you’ll stand much of a chance of fucking her, though - not looking like that, buster.
***
10 am next day
Kristy stood at the foot of Jack’s bed. The man was unrecognisable. Blood rushed to her head and she leaned onto the metal frame for support. He could only be days from death.
After a moment she turned to Isaac. “Have his parents been informed?”
“Yes. His mother’s asked for the priest. Last Rites, I suppose. Irish Catholics.”
Kristy’s eyes opened wide. “You suppose? Have you checked it’s for the Last Rites?”
He sucked in his breath. “Why? No. But you can see…of course it is. To be honest I don’t understand how he’s gone down hill so fast. He complains of something in his throat preventing him eating, but we’ve had a full physical examination done - poor old chap’s had scans, blood tests, tubes down the oesophagus - the lot.” He shook his head. “And he’s repeatedly pulled out his drip at night even though we’ve sedated him. I have to say this is the worst case of treatment resistant psychosis I’ve ever come across.”
“Isaac - if this is psychosis I might as well train to be a beauty therapist. The man is possessed. I never thought I‘d say anything like that in my life but he’s bloody possessed by something - a demon - something terrible. I’m scared to death. If this can happen to an educated, strong man like Jack…”
He stared back at her in disbelief. “I don’t believe I’m hearing this from a fellow professional. Dr Silver - Jack is suffering from psychosis secondary to depression, as you well know. He believes there is something in his throat and that’s why he can’t eat. We’ve had round the clock care and you can see the state of his arms from ripping out IV tubes! I suggested a life support machine but his mother won’t hear of it. She’s on about his soul too.”
“Excuse me? Psychosis secondary to depression? Are you serious?”
“Yes - hallucinations, delusions, paranoia, almost no insight, need I go on?”
“Accepted. But you’ve talked to him - you know, you must, that he has an inexplicable knowledge of others’ personal lives, that he talks with multiple voices, blasphemes every other word, and abuses himself. In addition, and verified by the staff, there are external phenomena such as solid objects moving round the room, foul odours out of nowhere, and the electrics blowing. Nor can you put the cadaverous frame, the black unblinking stare or the attack on his wife - down to schizophrenia. His total personality changes. And no drug regime works…There have even been multiple suicides here since he arrived.”
“Oh you’re surely not inferring…”
“Isaac - we are in a different league here - out of ours anyway - and it’s one we know nothing about - this man needs a priest to conduct an exorcism or he’s going to die and so is his soul!”
Isaac leapt back from her. “Oh I hardly…”
He got no further. Both doctors turned to see the bed shaking as if it was in an earthquake. Then Jack’s eyes snapped open, the pupils brilliant red.
“Dear God,” said Isaac.
A guttural choir of voices erupted from his former colleague, the tongue flicking in and out like a chameleon. “Fucked any chambermaids recently, Dr Hardy - me old mucker? A Philippino for a tenner when your wife’s at home wondering where you are? Don’t think we can’t see you, you sanctimonious twat! We know you very well - just how low down you really are…come closer my friend…we need to verify something, mother-fucker…”
A deep red flush burned its way up Isaac’s neck, scorching the side of his face faster than a bush fire. He turned to Kristy, unable to form a sentence.
She looked hard into his eyes. “I need to know. Is he right - have you? Because…”
His sickened expression told her what she needed to know, while behind her Jack’s emaciated form began to thrash violently from side to side.
Then stop dead.
His eyes locked with hers.
‘Enjoying your dreams, Kriiiiiistyyyyy…?’
***
Chapter 27
December 2015
Becky lay in crisp, white sheets staring at the skylight. In the circumstances there couldn’t be a better place in which to wake up - Noel’s flat was a modern loft conversion in the heart of Leeds, with pale wooden floors and white paintwork - lit today by the dazzling light of winter snow. A wedge of it shifted and slid down the glass pane. Was it Christmas yet?
“Is there anything else I can get you?” Noel asked, hovering in the doorway.
She shook her head slightly, unable to stop stinging tears from coursing down her cheeks. It was a good thing, she told herself, to feel this pain. Not to be numb anymore. A good thing. It meant she was human and would be okay.
“Are you ready to talk?”
It had been three days now. Three days since Martha Kind’s funeral. Four since Callum had been reported missing, the burned-out shell of his car discovered upside down and abandoned on Bridestones Moor.
She nodded.
Noel drew up a chair, turned it round and sat astride it. “How you feeling?”
“Exhausted. Confused.”
“Mark’s been ringing. All he wants to know is if we’re having an affair or not. I’ve put him straight but he doesn’t believe me.”
“Well this doesn’t look good, you have to admit!”
“No. I’ve told him I’m as gay as a row of pink tents, but he just said people could change.”
Becky smiled, almost laughed. “Yes, he would say that. He thinks it’s a choice.”
“Becks - first things first. Can we go back to what happened at the church because I’m still reeling? And scared. ”
“So am I.”
He re
ached across and squeezed her hand. “I know.”
She closed her eyes, steeling herself. “Okay…”
“Start at the team meeting. When you asked me to take you to the church.”
“The team meeting - my God, that was the last time I ever saw Martha! Do you realise I’ve known Martha for the whole of my adult life? She was the social worker when I got my first placement in Doncaster. I still can’t believe it. She was really looking forward to retiring - to doing something other than working. She wanted to travel and do a cruise, bless her. I just can’t believe it, Noel, I really can’t.”
“Me neither. I’ve never seen a funeral so well-attended either. She was loved by everyone, wasn’t she? It was such a shock. Here one minute then gone - doesn‘t exist anymore - it’s hard to get your head round.” He reached out and took Becky’s hand. “I wonder what happened to her, as well? I mean, it doesn’t make sense. As far as I’m aware she’d been at home that day. Just popped out to the post office and never made it back. I suppose, just guessing, it was the strain of everything that had been going on? But she was fine at the meeting, wasn’t she? What did she say last, can you remember? What was it she was going to do… let’s take it from there.”
“She said she was going to Woodsend to investigate the Dean family, and also to read her colleague’s notes - the one who covered for her back in the nineties - what was her name, again?” She shook her head. “Didn’t she say she was going to talk to the woman’s husband? That she’d died suddenly and he was devastated?”
“Hmm….yeah, I remember now. Linda, I think.”
“So she’d presumably read Linda’s notes? Had she visited Woodsend? You see I don‘t know. I only know how ill I felt that night. Still, you know she was sixty-five and she’d had a lot of health issues. Poor Martha.”
“I didn’t think she’d had a heart condition, though. Just rickety hips and knees. So we’ve got another woman in otherwise good health, investigating Woodsend and suddenly she’s dead as well! Another coincidence, Becky? It’s like Kristy said - it isn’t each individual story it’s the whole picture! Almost every member of the team associated with Ruby has become seriously ill, which brings me back to you…I mean, do you still see this um…apparition…Chester? Because that’s who you were speaking to that night - someone the rest of us couldn’t see!”
Becky regarded her friend and colleague closely. He’d seen the worst and yet she was still here, not under lock and key doped out of her head. By rights she should be in the local psychiatric ward pumped full of anti-psychotics. “No. Not since that night.”
“Do you remember anything after we left the meeting?”
“I’ve got a vague image of not physically being able to enter the church. I could see the soft red of the carpet down the aisle, and candles flickering on the altar in the distance, but I couldn’t get my legs to move. I was focusing on the stained glass window at the back…but I just couldn’t get there.”
“You were screaming. Except it wasn’t your voice. More like a teenaged boy, and you were saying the same thing over and over, ‘Don’t make me go in there, don’t make me, I can’t - I hate you, I hate you…’”
“That sounds like Chester!”
“So the hallucination spoke?”
“Oh yes - he was a tiny man in a sharp suit and black hat with a New Yorker accent, or maybe Chicago - I’m not good on accents. He was funny and charming, and then kind of wheedling and sometimes nasty. He first appeared after my accident, sitting on a chair at the side of my bed. I thought it was the head injury and didn‘t want to say anything to the nurses for obvious reasons …but here’s the thing - he followed me home! And then it just got worse and worse…and don’t ask why I didn’t confide in anyone! I’d lose my job, you know I would!”
Noel said nothing.
“Anyway, I got into the church so I must have managed to keep him out!”
“Keep him out?”
“That’s what he wanted - he kept saying ‘let me in, let me in,’….that’s how I started to guess it wasn’t my own madness but something external. All he wanted was for me to say, ‘okay’, but the more pressure he put me under the more I feared giving in to him. I had to keep my real self separate and strong if that makes sense? I knew Chester wasn’t real…so I wasn’t psychotic. But who’d believe me if I said he was an independent entity? What could I do? Noel please don’t look at me like that - trust me - Chester was an obsessive, intrusive thought. A very real one, though.”
“Okay.”
“Actually, I don’t remember how I did that - overcame him and got into the church - because I’ve got a memory of suddenly being at the front praying, but not of actually crossing the threshold!”
“I dragged you in, then I called to a priest, who was in there praying, and together we forced you inside, with me frantically telling him it’s what you wanted even though you said you didn’t. It wasn’t nice. In the end, we sat you down in a pew with one of us either side of you, and we all prayed together.”
She nodded, frowning. “Yes. And there was all this light streaming through the stained glass windows. I begged and pleaded inside my head. I thought of the days I went to Sunday school as a kid, and some of the hymns we sang… Immortal, Invisible…I thought of my old dad and he was smiling and beckoning to me to come and look at the sunflowers on his allotment. He played in a brass band, you know? How long were we there?”
“All night. All three of us.”
“Who was the priest?”
“I don’t know. Michael, he said. I went back to thank him but no one knew him.”
Silence bathed them in the silvery, white room; snowflakes collecting wetly in a lower corner of the skylight.
“He saved me, you know? Because I feel cold and real and, I’m not sure how to put this, but ‘alone’ - like there isn’t anyone watching me anymore. I can remember things, but it’s like they happened to someone else in a very bad dream. It’s weird.”
“I understand.”
They let the silence grow, as only truly good friends can, taking solace simply in each other’s presence.
Eventually, Becky asked, “Noel - is there any news on Callum? Have they found a…a body?”
He shook his head. “No.”
“Where did he go after the meeting? He didn’t come with us to the church. I deliberately made it clear I didn’t want him to in case he thought I was bonkers, but I wish he’d come now. Noel - I …I loved him.”
“I know.”
“How? How do you know?”
He smiled sadly, kindly, squeezing her hand in his. “I just do.”
“Thank you.”
“For?”
“For just being there. Not asking. It was an affair and it was wrong.”
“That’s okay - I’m not here to moralise and judge you.”
“Thing is - we knew each other from schooldays. He was my first! We had a wedding planned, then I went out on a stupid, wild drinking night and someone told him I’d cheated on him. After that he went away for a while and when he came back he was cold, different. Joined the Police Force. He met someone else and the rest is history - two kids, divorce - then came looking for me when it was all way too late: my mother told him I’d re-married and so our paths veered off in different directions again and he never knew the truth. Until last year when we attended a case meeting about a patient we had. We sat staring at each other, unable to talk because of everyone around us. After the meeting he asked me for a quick coffee, no strings… and then it all came out - how the so-called friend who told him I’d been unfaithful had been someone he’d thrashed on the football pitch and wanted revenge. That simple.”
“Oh Becky!”
“I’m not sure it would have worked out, to be honest: we both had issues, but well you know… there was no one who made my heart skip like him! Not before or since. And now he’s gone.”
“Not necessarily. I’m guessing he snooped around Woodsend after our meeting and encountere
d someone nasty, maybe that guy Kristy mentioned? Anyway, I’m sure he can take care of himself and he could be hiding out! Doesn’t mean it’s the end by any stretch of the imagination. And remember the whole Force is out looking for him. Woodsend is practically under siege.”
“Is it?”
“Well there were police cordons round the caravan park and tape round a cemetery at the back of some houses.”
“Did you go to look?”
“No. It’s in the papers. There’s a lot of talk about black witchcraft, dating back years to when a local witch was reputably driven out - funnily enough in the mid-nineties when Martha was off sick and Linda was covering for her. So maybe Callum happened on some kind of satanic cult and they wanted to silence him?”
Becky stared. “I bet that’s it! And if those kids who were taken into care - Thomas and was it Belinda - had been subjected to it? My God, it’s all making sense.”
“Hmmm…I’ll be honest with you though, Becks, I’m not happy about this evil spirit stuff - I’m easily spooked. After I watched ‘The Exorcism of Emily Rose’ I didn’t sleep for a week!”
“And yet you took me to a church instead of a mental health unit! And that was after everything Kristy told us about Jack and her own experiences! You must have been scared witless? That must really have gone against your grain?”
He nodded. “Yes. But it was what you asked me to do and somehow I just knew I had to. That there was only me. And I’m glad I did because I kind of feel stronger now, if that makes sense? I’m not sure how to explain myself either, except that here you are - back to health - so what happened in that church? Something good…that’s all, something spiritual and good.”
“We humans don’t have all the answers, that’s for sure.”
Father of Lies Page 20
