Terror in the Night

by J. M. Robinson

  The horse started to clear its throat and shake its head from side to side as he approached. He placed a hand on its nose and stroked gently to calm it. He didn’t need a horse trying to bolt on top of everything else.

  Inside the shed it was dark but he could make out shapes on the floor that in his frantic mind looked like bodies but on reflection were probably just sandbags or horse feed. He ignored the smell, he didn’t even want to name it, but the flies would be swarming before long if it didn’t get cleaned up.

  He crept into the darkness, feeling like a little boy again, as if he was doing something wrong. Someone had done something wrong though, he was sure of that. He wished that he had a gun but he hadn’t even picked up his truncheon. If something was still in there he would have to face it with only his cunning.

  The door to the shed opened outwards. He stood behind and pushed it closed. It was made of heavy steel and although it squeaked it gave him protection from anything that was inside.

  “Nicholas?” he said, his voice hesitant because he didn’t want to find out whether his friend was in there or not. As long as he didn’t know he could believe he was okay.

  There was no answer, as he’d known there wouldn’t be. He listened for a moment but knew that all the time he delayed here was time for the fire to spread and it would be that much harder (if not impossible) to put out.

  “Nicholas?” he said again.

  Again there was no answer and no sound of movement from inside. If there was anyone in there they were keeping quiet, or else they were dead.

  He stepped away from the door and into the dark room beyond. The air was still and warm. He felt the sort of unease normally reserved for the cemetery. His boots clopped on the stone floor, worn smooth through years of use.

  The first bundle was the body of Edward Fisher. Edward was nineteen (and would remain so from now until the end of time) a tall skinny boy with dark blond hair that he kept a little too long for Graham’s taste. He had lived with his mother since his two older sisters had married and left home and since his father had died two years earlier. Graham supposed he would have to break the news to his mother, it would devastate her. Though he would leave out the grizzly details:

  Edward lay on his front though his neck had been twisted around so that he lay looking up at the ceiling. His throat had been cut for good measure, although judging by the lack of blood it was safe to assume he had been dead by then. His left shoe was on the floor a few feet away, as if he had been running away from whoever had done this to him.

  Graham walked further into the room and almost tripped over Michael Bothwell. He was a short grumpy little man that Graham did not like. If he hadn’t been a fire warden he would have expected to find him with the rest of the yokels gawping at the fire that threatened to burn down the village. He lived with his much younger wife in the north of the village. She was frequently bruised and constantly timid. No, Graham didn’t like the man but even Michael Bothwell didn’t deserve to have his head caved in against the stone wall. Brain tissue and faecal matter mixed together beside him in a dirty soup that was responsible for much of the smell in the shed.

  Nicholas Sutcliffe was laying half in and half out of the carriage. He was just as dead as Edward and Michael. His throat had been cut and for him that had been the killing blow, fresh blood pooled beneath him. It shone like oily water.

  Graham looked at his friend for a moment but there was nothing he could do for him now. Nicholas had been a voluntary fire marshall since he was a boy and he was good at it. The last thing he would want was for the village to burn down because of him.

  The body was heavy but Graham didn’t notice. He lifted Nicholas with tender ease and carried him across to the side of the room to lay him on the floor. The wound on his neck gaped like a smile, blood clotted around it like badly applied lipstick.

  The crowd had grown around the burning cottage. It seemed as if half the village was there now. He could hear the chatter of gossip even above the flames that had burned down half the forest. He rang the bell as he approached and they parted to let him through. They were a good way further back now because the fire had started to spread but mostly because the boy with the scar was holding them back with a fierce look in his eyes.

  Graham jumped off the carriage and took the boys hand. Together they unwound the dirty pipe and aimed it as close as they could to the centre of the blaze.

  “You’ve done a good job,” said Graham.

  “What?” said the boy, his hearing wasn’t good.

  Graham repeated himself but the water started to flow. The rush of the water, the cracking trees and the shouting crowd made it impossible for the boy to hear him.

  It took three hours to get the fire first under control and then out completely. He had to take the carriage away more than a dozen times to refill the water tank and each time he expected to come back and find that the fire had spread. It didn’t though and once it was out he made a final trip to refill the tank and liberally doused the ground so that no embers could reignite the blaze. By the time they had finished the crowd had thinned considerably and the last few onlookers left shaking their heads with disappointment, as if they had wanted the village to burn.

  When it was over just Graham and the boy remained. They were slick with sweat and black soot was caked into their skin. He felt exhausted.

  “We did it,” said the boy.

  Graham nodded. “That we did.”

  They stood in silence for a moment and surveyed the wreckage. The cottage and the trees closest to it were indistinguishable black lumps. The ground was soaked as if there had been a flood. Further back into the forest there were charred stumps that would rot away completely by the end of next summer.

  “Do you think she was in there?” said the boy.

  Graham shook his head. “I don’t know, I hope not.”

  “People said she was a witch.”

  He nodded.

  “I don’t believe it though,” said the boy.

  Graham tuned towards him. The boys scar seemed to have rejected the black soot that covered the rest of him and stood out bright and red. “What’s your name son?”

  “It’s Charlie,” he said. “Charlie Griffin.”

  Graham looked at him again, he looked like a Charlie, with his wild curly hair atop a high brow. He looked intellectual. He would remember the name. “Have you ever thought about volunteering as a fire warden Charlie?”

  Charlie shook his head. “No sir. I’m much more interested in police work.”

  The answer took him by surprise. Working for the police was not an ambition you heard often in the village. Usually it was a quiet place, his job consisted of walking the streets after the public houses had closed, lighting street lamps and settling disputes between neighbours. Not a lot happened in Odamere. Then he reminded himself that there had been three murders, possibly four that very morning. Perhaps times were changing.

  “Let’s go,” said Graham.

  They walked away from the wreckage together but at the road Charlie turned left to walk up the hill.

  “Where are you going?” said Graham.

  “Home sir,” he said.

  “Come with me, I’ll get Mrs Kable to lay an extra place at the table. Do you like bacon?”

  Charlie nodded and the two of them crossed the village together. Graham found that he liked the boy, which was not something that happened very often. He had lived in the village most of his life and retained a healthy disdain for most of its residents. They weren’t his sort of people. They were, for the most part, small minded and petty. They liked their routines and their jobs. They didn’t have any ambition. Graham had ambition and, because the times were changing, he was going to get the chance to fulfil it but he would wonder for the rest of his life whether it was worth the cost.

  CHAPTER 3

  THEY SAT AT THE TABLE IN THE KITCHEN. Agnes fussed around behind them getting a short notice breakfast prepared while Bridget sat opposite,
openly staring at Charlie’s scar. Graham thought to tell her off but Charlie didn’t seem to have noticed and he didn’t want to draw attention to it. He wasn’t sure he wanted to know what had happened.

  “This looks lovely Mrs Kable,” said Charlie as Agnes placed a heaped plate of meats and bread in front of him.

  “Thank you Mr Griffin,” she said and returned a moment later with Graham’s similarly stacked plate. “Come on Bridget,” she said, heaving the little girl out of her seat. At eight she was too old to be comfortably carried and Agnes put her down on the floor.

  “Please don’t leave on my account,” said Charlie.

  “Oh we have things to do,” said Agnes. “And I’m sure we’d just get in your way.”

  “I’m sure you wouldn’t,” said Charlie.

  Agnes looked at Graham, waiting for his approval. He nodded and she sat down, Bridget climbed back into her chair.

  Graham had told her about the fire and about old Miss Nighthorn’s house but she didn’t seem to realise the seriousness of what had nearly happened. Perhaps later he would take her there to see for herself and she would understand how close they had come to losing the whole village.

  Agnes pulled out her sewing. He thought to tell her to put it away, because they had company, but then Bridget asked the question he least wanted to hear:

  “What happened to your face?”

  Graham didn’t know where to look. Bridget almost never talked to strangers, even neighbours she had known all her life had barely heard her speak.

  “Bridget, you mustn’t...” said Agnes but Charlie cut her off.

  “It’s alright, I don’t mind.” He smiled at the adults and waited for their permission to tell what had happened.

  Graham wasn’t sure that a story about getting an injury like that was suitable breakfast material, certainly not for a girl Bridget’s age and with her wild imagination, but he was curious himself. “If you don’t mind.”

  Charlie leaned forwards until his head was at roughly the same height as Bridget across the table. The front of his stained shirt almost rested on his sausages. He opened his mouth but before he could start to speak there was a knock on the door.

  They all looked up.

  “Don’t answer it daddy,” said Bridget.

  Graham glanced at her, gave her the ‘don’t tell me what to do in front of guests’ look. She turned away bashfully and he stood up.

  “Detective Kable?” called a voice from the other side of the door.

  “I’m coming,” he said and pulled open the door. It was Mrs Taylor, Constance to her friends. “Good morning Mrs Taylor,” he said.

  She looked as if she had been crying. Her hair, usually neatly tucked away with pins and a hat, hung over her shoulders. She looked as if she had just woken up. Her bottom lip quivered. Her eyes were red and puffy where she had been crying.

  “Is there something I can help you with Mrs Taylor?” said Graham.

  She nodded but didn’t say a word. He could feel himself losing patience with the woman, it had been an exhausting morning and he was hoping to catch up on some sleep after breakfast.

  “Are you here to see Mrs Kable?” he said, more hopeful that expectant.

  She shook her head and finally she managed to speak. “It’s Mr Taylor,” she said and shook her head again, bit back the tears behind her eyes. “He’s dead.”

  It turned out that lots of people had died during the fire but none from the smoke or flames. The grieving survivors turned up at Graham’s door one after another. He had Agnes bring him paper and ink and he made a note of the names of all the deceased and what they had apparently died of. There were a surprising number of ‘I don’t know’ responses. Young people (children), the elderly and middle aged appeared on his list. Counting Edward, Michael, Nicholas and Miss Nighthorn (to be confirmed) brought the total to twenty-three. Not a lot in a big city like Wreathing or Lunden but in Odamere they might have had that many deaths in a decade, and before he had finished his kippers, it was staggering.

  When the knocks stopped he took his list and walked up the lane to see Dr. Foster. He had asked some of his visitors why they had come to him rather than the doctor and they told him they had tried but he wasn’t answering his door. After the morning he’d had Graham almost expected to find the doctor laying dead on the kitchen floor. It wouldn’t have surprised him, Dr. Foster was a notorious drunk and he lived alone so there would be no one to sound the alarm if he started choking on his own vomit.

  Dr. Foster, however, was very much alive, although when he opened the door to Graham the rosy tint to his cheeks suggested that he had been hitting the bottle even earlier than usual that morning. “Come in, come in,” he said throwing the door wide open.

  Graham stepped inside. The house was cold and there were very few personal belongings on display. Dr. Foster ran his practice from the same building he lived in.

  “And what can I do for you this fine day?”

  “Did you hear about the fire?” said Graham.

  Dr. Foster shook his head so Graham told him about the fire and about the sudden spike in unexplained deaths. His face grew pale as he listened and Graham could see his fingers moving as if trying to grab a bottle.

  “May I see the list?” he said when Graham was done. The cheerful countenance that had first met Graham was gone.

  Graham handed over the ink stained sheet of paper and Dr. Foster looked down at it. His hands were shaking wildly so that the paper rattled. Combined with Graham’s uneven hand writing it must have been impossible to read. He placed the document on the table and leaned over it.

  “Oh dear,” said the doctor, shaking his head. “Oh dear, oh dear. Have the families been notified?”

  The families had been the one to notify him, Graham thought, and then realised that the doctor was talking about the murdered men. A task he was reluctant to begin. “Not yet. The others though, do you know anything about them?”

  Dr. Foster leaned back. Graham knew that as soon as he was out the door the good doctor would be reaching for his own bottle of special medicine but if there was ever a day when it was needed that was today. The doctor shook his head, “nothing I can think of. But I have records. I have records. Wait here.”

  Graham waited while Dr. Foster disappeared into the next room. He heard a draw being opened in the next room and then the clink of glass. Dr. Foster was fortifying himself for the task at hand and for once Graham couldn’t blame him. When he returned he had a pile of documents wrapped in skins. He placed them on the table between them.

  An hour and a half later the table was strewn with the detritus of their investigation. Dr. Foster was back to his rosy cheeked self after frequent trips into the next room to ‘just check on something’ followed by the sound of clinking glass. Graham however, was exhausted, the lack of sleep and early morning action had caught up with him as he read through the doctors untidy notes.

  They had learned something for all their efforts: all the people who had died that morning, young and old alike, had been seeing the doctor regularly for ongoing complaints. In several of the cases he had scribbled notes in the margins that amounted to ‘this person should have been dead months ago’.

  “So they all picked this morning to go?” said Dr. Foster.

  “Hell of a coincidence,” said Graham.

  “You think there might be more to it?”

  He didn’t know but things in the village would calm down in a few weeks, once the run on St. Crispin’s Church funerals was out of the way and the new fire wardens were in place. Once he had solved the obvious murders of Edward, Michael and Nicholas (which he could safely assume were committed by whoever had started the fire in an attempt to stop it being extinguished) after that it would be quiet and he could poke around in the sudden deaths of twenty people who were all due to drop dead at any minute anyway.

  He looked at the doctor, didn’t like to think it because he was a friend, but he was the obvious link. Maybe a botched re
medy or an oversight somewhere. More than likely it had been an accident rather than a deliberate act. And these people were going to die sooner rather than later anyway.

  “I should be getting back,” he said standing and stretching his aching back.

  “Stay for a drink?” said Dr. Foster.

  “You have mine,” said Graham and before he had closed the door behind him he heard the clink of glass that suggested the doctor was doing just that.

  CHAPTER 4

  THINGS DID NOT CALM DOWN BECAUSE THE TIMES had changed. In the weeks following the fire Graham was inundated with crime, from petty theft up to and including attempted murder. So much so that he was forced to take Charlie Griffin on to help him, much to the young lads excitement. Of course he wasn’t officially a police officer, they would have to travel to Wreathing to organise that, but he was useful to have around and no one in the village needed to know he didn’t really work for the police.

  They spent much of their time in the hut at the end of his garden, which Charlie called the Odamere Police headquarters. Said headquarters was a single room wooden shed with a tiny window and no heating.

  That morning it was raining. A steady pitter-patter on the small window, the glass was fogged up from the inside. Charlie was behind him, there was a small ledge that he had turned into a desk and right now he was sorting through the various complaints about a pair of dogs that had been seen running through the street at night. No one seemed to know who they belonged to, and a couple of the more outlandish reports had referred to them as wolves. Whatever they were, they were keeping people awake with their constant barking and howling.

  Graham remembered a time when this sort of thing wasn’t an issue. Either dogs hadn’t go running through the street in the middle of the night barking or people hadn’t cared. Maybe they even took it into their own hands but it didn’t come to him. He stopped himself when he began to feel nostalgic for the old days when he could put his feet up on the desk and spend a quiet couple of hours dozing. That wasn’t what he wanted. These days there was a lot more work but it was exciting, some of the time, and now that he had Charlie to pass the case of the barking dogs (and other non-crimes) to it was exciting more often than not.