THE HISTORY OF THINGS TO COME: A Supernatural Thriller (The Dark Horizon Trilogy Book 1)

by Duncan Simpson

  ‘Just give me a second,’ he shouted from the bedroom. Resurrecting his trousers from the floor, Blake hopped to the door, trying to locate the opening to his trouser leg with his foot. He kicked frantically at the material, but it refused to comply. Several seconds passed and then Blake opened the door by a few inches. He looked terrible, like a convict just emerged from a long stretch in solitary confinement. He pulled a towel close around his shoulders.

  ‘Sorry about that,’ he panted, trying to regain his equilibrium.

  Sabatini, a woman obviously unaccustomed to being greeted in this way, acknowledged Blake with a reserved, ‘Oh, good morning.’

  ‘Carla, I’ll meet you at breakfast, just give me ten minutes. I’ve just had a message from the hospital about my daughter. I’ve got to give them a call.’

  Blake’s reaction to his conversation with the hospital consultant was immediate and visceral. He ran to the bathroom, the muscles in his abdomen tightening with every step. He got there just in time to retch up the meagre contents of his stomach into the toilet. After steadying himself against the wall, Blake sat down on the edge of the bath and then reached over to the washbasin. A muscle in his cheek began to twitch. He switched on the tap and plunged his head under the ice-cold water.

  Sabatini sat alone in the hotel’s small dining room nursing an untouched cup of black coffee. Blake arrived at her table in a hurry, his face paler than usual.

  ‘Carla, something happened to my daughter last night. I’ve got to get to the hospital. I’m sorry. The book, the map, it’s all got to wait. I’ll give you a call from the hospital.’ His words were like bullets being fired from a machine gun. Sabatini tried to grasp what Blake was saying, but he was already turning towards the door. Without thinking, she grabbed her coat from the back of her chair and shouted after him.

  ‘I’ll come with you.’

  Blake pushed the door handle of the Bedford Hotel and impatiently held it open for Sabatini. It felt loose, worn down by use from thousands of hands. Blake descended the eight large steps down to the pavement in two jumps, quickly followed by Sabatini. About 100 metres further on up the road Blake spotted a taxi rank. At this time in the morning, the ride to the hospital would take about twenty minutes. Placing a hand behind Sabatini’s back, Blake ushered her forward along the pavement.

  A little way further along the road, a large man wearing a baseball cap and a well-worn leather jacket walked towards them in the opposite direction. He was moving quickly in the centre of the pavement, his face down, his eyes covered by the visor of his cap. Both Blake and Sabatini had the same notion at approximately the same moment: if the approaching pedestrian didn’t alter his current trajectory, Blake would be required to step into the road to prevent a collision. A few seconds later, the person on foot still hadn’t looked up, apparently unaware of the oncoming obstacle. Blake gave a quick glance up and down the road for traffic, then dropped away from Sabatini’s side and stepped into the road.

  As the pedestrian passed, he abruptly changed direction. A fraction of a second later, he had pinned Sabatini up against the wall by the throat. At the same time, Blake felt a hard object jab in the centre of his back. He heard a voice behind his head.

  ‘Don’t you fucking think about it,’ said the voice. ‘You have a gun in your back. Don’t make me squeeze the trigger.’ The voice was Eastern European and terrifying. A second jab arrived in the square of Blake’s lower back, this time its force of delivery was designed to hurt. Blake cursed with pain. Out of the corner of his eye, he could see that Sabatini had been released from the wall. A gun barrel brushed against her side, just above her kidney. A voice behind Blake’s ear whispered calmly.

  ‘We are going to cross the road and walk over to that van. We’re all going to take a little trip.’

  Chapter 55

  As Blake’s unsupported head jerked forward, his mind was thrust back into consciousness. For an instant, he felt his thoughts retreating into sleep like a wave being sucked out to sea, but a noise, sharp and irregular, yanked him back into waking. He moved his head instinctively towards the sound. It came again, this time louder, more insistent. Gradually, Blake’s mind began to resolve the dirge of sound into a series of distinct words. Moments later they detonated in his brain with desperate meaning.

  ‘Vincent. Vincent, wake up! They’re going to kill us! Vincent, please wake up! Oh god!’ Sabatini’s voice was hysterical, her words fighting to break through her shallow frantic panting. As Blake slowly opened his eyes, diffuse blurred outlines gradually turned into clear edges. He turned his head to one side. His body tried to follow, but his movement was severely restricted by something cutting into his wrists.

  Then he saw Sabatini, and dreadful memories began to flood into his mind: the Bedford Hotel; being bundled into the back of a van at gunpoint; the hypodermic needle. The needle had been plunged deep into his neck and the entry point was still raw. He tried to raise his hand, but he couldn’t move. He looked down and took in his awful predicament. Both his wrists and his ankles were tightly bound to a chair with electrical insulation tape. He tried to push against his restraints, but they were too tightly wound. He tried again, this time with his entire body writhing against the bindings, but it made no difference.

  As Blake looked over to Sabatini sobbing at his side, he became aware that they were sitting in some sort of derelict building.

  ‘Carla, are you okay?’ Blake whispered as his eyes scanned their surroundings.

  Sabatini didn’t know what to respond. She had regained consciousness minutes before with one of her kidnappers standing over her. He had been holding a kitchen carving knife.

  ‘Vincent, they’re going to kill us,’ Sabatini moaned through tracks of tears and snot. ‘He’s got a knife. He’s got a …’ The end of her sentence dissolved into a whimper.

  ‘Carla, I need you to think. Have you got any idea where we are?’

  Sabatini shrugged her shoulders. The last thing she could remember was being shoved into the back of a van then a sharp scratch on her neck. She had woken up with the blade of a long knife twisting before her eyes.

  By the random assortment of shiny nails and off-cuts of electrical wire scattered on the bare wooden floor, Blake guessed that the room had been recently gutted. The walls were stripped back to plasterboard and bore the remnants of many layers of wallpaper. A large window was set into the opposite wall, its frame painted in an incongruous bright yellow gloss, and a single light bulb hung down from the ceiling. From where he was sitting, Blake could see a thin rectangle of dappled daylight shining out from the bottom of the slatted blind. Maybe trees swaying outside, he thought. Maybe we’re not on the ground floor.

  An idea flickered in Blake’s head. He strained his neck forward and looked down at his watch. Though most of its face had been caught up in the taping around his wrist, Blake could clearly make out the first figures on its digital readout. The digits formed the number ten; the hour was still ten o’clock. Blake had received the call from the hospital a few minutes after ten, which meant that they had been unconscious for less than an hour. If that were the case then Blake guessed that they were probably still in London.

  The door flew open. Blake held his breath. Sabatini looked up, her heart beating so fast that it pounded in her ears like a metronome. Slowly two men walked into the room. Both were tall, muscular and formidable: the same men that had confronted them outside the Bedford Hotel.

  ‘What do you want?’ Blake pleaded. ‘Tell me, please, what do you want with us?’

  Crossland sneered at his prisoner. Blake should have been dead, burned to a crisp in that shitty bedsit. He soon will be, he thought, as his sneer morphed into a malevolent smile. Out of the side of her eye, Sabatini tracked the other man as he picked up a large cardboard box abandoned in the corner of the room. As the man came closer with the box, her body retreated back into her chair. Once close enough,
Denic casually threw the box onto the floor in front of the two prisoners. After making a small adjustment to its position, he placed an open laptop onto it.

  Almost immediately an alien voice echoed through the dilapidated house. The voice was not human. Though the laptop’s screen was black, a small red light next to its inbuilt webcam indicated that the picture was being streamed live to an unknown location over the Internet.

  ‘Dr Blake, you have become somewhat of a problem to me,’ said the voice.

  Blake strained against the electrical taping securing his wrists to the chair. Though the voice had been digitally disguised, Blake guessed the name of the person he was listening to.

  ‘Are you the Drakon?’

  ‘Very good, Dr Blake, very good, I see you have been doing your homework,’ said the voice.

  ‘You bastard!’ Blake spat the words contemptuously from the side of his mouth. Seeing the larger of his two jailers step forward menacingly, Blake checked himself.

  ‘Time is running out,’ the voice continued. ‘You are in possession of something I want and I need it now.’

  ‘In possession of something? What do you mean?’ said Blake.

  ‘Don’t play games!’ The voice shook the internal speaker of the laptop with obvious frustration. ‘Newton’s pocket watch; the one that was switched in Cambridge. I need the original.’

  ‘Switched?’ Sabatini questioned indignantly.

  ‘Yes, Dr Sabatini. Your friend the priest switched the original with a fake. We ended up with the fake and Dr Blake ended up with the original. Isn’t that true Dr Blake?’

  ‘I don’t have it. It’s back with the police,’ said Blake, his fingertips squeezing hard the metal armrest of chair.

  A pause followed where the only sound that could be heard came from the static of the laptop’s inbuilt loudspeaker. When the Drakon’s response arrived, it was seething with rage.

  ‘Listen to me, you little fuck! You will give it to me. Remind Dr Blake what he has at stake.’

  Crossland smiled, removed a small, white plastic box from his jacket pocket and placed it next to the laptop on the makeshift cardboard box table.

  Blake stared at it, and then a dreadful thought entered his head.

  ‘No, no, please. I’ll get it for you. Oh god, please no.’ As his wrists writhed against his restraints, his left thumb clawed against the edge of his wedding ring.

  ‘For the love of god, no.’

  Tears began to stream down his cheeks, as his head rolled from side to side in anguish. The Drakon’s voice started to rage again over the speaker.

  ‘Where is the watch? Nothing will stand in my way. Do you understand?’

  Blake began to nod furiously as Crossland quickly grabbed the plastic box from the table, removed its airtight lid and dropped the contents onto Blake’s lap. Blake looked down, his face frozen in sheer horror. There, resting between his legs was a severed finger; the finger of a child. The fingernail had recently been painted in nail varnish. Blake recognised the shade: electric blue. It was the finger of his daughter.

  Blake’s body thrashed against his bindings. A tidal wave of adrenalin surged into his bloodstream.

  ‘You evil bastard! I’ll fucking kill you if you go anywhere near my daughter. I swear it, I’ll kill you.’

  ‘I doubt that very much. The watch, Dr Blake, where is it?’

  ‘Okay, okay.’ Blake’s head rolled back against the chair as Crossland gathered up the finger from his lap with the plastic box. ‘It’s in the back safe of a pub in Clerkenwell called the Jerusalem Tavern. I asked the landlady to keep it safe after you burned down my bloody bedsit.’

  Denic nodded in acknowledgement.

  ‘Blake, this is your last chance. If the watch isn’t there, I’m going to gut you both alive.’

  ‘It’s there, I swear,’ cried Blake.

  There was a long pause and then the loudspeaker shouted out a final order.

  ‘Gentlemen, I need to talk to you in private about our next move.’

  With that, Denic stepped forward, retrieved the laptop and followed Crossland out of the room, shutting the door behind him. Seconds later, the sound of their heavy footsteps could be heard descending a long flight of stairs outside.

  A terrible coldness swept over Blake’s body, as if the sun itself had gone out.

  Chapter 56

  Hitting out his right shoulder and then his left, Blake managed to make his chair rock. He did it again, this time twisting his body as far as he could to the edge of the chair, using the bindings around his wrists for purchase. Sabatini looked on, her face taut and damp with sweat. This time two legs cleared the floor, teetered for a moment before thumping back down again. Keeping the momentum going, Blake shifted his body weight to the opposite side. The chair rocked again, this time through a bigger arc. It gradually came to rest perfectly balanced on two legs. Sensing the tipping point was close by, Blake yanked his shoulder downwards, every muscle in his neck jarring as he did so. Sabatini held her breath. The small additional force was just enough to send the chair and Blake crashing to the floor. The side of his head smacked onto the ground, his right eye just missing the upturned edge of a discarded paint tin by several inches.

  Panting loudly, Blake pulled in his ribcage and tried to raise his shoulder off the floor. After managing to open up a small gap between the top of his arm and the floor, Blake gritted his teeth and jerked his other shoulder forward. Blake and the chair shifted their position on the floor. He steadied himself for a moment and then once again jarred his shoulder forward. This time his body and the chair rotated through some forty-five degrees around an imaginary axis through his pelvis.

  With a gasp, Sabatini realised what Blake was doing. ‘Vincent, you’re really close, just a bit further.’ The fingers of Blake’s right hand scrambled desperately towards the large shiny nail resting in the gap between two wooden floorboards. An inch now separated his fingertips with the end of the nail. He had to be careful. Too much movement and the nail would be lost under his torso. Too little, then the combined weight of the chair and his body would remain stubbornly anchored in its current position. Blake pulled his head back and then snapped it forward. As the chair shifted slightly, pain fired down the muscles of his back. He let out a gasp, his elbows instinctively pulling themselves into his midriff.

  After several deep breaths, the pain had subsided enough for him to re-assess his altered position. Unclenching his tight fist, Blake stretched out his fingers, desperately trying to locate the thin metal spike. At last his fingertips found the groove between the floorboards. Using the furrow between the wooden slats as a guide, he clawed forward with his index finger. Finally, his fingernail touched the head of the nail, the slight downward pressure flipping it onto the back of Blake’s hand. His fingers scrambled to get hold of the object. Soon it was secure in his hand. Far from being blunt at one end, the nail head had been fashioned into a pointed wedge, as if it had been struck repeatedly by a hammer. With the nail head pushing down into the well of Blake’s right hand, he positioned the sharp tip against the electric tape binding around his wrist. Slowly he closed his hand, the action driving the point of the metal spike into the tape restraint and beyond into the skin of his wrist.

  Sabatini watched in silence as Blake grimaced with pain. Squeezing the shaft of the nail, Blake tried to focus on the binding around his wrist. A puncture hole was clearly visible in the plastic. After first repositioning the nail in his palm, Blake once again drove the spike into the plastic tape. “Fuck!” The pain shot through his wrist as if a shard of glass had been jabbed into his forearm. Sabatini tried to find some words of comfort, but all she could manage was to mumble his name into the cold air.

  Blake bit into the side of his mouth and willed the image of Sarah lying in her hospital bed back into his mind. Keeping the nail flat to his palm, he angled its sharp tip in the
small gap that had just opened between the underside of his wrist and the tape that had come unstuck from his skin. Clenching his hand, he pushed the nail hard into the plastic. Abruptly the tension on the nail gave way as its tip cleanly punctured a hole through the tape. Blake pulled the spike back through the hole with his fingertips. After realigning the tool in his hand, he once again drove it through the tape. Quickly he repeated the operation. Like the merging of several drops of water, the puncture points joined together to form a wider hole. A minute later he had opened up an aperture of over an inch in the binding.

  The ligaments in Blake’s wrist tightened like wires through his skin as the nail jabbed at the tape. His hand slipped and the head of the metal nail cut deep into his palm. He recoiled in pain, spitting curses through a shower of sweat. With breath bursting in and out of his lungs, Blake carefully repositioned the nail’s head away from the stinging flap of skin now hanging from the well of his palm. He shut his eyes and girded himself for the inevitable pain. Mustering all his energy, Blake’s hand unleashed a final flurry of stabs with the nail. Abruptly, his bound wrist moved slightly under its restraint. He forced his hand upwards, his biceps and forearm tensing under the pressure. The tape started to tear apart through the perforated edge he had just created.