by Simon Clark
Bernice lifted her head a little, looking at the screen in drowsy wonder. How could that be? The scene, although full of fury and savage movement, was eerily silent.
She’d seen this video so many times before that it no longer scared her. If anything, it had a soporific effect, inducing even greater drowsiness.
She even blotted out what she saw in the darkened corridor beyond the man.
Yawning, she climbed out of bed, ready to switch off the TV and video. She’d sleep now.
As always the picture of the closed door would remain for a few moments. Seconds later it would switch to black as the tape ended. Then there would only be the electronic snowstorm of the dead channel.
She walked towards the TV. (Why don’t all hotels trust their clients with remotes?) The screen blacked. Snowstormed.
Just as it always did.
Then the picture returned. She stopped and watched in surprise.
It showed the corridor, the stairs, the lobby. The camera moved with fantastic speed, yet with equally fantastic fluidity — and oh-so-smoothly — as if running on oiled wheels.
A door loomed. The little door next to the Dead Box.
Stairs descending.
Down into the basement. The walls were raw brick. Brick archways flashed by at incredible speed.
In the basement, there was a figure, standing at the join of two walls — one brick, one stone.
She saw the white shirt, blond hair. She recognized the man as Mike Stroud, the man in the video. But the composed, cheerful expression had long gone. His face was a snarl of horror. There were grazes round the eyes and mouth. He was screaming. Yes, she was sure he was screaming and fighting something she could not see.
Then he was crying as if something was hurting him and wouldn’t stop hurting — she thought of a child being bullied at school, the bully twisting the child’s arm —
Stop it! Stop it!
— the more the child cries, the harder the bully twists the arm.
At last Mike Stroud was pulled sobbing into darkness; a second later he’d vanished, as if dragged through a hole in the basement wall.
Now the camera moved again.
(But who is filming? Bernice thought, frightened. Who can hold the camera so steadily while running so quickly? Who?)
On the TV screen she saw this: the brick walls blurring; the basement stairs filling the screen, the camera rushing up them, to the lobby, to the carpeted stairs. Up, up, up.
To the top floor.
Rushing along the corridor,
Hotel room doors flicking by one after another. The camera flying straight at a door.
My door; it’s my door!
Room 406.
Now she heard the thump of bare feet hard against the floor.
The door — My door, my door! — filled the TV screen
She held her breath.
The door burst open.
Cracked window above the bathroom door. Girl-in-the-river portrait, dressed in white.
Thunder rumbled as if the hotel was falling into a pit.
The door swung open and out of sight.
There was a figure in the bed.
It’s me, Bernice thought, heart pounding.
My eyes are wide. I’m rising to my knees, blankets held in front of my body like a shield.
A shield of cotton and wool?
No good at all, Bernice.
Whoever holds the camera runs into the room, then rushes at the bed to bounce onto it. On screen the camera looks down at the girl who falls back, fair hair splayed out across the pillow, mouth opening in a terrified scream.
And all the time the thunder pounds on and on and on as the floor splits open, the bed tips; she slides from its once warm and cosy safety to fall down into a pit where bloated figures wait with arms raised to catch her. A thousand faces look up. Hungry.
They have no eyes.
7
The sizzling sound was overlaid by a thunderous pounding.
She opened her eyes and thought she could smell bacon, just a faint whiff, but bacon nonetheless. Yawning, she climbed out of bed. Killed the TV with a jab of her index finger. The sizzle of static from the speaker stopped. The thunder continued.
Bernice Mochardi looked out of the window into the sunlit market square. Dumpster day. The municipal truck hoisted the market-place rubbish skips to upend them into the back, before the mechanical grabs pounded the big metal bins against a steel spar. Overripe tomatoes, bruised apples, squashed bananas and old boxes would soon be on their way to the big hole in the ground outside town where they’d lie forever with the grotty pair of stranger’s socks she’d thrown out all those weeks ago.
Across the market square lay the single-storey station building; beyond that, the red-brick monstrosity of the slaughterhouse rose above the town. The blue-black slate roof still glistened after the night’s rain.
A great jaw-cracking yawn came as she stared out, hanging tightly onto the normality of another day in a small town.
She didn’t know when she had fallen asleep and when the reality of watching the video had given way to nightmare. She should watch the video in daylight. Maybe it wouldn’t be so bad after all. But then again, it might show worse things. It was the same cassette, but it never showed exactly the same programme twice. Or so it seemed to her.
The church clock struck seven. A mere twelve hours until it grew dark once more. Already the spectre of another night — a night that would seem to last forever — was approaching fast.
Bernice Mochardi shivered and turned her back on the window.
CHAPTER 1
1
The train journey to Leppington was a picturesque one. Dr David Leppington stretched out his long legs as far as the seat in front would allow, relaxed to the rhythm of the wheels on the track, and watched the flow of fields, woods and hills pass the carriage window.
He’d recognized nothing yet. The river running alongside the track was, he guessed, the Lepping that tumbled down from the hills to cut the town in half before flowing on down the valley to join the River Esk for the rest of the journey to the sea at Whitby.
Would he recognize anything? Six-year-olds are more likely to remember incidents than places. He had vivid memories of the day his dog, Skipper, ran into the sea in Whitby and promptly got washed back up the beach again by a huge wave. After that, the dog flatly refused to have any truck with the beach, never mind the sea. He remembered when the chimney caught fire — he must have been about five — and being carried outside by his uncle to watch the sparks shooting from the chimney pot into the night sky like some great wonderful firework. But as for Leppington itself — the town from which his family took its name, or was it vice versa? — he’d not seen it in more than twenty years. There were fragments of images like clips of patched-together film. He remembered sitting on the kitchen table as his mother laced up his shoes — the wallpaper bore a pattern of plump black grapes. And he remembered sitting in what seemed a huge palace of a building where he’d eaten a ham sandwich. A film on television had scared him witless — his elder sister had smuggled a horror video into the house, he supposed. But had his family owned a video player twenty years ago? Perhaps she’d surreptitiously switched channels to watch a horror film?
The train clattered over a level crossing.
The hills were steeper and higher now; the tops crowned with purple heather. Here and there, even though it was late March, he glimpsed white streaks where snow still clung to the hollows or was shaded by walls.
Perhaps returning to Leppington wasn’t such a brilliant idea after all. It would be awkward meeting the sole family member remaining in the town after so long. Well, he’d cross that bridge when he got to it; it shouldn’t be so bad.
Also, he had a letter in his pocket containing an invitation that had seemed almost irresistibly tempting. Actually, there were two letters in his pocket; but for the time being he’d prefer not to think about the second one. The time would come to open it
, then eventually read it. But the time wasn’t now. He’d postpone it as long as possible.
The train began to climb more steeply into the hills. Ahead black clouds tinged with green that made him think of severe bruising hung over the hills. (Bruises, properly known as contusions, require no treatment: his professional medical persona had clicked into gear — bruising is caused by a blow resulting in damage to blood vessels beneath the skin allowing seepage of blood; the later yellow colouration is due to the accumulation of stomach bile in the affected tissues…) Relax. He smiled to himself. You’re on holiday. Once more he turned his attention to the passing countryside that looked so incredibly peaceful.
2
The relaxation was short-lived. Trouble had been simmering all the way from Whitby. The young man sitting in the seat across the aisle had lit a cigarette as the train had pulled out of Whitby for its thirty-minute run up into the sticks where Leppington had hunched itself in the valley for the last two thousand years or so.
The young man, early twenties, shaved head, with so many tattoos there was more blue than skin tone on his pelt, blew smoke in clouds above the grey head of the old man in front. A scar that was a vivid red ran from the corner of the young man’s eye to the top of his ear, making it look as if someone had tried to draw a spectacle arm in red felt-tip there.
‘You must put that cigarette out,’ the old man had said, turning round. ‘I’ve bought my ticket.’ The youth grunted rather than spoke.
‘It’s a no-smoking carriage.’
No reply.
‘Look at the sign. No smoking.’
No reply.
‘Can you read?’
‘I’ve bought my ticket.’ The youth’s voice turned hard.
‘But you can’t smoke.’
‘You’re going to stop me?’
The old man paused, realizing this was someone who wasn’t going to fold up and do as he was told. Maybe the old man had been a tough nut in his youth, or perhaps he’d occupied a position of authority in working life. In any event he didn’t want to lose face.
‘I’ll stop you, young man. I’ll tell the conductor.’
‘Tell your fairy godmother for all I care!’
‘Put out the cigarette.’
‘No.’
‘It really is antisocial.’
‘I don’t like your face.’
David Leppington saw the danger signal in the young man’s face. If someone’s complexion flushes red they might get angry, shout, but when it turns white that’s when the warning light should flash on. A suddenly white, bloodless face spells danger. The adrenalin’s kicked in. The man’s going into fight-or-flight mode. And from the look of that tattooed thug, David thought, he wasn’t going to run.
David Leppington looked round the carriage. A group of old women sitting at a table seat had been chatting away until the raised voices told them there was trouble brewing. Now they lifted their heads to watch. In the seat in front of him sat a young woman with a toddler on her knee. She determinedly told the toddler to ‘See the horsey. See the trees.’ She wanted no part of the trouble.
If the young man took a swing at the old man David Leppington would have to step in quick.
‘You’re going to take this off me, then?’ The young man held up the cigarette, his eyes locked onto those of the old man (who’d stood up so he could look back at the youth). ‘You just do that. You just try.’
‘You’re being ridiculous now; I think — ‘
‘You think what?’
‘I think — ‘
‘Come on. Take it off me. Stuff it down my throat. Why don’t you try it?’
‘Smoking in a non-smoking carriage is antisocial.’
‘I bought my bastard ticket, didn’t I?’
‘But that doesn’t give you the right to —’
‘What are you waiting for? Take it off me.’ Finger and thumb pinching the filter end of the cigarette he held it in front of the old man’s face. The challenge was there. The man could either back down (and lose face) or he could try taking the cigarette.
David knew what would happen then.
A flurry of fists and the old man would go down like a sack of coal. The shock would probably be lethal to a man of his age.
‘Take…the…bastard…cigarette…OK?’
The skin of the youth’s face was so white now the tattooed teardrops on his cheek seemed to stand proud of the skin like blue pebbles.
David Leppington twisted sideways so he could push himself out of his seat. He’d got no enthusiasm for what he might have to do next, but he couldn’t sit back and watch the old man become a punch ball.
‘Take it.’ The thug held the cigarette up to the old man. David Leppington could see the muscles bulging under the youth’s fists; tattooed daggers dripped blood.
‘Tickets from Whitby…Your tickets from Whitby, please.’
It broke the spell; the old man looked round at the conductor — a solid-looking man of around forty-five.
‘I’d asked this young man if he’d stop smoking,’ the old man said in reasonable tones.
‘No-smoking carriage, sonny,’ the conductor said breezily.
‘I’ve bought my ticket,’ grunted the youth.
‘I once bought a picture of the Eiffel Tower, but it doesn’t give me the right to go and live there.’ The conductor spoke in a disinterested way; this was all run of the mill.
‘I want a smoke.’
‘Next carriage is the smoker.’
The conductor had handled it well. He wasn’t being provocative, he was just being helpful. The young man stood up, pulled his holdall from the overhead luggage rack and stomped through into the next carriage.
After he had gone, and the conductor had moved on, the old man said cheerfully to the old ladies, ‘Sorry about that. He had to be told.’ Then, with a self-satisfied smile, he sat down and beamed out through the window.
3
The hills rose. The sky grew darker. The train rattled along more slowly as if reluctant to go further. The river Lepping contained flashes of white where it rushed over rapids.
On two occasions the youth had walked up the carriage to the old man and spoken to him: ‘Your face is giving me grief,’ the youth had said. Then he’d gone, only to return five minutes later. ‘I’m going to remember your face. I’ve got it locked up in here.’ The youth had jabbed a finger at his own shaved temple. Then he’d returned to the smoker’s carriage again.
The third time he comes back he’s going to bop the old man, David had thought. What now? Warn the conductor?
Before he could come up with an answer, suddenly there were old brick houses alongside the track, the train braked, and David realized, with a huge sense of relief, that they’d arrived in Leppington. Deliberately, he allowed the old man to leave his seat first. He followed, so that now at least he formed an obstacle between the old man and the youth if the young thug should come tearing down the walkway between the seats intent on beating the old boy to a pulp.
He needn’t have worried. Through the window, he saw the youth walking at a furious pace along the platform and out of the station.
David pulled his own holdall down from the overhead shelf and stepped out of the train into Leppington, the town that bore his name. For a moment he paused to look at the station sign.
LEPPINGTON
The sign was of the free-standing sort, being simply a board fixed to a post that had been set in concrete where the platform met a perimeter fence. If David had expected any sense of awe at standing in the land of his ancestors, he was going to be disappointed here, he realised. Leppington station was a dowdy red-brick affair. As he shouldered the holdall, ready to head for the exit, he saw a large crow swoop down over the roof tops. As black as if it had been carved from coal, it landed on the station sign, directly above the word LEPPINGTON. For a second it perched there, long, curving claws gripping the top of the sign, yet still flapping its wings before it found its balance.
A
s it stood there, huge wings outstretched, it fixed its gem-bright eyes on David, staring hard at his face. For all the world it could have dropped down from the sky to take a second look at him, as if to confirm his identity. Then the yellow beak opened to release a surprisingly loud cry. Almost instantly the wings beat hard, hard enough to flutter scraps of paper away across the platform, and then the bird rose slowly to flap above the roof tops, its long black wings pushing the air in a muscular yet unhurried way.
Well, I guess that some old reincarnated ancestor’s come to welcome me back, David told himself with a smile. It was a flippant thought. At least, he meant it to be. But as he headed for the exit he saw the huge black bird circling, high above the station, and he couldn’t escape the notion it was keeping watch on him. That it was curious as to why this last son of the Leppingtons had returned to the town of his ancestors — and what would he do next?
CHAPTER 2
1
David Leppington stood outside the station. Above him the crow glided in great circles, its beady eyes no doubt watching his every move.
He thought: This is your kingdom, David. LEPPINGTON. The town is in your blood.
Oh no, it isn’t, he thought more light-heartedly. I haven’t clapped eyes on Leppington in twenty years.
Leppington is your kingdom. Rule wisely and well.
But if you see the bloody great dragon run like hell. He’d added the second rhyming line flippantly but the voice he heard in his head sounded like that of an old man. As if he was remembering words someone had once told him with great seriousness: as if it was vitally important he should remember.
Oh well, I’m home, he thought, definitely being flippant now. Where are my subjects to greet me?
He stood at the entrance of the station and looked out across the market square. If these were his subjects they weren’t taking a blind bit of notice of the return of their king. Shoppers mooched among the dozen or so stalls set out at one end of the market square — most of the people seemed well past middle age. At the far side of the square were a row of Victorian buildings — library, half a dozen shops, something called The Bath House. Dominating them all was the Station Hotel, a four-storey monstrosity with pointed towers at each corner in some kind of mock Gothic style. Perched above that was that great lump of bruised-looking sky filled with black and green cloud. And gliding across the face of the cloud, the crow that had risen so high it looked little more than a black speck.
