The Kielder Strain: A Science Fiction Horror Novel

by Rebecca Fernfield

  A howl pierces the night, stopping her thoughts in their tracks. She swallows, reaches into her pocket for her car keys, and checks the area. She can’t see beyond the orange haze that hangs - thank God - over her car. The howl comes again as she strides forward. It doesn’t sound as loud this time and yes, it could be a dog, a rabid dog that could come charging out of the trees and bite her, savage her as it had done that ‘poor, poor girl’. She runs the last steps to her car and unlocks the door.

  Her heart thuds a hard beat as the trees rustle. Calm it. It’s just the wind … What if it’s not? She swings the door open and slides in, slamming the door shut with one swift movement and sighs, suddenly safe. For crying out loud, Jav. Calm down. She breaths out, letting the fear ease, mentally pushing it away as she breathes out. She starts the car, manoeuvres it to face the exit, drives out onto the road, and heads towards her cottage.

  As she passes the pub, considering for a second stopping off and sitting beside its warm and glowing fire before rejecting the idea, she checks in the rearview mirror. Movement on the road catches her eye. She checks again. The road is clear. Silly cow! Now you’re imagining things.

  Hugging the shadows, Max runs with the others through the dark street, following the car. They watch as the woman pulls into a driveway and steps out. Lois moves forward. Max digs his claws into her shoulder then growls. The woman stops, eyes darting to where they crouch, then disappears to the side of the house.

  Voices carry from the village, laughing voices, and footsteps. The door to the house opens and slams shut, metal scrapes across metal as the woman locks herself inside. The voices grow stronger and Lois turns her back on the house and heads to the village.

  20

  Anya draws another almond shape on the paper, glancing at her mobile as the drawing tutorial progresses. She pauses the button to catch up, filling the almond with a circle and shading it as the woman on the video had. The artist’s work was amazing: snakes that looked as though they would pounce from the page, apples that looked as though they were sitting on the table, and kittens you could pick up and cuddle. Anya’s efforts at realising a 3D eye in its socket had so far failed, but each time she tried they were improving. As her dad had drilled into her, ‘If at first you don’t succeed, try, try, and try again.’ She grumbled when he stopped her complaints in their tracks but, secretly, she knew he was right. She’d kept her first efforts, like he suggested—to see the improvements. The music playing in her ears stops. She shades in another section of iris and re-starts the video. It buffers. She sighs with impatience and presses refresh. Still it buffers. In the corner, the bars have dropped to zero. The phone has disconnected from the Wi-Fi and she has no roaming data left. Damn! She throws down the pencil.

  “Mum!” No reply. “Mum!”

  “Anya!” her father calls up the stairs. “If you want your mother, come downstairs.”

  She huffs. “There’s no Wi-Fi!”

  “If you want to talk,” he bellows, “come downstairs like a civilised human being!”

  Yeah, right. Like shouting at her is civilised! She yanks the earbuds a little too hard and pain scratches at her ear. God, she hated parents! She pulls her hoodie up and sulks downstairs.

  “There’s no Wi-Fi,” she says as she enters the kitchen. Both parents sit at the table, coffee in hand. Its aroma is a permanent fixture in the house.

  “Hello to you too,” her mum quips.

  “Well, I tell you what …”

  Trust Dad to be difficult. “Yeah?”

  “If you take the rubbish out, then I’ll see if I can fix it.”

  She needs her mobile on—and now. Ryan might snapchat her later. She returns a gruff ‘OK’ and takes the bag of rubbish from beneath the sink.

  “Put your shoes on. I don’t want wet socks all over the carpets.”

  She grunts again but slips her trainers on, stuffing feet inside, her heels squashing down the backs. She switches the outside light on and shuffles out into the yard.

  Cold pinches at her cheeks and fingers, the wind blowing through her thin top. Should have put layers on! Oh, shut up, Mum. The bins are at the side of the outbuildings: three narrow rooms that house a collection of cardboard stuffed in there when Dad couldn’t be bothered to recycle it in one; a load of rusted tools in another; and a damp, spider-infested toilet in the other. Using the outside loo was a torture, but it was better than going in the bathroom after Dad had been for one.

  She swings the gate that divides the back garden from the house and flips open the lid of the grey bin. The light doesn’t reach this far, and a shiver runs over Anya’s shoulders as she peers down the garden to the meadow that ends where the forest starts. A rotten stench wafts into her nostrils from the bin and the feeling of being watched creeps over her; her scalp tingles and she shivers. Hurry up and get back inside. She drops the bag into the bin with disgust then taps the lid to close, steps back, and knocks over a collection of tools her father has left. She grunts as a metal rod thwacks her calf. Why the hell couldn’t he put them away like other dads? It wasn’t like Mum didn’t tell him. But no, he had to leave them out to go rusty and for her to trip up on. It wouldn’t be the first time one of his misplaced tools had caused her injury. Only last week she’d stood on a nail he’d left in the grass after working on another shambolic DIY project. Mum had done her nut when he’d used the picnic table as a workbench and cut through the seat. She reaches down to grasp the metal implements and prop them up against the side of the brick shed and something moves behind her.

  Her heart rises to her mouth and all she can hear is the tack, tack of something on the concrete path and its rasping breath. She grips the metal bar tighter. As she swivels to hit whatever it is, pain rips through her shoulder, and a stench that instantly reminds her of wet dog and shit, fills her nostrils. She thwacks the metal bar against the creature sinking its teeth into her shoulder. The pain is immense and the thing is heavy. She hits it again, ramming it back against the wall. Its bite releases. She raises the bar again and thwacks it down. The creature yelps and Anya lurches forward, sprinting through the gate, all sense of pain gone in her need to get to the door. The gate clacks behind her and the rasping breath is back. She lunges across the concrete pad outside the house and crashes through the door, slamming it shut behind her. The creature thuds against the door and it rattles in its frame. Frantically, she locks the door and stands back. The door remains still and she listens to the tack, tack of the creature’s footsteps across the concrete. The gate clacks and the thing disappears back down the garden.

  As Anya stumbles back into the kitchen screaming in terror at her horrified parents, Javeen fills the kettle with water and flicks on the remaining downstairs lights. She can’t shake the feeling of being spooked. It’s stupid. She knows it’s irrational, and that she has to get a grip, but the sensation of being watched has clung to her since the trek through the woods. To make it worse the image of the girl, torn and gutted, flung against the tree, keeps intruding into her thoughts. Once she’s had a cup of tea, she’ll take ten minutes to process the day and then work on the mindfulness techniques she’s been reading about; she needs to be fully present, focus on this exact moment, to get some relief from the haunting images of the girl.

  Tea made, she makes her way into the living room and sits down. She takes a sip and leans back in the armchair, letting its soft velvet soothe her. It was her favourite chair, the place she always gravitated to when she wanted to curl up and feel soothed. She takes another sip and reaches for the remote. She turns it on. The screen flickers and the room fills with the buzzing of white noise. She tries another channel and then another. Nothing works. She switches it back off and takes another sip of tea, searching the pile of DVDs in her mind’s eye. Perhaps a good film will take her mind off things, if she can settle enough to watch it.

  In the distance, a car’s doors slam and an engine starts. It is followed by the scatter of stones in her driveway. Startled at the noise so close
to her window, she spills her tea. The hot water soaks through her trousers and she jumps up, pulling the fabric away from the skin of her thigh whilst putting the mug down on the coffee table. She hobbles - tea cooling in the fabric - to the window and peers through the glass, blocking the light with her cupped hand and gasps as a dark figure disappears around the bush at the end of her drive.

  As Max leaves the house and the woman, and sprints back towards the village, Jim Kendrick slips a loaf of bread into the ‘forever’ canvas bag his wife had forced him to carry, and hands five pounds to Sid. The old fashioned till tinkles with change as the drawer slides open. A howl scratches at Jim’s eardrums and makes the hair on his neck and scalp prickle. Sid holds the drawer half shut.

  “What in God’s name was that?”

  “Reckon there’s a wolf loose in the forest. I heard they were fencing it off to try and catch it.”

  “Fencing off the forest?”

  “Aye. Melvin Stubbs came in this morning on his way back from Falstone and said there’s lorries erecting barriers along the road. Could just be roadworks though. You know how these things get twisted.”

  “Chinese whispers,” Jim agrees. “The road to Stannersburn has got plenty of potholes so maybe Mrs Maybank’s efforts haven’t fallen on deaf ears this time?”

  “Mayhap.” Sid shuts the money-drawer with a bang. “Cold’s coming in,” he says as he returns the change. “I heard that wolf howling last night. Sent shivers down my spine it did. I put the bolt across the door too and gave my rifle a clean—just in case. Mrs Blanchard said she saw something that looked like a wolf in the churchyard—she said it looked like half wolf, half man. But I reckon she’s going senile.”

  Jim can’t help a wry grin. Beatrice Blanchard, the village’s oldest resident, definitely was a little odd these days, but then she was ninety-five years old.

  “Having that fall last year did for her I reckon. She was as sharp as a knife until then. She’s not been the same since. Shame.”

  “It is. Perhaps there is an escaped wolf then?”

  “Could be. There’s no wolves in this area, and no sanctuaries like down south, but there is one up in Scotland.”

  “Could be deliberate. Like that one in Berkshire earlier in the year. Some nutter let it loose and they had to lock down the schools.”

  “Oh, aye. What happened there then?”

  “They called out police marksmen, but they managed to coax the wolf into a trailer—no harm done.”

  “Maybe they’ll send in a team here then, but don’t bank on it. Out of sight, out of mind.”

  Jim nods. The village was out of the way and with it being out of season and the tourists warm and cosy at home, unlikely to be a priority. A shudder runs through Jim as another howl pierces the night. Both men look to the glass door, their reflections and that of the shop, block any view to the outside.

  “Dark outside.” Is Sid’s flat statement.

  Jim interprets this as meaning ‘rather you than me’. “Aye, nights are really drawing in.” Jim shivers at the thought of leaving the small shop with its glowing log-burner in the corner to face the dark night with its unsettling howls. Comfortable chairs sit in a circle around it with a small coffee table at their centre. Rachel, his daughter, has sat herself before the fire and is warming her hands.

  “Rachel,” he calls, “time to go.” The girl stands immediately and Jim is thankful that she hasn’t thrown one of her too frequent strops and turned around with a rude ‘No!’. He dreads taking his daughter out. For an eleven-year-old she had been very slow to learn the niceties of polite behaviour. He hands her the bar of chocolate he’d picked up as he paid for the bread, and her face lights up. A sliver of guilt passes over him. He wouldn’t have done the same for Lennie, but then Lennie didn’t strike the same level of fear into him as Rachel did; he was a good boy, a joy to be around.

  “Thanks!” She snatches the bar from his hands and he resists the reprimand that sits on his lips as she tears into the metallic wrapper.

  “Don’t eat it all at once,” he says with forced joviality.

  “You calling me greedy!” she snaps back.

  Sid raises his brows and Jim’s cheeks sting. It wasn’t the first, or even the second, time that Sid had cast a frown at Rachel. Embarrassed, Jim raises his brows in the universal sign of the long-suffering parent, and rolls his lips against his teeth. “No, love.” It takes enormous effort to keep his voice calm and the biting words back, “it’s just that you’ve got to eat your tea soon.”

  Sid shakes his head, and the sense of failure that Jim too often feels when dealing with this difficult child, makes him step quickly out of the cosy atmosphere of the village shop and out into the biting wind of the early November night.

  “Wait!” Rachel’s wheedling voice demands. “Dad! Wait.”

  Irked, Jim turns. “Rachel, I’m two steps ahead of you. I’m not exactly about to disappear from view!” Exasperated at her rudeness, and disappointed that his resolve to stay calm has cracked, he turns back to the face the road with a downturn in his mouth and despair eating at his heart. Every day she touched their life with a scratching unhappiness. Her behaviour bordered sometimes on disturbing, though Melissa wouldn’t hear about getting help. ‘She’ll grow out of it,’ she would say, or, ‘it’s just a phase’ though he could see the fear in her eyes, a fear that there was something wrong with their firstborn, fear that it was somehow their fault, and that they had failed their own child.

  She catches up with him, slides her arm through the crook of his, and wheedles once more. “Wait will you!”

  Spending time with her was a chore, that he felt like that about his own child, added just another layer of shit to the whole damned shit-show. They are your monkeys and it is your circus. He bites back his retort, looks to the moon, takes a deep breath, and pats her fingers in an effort to be caring. “Let’s get home. The beans will be done by now and your mum will be frothing at the mouth waiting for the bread.” This makes Rachel laugh, and a smile cracks across Jim’s face though his jaws remain clenched.

  A scratching, rustling noise catches his attention, and the creature that jumps out in front of him and runs across the road startles him more than he cares to admit. “Shitty cat!”

  “Dad!”

  “Well, the bloody thing scared me.” The cat seemed scared too.

  “It’s just a cat.”

  Jim quickens his stride. The orange light from the streetlights casts its glow over the stone cottages along the street and the air is thick with the smell of burning wood. One good thing about living out here, getting wood for log burners was easy, and most houses had one, some were completely reliant on them for heating their houses and water, there being no gas mains to the village. He tightens Rachel’s hand against his arm and takes quicker steps. A clack in the near distance is the familiar closing of the Church gate.

  “Dad!” she whines. “Slow down. I can’t keep up.”

  He slows his pace a little. She was right, she’d have to run to keep up soon if he didn’t slow down. Behind him footsteps tack, tack. He turns to look. The road had been deserted when they left the shop and the noise of those footsteps was odd, unless the person was wearing a pair of tap shoes, or stilettoes, and those were just as unlikely in this village. As he swivels, a figure jumps back into the shadows. His heart thumps against his ribs. He screws up his eyes and shakes his head as though to clear his vision; the figure had seemed naked, though covered in thick hair, and oddly stooped. Sid’s talk of wolfmen was adding to an already overactive imagination fed by Jim’s keen interest in the occult. Despite his interest, and, at one time, dabbling in the dark magic of Ouija boards, even staying overnight in a haunted house, Jim only flirted with a belief in the supernatural. What he’d seen there had just been a figment of his imagination, a prank by one of the other villagers at best. He turns back to look again with a quick jerk of his head. Nothing. Absolutely nothing, and if there had been something lurking in the
shadows, he’d have seen it right then.

  “Come on, Dad. I’m cold.”

  “I’m coming, Rachel.” Jim’s response is curt and he regrets it instantly. “Come on, love. Let’s get home to that warm fire. Do you want a hot-chocolate when you get in?”

  Tack. Tack. Tack.

  “Yes! Of course I dooooo-.” Rachel’s unsolicited terseness is cut short as a figure hurls itself from the bushes and throws her to the ground. As Jim realises that something has grabbed her, she’s gone, carried into the woods by a galloping figure, a naked and very hairy woman, with snarling incisors and tits that jiggle freely beneath a tattered top. As Jim’s brain desperately tries to process the scene, Rachel’s scream comes to an abrupt halt, and he is thrown to the floor. Above him, a creature that used to be his friend Max Anderson, snarls and gnashes its teeth before tearing out his throat.

  21

  Max pulls the body out of the orange glow of the overhead light. The head knocks against the stone blocks. Jim … his name was Jim. He snickers. James. Captain James T. Beam me up, Scotty! A flash of grief and he groans. Jim. Jimbob. No! No! No! He digs sharp claws into his own temple and rocks, pressing claws through the thin layers of skin. Blood trickles into thick sideburns. Max crouches, resting on his haunches, alert to any movement, the spark of horror, and then regret, that had pricked his soul gone in an instant. The man is silent though his heart gives its final beat as Max rips it from its bony cage. With claws piercing the hot flesh, he rams it into his mouth, chewing and swallowing with greed. Warm blood trickles down his chin, glistening black in the orange glow. He grabs for the liver and tears it from its mooring. The offal slips in his hands and he pierces it with sharp claws and takes a deep bite. Aroused, he salivates as the flesh tears between his teeth, slides over his tongue, and into his throat. The blood, and the silky warmth of the meat, is an ecstasy as he swallows. He grunts and shuffles as he reaches for the innards, but stops as movement catches his attention.