Darkshines Seven

by Russell Mardell

  ‘Yes, yes I did! I didn’t mean to!’

  ‘Of course not, Henry. Now, you remember what doctor Jarrow said to us? Anger is a disease. Anger is an affliction. You have to release that anger from the bottle. You have to lose that anger to the right places, to the people that deserve it. Because that protects you and the people closest to you. It is human to be angry. But it is inhuman to show that anger to people that don’t deserve it. Do you understand?’

  ‘Yes. I think so, Donald. But I really don’t want to. I don’t feel angry any more. I don’t want be angry now.’

  Donald laughed the laugh of an all-knowing parent, deaf to their child’s protestations. ‘Of course you do! Come on, Henry.’ Donald stood and grabbed Henry’s hand, a little tighter than before, and led him along the path again. Mia was no sooner walking out from behind the oak tree than she was ducking out of sight again, pulling herself down behind a thick tangle of brambles.

  Donald was bending down and moving a metal panel covering a hole carved into the ground, and then a second later he was pulling a very large and long wooden box from the hole and then opening it on the ground and ushering Henry to it. The boy seemed to pause for an age, staring into the box, and then he gently took out a wooden bat, some crudely designed weapon fashioned from a branch, with a taped handle at one end. Donald squatted down and then raised his hands up in front of Henry as he showed the boy how best to hold it. In Donald’s right hand, Mia could see he was holding a small knife. Standing again, he moved Henry on, the two of them taking a sharp left and then picking up a second pathway that double-backed on them, leading straight to the tents and the clearing.

  Once they were out of sight, Mia jumped from behind the brambles and jogged up to the box on the ground. She knew what she would see, but even so, standing there, staring down inside the box, her skin prickled and broke into goose bumps. She was looking at a huge collection of weaponry – guns and bullets, knives and machetes, bats, clubs and arrows. Sat on top of them all was a rifle and a machine gun that she recognised all too well.

  4

  Callie had nodded off for a few minutes, but those damned flashing fairy lights had made sleep impossible. On and off they went and even with her eyes closed she still seemed to see them and feel the steady, annoying flashes. With the lights and the continuous thump-thump inside her head it felt as if her brain was holding a party to which she wasn’t invited, and yet had to sit and suffer like an uptight neighbour listening through the walls.

  She pulled herself up on the table, ran her hands over her face and then gave up sleep as a wishful thought. She was about to slip off the table and test out just how bad her ankle was, when a sound took her attention, something odd and alien that she couldn’t place. At first she thought it was coming from outside the tent, perhaps from someone further along the clearing at the campfire she could just see glowing through the tiny gap at the entrance. But then it seemed to be coming from above her and she found herself scouring the roof of the tent with bleary, itching eyes.

  The butterfly, she thought briefly, but there was no butterfly there.

  She turned left and then right but saw nothing but the sides of the tent breathing back and forth on the rising night time breeze. It was a rattle, she thought, something coming loose and skittering along a hard floor. Then the rattling became a clank, and then that in turn became a squeak. But it wasn’t a squeak. Not quite.

  Callie sat still, squinting her eyes as if somehow that would make her hear better, her hands wrapped around the edge of the table, holding her upright against the headache that screamed at her to lie back down. No, not a squeak, she thought. It was someone’s voice, a mumbled, muffled plea in a high pitch that was being stopped from articulating itself into words. Again and again it came. Finally Callie turned herself around on the table, felt her headache shift angrily, and then gazed around the tent. When she saw the covered cylindrical object for the first time, she knew instantly that that was where the sound was coming from. It looked like a large covered birdcage and for a moment she tried to imagine what hideous monster a cage of such a size would house. The sheet fluttered as if the thing’s beak was tapping at it and trying to shift it. Still the sound came, and now she tried to convince herself that the sound wasn’t, couldn’t be, human. She looked to the front of the tent again, hoping that she would see someone there and explain away the horrid, creeping thoughts that scratched at her imagination. She was alone.

  Slowly, Callie slipped off the table, wincing as her ankle pain flared as she touched the ground, and then turned herself to the covered object at the back of the tent. She watched the sheet twitch and shiver as something unseen pushed at it. ‘Hello?’ she said, and then felt stupid. She looked to the front of the tent again, saw the campfire through the slit in the doorway, the shadowy heads of those who sat there, and then, as the irritating fairy lights continued their blinking watch above her, she hobbled slowly across the tent.

  ‘Is there someone there? I’m Callie Frost…’ and what’s your name? she stopped herself saying and gave a small, frightened laugh. Her right hand reached out for the sheet and she held the palm just over the part that was moving. ‘Hello?’ she said, once more. The muffled noise came again at the sound of her voice, and Callie felt a small icy wave roll through her. She took a small pinch of the cover between thumb and index finger and slowly started to pull the sheet down. Her breath held, her eyes widened and the sheet came away in her hand, running over the curved contours of what was now slowly confirming itself to her as a large cage. It was a dull silver colour, its bars thin but sturdy, running all the way around and then up to a small domed top where the bars blended into a sleet coloured roof. It was about six feet tall, and about half the size in width. Just about big enough for a human to fit inside if they were sat down with their legs pulled to their chests. Just like the man who was in there now.

  The man was glaring at Callie, mumbling words that were flattened by a bloody bandage shoved into his mouth. Cuts and bruises marked his face. A stitch above one eye was beginning to unravel. His slashed hands were bound together in his lap, and his neck was tied to one side of the cage with a thin piece of rope.

  In that moment of reveal all Callie could do was stare at him with her mouth hanging open. The man began jerking his head from side to side, his eyes darting downwards either to his bound hands or the bandage in his mouth, those mumbled pleas that had brought her to him now louder and even more determined. The hands moved to the bars and gnarled and broken fingers ran into the gaps, groping for her. The man swung his head to the side of the cage nearest her and slammed his forehead against the thin bars. He jerked and wriggled and clawed at the cage and then finally, mercifully, Callie was shoved out of her stunned horror and was at the cage, running her fingers around the bars and looking for a door.

  ‘Hello, you must be Callie. Shouldn’t you still be resting?’

  Donald and Henry stood in the entrance to the tent. Callie saw the knife in Donald’s hand before she saw his face, and the ridiculously wide smile painted across it. Henry was half in view, half sheltered by Donald, and was peering at Callie and then at the cage, as if both were going to attack him.

  ‘Doctor Jarrow said you took a nasty little knock on your ankle. How are you?’

  The man in the cage was now wriggling in the meagre space afforded him, struggling with his tied hands and rocking the cage from side to side.

  ‘I’m Donald and this here is Henry. Say hello, Henry.’

  ‘What the bloody hell are you people doing in this place?’ Callie shouted, this new stranger’s cordial greeting only serving to fuel her disgust. ‘What have you done to this man?’

  Donald seemed genuinely taken aback by Callie’s venom. His forehead creased as his smile fell away. Stepping forward he dragged Henry by the hand and held the knife up to Callie with the other, as if in explanation. ‘He’s a Party man, Party Plod, one of their hired guns.’ He gave a snort of laughter at Callie’s stupidity
and then ushered Henry forward to the cage. ‘Go ahead, Henry. Hold the bat like I showed you.’

  ‘What the hell are you doing?’ Callie staggered back against the table in disbelief, unprepared to accept what she was seeing.

  ‘Strike the cage first, Henry. Go for the fingers! Hard! Go on Henry!’

  The man in the cage retracted his fingers through the bars and then rocked back and hit his head. His muffled screams came again. His eyes imploring Callie to help him.

  Henry stepped forward tentatively and prepared to swing the makeshift branch that he had taken from the box. Callie was suddenly in front of him, blocking him off. ‘Henry? Henry, why is he making you do this to that man? You mustn’t do this!’

  ‘Mustn’t?’ Donald snapped. ‘Strange word for a guest to use. This is our community, girl. We have a way of doing things here that are not yours to question or interfere with. Get out of his way!’

  Callie held a shaking hand out to Henry and hoped the reassuring expression she was working wasn’t as grotesque to him as it felt to her.

  ‘This is Party scum!’ Donald continued. ‘Or perhaps you don’t know our enemy, Callie? Perhaps you find you sympathise with what they are doing to us? Maybe that’s it? Is that it?’

  ‘Henry, you must not hurt people,’ Callie continued, refusing to dignify Donald with even a look. ‘I don’t know what this man has told you but it is not right to hurt people. Do you understand?’

  ‘But they hurt people. Mummy says they are bad people and that it is okay to hurt bad people. Doctor Jarrow says it is good for us to be angry with bad people because it stops us being angry with good people.’

  ‘Hit him, Henry!’ Donald shouted again. ‘Put the sharp end through the bars! Go on Henry, like we did before. Remember how you felt before!’

  ‘But…’ The boy was confused, close to blubbing, and the branch was loosening itself in his grip. ‘But…but I’m not angry any more. I don’t want to be angry right now.’

  Callie moved the branch from Henry’s hand. ‘It’s okay, Henry. It’s fine. Give me the weapon. It’s okay.’

  There was a heavy sigh from somewhere over her shoulder and then a seething rasp. Callie spun around to see Donald at the back of the tent, his right hand curled into a fist that was now pounding at the cage, as the knife slipped through the bars and into the back of the nameless man. Back and forth it went, pushing up, and up, the cage rocking side to side as the gagged man’s eyes threatened to explode out of his skull. Donald’s own eyes were closed, his face betraying no anger or even the merest trace of aggression. In the split second between the revulsion and Callie’s scream for help, Callie thought Donald’s face looked dreamy, pleasured, contorted in joy.

  ‘Hector!’ Callie screamed. ‘Albie! Help! Get in here!’

  Donald had unlatched the back of the cage and was now swinging open the rear section of the bars, reaching in and pulling the man out.

  None of them saw Mia at the entrance to the tent, the rifle rock steady and ready for answers, the machine gun hanging across her back. For a moment Mia didn’t see them either. It was the bloodied man now dumped unceremoniously on the ground that had her attention. As the man found the strength to look up and offer his pleading stare one last time to those in the tent, it was Mia that he found, and then only Mia that he saw.

  They had met before on the road.

  He had said then that people died around her.

  Galton…

  5

  Galton. That man Galton is lying on the ground, bloodied and battered and bruised and he knows the girl Mia. She knows him. Hatred. A new thread of the web. Then there is Tommy Bergan and Galton knows him all too well…Tommy, the first one there to answer Callie’s call for help. But he wasn’t answering her as much as he was seeing Mia at the entrance to the tent and running to her. Helping her. The hero. The fool. Good old Frosty bollocks is a good few paces behind. Running. Worried. Scared for his sister. Then the older woman and the dog. They are approaching the tent and the woman is staring in horror at what is happening in that tent. They are forming a wall behind Mia. Lastly there is that young assassin and he is waking from a child’s deep sleep and wandering over to the commotion and trying to flatten his straw coloured hair. The others, at the campfire, these nameless and irrelevant few are slow to enter the tent. No surprise. No hurry. Seen it all before. But now they are all there and the tent is busy and there is fury.

  The carpet truck lay on its side in the field. The headlights of Sam’s car cut through the close hugging night and lit it just enough to allow Silence to climb up and take a seat. Crossing his legs over the fading white lettering of WADEMAN’S, Silence removed his hood and turned his face up to the steadily weakening rain and opened his mouth and eyes as wide as he could. He enjoyed the sensation. He could still smell traces of the thick smoke of the cottage fire in his nostrils and his eyes felt tired and itchy. The gentle rain was soothing, cleansing. At least that was what his mind tried to convince him, and Jacob Silence always listened to his mind. He slowed his breathing and relaxed his hands on his knees. He moved his head forward and looked off towards where the glow of the headlights ended. The edge of the wood was etched timidly in the light, but it was there. They were there.

  He started to focus on her. She had been there in the tent. He had seen her as Tommy had seen her. It was different, yes, the clarity was dulled, the feel of her thin, yet she had been there again in his mind. Mia. Silence tilted back and lay across the side of the truck, his arms stretched out above his head. Mia…

  He closed his eyes and moved into his own darkness, stealthily moving between Tommy and Mia with the silent cunning of a master thief.

  6

  Time seemed to drag in the silence. Only five minutes had elapsed since everyone had gathered in the tent and formed a wall around Mia and the bloodied body of Galton, and yet it felt as if days had drifted past them, such was the heaviness of that silence. No one seemed keen to be the first to speak. Mia circled the centre of the tent slowly, the rifle barrel pointing to everyone in turn as if deciding who was worthy of meeting it; angry, scared, confused, the faces that she met all seemed to carry a different emotion.

  ‘Callie?’ Mia said into the silence, and Callie’s name sounded loud and ferocious in that space between them. ‘You want to tell us what is going on here?’ Mia didn’t need an explanation, no one did – Galton was enough visual proof of this sham community’s actions – but she needed to hear another voice. She needed someone else to jump into the ominous silence with her.

  ‘What do you think?’ Callie shouted back. ‘They’ve been torturing this man. Look at him! Look at the injuries on him. That man…’ she was pointing accusingly at Donald, as the rest of her hand tensed into a fist, ‘he was trying to make the boy hurt him. This boy!’ Callie shoved the stick weapon in Henry’s direction, the boy now across the tent, hugging his mother’s leg tightly. ‘He said he’s a Party stooge. That was his justification for what they are doing to him.’

  ‘Don’t you wave that at my son!’ Melissa seethed, pulling a protective arm around Henry. ‘Don’t you threaten us! You’re a stranger here. You don’t belong with us!’

  ‘You’re damn right about that!’

  ‘Help me!’ Galton squeaked from the ground. ‘Get me away from these people!’

  ‘Shut up,’ Mia snapped back at him.

  Donald quickly jumped forward and aimed a kick between Galton’s spread legs before him. As he stepped back, Callie moved in front of him and aimed a punch that caught him square on the chin.

  ‘You leave that man alone!’

  ‘What the hell is your problem? Huh?’ Donald made to move at her but Callie was ready, willing it, and swung a kick hard across his left thigh that sent him off balance and then flat on the ground next to Galton. Callie grabbed a scalpel from the trolley between the two tables and brandished it in front of her in case Donald came again.

  ‘Enough!’ Mia shouted.

  ‘I quite
agree,’ Jarrow said quietly. ‘Mia is right. Enough. Calm yourself, Donald.’

  ‘Don’t you know her?’ Galton hissed towards the assembled bodies in front of him. ‘Don’t you know what she is?’ He coughed loudly and then spat a glob of red tinged mucus onto the ground. ‘This murdering bitch!’

  ‘And we don’t need anything from you either, thanks very much,’ Mia said calmly and then reached down to Galton, grabbed him up by the hair and then threw him back against the cage. An old ginger acquaintance swaggered across the space, brushed his rump against Mia’s left leg, and then took guard in front of Galton, growling deeply.

  ‘Haircut?’ Mia said calmly in the direction of Hector, ‘do you want to explain to your sister about this man here, and how he nearly killed us both? Would you do that please?’ Mia turned to Jarrow without waiting for Hector’s reply. She could see the crazy unkempt hair blur across her vision and a second later heard Hector’s quiet whispers trying to placate his sister.

  ‘I’m not going to stand by and let them torture this man!’ Callie shouted at Hector. ‘I don’t care what he is or what he was, I won’t let it happen.’ Hector gently took the scalpel from his sister and placed it back on the trolley with the rest of Jarrow’s instruments. ‘You hear me? You hear that, Mia?’