Darkshines Seven

by Russell Mardell

  ‘He’s not my child.’

  ‘How long has he been with you? From the start he said to us. That right? That would make him very young when you found him.’

  For the first time since they had left Jarrow’s community, and the three of them had bundled into the back of the ambulance, Albie looked him in the eye. ‘So it’s my fault?’

  Hector shrugged. ‘Doesn’t really make any difference to me whose fault it is. Maybe he was just born bad. Maybe his real mother dropped him on his head when he was a baby. What does any of it matter now?’

  ‘Or maybe he just doesn’t remember anything else? Lucky that you and Callie do. Hypocrite.’

  Hector looked away from Albie so slowly and so pointedly that she knew the conversation was over.

  Albie pushed on regardless: ‘do you think Tommy was telling the truth, about the coast? Storm Tail cove?’

  Once more Hector shrugged, and now it seemed like a petulant act.

  ‘I’m done listening to strangers.’ Callie was sat just along from her brother, her face as dark and brooding as a storm cloud, her words the first rumblings of thunder. ‘I’m done with you people. Running around following some deranged girl, because of what? Why? Because she’s possessed and we are all in danger if we don’t help her?’ Callie gave a crazy laugh. ‘Have you not once stopped to think how utterly absurd that sounds? You might want to be taken in by her mad little ramblings, but I’m done following lunatics. That’s what messed the country up in the first place, wasn’t it? It’s Hector that matters to me. It’s always been him and me. That’s what it’s going to be again. To hell with you people.’

  ‘I’m sorry, Callie.’ Albie wasn’t quite sure what she was apologizing for, but Callie’s demeanour made contrition seem like the safest course. ‘But if what he says about the coast is true…’

  ‘Do what you like, Albie. I don’t care. Go and make sandcastles while you wait for some great rescue mission if you want, if you really are that deluded. Not my business. We were doing fine until that girl walked into our lives, and we’ll do okay again once we walk away from her. We don’t owe her, or you, or anybody else, anything.’

  ‘But where are you and Hector going to go? Isn’t it worth a try?’

  ‘Why do you care?’ Callie stretched out her legs and began rubbing at her injured ankle. ‘When we get back into the city we’ll go. We’re better alone. All of us.’

  ‘What are you so afraid of? If you don’t believe Mia, if you don’t believe the things we’ve all seen today, then just what are you so frightened of, Callie?’

  Callie’s expression changed, just for a moment, the storm passing off her face and leaving it empty. ‘Everything, Albie. Aren’t you?’

  5

  ‘Quite the trail of destruction you leave in your wake. Make friends easy, do you, Mia?’

  Tommy hadn’t said much to her or to Sam since they left, but in everything he did say, Mia could hear how nervous he was. His attempts at levity were pitiful but Mia didn’t try and stop him. She found it a comfort just hearing him speak. Sam sat between them in the front of the ambulance, cradling the machine gun, and his presence was awkward and uncomfortable. There wasn’t so much an elephant in the room, as a whole herd.

  Sam had made no effort to speak to them. From the moment Callie had kicked off and refused to allow him anywhere near her or Hector, to the moment they had crossed back into City 17 and Tommy had picked out a path along the back roads, the young boy had kept his council. Mia had wondered whether it was a deep shame at his actions that was keeping him quiet, or was it a fear of what was ahead of them at Darkshines? Sam didn’t seem the sort to scare easily. He seemed braver than any of them. But was it bravery, she wondered, or did he have a bloodlust? The thought was as unnerving as it was plausible.

  ‘Someone once said that people die around me, Tommy. You better be careful.’ Mia looked over Sam’s head to Tommy and nodded to the wheel. ‘Keep your eyes on the road.’

  The deserted side streets of City 17 were all the more oppressive for the darkness of the night that hung over every building. Every shadow was a person, every corner they turned the entrance to a trap. Tommy held the steering wheel tightly, his knuckles whitening. Mia cradled Blarney in her lap, and even he was staring out of the windscreen at the shifting gloom that danced around the headlights before them. There had to be something watching them, she thought, there had to be something out there in that deep night.

  ‘What are we walking into, Mia?’ Tommy whispered.

  ‘You tell me. You know this man. You know this place. Will there be guards?’

  ‘Yeah, there will be guards, you can bet on that, but that’s not what I meant.’

  Mia knew what Tommy was trying to say. ‘I don’t know, Tommy.’

  ‘Can you…can you feel…it? What does it feel like?’

  Singer. She said his name inside her mind. There was no response. That old sensation of being under water was still there, it had never left her, but now it was different and for the first time since she had dreamed of Sullivan and The Wash, and woken up to the grinning face of Jarrow, she realised that she had broken the surface. But that brought her no comfort. Singer. Talk to me. Tell me what you want. Singer’s silence began to frighten her. It didn’t feel like freedom, it felt like bait for a trap.

  ‘I don’t know, Tommy. I just don’t know.’

  He looked distracted, wanting to say more, yet not really knowing what to say. What was there to say in such a situation? They fell back into their original silent selves. Corner after corner was turned, street after street covered, and then finally Tommy slowed the ambulance, pulled over to the side of the road and pointed at the windscreen. ‘There. Just over the top of the building. See it?’

  At first Mia didn’t. She followed Tommy’s finger to a large warehouse up ahead of them and then searched the empty, black velvet sky above. Nothing.

  ‘I see it,’ Sam said quietly.

  Mia suddenly saw it too. The pointed roof of a large building peeped over the top of the warehouse. What looked like turrets were on either side of it, arms up in the air, reaching for the sky. A single light shone out from somewhere underneath the eaves.

  ‘We’ve come at it from behind. There’s a small alleyway that runs behind the gardens on the south side of the grounds, about three streets over. I don’t think we want to risk driving any closer than this.’

  Sam moved the machine gun up before him. ‘Let’s go then.’

  Mia put a hand out to him and gently pushed the gun back into his lap. ‘Wait. Let me check the streets out, and try and see the best way in. If the place is guarded we don’t want to turn up there all together. Easier if I go first and see. Yeah?’

  Mia gave Sam no chance to argue and herself no pause for second thoughts, pushing her door open, she shifted in her seat as Blarney bounded off her lap and down to the ground, his tail wagging furiously.

  ‘Be careful.’ Tommy was looking down at her, peering around Sam’s head.

  ‘Yeah.’ Mia gave a small nod and then whistled to Blarney and pointed him off down the road. Her terrier scuttled away, his nose to the ground. Mia paused, her hand at the door. ‘Thank you.’

  Tommy smiled awkwardly and returned her nod.

  ‘What you said about Storm Tail cove…you really think it’s a way out, Tommy?’ Mia saw his makeshift smile falter, the sudden eruption of guilt in his eyes. ‘I like the sea,’ she continued, rolling on quickly, not allowing his answer, not needing it now. ‘I’ve always liked the sea.’ With that she hoisted her rifle onto her right shoulder, slammed the ambulance door and then disappeared into the shadows of the street.

  ‘I suppose it is a way out where she’s concerned,’ Sam said towards the windscreen. ‘One way or the other, right?’

  ‘Huh?’

  ‘What have you got waiting for her at Storm Tail cove?’

  Tommy laughed and turned the keys in the ignition, cutting the engine. ‘I don’t know what you’re t
alking about, kid.’

  ‘I wouldn’t worry about it, she won’t be getting there. Turn that engine back on.’

  ‘What?’

  Sam whipped his head around and then lunged at Tommy, his left hand grabbing at his throat and squeezing hard. Their faces pressed close together, Tommy saw the young boy’s features shift and change right in front of him, the skin seeming to pull tight over cheekbones that looked impossibly sharp, and eye sockets that were sinking back into his head. As Sam’s eyes rolled back and that familiar nightmare voice returned, Tommy could smell death on Sam’s breath.

  ‘The pathetic look of incomprehension. You pitiful band. You wretched soul. My bitch was too weak. But the boy is a killer. The boy has the heart for murder. He is stronger than all of you. He was a gift.’

  Tommy mumbled and gibbered into the grinning face before him, his shaking hands moving up above him as if in surrender. The boy that held him seemed to delight in what he was seeing and gave a laugh. It was the most hideous noise Tommy had ever heard.

  ‘You will leave this place. All of you. I have no use for you now except for my own amusement, and there is even a limit to the joy of watching you suffer. Take this vehicle and the rest of your worthless rabble and disappear. You stay here and you will die. All of you. The brother and the sister will die. The woman will die, and then you will die Tommy Bergan. Just like your father did. I will crawl inside your darkest places.’ The hand tightened further, the fingernails drawing blood from the skin around Tommy’s neck. Sam moved his face to the side and breathed into Tommy’s ear. ‘You let me in and I promise Tommy, your demise will be long and slow. I will torture you until your soul screams for me to show mercy.’

  Tommy’s right hand fell to the dashboard with a hefty thump and then slipped over the steering wheel before dropping to the keys swinging from the ignition. A second later the engine was purring beneath them. Sam released his hold on Tommy as fast as he had taken it and then began to back out across the seats on all fours, his hideous, corrupted smirk stretching across the smooth, boyish face.

  Tommy broke into a series of loud, hacking coughs, his body almost bent double. His fingers played around the skin at his neck and throat dabbing at the small bloody streaks. As the coughing passed and he righted himself in the seat, he saw that the boy was now standing in the middle of the road before him, those empty eyes staring back, looking through him, seeing past him. Tommy quickly fed the gearstick into reverse and lurched the ambulance back down the road.

  At the end of the road the ambulance reversed over the curb before clipping off the bumper of an abandoned car and juddering to a stop. Tommy wrenched the gearstick into first and floored the accelerator. The engine screamed, the tyres screeched and then Tommy moved through the gears and the ambulance tore off through the empty road.

  Over the roar of the engine, a single, lonely church bell sounded once, somewhere close by, its chime echoing out into a thick, oppressive night sky, slowly being broken by the oncoming roll of thunder.

  PART 3:

  STORM TAIL

  THE ASYLUM

  1

  The dead flies along the windowsill were a thin black carpet, as dark as the night sky. There were even more dotted around the spider’s web in the top right corner of the window, caught, defeated and dead. Audley Thinwater took a pen from his desk and ran it through the web, and then with one large, beefy hand, he swept the windowsill clean and brushed his hand off along his already dirty, once white, shirt. He caught a quick glimpse of himself in the old mirror at the far end of the room as he turned back into the office and did a double take. It was a stranger he was looking at. Stepping closer, as if to confirm his suspicions, he glared at his own reflection. The bushy moustache was lightly speckled grey, greyer even than the thin wisps of hair on his head. His eyes were bloodshot and distant with lack of sleep, and the saggy skin around his neck was starting to look as white as his shirt had once been. This face once instilled fear in everyone, he thought to himself. This tough and compact frame was once hard and immovable as a rock. This was the guy, it was once joked, that was used as The Party’s very own wrecking ball. How times had changed.

  ‘What you looking at?’ Thinwater spat at his reflection and then turned back into the room in disgust.

  Thinwater slumped down behind his desk and stared at the far wall, at the tangles of cobwebs running along the eaves, and the dead flies that hung there too. The room seemed smaller than it had done before, as if the horror beyond the building had finally grown strong enough to push the walls in. The single security light that shone out across the courtyard washed the room in a ghostly grey light like the glare of TV static. The shadows in the corners seemed to move and suggest that they held surprises. This office that he had taken as his own the day he claimed Darkshines asylum, was once grand and impressive with shelves of books and a neat scattering of ornate furniture, a painting hanging on each wall, and deep red velvet curtains framing huge arched windows. It was always light and always grand. Now the room seemed to want to hide from sight, in shame of its fall from stature. Time had stripped it down to the bones.

  With a hefty sigh Thinwater flicked on the desk lamp and began rummaging through the mounds of dusty papers in piles in front of him. It was a chore that made him feel even smaller than his reflection had. He had once been so important to The Party, so ingrained in their practices, that he had been the one writing the letters – or better still the one dictating them – and now here he was staring back at words that meant nothing to him, written by the younger hand of a man he had never met. The fact they still felt compelled to share correspondence with him meant very little. It was lip service and no one was saying much.

  There was a loud knock on the door, and then Harris was striding into the room without waiting for an invite. He was at the window, staring down at the empty grounds, before Thinwater even bothered to look up from the desk.

  ‘Yes?’ Thinwater gave him the once over and returned to his papers.

  ‘Mason says he has picked up movement on the south side of the grounds.’

  ‘Mason?’

  Harris turned back into the room. ‘The tall one?’

  ‘Oh yes.’

  It was no secret amongst the three guards that roamed Darkshines asylum that Audley Thinwater could never remember their names. There had been anger at the start, that this great pompous fat man didn’t have the ability or, it seemed, the interest, in learning the names of those that were tasked with keeping him safe, but the three of them – Harris, Mason and Adams – had learned to find amusement in it over time. What none of them knew, and Thinwater had been incredibly careful not to let slip, was that he had named the three of them on day one and, for him, those names had stuck. Rodent 1, Rodent 2 and Rodent 3 were much easier to remember.

  ‘You want to look for yourself?’

  ‘Look at what?’

  ‘What he’s seen on the south side of the grounds.’

  ‘What has he seen?’

  ‘He doesn’t know. Something.’

  ‘Well, when he has put a name to it, let me know and I will see if I want to see it.’

  ‘Could be intruders again.’

  ‘It could be, yes, and if it is I trust you will handle it like you have done before. I don’t need to see them first, do I?’

  ‘Thought you’d be interested.’

  Thinwater coughed at the dust that was coming off the mounds of paper. ‘Please don’t think…’

  ‘Harris.’

  ‘Yes. Just do your job. Do what you are paid for doing.’

  ‘Paid? How are we paid?’

  Thinwater slammed a fist onto the table and a dust cloud puffed up in front of him. ‘You could be out there in the real world, you know?’ he barked. ‘You could be sleeping in the gutters, scavenging for food, fighting over the shit at the bottom of bins. You want that? I can make that happen easy enough. You’re paid by being allowed to share in what we have here. You’re allowed to live. Th
at is how you are paid.’

  Harris turned back to the window. ‘You hear that?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Sounded like a dog barking.’

  ‘Is that all?’

  ‘Harris.’

  ‘I said is that all?’

  ‘Got a lot of work to do have you, boss?’ Harris moved around and slid his hands into his pockets. He nodded to the desk and smiled. ‘Me and the boys often wonder what it is you do in here all day. We see your papers and your files, but they never seem to get smaller. Mason and Adams say you’re like some office boy for the top brass. Like they’ve got you keeping records and filing things because they’ve turned you into some sort of bookkeeper.’

  Thinwater shot out of his chair as if he had just been stung. ‘I will not have talk like that from some lackey, thank you!’ he screamed. ‘You’re here to bang heads, not question me. Who the hell do you think you are?’

  Harris sauntered across the room, back towards the door. ‘I tell them it’s a bit unlikely considering where you came from and the money you poured into The Party. Damn, they’ve even got your name up on a board out front. But I get why they think that. They don’t look beyond what they see, Mason and Adams, but I see that a man like you doesn’t start pushing pens for anyone. I see that.’

  ‘Oh, I’m so pleased…’ Thinwater seethed, one chubby hand motioning to the door.

  ‘Harris…yeah, I say to them that it’s all show. That it’s just a reason to get out of bed in the morning. You are deceiving yourself that you have something to do that is of any importance to anyone. Like us guarding a man like you. Meaningless, really, isn’t it? But we do it because doing something is better than letting this reality have you. Right? Man has got to have a purpose, even when there is no point.’