Rhos Meadow

by Lex Sinclair

  Eric nodded. ‘C’mon, before my sanity takes over.

  Together they crossed the road, silhouettes amidst the still fog and darkening skies.

  ‘Do you believe in life after death?’

  Prior to answering, Eric contemplated Diana’s question. ‘I guess I always hoped there was something more after our time on earth. A lot of innocent people die young, and that’s not fair. But then I don’t believe in stuff like that. But sometimes people deserve more than the truth. Sometimes people - good people - deserve to have their faith rewarded.’

  Diana smiled. ‘Very eloquently put, Eric. I’m putting my faith in you that you will help find my innocent little girl. And I believe that Tulisa and I deserve to have our faith rewarded.’

  A farmhouse with grey-blue stone facade and varnished oak windows and porch stood before them. The long beige-stone driveway led the way to two steps and a small stone path. Diana and Eric used the path to arrive at the porch.

  The steps groaned beneath their weight. Eric pulled open the screen door on its squeaky hinges. The varnished oak door was closed over but not locked. Eric nudged it open ajar and peered into the dimness. Dust motes hung languidly in the interior. Although the house had been renovated its aura emanated an eerie, forsaken ambience. The house itself was fine but something otherworldly and sinister had befallen within the four walls that informed Eric’s intuition that entering unarmed, save a large kitchen knife, would be at his own peril.

  Diana’s hushed voice was about as welcome as rattlesnake’s hiss in his ear.

  ‘Are we going in?’

  ‘I’m not sure whose house this is,’ Eric said. ‘Only one way to find out though.’

  Using the light of his torch, Eric crept over the threshold and into the house belonging to town councillor, Alan Willard.

  The oak décor would have given a warm, cosy aura had the lights been on and there had been a fire crackling in the hearth. Instead the vacant living room area which took up most of the ground floor appeared as mundane as a dog walking itself. Eric shone the light into the dark niches, preparing himself for a shock. The silence threatened to perforate his ears. He made his way into the kitchen feeling slightly daft wielding a bread knife where there was no assailant in sight.

  Diana brought up the rear. She entered the kitchen and, seeing it too was empty, opened the fridge and recoiled, covering her mouth with the hand not wielding her knife. Eric came to see what induced Diana’s reaction.

  ‘Oh, nice,’ he said, contorting his features in repulsion.

  The carton of milk had turned yellow. Diana could actually see the lumps floating inside and had to force herself not to regurgitate her snack. Pork pies had gone a grey-green hue and looked more like mothballs. But worse than that were the maggots crawling incessantly over the leftover chicken and sausages on a plate.

  Eric threw the door closed.

  ‘No one’s down here.’

  ‘What about upstairs?’

  Eric shrugged. ‘I think if someone was home they would’ve heard us.’

  ‘We’d still better check,’ Diana said, turning away and stepping out of the kitchen.

  She led the way upstairs and saw that the bathroom, master bedroom and spare bedroom were empty.

  ‘What ‘bout that room?’ Eric said, pointing to the plain wooden door at the end of the hall.

  Diana nodded. The she moved on tiptoes and placed her head against the door and listened. No sounds came from inside. She wrapped her hand around the handle and pushed.

  The door did not yield.

  Eric motioned for her to move aside and without hesitation (the suspense was killing him), booted the door in. The audible crunch sounded like bones breaking. The door slammed against the wall, hanging off its rusty hinges and dust motes swirled in the air, a miniature sandstorm. When the dust settled, Eric, snapping his head to and fro, entered the room.

  In front of him stood a varnished oak desk cluttered with spilled pots of stationary. The window was covered in a film of thick dust; only clean by a smeared handprint. Atop the desk a notepad lay open. Having checked studiously that the room was empty, Eric cornered the desk and lowered himself into the cherry-red vinyl swivel chair.

  Diana followed him into the study and leaned over the desk, intrigued by the notepad that someone with beautiful handwriting had begun and someone who was either frail or mentally challenged had tried to finish. She also noticed droplets of blood on the last page as though the person who’d been writing stopped in the midst of a nosebleed.

  Eric riffled through the notepad and reached the first page.

  ‘Jesus wept,’ he hissed under his breath.

  ‘What? What is it?’

  Eric used the light of the torch to read the handwriting, ‘February 2014. It is becoming increasingly palpable that residents of Rhos Meadow have suffered some inexplicable rare virus. Or have been exposed to some toxic chemical. I, myself feel fine. Whether or not that will be the case in the near future I cannot, nor will I, speculate.

  ‘Not long after an uneventful Christmas, Bobbie and Greg came to see me when I asked if they were suffering from any symptoms that would come under any illness over the last few months or weeks. I am pleased to respond in the negative. Then they both told me about an incident which occurred more than a year ago involving another town resident, Tony Little.

  ‘The story of how they’d seen Tony digging up a dead body seemed pretty ludicrous to me. They had no photographic evidence or dead body to prove their claims. Yet they told the story with such clarity and urgency that it was hard not to believe them. I tried to convince them that there must be some kinda mistake. But as Tony had done a disappearing act, it seemed quite plausible if a bit farfetched.’

  Frowning, Eric turned the page and read, March 2014. As the spring draws ever closer a story of a young boy in Rhos Meadow reaches me and gives me sleepless nights for the best part of the week.

  ‘According to Hilary and Harold Banks, a young boy by the name of Stephen had been discovered in the meadow beyond the hydraulic fracturing drilling site, sitting upright with his legs folded with his back to the town facing the rolling hilltops. He’d been spotted by Caroline Jacobs on her way home from her shift at the fish bar and restaurant. But she didn’t take much notice. Caroline finishes her shift at 4pm. Harold and Hilary had spotted the boy at ten past five while walking their golden Labrador. Harold had called out at the top of his voice. But the boy remained unmoving. They watched the boy for ten minutes, not moving an inch, shouting at him to no avail.

  ‘On their way home Harold told Bobbie Hopkins about the boy. He pointed him out. Then he and his wife returned home with their dog. Bobbie had shouted out several times before clambering over the fence onto private property. I was a little annoyed he’d done that without either getting in touch with the police or me first. But after his first call to the police regarding Tony, I could see why he didn’t want to phone them straight away and be accused of wasting their time again.

  ‘I didn’t get the story of Bobbie. He’d gone into shock and had been taken in the ambulance to Morriston Hospital later that day. Raymond Jones told me as best to his knowledge that Bobbie had crossed the cornfield and onto the meadow wondering why the hell the boy with his back turned to him didn’t even look over his shoulder to see who was yelling at him.

  ‘He said Bobbie kept saying “jet-black eyes blinked open. It’s not a boy. It bared its teeth and snarled at me. It’s not a boy - it’s something else!”

  ‘As I write this I still don’t know what the hell that means. But I do know the boy had been rushed into hospital with a bloodied hand. His heart rate was high but his breathing unimpaired. The hand had turned black with infection. They’d had to amputate his arm from the elbow down. They gave him a shot of morphine and strapped him to the examination table and place
d a breathing apparatus into his oesophagus. They pasted electrodes to his chest and connected him to the heart monitor. The doctors would normally be confident that the boy would recover from the amputation, providing the wound didn’t become infected. But the fast-accelerating disease was something they’d never seen and knew nothing about.

  ‘The surgeon had taken a blood sample and examined it through a microscope. Red platelets. Jet-black, wired organisms swarmed and imitated. Whatever had bitten the boy was carrying and spreading a malignant disease.

  ‘When he went back to the operating theatre the examination table was empty. The drip stand had crashed to the floor. The airway tube, which Stephen had extracted from his throat, lay on the floor like a dead snake. The cardiograph had been smashed, and from the scrap of surgical dressing beneath the carnage it appeared the boy had torn the canula out of his arm.

  ‘To his left a wall mirror had been shattered, dappled with black blood still fresh. On the table was a puddle of Stephen’s life fluid drowning an eye that had been severed at the optical nerve with a surgical knife and an eyeball as black as an onyx.

  ‘I am writing these words and the date is March 23 2014.

  ‘The boy whose name is Stephen has been missing ever since.’

  Eric looked up from the page and met Diana’s anxious gaze.

  ‘This is far worse than we thought,’ he said. His words hung in the room as heavy as a thundercloud.

  ***

  Eric and Diana discussed what they’d read in Councillor, Alan Willard’s diary up to the end of March 2014. It would have served them no better if they’d seen Alan himself and he’d explained all this to them.

  ‘We need to read this,’ Eric said in a strangled voice.

  ‘What about Tulisa?’

  Eric raised his hands out in a defensive gesture. ‘Yeah, okay. I get it already. But we’ve got nothin’ but kitchen knives to defend ourselves against people who’re infected by a serious case of rabies who attack us as soon as they see us. This diary will give us some preparation and help us find your daughter without dying in the process.’

  ‘You just don’t wanna risk your life for my little girl,’ Diana spat.

  ‘I am risking myself already. But there’s a difference between being reckless and brave.’

  Diana kicked the oak desk.

  ‘April 2014,’ Eric said, reading from the text. ‘The air is heavy and humid. I don’t think it’s just the change in climate or season. It feels abnormally oppressive. The nights are as bad as the days. I, and a lot of other town folks, are feeling lethargic and wanting to lie down. This is the worst thing to do. Breathing is becoming arduous when the fan is on full blast. The windows and doors are all open, and I drink plenty of fresh drinking water. But still I feel like I’m being deprived of oxygen.

  ‘Reverend Rhodri Jenkins has been busy these last couple of months with funerals. Three old people died suddenly. Medical examiners claim it was sunstroke and the humidity that got ‘em. I don’t know. Maybe I’m just being paranoid, but the ambience in Rhos Meadow is... unnerving.

  ‘A fiver year old died last week of stomach poisoning. His last meal had been chicken and chips and peas. The chicken and peas were freshly grown in Rhos Meadow.

  ‘But that’s not the part that makes me sweat like a pig when I’m lying in bed at night, shivering in the warmth. The scary part that makes me piss my pants is how the medical examiner declared the young boy dead and an hour later reported the same boy missing from the mortuary.

  ‘I keep telling myself over and over again there must be some kinda mistake. But the other boy, Stephen got up and left the operating theatre only a month earlier. Both boys were born and raised in the sleepy town of Rhos Meadow. A town truckers and tourists pass through to get to one place to the other if the motorway is jammed.

  ‘On the 29th of this month I drove up to St. Paul’s Church to speak with Reverend Rhodri Jenkins about the increase of sudden deaths and two boys going missing. I’d gone to ask Rhodri to visit Stephen’s parents at their home to say a prayer and give them his blessing. It might help them in their time of - not grief - suffering. And give them hope.

  ‘I also wanted to ask him to do something similar for the other boy’s family, although in truth, there wasn’t a whole lot anyone could do or suggest. After all, if the dead boy got up off the gurney and exited the locked mortuary while the medical examiner went to get himself some lunch that’d normally be considered good news. But for some reason, it gave me the willies.

  ‘The medical examiner had been in his profession for close to twenty years and never declared anyone dead until he was absolutely certain. According to his report, the boy was stone dead. The heart had ceased pumping blood around the body and the brain had shutdown. When he returned and saw the lock had been snapped and the door was wide open and the child’s body was nowhere to be found he very nearly died himself.

  ‘The sight of Gary Williams bent over a shovel and excavating a six foot hole in the earth upon arrival brought all those nightmares and vivid hallucinations flooding back into my mind’s eye.

  ‘I hope this is just a bad period our quiet - once peaceful - town is enduring. I hope everything will return to normal again real soon. I hope.’

  Eric stopped reading and grabbed a ruler from the stationary pot. He placed it inside the notepad and closed it.

  ‘Better save the torch’s battery. Check some of the other houses before it gets too dark to see. Now that we know this place is abandoned, we can haul up here for the night.’

  Diana nodded. ‘Tulisa was right.’

  ‘More than she knew,’ Eric said.

  ***

  Notepad in hand, Eric led the way out of Alan Willard’s house.

  When they got outside Rhos Meadow appeared even more haunted. The fog, however, had abated to a thin mist. The solar streetlamps were off. Eric couldn’t help thinking it was lighter indoors than it was out. Also, being outdoors in the pitch dark meant being exposed to attack. The house next door that was similar in structure looked deserted. Nevertheless, their mission was to find Tulisa and in order to fin her they needed to check every square inch of the ghost town.

  However, prior to heading next door, Eric ambled down the driveway and shone the torchlight on the sign RHOS MEADOW Population 301.

  Rhos Meadow in effect was more a village than a town. Yet due to the newly constructed red-bricked homes on the four cul-de-sacs running from the foot of the hill to the summit the population increased. Eric knew for a fact that it wasn’t that long ago the population had been in the excess of four hundred. The town wouldn’t change the sign if one or two people moved or died. But for more than a hundred residents to drop off felt ominous.

  ‘What’re you looking at?’ Diana wanted to know.

  ‘Used to be a lot more people lived here,’ Eric said, indicating the sign.

  ‘The ones who do still live here aren’t exactly a lively bunch, are they?’

  Eric managed a trace of a smile.

  ‘Sorry for having a go at you again just now.’

  ‘Don’t worry about it,’ Eric said, waving dismissively.

  They entered the house of Bobbie and Abigail Hopkins’. The front door was hanging off its hinges. The construction was identical to Alan Willard’s house. The only palpable difference was the interior décor. The living room had a thin carpet with two Persian rugs at the opposite ends. A large 42inch TV took up one corner along with a DVD and Blu-Ray player. Alongside the stone hearth were stacks of DVD’s and paperback and hardback books. An oval mirror hung above the fireplace and on the opposite walls there was a wooden clock with a woodpecker rhythmically pecking away the seconds. A framed photograph adorned the wall of Bobbie and Abigail on holiday in France with the Eiffel Tower in the background. Another one was a picture of Bobbie and Abigail sitting
either side of cheerful white Jack Russell.

  Tears sprung to Diana’s eyes seeing the adorable little dog with its family. It made the incredulous situation of Tulisa missing all the more real. It wasn’t just her own pain and loss. Other people, just like her, had had their lives destroyed. Eric mentioned he had a doting mum who was probably sitting at home worrying sick about why he was so late.

  Tulisa was the key to getting out of here and maybe saving Rhos Meadow from total distinction, although there were other souls trapped in dead bodies needing to be freed.

  ‘You okay?’ Eric asked, placing a hand on her shoulder.

  Diana nodded. ‘Look at him,’ she choked, pointing at the cute dog.

  ‘Yeah. He’s lovely.’

  A long pause.

  ‘Listen, the battery in this torch isn’t gonna last all night,’ Eric said. ‘I’m gonna check upstairs is clear. Then, as long as it is, I’m gonna come back down here and find some batteries. If I find any matches, we can start a fire. I can’t see us finding anything in the dark tonight.’

  ‘I can’t stop looking.’

  Eric sighed. ‘I don’t know about you but I think we need to get a little shut eye. I’m tired. One or two hours will do us the world of good.’

  ‘I don’t think I can sleep; not till I find Tuli -’

  ‘Yeah, all right,’ Eric said, not hiding his frustration.

  When he came back downstairs, Eric flopped down on the sofa. Diana could see by his eyes and his haggard face that he desperately required sleep. After all, Eric had been returning to the police station after a ten hour shift when he’d crashed into the back of her car.

  ‘Gimme the torch,’ she said. ‘I’ll see if there’re any batteries there and matches. Then I’ll leave you here for a few hours and check some of the houses on my own.’

  Eric shook his head. ‘It’s too dangerous, especially in the dark.’

  ‘I can’t sit here and not do anything.’