by John Moralee
Bloodways
A collection of horror stories
By
John Moralee © 2012
All rights reserved.
The moral right of John Moralee to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Design and Patents Act, 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system, without the permission of the author.
This book is a work of fiction. All names, characters, businesses, organisations, places and events are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or locations is entirely coincidental.
OTHER KINDLE TITLES
Acting Dead – mystery novel
The Bone Yard and Other Stories – fifteen horror stories
Afterburn and Other Stories – crime omnibus
The Good Soldier and Other Stories – short stories
Blue Ice – three crime stories
The Tomorrow Tower – science fiction stories
Thirteen: Unlucky For Some - crime stories*
Under Dark Skies – crime stories *
The Uncertainty Principle – SF detective story *
* included in omnibus Afterburn and Other Stories
Book Contents
Riding the Lightning
Bloodways
The Black Chip Game
Only Snowing
Red Red Wine
Stalk
Behind Closed Doors
Deathware
A Distant Roar
Breaking Vlad
The Final Tweet
The Beachcombers
Riding the Lightning
Scott wondered why her suitcases were in the hall. Melanie had put them there while he had been in the barn feeding the newborn chicks. He rubbed dried dirt off his boots onto the welcome mat before stepping past them and hurrying down the hall.
He found his wife in the kitchen, sitting at the table, her long dark hair obscuring her face. She was wearing her green coat, tartan skirt and riding boots, as if preparing to go out on her horse, but if that were the case then why pack the suitcases?
Why did the house suddenly have a feeling of emptiness?
She appeared to be crying. She was writing a note, which she suddenly stopped writing and crumpled up, releasing a sob of frustration as she tossed the sheet in the waste basket. She heard his footsteps then and turned to face the doorway as she swept her hair back, sighing. Her eyes were bloodshot. They darted everywhere - but at his own.
“I can’t do it,” she said.
He thought she meant she couldn’t leave.
Then, she destroyed him: “I was going to write an explanation. But I guess I’ll just have to tell you face to face why I’m leaving you.”
Scott could not believe this was happening. It was a complete shock. Didn’t she know he loved her? He went to hug her, but Melanie flinched as if afraid of him. She acted like a stranger.
“But -” He lost the strand of his thoughts. “But why?”
She looked away. Her chair scraped the hardwood floor as she stood. “I’ve never been happy here. Not for years.”
“You never said so.”
“I’m saying now. Scott, I’m going back to London where there are people and things to do. Being a farmer’s wife isn’t me. I need noise. I need good food. I like to go out and meet new people, and I can’t do it stuck in the middle of the rotten countryside, ten miles from the nearest village. I don’t like the smells and silence and emptiness. I hate it. We don’t talk any more, Scott. We have nothing to talk about. I’m not a country bumpkin, Scott. I don’t want to be your Felicity Kendal.”
“Who’s Felicity Kendal?” he said. Was she accusing him of having affair with the woman, was that it?
“A television character,” Melanie said, exasperated. “You see, Scott, you don’t even live in the same world. You didn’t even own a TV when we met. You live in a different century.”
She passed him, avoiding his touch as she reached the doorway and entered the hall. Her passing left her perfume lingering like a memory of the good times. He watched his wife lifting the suitcases with some strain, flashing a contemptuous look in his direction. Everything she owned had to be in the suitcases, he realised. She wasn’t coming back. Her face hardened as she added, “And I don’t love you any more.”
“Go then,” he said, saying the words - but with no conviction. Her words had hurt him. Lashing out was his first instinct - instantly regretted. “Wait!”
Melanie stood there looking as though she was going to say more, then she turned and carried the suitcases outside to their olive-green Toyota Land Cruiser.
He didn’t follow her. If he chased after her, he knew he would not be able to stay calm - he would shout and plead for her to stay - which was the last thing he wanted, to be further humiliated. Nothing could stop her leaving; no words; no force; nothing.
Through the kitchen windows, he watched her drag the suitcases to the rear of the Land Cruiser. She loaded them into the back before glaring at him on her way to the driver’s door. Pure hatred powered her actions. She got in and slammed the door. Almost immediately, she started the engine and pulled away. She didn’t look back.
Scott let out his held breath. “No.”
The Toyota tore past the barn and stables and vanished behind the gaunt sycamore trees standing on the hill like lonely sentries. Scott rushed up the stairs to continue watching her from their bedroom as the olive-green vehicle grew smaller and smaller as it joined the proper road at the bottom of the valley and accelerated in a screech of gear shifts. It merged with the hills and woods to the south, disappearing completely.
*
“He’s awake ...”
A cool hand on his feverish brow brushed the damp strands of hair from his eyes. He opened his eyes.
“Mum?” His lips were dry, but not as dry as his throat. It hurt to talk. He was confused. He didn’t know where he was.
“I’m here, my baby. It’s okay.”
“You’re looking better, soldier,” his father added. There was relief in his eyes.
Scott didn’t have a clue what they were talking about. The last thing he remembered was the thunderstorm, and staring up at the sheet lightning splaying between the silver clouds. Now his head was sore and bandaged. He felt sick when he lifted his head, which seemed a dead weight on his shoulders. The most startling thing was he wasn’t at home in his own bed. He was in hospital.
“My head hurts. What happened?”
“You were struck by lightning.”
“Oh.”
“You’re very lucky to be alive.”
“Very lucky,” his father repeated.
His mother held his small hand. Hers was soft and comforting. “There. There.”
*
The dreams began the day Melanie left him.
Scott had been six when the lightning struck him, but it didn’t seem like a day ago. The dreams were so vivid, so lucid, a perfect replay of his childhood memories, that he could not get them out of his mind even when he fully concentrated on his farm work.
In the spring there was always so much to do around the farm that the physical labour kept him busy all day, not much time for thinking about the past, but he could not escape it.
At night he would lie down on the double bed and fall instantly asleep. But he would dream. About Melanie. And lightning.
Scott tried to continue his life without Melanie. He tried, but failed. Love wasn’t something he could switch off like a light. Perhaps, he thought, there was way to convince her to come bac
k?
He called Melanie’s mother Carol for her new address - only to discover she was already living with another man, a David Something she’d met in the city. They were planning on marrying as soon as the divorce was finalised.
Divorce. She hadn’t even called him to discuss it.
He was truly alone again.
Scott wasn’t comfortable in his own company. He’d had too much of that as a child living on the farm. His only friends had been his parents, but they had always been too busy fighting to pay any attention to him. He was a very lonely boy.
Things had only improved when he was six – after he was struck by lightning.
He remembered the time with fondness, for the following six weeks had been the best in his entire childhood. The lightning had burned a small patch of hair right off just behind his right ear, and even thirty years later no hair grew on the white scar tissue, but it was just a reminder of how a freak accident could turn into a miracle.
The lightning should have killed him, but he’d only suffered minor burns. His parents, usually fighting and screaming at each other, suddenly started acting extra extra nice. He’d enjoyed being the centre of attention. While in hospital, they’d brought him a cuddly toy rabbit with fluffy blue ears and a bushy tail, which he’d loved like a brother. His mother had read stories at his bedside. His father had smiled and gently kissed his forehead each night. His parents had hugged each other when they thought he was sleeping. Wonderful times.
As a kid he’d believed the lightning had been a gift from God, something to bring his family together. A miracle.
But once he’d been released from hospital, his parents had returned to the old ways. The magic had been spent. His parents had divorced the next year, and his father had disappeared, never to be seen again. His mother had wallowed in misery, never really recovering, dying of alcoholism when he was fifteen. His childhood had been miserable – except for those few weeks after the lightning struck.
His memory of the effect of lightning remained strong in his mind. Lightning had changed things once for the better – so why not again?
He’d never stopped believing in its magic powers.
A desperate man living in complete isolation was entitled to think what he wanted, believe what he wanted to believe.
It was then he realised lightning was the only answer to his prayers.
He needed to be struck a second time.
*
Scott started going outside and shouting at the sky whenever it thundered, challenging the lightning to strike him. It soon became an obsession. One time the lightning got as close as the willow tree across the far side of the farm, blackening its branches, scorching its leaves, but that was as close at it came. It was as if the lightning were afraid of him.
It wasn’t fair.
So, he read all there was about the subject, becoming an amateur meteorologist in his pursuit of its elusive gift.
One of the first things he learnt was that there were two kinds of lightning: positive and negative. Negative was the usual kind. It flowed from the clouds to the earth. Positive did the opposite - striking upwards from tall places, like radio masts and mountaintops. It was very rare. He’d been on a high hill when he had been struck, so he wondered if his had been a positive strike, granting him six weeks of happiness.
There wasn’t much known about the formation of lightning. Even in the twenty-first century, the immense forces in the sky were almost a mystery. It was like a supernatural power, randomly striking in the least expected places. It could kill. It could destroy. It could save. Lightning had even cured blindness and epilepsy, if you believed the anecdotal evidence, which he did. Lightning was like no other force of nature - power stations could not compete with it for sheer energetic bravado. The temperature of a lightning strike was 30,000oC - hotter than the sun.
To Scott, it seemed as though it would not grant its favours on him twice in his lifetime. He’d had one chance, but that had gone. But he would not give up. After Melanie left him, it merely renewed and confirmed his convictions, that the lightning held the only answer.
Suicide or redemption ...
Unfortunately, the chances of being struck by lightning were less than one in a million. You were more likely to win the lottery. And the chances of the same person being struck again were even higher, but was there a way of increasing the odds? Maybe if he stood under a tree, flew a kite, or held a piece of metal conductor, then the probability would shrink to an acceptable level?
He tried all three methods - without success. Lightning was a fickle beast. It rarely happened when he was ready. He would be lucky if there were three or four good storms in the year. He considered creating his own lightning, on a minor scale, using Tesla coils and electricity generators, but that would not be natural lightning. He believed the only lightning with special powers was that from the sky, bringing down manna from heaven.
He suspected he was mad.
That was why Melanie had left him and the farm.
But if he were mad, surely he wouldn’t suspect it? Surely, he would not know he had a problem? He had a problem. He needed a miracle.
And so, he waited for the next storm and built his own lightning conductor in his field, a tall pylon that would draw the magical electricity to him.
It was a hot summer that year. After three weeks of sweltering days with clear blue skies and uncomfortably humid nights, the air was electric with the coming of a powerful storm. In the morning, as he tended to the farm animals, he could feel the charge in the atmosphere, the pressure changing, forces shifting balance in the atmosphere. The sheep seemed edgy. The pigs were nervous. The horses would not let him mount them. The hairs on his arms stood up with anticipation of a big storm. At noon the weather forecast warned of dangerous thunderstorms tonight all across Britain.
Scott climbed to the top of his pylon and waited and prayed, watching the sky. Around five-thirty the weather started to change. It turned colder. A cold breeze swept in from the west. There were dark grey clouds on the horizon, just above the hills. He heard a distant rumble.
When it started to rain, he was already in position. He was standing at the top of the pylon, looking across at the Pennines. The clouds above the mountains were solid black, like charcoal drawings of clouds drawn by a child - thick, broiling masses colliding and expanding. Nearer, the hay in the fields whipped about. The horses whinnied in the stables. He held up a metal rod like a magic wand and pointed it at the clouds.
“Come on! Hit me! HIT ME!”
Tongues of lightning licked the ground half a mile off. Thunder followed, drowning out his shouts. The clouds lit up as the lightning was reflected. Sheet lightning was just the reflection of the light from ground strikes, but it seemed to cast a weird light on the ground, as though God was taking black-and-white photographs. The lightning was more or less continuous now, brilliant flashes striking the ground and trees. He could see a hay barrel burning despite the heavy rain, amber flames rising up inside a column of smoke. The air smelt metallic, of iron, of copper, of zinc. His adrenaline was pumping. The lightning was getting closer. The time between thunderclaps became indiscernible.
“Scott, what are you doing?”
Scott spun around, searching for the source of the voice.
Melanie had parked her car at the house and was coming towards him, stumbling through puddles and up the muddy hill. She’s come back! There was no need for a miracle. She’s seen sense after all!
He looked down at her. “Melanie? What are you doing here?”
She waved some papers. “I have the divorce papers! You have to sign them!” She looked up at the pylon where he was standing. “Jesus, don’t you know that’s dangerous? It’s thundering! Come down!”
“Leave me alone!”
“That’s -”
The lightning hit her mid-sentence. She seemed to freeze as the blue-white electricity crackled through her body, her eyes glowing with eldritch fire, then she was thrown twe
lve feet backwards. She was still. The lightning explored the ground around her, blasting up soil in black plumes, ionising the air. Then it moved on to the next hill, the thunder receding, the storm dying.
“Melanie?” Scott said.
She was lying on the ground, one side of her face a black and red smear of blood and skin. Pink after-images danced on Scott’s retinas. He blinked them away. He was certain he had seen Melanie’s body outlined in an ultramarine aura for a brief moment as the lightning struck - like a halo - but it had gone now, leaving her possibly dead. He could smell ozone and burnt flesh. He climbed down the pylon and ran over to his wife. Bending down, he saw Melanie badly burned on one side of her neck and right arm, as well as her face, which was the worst. Third degree burns, he reckoned.
She moaned.
She was alive.
The wind blew away the divorce papers, like the fluttering wings of a dove.
*
The young doctor pinched the bridge of her nose, rubbing at the groove made by her glasses. She put her hand on Scott’s shoulder - an oddly compassionate act for someone so busy. They both looked at the body in the bed, half hidden beneath drips and wires and bandages.
“I’m afraid your wife’s in a coma.”
“Will she ... will she ever wake up?”
More nose-pinching. “It’s too early to say. She’s stable, which is good. All we can do is keep her here for now.” Her beeper bleeped, calling her to another patient. “Excuse me.”
