Darkness Falls

by J. M. Robinson

  He pulled out the cork and pressed the bottle to his lips. The tiniest amount seemed to have as much of an affect as a large amount. He was careful only to let two drops fall on his tongue.

  When the cork was back in and he had returned the bottle to his pocket, Graham closed his eyes. There was no need for him to do so, it worked the same either way, but he did it anyway. It helped him to calm down.

  He opened his eyes and the world around him had transformed. A golden light hung in the air and made the windows of the church glow.

  Each time he had taken the potion the effect had lasted less time. He had a feeling that, by the time he reached the end of the bottle he would be able to count the time in seconds. He doubted that another bottle from the Witch would have any effect at all.

  The big church doors were unlocked and he opened them. He could feel Agnes with him but he didn’t turn to look at her. If she was there then there wasn’t anything he could do about it. If she didn’t try to attack him then he didn’t have a problem with her accompanying him.

  The light led him into the main hall of the church. A few people were sitting in the pews beneath the large wooden crucifix. A couple of them turned to look at him as he came in.

  For all that The Church had done to him and his family Graham found it difficult to feel anything but pity for the people who were sitting in servitude. He raised a hand to signal his apologies for disturbing their prayers and continued to follow the light along the central passage towards the large cross.

  The light led him to the back of the building. He knocked on an unvarnished wooden door. There was no answer and he didn’t wait to try again. Graham tried the handle but it didn’t move. He took a step back and then threw himself against it.

  It burst open and Graham stumbled into a small dark room. There was a desk with little on it except an inkwell and a piece of blotting paper. An oil lamp stood on the floor beside a large brown leather chair. He looked around for anything that might suggest when Bridget had been there but the room was clean.

  “Can I help you?”

  Graham turned around suddenly at the sound of the strange voice. He found a man standing by the door, one of the worshipers possibly, he wasn’t wearing a collar. He didn’t need to speak to this man.

  “Would you like to explain yourself or shall I call the police?” said the man.

  “I’m looking for the vicar,” Graham said.

  “You wouldn’t be the first. He’s not here.”

  “I can see that,” Graham said. “Where is he?”

  The man shrugged.

  “You won’t tell me?”

  “I can’t tell you,” the man said. “He left two weeks ago without saying where he was going.”

  Graham wondered if the vicar had left with Bridget. If so, he was only two weeks behind her and, if she was spending two nights in each location, he might only have seven more to visit before he found her. He felt for the bottle in his pocket and hoped that there was enough of the potion left for him to take him that far.

  “Thank you for your help,” Graham said.

  The man stood aside as he walked out of the little office. Graham felt Agnes beside him as she had been the last time they had walked down the central aisle of a church together. All those years ago when they had been married in Odamere.

  Outside the night had a bitter chill. He stopped outside the doors and watched the swirling golden light for a moment. He couldn’t afford to wait for long. He was getting closer now and he didn’t want to lose his opportunity to be reunited with his daughter.

  Beside his ghost wife Graham set off. He pulled up his collar and adjusted his hat. He needed to be quick but he couldn’t afford to rush.

  He crossed a bridge and travelled into the slums. In the rest of Lunden good people were sleeping but here, young and old, crowded the streets as if it were the middle of the day. Graham could feel them watching him.

  The light led him along a dark street. The houses were old, broken and lurching unsteadily to the side. The windows were dark but he knew there were people behind them, watching him. He saw himself as they must have seen him, a strange man on his own, walking with his head in the air, looking at something they couldn’t see.

  The cobbled ground had been smoothed by decades of constant use. he could see the grooves of wheel tracks leading away into the darkness. Overgrown gardens and broken fences. The place looked as if it had been abandoned long ago.

  The night grew colder but he gave no thought to turning back. He followed the light through the village. It soon gave way to empty land.

  Leafless trees grew in the distance. Their crooked branches hanging like fingers above the land, holding it down. Graham heard no insects and no birds. Only his footsteps across the dry grass that broke and crackled beneath. He turned to look for Agnes, even her presence might have reassured him, but he couldn’t see her. It didn’t mean that she wasn’t there but he might have liked to see her face again.

  The land went down and up and still, somehow, it never changed. He might have walked a dozen miles that night, following the golden light, and yet he might not have moved at all. Graham had the strangest feeling that if he turned around he would still see Lunden there as close as it had ever been.

  He kept going. The landscape was almost featureless, a projection designed to fool the mind like he’d seen at the circus as a boy. He didn’t know what was happening but as the night wore on he watched helplessly as the golden light began to fade, flutter and vanish.

  Graham stopped walking. The moon was hidden behind thick cloud but his eyes had adjusted to the darkness. He turned around expecting to see Lunden but there was nothing except lonely forest. He could see no sign of Agnes.

  He felt the glass vial in his pocket and considered taking more but two doses in a row was rarely as good as waiting another night. He had seen where the light led and thought he might walk where he knew it would be. If he got lost then he could hardly be worse off than he already was.

  Graham started walking again. More acutely aware of the crunch of grass beneath his feet and the whistle of the wind as it passed him. The land went downwards and he followed it. He didn’t expect to find anything but he was mistaken.

  At the bottom of the hill there was a stone structure that had never been a Christian Church. A circle of flat rocks surrounding something flat and round. Cautiously he walked towards it, knowing, even without the magic light, that this was where they had taken Bridget.

  Even for a hundred feet away he could feel it. A soundless hum that filled the air and made the hairs on his arms stand on end. Graham walked slowly towards the object and even in the darkness he could see how ancient it was. The stones towered many feet above him so that he had to stretch his neck to see the top.

  He didn’t expect to find Bridget there but if she had gone inside then he would have to as well. Nothing else would do for whatever magic worked the golden light. If he tried to cheat it then it would punish him.

  As far as he could see there was nothing inside other than the round stone he had seen from a distance. The grass had been worn away so that compacted earth made a hard floor. There was clearly nothing to be frightened of on the other side of the stones but he hesitated. A part of him just didn’t want to move forwards. Eventually though he did.

  Graham took a deep breath and stepped forwards, certain that it would be the last thing that he ever did. His life did not flash before his eyes and he did not fall to his knees in bloody, blinding agony. Nothing happened.

  The flat round stone looked something like a table and there were red marks upon it.

  The ground began to shake. He didn’t need to know what was causing it to realise that it couldn’t be good. He looked around but the world beyond the vertical stones seemed distant and faded. He couldn’t see anything but that didn’t mean there wasn’t anything there.

  He looked down and saw that a scar had appeared across the compacted earth. Graham moved towards the edge of
the circle. When he tried to get through the gaps between the stones he found his way blocked by an invisible hand.

  The split in the ground grew wider. The shaking and the humming became louder.

  Graham looked around desperately but he was on his own to face whatever this subterranean horror turned out to be. The ground continued to split and a creature emerged that bore a passing resemblance to a bird.

  Its beak was cracked and crooked. It looked like something that had been carved out of the rock that surrounded it. Its head was scaled and seemed to be covered with a thick layer of some viscous liquid. Graham watched its head continue to rise and reveal human looking shoulders.

  A loud shriek from the other direction made Graham jump and he turned suddenly at the same time as the creature.

  Agnes floated above the ground in her fiery form. Her arms apart so that her ghostly clothes seemed to hang from her body like a scarecrow. Graham took a step away from her but he couldn’t get far and then he was trapped between the creature and Agnes.

  The creature turned and looked towards him. It leaned forwards as if it wasn’t sure what it was seeing him. It opened its stony beak and revealed a set of tombstone sized teeth etched out of sharp rock. Its tongue fell forwards and it let out a screech that made the stones around Graham crack.

  This was it, he realised, it was all over. The creature lurched towards him as if it really was made of stone. Its sharp carved fingers were open and ready to grab him.

  Graham dived away. He tucked and rolled and jumped to his feet. The creature turned, slowly, and then it was facing him again.

  It stood as still as a statue until suddenly it wasn’t. For all of its lumbering movements the creature turned out to be capable of a speed that seemed impossible to Graham. Even Arthur Park wouldn’t have been able to outrun it.

  Graham felt the air crushed out of his body as the giant hands wrapped around him. He thought he heard bones snapping and breaking inside of him.

  The hands squeezed his chest and now he could feel them against his organs. He wondered which would be the first to burst and leak its poison into his body.

  The creature opened its beak mouth and Graham knew what was going to happen. He could see the slimy tongue lashing back and forth against those sharp teeth.

  It was the fire that caught his eye first but the creature hadn’t noticed it. Graham couldn’t turn to look but he didn’t need to.

  Graham was amazed to see the creature stop at the sight of his wife. She burned so brightly that it was painful for him to look at her. The orange flames flickered to blue and white and he could feel the otherworldly fire against his skin.

  Agnes approached him. The hairs on his neck were already being singed and he could feel his scalp burning. He didn’t know what the creature could feel but he had a good idea that its stony form was less vulnerable to fire than his own flesh and blood.

  When Agnes opened her mouth and screamed her banshee wail the creature stopped. It took a step back. Agnes moved towards them and the creature backed away.

  Agnes seemed to double in size. She was as big as the creature itself and growing bigger. It hurt his eyes to look at her but he couldn’t turn away.

  The creature struck the edge of the circle and broke through. It hit something, tripped. It fumbled him. Graham felt his stomach fly up into his mouth as he began to fall towards the floor.

  He landed with a heavy thud he reached into his pocket and the bottle was still there. It was still intact and the lid was still on.

  He got to his feet and ignored the pain flaming through his old breaks and bullet wounds. He turned back towards Lunden and set off at a run before either the creature or his wife had a chance to wonder where he was.

  CHAPTER 11

  CAROL SAT AT THE WINDOW AND WATCHED THE sunrise spread across the street. The light seemed to move slowly, more like liquid, filling in the gaps and the crevices. The house was silent but it wouldn’t be for long. Cook would be the first one to wake up. Mrs Armstrong prepared all of the food for the house and the day wouldn’t begin without her eggs and sausages. Next would come the children and then she would need to be ready. No one else was up yet but Carol hadn’t even been to sleep.

  She had tried to adjust to a daytime schedule but, after half a life in a brothel, she found it impossible to get used to sleeping at night. So she sat by the window and watched the sun rise and waited for the house to wake.

  Outside a man in a blue suit walked past with a small brown dog. He saw her looking out of the ground floor and waved. Carol waved back and wondered what the man did for a living. Whatever it was it had to be more interesting than her own life. The dog probably had a more interesting life than she did. She watched him walk along the road and out of sight, she didn’t turn away until she heard footsteps on the floor above her head.

  Carol stood up with a sigh and left the sitting room. It wouldn’t be appropriate for her to be seen in her night clothes by any of the staff, Mr and Mrs Brambley or the children. Another big change from her life before. She walked up the stairs and into her bedroom at the back of the house.

  She closed the door behind her and started to get dressed. Mr Brambley had bought her a whole wardrobe of sensible conservative dresses. When she wore them she felt ten years older.

  She washed in the bowls in the corner of the room and then strapped herself into the uncomfortable bone corset. It pushed everything around so that it was difficult to breathe and her shape was flattened so that she resembled a young boy. When she was ready she checked her reflection in the looking glass and then sat down in her wicker chair to wait for the children to wake up.

  No sooner had she let her weight sink into the soft cushion than she was disturbed by a knock on the door. She looked up as if she might be able to see who had come to call on her through the white wood but, of course, she could not. She sighed and stood up, walked to the door and opened it.

  “Good morning Mr Brambley,” Carol said. She was surprised to see the master of the house outside her room. Most days she barely saw him.

  “Good morning Carol,” he said. He didn’t seem to know what to say to her but there was clearly something on his mind.

  “Is there something I can help you with sir?” Carol said.

  He nodded. “Um, yes, uh, I think perhaps there is.”

  For a moment she wondered whether she had wasted the last ten minutes getting dressed.

  “Would you, uh, come with me please?”

  “Sir?” Carol said.

  He nodded as if he was reminding himself of something. “There is a gentleman who would like to see you.”

  She followed him out of her room and along the corridor. The house was expensively decorated but, in Carol’s opinion, showed little taste. She tried to think who might have come to visit her but no one knew that she was living there now. Perhaps Graham, she thought, and her heart rose.

  Mr Brambley led her down the back stairs that would take them to the kitchen. Carol couldn’t imagine Graham calling at the servants entrance if he did want to speak to her. They passed the nursery and then the rooms of the other members of staff. In this part of the house the decoration wasn’t so lavish, the walls were bare and, in places, had been chipped to reveal the horse hair plaster beneath.

  Carol was led to a door at the bottom of the stairs which she had seen, although never been through before. She looked at Mr Brambley. “Did they give a name?”

  Mr Brambley shook his head but she knew better than that. He wouldn’t have answered the front door, let alone the servants door, someone else must have fetched him which meant that whoever was waiting for her in there wouldn’t be good news. She couldn’t think who it might be but she didn’t have to wait long to find out.

  He reached past her and turned the handle. She felt his arm brush against her chest but there was no meaning to it. She looked at Mr Brambley a final time and then walked into the dark room.

  The door closed behind her. It took a momen
t for her eyes to adjust to the darkness but before they had her visitor revealed herself.

  “Hello Carol,” Emily said

  Carol blinked in the darkness and in a moment her friend’s shape revealed itself. The small woman, barely more than a girl, sat in a little wooden chair with her legs crossed at the knee, revealing more than was considered proper in the Brambley household.

  “Are you surprised?” Emily said. Her voice had the raspy croak of someone who had been awake all night singing and dancing.

  “What are you doing here?” Carol said.

  Emily smiled but didn’t answer for a moment. Then she stood up slowly and moved across the little room towards her. “You landed on your feet, didn’t you?”

  Carol shook her head. “I mean yes but... what happened to you? I thought everyone was...”

  “Dead?”

  Carol nodded. She was already starting to feel guilty for not going to look for her friends. Of course they hadn’t all been killed. A dozen women and however many men being killed in a fire would make the news. Even if those women were prostitutes. People would have spoken about it.

  “So you what? Organised funerals for us all? Remembered us in your prayers?”

  Carol hadn’t done any of that. She had been all too pleased to seize upon the opportunity to get on with her life and do something other than sleeping with men she didn’t know for money.

  “People talk Carol,” Emily said. “Do you know what they’re saying?”

  Carol shook her head. She felt blind sided, too dumb to speak.

  “They’re saying it’s real convenient that you just happened to be somewhere else when the fire happened.”

  “They think I had something to do with it?” Carol said. She was shocked.

  “Did you?” Emily said.

  “I didn’t do anything Em,” Carol said. She hated the sound of desperation in her voice. “You believe me, don’t you?”

  “And look where you ended up,” Emily said. She looked around the little room as if it was a microcosm of the household. In reality it was probably a store room that wasn’t currently being used. “It’s pretty suspicious, don’t you think?”