He thought about the rain flowing up into the policeman. His black eyes … At first he’d thought it was just his pupils getting big in the darkness, but it wasn’t that. They had been totally black. Like pools of unrefined oil.
The strangely luminous glow of the rain on his clothes and on his face.
John laughed to himself.
The way the policeman had exploded in a flash of light. Nothing else really mattered. In his experience, people didn’t generally explode.
The policeman wasn’t really a policeman. He wasn’t really a person.
John sat and thought about that for a while. Something in the form of a person. He didn’t think he’d ever read anything along those lines. He’d read plenty. He was a voracious reader. A shop full of books, and he’d read most of them. He’d read about vampires and ghouls. He’d read ghost stories aplenty. He read fantasy and horror and science fiction.
How the fuck do you fight something that can change shape like that?
He took a deep breath.
“Hold on there, John.”
Was he thinking of trying to fight something that couldn’t exist? He nodded. Caught sight of himself in the rearview mirror, his head bobbing up and down with no one to see it but him. It brought an embarrassed smile to his face.
“Going crazy, John?”
Fire? Would fire do it?
“Yep. Crazy as fuck,” he told his reflection.
The box seemed pretty effective, but he played the visit from the policeman back. The flash of light. A splash. Then the glass of his living room window breaking out.
He tried to imagine what he hadn’t seen, to see the story in the sounds.
The box had destroyed the policeman, but something had been left. Something that broke out into the night through his second-floor window.
He listened in his head to the sounds again. The explosion, followed by a splash.
Like a bucket of water falling to the ground.
He played it back again.
It had been heavier than water. What’s heavier than water? Mud? Blood?
If something wet had fallen, splashed all over his carpet, why had it been dry afterwards?
Because it went out the window, John.
It fell to the carpet, splashed, then broke through the window. There was hardly any glass on the inside. It hadn’t blown in, but out.
Something that could survive the fall. Something that could fuck up phones.
What kind of creature could do that?
He’d been sitting in the car, twisting at the steering wheel so hard that his hands ached. The mist on the windows was clear, and he was warming up.
He wasn’t getting anywhere. Sitting around thinking about things that were just plain nonsense. He wished he’d brought along a bottle. He wished he smoked.
The clutch was going to hurt, but he didn’t stop to think about it. He’d wasted enough time already, and he had no idea when the policeman, or whatever it was, was going to come back.
He put the car in reverse, swearing at the pain in his foot, and backed out of his space. Took the high street, got onto the one-way system. He saw no people, but plenty of cars abandoned by the side of the street.
The back end of a car was sticking out of the shoe shop. He thought about stopping, seeing if he could help, but what could he do?
Nothing. No mobile, cut feet. Even if he could help, he knew he had more important things to do.
The one-way system had turned into a river. The rain was still falling, not as heavily as before, but heavily enough to rush along the road. The drainage system wasn’t designed to cope with this volume of water.
There were going to be a lot of unhappy insurance companies come the morning.
John smelled it before he saw it. He reached the end of the high street, coasted to a stop.
The Indian restaurant at the end of the street was still burning. The crashed car was still there. Two police cars blocked the end of the street. An ambulance was parked at the kerb. The fire engine was pulled up in front of the burning building, but the properties on either side of the restaurant were on fire.
The fire burned unbelievably bright. The emergency vehicles’ lights swirled, throwing blue light into the air. John hadn’t realised how much he missed the light, running through the night in the dark. He’d become used to the near-dark in the strange glow of the rain.
He couldn’t ask for help, though.
The blue lights and the fires were the only things moving. All the people were gone.
*
Chapter Twenty-Eight
With the rain pounding on the roof of the car, the emergency vehicles’ lights, the raging fire, everything seemed unreal, impossibly bright and crisp. After the dark and the fear and the supernatural, it felt like a sunrise at midnight, like the world had somehow flipped over in its sleep into the blinding light of the sun.
John drove as close as he thought was safe. He really didn’t want to get out of the car. Not just because of his feet.
Goose bumps raised all the hairs on his arms. A chill ran down his spine. The night was already way, way over into the realms of fucked. This was something else. Something he couldn’t get a grip on. Like a shard of glass in your skin, so slick with your blood you couldn’t get it out. It just worried away inside of you, cutting you worse every time you tried to get a handle on it.
He got out of the car, because he didn’t want to, and if he started not doing things because he was terrified, he wouldn’t see the morning. It was something he knew instinctively. He’d never been in a fight for his life, but responses on a primal level kicked in. He couldn’t back off, because there was nowhere to back off to. He could see that now. If he hadn’t understood before, he did now. Looking at the carnage, he understood more than he ever wanted.
He slammed the door. Locked it. The box was inside. It was more valuable than the car. Valuable enough for people to destroy his shop. Whoever it was that wanted it thought it was worth John’s life.
But it wasn’t just John’s life.
John felt bile rising in his throat as he walked toward the back of the ambulance.
There was a skeleton in the back. Still slick with the blood that had once adorned it and been born in it.
He gagged. It wasn’t the skeleton that broke him. It was the fact that the leg was obviously broken. The thigh bone. The femur. Snapped in two. A clean break. The foot, the shin, the kneecap, all detached. The flesh had held the leg together. Without the flesh, it had fallen apart.
John lowered his head and threw up between his shoes. Whiskey, peanut butter, bread, and some partially digested pain pills.
The sight of his vomit set him off again. His stomach heaved again and again until it was empty and he was on his knees, his hands out either side of him, holding him out of the puddle that was washing away in the thumping, slanting rain.
He was panting, his breath coming in short gasps. He was about ten seconds away from screaming panic. He knew it.
But there was no one else to get him out of it.
No one else. That single terrifying thought galvanised him. He stood straight and sucked in great mouthfuls of air. The pain from his wounds woke him all the way up.
After wiping his beard clean with his sleeve, he walked back to the car, limping heavily, the pain somehow welcome.
He unlocked the car, got in, and locked it again.
He knew it wouldn’t make a damn bit of difference.
He imagined the policeman. He imagined what it would take to do that to a person. The power. It was beyond anyone’s imagination. Unholy, unfettered power.
But not just the woman whom he’d seen run over earlier.
He could see them now. His mind hadn’t let him see them before.
The skeletons of the dead littered the pavement outside the restaurant. The rain had washed these skeletons clean. Piles of bone, stripped clean of flesh and humanity. Empty ribcages lying in puddles, bodies tangled together, bodies
in the street and on the pavement, their bones twisted like the bones themselves were contorted in pain. They glistened and shone in the firelight.
The policeman had killed them all. But the thing that John had confronted couldn’t have done this. Nothing could have done this.
Whatever it was, it was terrible and powerful beyond belief. It had killed them all where they stood.
No one had time to run. Time to scream?
God, I hope not, he thought.
He said a prayer he hadn’t said for maybe twenty years.
“Now I lay me down to sleep,
“I pray the Lord my soul to keep.
“If I die before I wake …”
The emergency vehicles’ radios crackled to life as one.
I pray the Lord my soul to take. The voice screamed out, louder than the roaring fire.
John started the car. His car radio turned itself on.
I pray the Lord my soul to take.
He smacked the off button.
I will have my due, the voice said before the radio died. Water ran down the dashboard.
John floored the accelerator and took out the rear end of the police car blocking the street.
*
Chapter Twenty-Nine
The rain had washed out the road at the foot of the hill. There was a dip before the incline that ran across the road, out to the cemetery and down to the estate at the bottom of the hill. It was always awash in heavy rain, but now it was a river. It had never flooded like this, but then, it had never rained like this.
The rain had swollen what would have been a puddle into a deep black scar in the road, over to the north entrance to the cemetery and on to the west. The houses at the bottom of the dip were flooded up to the bottom of the ground-floor windows. A car, its door open to the elements, was half submerged in the floodwater. There was no sign of the driver.
The water stank.
“It smells like shit,” Smiley said, sniffing. “I can’t ride us through that. We’re going to have to walk.”
“No way.”
“No choice.”
“Of course we’ve got a choice. We go over on Cemetery Road, up Brecker’s Hill instead,” said Mandy, shifting on Smiley’s lap.
“I’m not going through the cemetery.”
“Smiley, it’s just dead people.”
His lips were in such a tight line they were blue in the eerie light of the rain. “No.”
“It’s probably the safest place in town.”
“Mandy, I said no.”
“Since when are you the boss here?”
“Since my dad died.”
“You fucking hated him.”
Smiley pushed Mandy off his lap. She stumbled into the edge of the water and jumped back.
“You dick!”
“He was my dad.”
She wanted to spit at him, or hit him, maybe, but he had a look in his eye. A look that said he was willing to hit back.
“I don’t want to fight,” she said eventually.
“Neither do I,” he said. He got off his bike. “You want to give up?”
“You know I don’t. I’m with you, Smiley.”
He smiled. He had a good smile.
“All right,” he said. It really did stink. “All right,” he said again, eyeing the floodwater blocking the road. It was maybe forty metres across. The car was about halfway in. The driver had probably thought he could drive through, not thinking it very deep. He’d been fine until the engine had flooded, the water being deeper than he expected. How high was a car?
It was a people carrier. It looked like a Vauxhall, pretty big, a fat rear end. The water was up and over the bonnet. Probably about a metre high …
Over his waist?
Smiley looked at Mandy. He wasn’t tall. She was shorter.
It wasn’t like they were getting any drier standing around in the rain. They were pretty much soaked to the skin anyway.
Fuck it.
“First one to find a turd wins.” He grinned and pushed his bike into the water. It was shallow to start with, then the water began to drag at his bike. It pulled at his legs, as if there was a current somewhere under him. Pretty soon, it was up to his thighs, then his waist. He waded through, his bike holding him back. The bike was totally submerged after he’d gone about ten metres. It was just a little BMX, low to the ground. He knew it was there, because he could feel the crossbar under his hand, but he couldn’t see it. The water was black. Full of shit and muck from the drains.
He looked back and saw that Mandy was following him.
He was glad. He really didn’t want to go on alone. He would if he had to, but it was good to have her with him. He felt stronger with her to look after. Plus, she made him feel better.
Then she screamed.
Smiley dropped his bike and half-ran, half-waded back to her. He had to use his arms just as much in the deepest part.
Mandy flailed her arms and screamed, then went under the water. Just disappeared. It wasn’t that deep. She couldn’t drown in it. Could she?
Smiley tried to go faster, but the water had weight. It was pulling at him, trying to stop him getting to Mandy. It felt like hands were clutching at his legs all of a sudden. His kicked out and pushed harder. It was just his imagination.
He got to the place where Mandy had gone under the water and thrust his hands down, feeling around in the murk.
He felt her top. He had her. He tugged with all of his might and brought up someone that wasn’t Mandy. A man’s grinning face stared back at him, and he let go with a scream. The person’s legs were missing. He could see the bone and the pale flesh, washed clean of blood.
He pushed it away, panicking now. His breath was coming in hard gasps. He thrust his hands into the water, splashing around frantically. He grabbed something and pulled as hard as he could.
Mandy’s head broke the surface. She sputtered, choking on the rank water. She saw the floating torso and began to scream again until the water in her lungs came out in a gush, like black bile, running down her chin. She followed it with black vomit.
Smiley took her in his arms and thumped her on the back. He didn’t know anything about first aid, but he instinctively understood that if she kept the water in her lungs and stomach, she would get sick. Whatever this was, there was probably shit floating around in it.
He thumped her as hard as he could until she’d stopped throwing up. He put his arm round her. Stopped thumping and patted her instead.
“Smiley …”
“I know. Come on. Let’s get out of the water.”
He tried not to think about how deep he’d had to go to pull her out. He tried not to think about his feet on the ground, under the water, and his head under the water, then crouching and having to reach lower than his feet to find Mandy.
She’d been pulled, not just under the water, but somewhere deeper. Someplace under the water that couldn’t exist. But it did, and they were standing on top of it.
He pulled her along at first, dragging hard on her top, not worrying about hurting her, just wanting to get the fuck out of the water. Wanting to get away.
How could someone nearly drown in a metre of water?
“Smiley … I can’t …”
“Come on! For fuck’s sake!”
He didn’t want to shout at her. He was afraid, though, and he couldn’t help it.
Eventually, she started wading herself. She was shivering. The water was freezing. Smiley’s legs were numb from the cold. He glanced at her. He couldn’t tell in this light, but her lips looked black. They were probably blue. Whatever colour they were, it definitely wasn’t pink.
They had to get into the warm, and quick.
He pulled her out of the water and onto the road, where it began to rise again. He scooted back from the water.
She was shivering, and he was terrified.
He looked out over the flooded road. The water wasn’t that deep. It wasn’t that wide.
It felt as th
ough it had taken them hours to cross.
He looked up the hill. It was a big hill.
His dad was going to give him hell for losing his bike. But then he wasn’t going back for his bike. No way.
But his dad was dead too, wasn’t he?
“Come on,” he said. He pulled at Mandy’s arm, but she pulled away.
“Come on!”
“I just want to rest. I’m tired, Smiley. Really tired.”
“We’ve got to move! For fuck’s sake, get up!”
She turned away and shook her head. Smiley looked up. Just over the crest of the hill, a car was coming. The lights went up, lighting the sky, then they dipped again. The car was going too fast. The driver obviously hadn’t seen Smiley. Hadn’t seen the flood.
“Mandy …”
She made a noise like she was snuggling down to go to sleep. He couldn’t take his eyes off the car. It was coming fast. Straight at the water. It wouldn’t make it through … but it was going really fast.
What if it was him?
“Mandy … run!”
But even when he shouted at her, she wouldn’t move.
The car ploughed into the water at maybe fifty miles an hour. A great wave of water shot high into the air.
The windscreen shattered under the impact, and spider-web cracks covered it. The car ploughed through the water until the weight of the water slowed it and then hit the engine. Smoke billowed out from under the water, and the engine died. The lights remained on under the water.
Smiley was frozen to the spot. He dropped Mandy’s arm.
The legless corpse in the water bobbed back against the bonnet, the lights shining underneath it. Someone was crying out from inside the car. High, but deep in parts too. A man in some really bad kind of pain.
And Smiley knew it wasn’t the policeman. It was someone else. A real man. One who could feel pain and one who was in real trouble.
Broken cries of a person who couldn’t breathe, but hurt enough to try screaming anyway.
Whoever had been driving sounded like they might be dying.
RAIN/Damned to Cold Fire (Two Supernatural Horror Novels): A RED LINE Horror Double: Supernatural Page 11
