Darkest hour aom-2

by Mark Chadbourn

  "Ruth," he murmured fearfully.

  Shavi, Veitch and Tom were gathered together around a table in the hotel lounge. Church had no idea how much time had passed, but everyone else in the room had gone. They all looked up in surprise as he burst in.

  "Where's Ruth?" he barked.

  "Went upstairs," Veitch slurred. "Ages ago. Couldn't stand the-"

  But Church was already sprinting back out into the corridor to the stairs. As he reached the foot, he was brought up sharp by Laura, who was just making her way down. She was staring at her hands in a daze, leaning heavily against the bannister. In horror Church saw she was splattered with blood.

  "My God." His voice seemed to be coming from somewhere else. Desper ately, his eyes ranged from Laura's hands, to her face, to the blood. "What's happened to her?"

  Laura shook her head blankly, struggled to find any words that made sense. But all the backed-up tension had suddenly burst out and Church was taking the steps two at a time, pushing past her. At the top he bolted down the landing until he came to Ruth's room. The door was ominously open. He kicked it wide and barged in.

  There was blood splattered across the quilt, droplets thrown up the wall like a Jackson Pollock painting, a small pool already soaking into the thick carpet. Church glanced around frantically. Ruth was nowhere to be seen.

  He was halfway back to the door when his eyes lighted on the small table under the window and he was brought up sharp. Laura appeared in the door, still looking like she was somewhere else. But when her gaze followed Church's it was like she had been slapped across the face.

  "Jesus!" Her hand involuntarily went to her mouth.

  On the table was another finger in a little puddle of blood with other droplets spattered around. And from its long delicate shape they could tell it was Ruth's.

  A few seconds later the others shambled in. Although they were worse for wear from the alcohol they soon sobered up when they glanced from Laura's tearstreaked face to Church's bloodless expression of horror and despair.

  Before any of them could speak, Church shrugged off the paralysis and ran out onto the landing. For the first time he noticed tiny splatters of blood leading away from Ruth's room down the stairs. Frantically he threw himself down them, following the stains out to the street. But there the trail ended and he found himself running backwards and forwards along the deserted road searching futilely for any sign of what had happened to her.

  Back in the bedroom, the others could read what he had found in his dejected face.

  Veitch suddenly noticed Laura standing apart, still in shock. "What did you do?" His voice rumbled out infused with so much threat, Church felt his blood run cold.

  Laura shook her head dumbly. "I don't know-"

  Veitch moved quickly. He was already gripping Laura's shoulders roughly before the others realised. "You better tell us, you bitch. You're the one! Look at all the blood-"

  "Ryan!" Church and Shavi grabbed him by the arms and hauled him off her roughly. His face was filled with rage.

  "Look at the blood!" Veitch spat accusingly.

  Laura held out her hands which were stained red. "It's not like that-"

  "What is it, then?" Veitch struggled briefly, than allowed the others to restrain him.

  "I was asleep on my bed," Laura began hesitantly. "I woke up… some kind of noise. My head was fuzzy… you know, the drink." She looked around the room, didn't seem to see any of them. "I got up to find out what it was… thought it might have been Church. When I was out on the landing there was another noise. I saw Ruth's door was open."

  "Who was there, Laura?" Shavi asked calmly.

  Her eyes widened and filled with tears as she looked past him into the shadows in the corners of the room. "I don't know… I can't remember!"

  Veitch searched her face. "You're lying," he said coldly.

  She shook her head, held out her hands pleadingly, but all anyone could see was the blood.

  "You don't remember anything?" Church asked.

  There was a flicker of pain in her eyes. "Don't you believe me?" She started to back towards the corner.

  "Stay calm, Laura." Shavi's voice was warm and reassuring. "We are simply trying to find out what has happened to Ruth-"

  "We haven't got time for this!" Veitch snapped. His clipped movements and roving eyes reminded Church of an animal; he was surprised how concerned Witch seemed to be for someone who had hated him only a few days before; it suggested feelings beyond friendship. Church laid a calming hand on Veitch's upper arm. He half-expected Veitch to throw it off instantly, but the Londoner responded almost deferentially.

  Laura slumped on to a chair in the corner and rested her head in her hands before realising she was smearing the blood over her face. She jumped up in a fury and stormed into the bathroom to wash herself.

  Her departure seemed to break the dam of disbelief that constrained the others. "Why weren't we more careful? Christ, we should have known by now." Church's voice hummed with repressed emotion.

  Veitch glanced from one to the other. "Do you think she did it?" he whispered, jerking his head towards the bathroom. "All that blood on her-"

  Church gnawed on a knuckle. The others looked away, unsure what to say.

  Veitch scrubbed his face, suddenly sober, then walked over to the window and threw back the curtains. "Where is she?" Then, fearfully: "Do you think she's dead?"

  "They'd have left a body," Church replied. "Wouldn't they?"

  "Unless they needed it for ritual purposes," Tom noted. Church glared at him for his unfeeling bluntness.

  Veitch finally found it within himself to look at the finger on the table. "What kind of a sick bastard would do a thing like that? Christ, what must she have felt-" His voice choked off.

  Shavi dropped to his haunches to scrutinise the stains on the carpet. "The amount of blood is commensurate with the removal of a finger. There is a chance-"

  "Don't touch it!" Tom yelled as Veitch stretched out a trembling hand towards the finger. Veitch snatched his arm back as if he'd been burned.

  Tom marched over and bent down to examine the finger at table height. "I think it's a sign." He removed his cracked glasses and said, "Which direction do you think it's pointing?"

  Shavi glanced out of the window. "The sun set over there," he said with a chopping motion of his hand, "so I would say, maybe, south-east."

  Tom replaced his glasses and stood up. "Exactly south-east, I would guess. Towards Edinburgh."

  Church broke the long silence that followed Tom's comment. "What does it mean?"

  "Whoever did it is showing us the way. They want us to follow." He stared out to the shrouded countryside that lay beyond the feeble lights of the town. "In all this there is the pathology of evil, of ritual. Somebody is trying to bend the power that is loose in the land towards darkness."

  "Calatin?" Church suggested. "Mollecht? Some other Fomor?"

  Tom shook his head. "This is not their way. It is the first play in a new game."

  Chapter Three

  New Words For An Auld Song

  The night dragged on interminably. They sat in a state of near-paralysis, fearing the worst, afraid to discuss what had happened, unable to decide what they should do next. The finger remained on the small table, the blood rapidly congealing. Their gaze kept returning to it, as if its unchanging pointing were a Poe-esque accusation.

  Laura sat apart, staring out of the window blankly. Church found it impossible to read her; the impassive expression could have been hiding a sense of deep betrayal, or something he didn't want to consider, but which was nonetheless licking at the back of his mind. He hated himself for thinking it, though when he looked around he could tell the others felt the same. The thing he had dreaded had come to pass: a cancerous suspicion was eating away at them all.

  Beyond that he found it almost impossible to cope with the raw emotion searing his heart. At times, if he allowed himself to inspect it too closely, it reminded him of those terrible
feelings that had consumed him after Marianne had died, and that surprised him; had he grown so close to Ruth so quickly? So much had changed over the past few weeks, bonds materialising on a spiritual level, others being forged through hardship: he hadn't even begun to get a handle on what was happening inside him.

  As the first rays of dawn licked the rooftops across the street, the intermittent, stuttering conversation told him what he feared: that the others were looking to him to make a decision. Before Beltane, he would have wanted to tell them he wasn't up to it, he didn't have the resilience or tenacity of leadership within him. But his failure had made him face his responsibilities, and he would take the difficult decisions however much they might corrupt his essential character and beliefs. That, he told himself, is what it's all about. He had to make sacrifices for the greater good. He just hoped the sacrifices wouldn't be so great that there would be nothing left of him by the end of it.

  "We need to move on to Edinburgh rapidly," he said eventually.

  "We are going to look for Ruth, right?" Veitch asked.

  "Of course."

  Veitch eyed him suspiciously. "What would you have done if she'd been taken in the opposite direction?"

  Church didn't answer.

  None of them could decide how they should dispose of the finger so they wrapped it in a handkerchief and buried it in the depths of Church's bag. They packed quickly and checked out, despite the obvious concern of the hotel manager who wondered why they were leaving so early, without breakfast and one travelling companion short.

  The last building of the town was barely behind them when a police car came screaming by, lights flashing, forcing them to pull over. The driver was a man in his mid-forties with greying hair and the wearied expression of someone who had been pushed to the limit, while his eyes suggested he'd been dragged out of bed to catch them. Veitch wound down the driver's window as he approached.

  "You're going to have to accompany me back into town, sir." His eyes were piercing, but Veitch didn't flinch from the stare.

  "No can do, mate. We've got business down south."

  "I don't want to have to ask you again, lad. Since the martial law was brought in, I've been run ragged. They don't think it's the rural areas that need the help, so we have to fend for ourselves. So don't push me around because I'll push back harder if it makes my life easier."

  As Veitch bristled, Church hastily leaned across him. "What's the problem, officer? We were driving okay-"

  "You know what the problem is." There was a snap of irritation in his voice. "A certain matter of blood on the carpet."

  "Oh, that. A bit of horseplay that got out of control. If the manager wants us to pay for cleaning-"

  "Get out of the van. Now." The policeman's body grew rigid with tension.

  Shavi tugged at Church's jacket from the back. "He thinks we killed Ruth," he whispered, too low for the policeman to hear. There was something in his voice that suggested he wasn't simply reading the policeman's mannerisms.

  Everything seemed to hang for a second. Church saw Veitch's eyes narrow, his forearm muscles tense, and an instant later he had snapped on the ignition and popped the clutch. The van roared away, leaving the policeman yelling furiously behind them. Veitch drove wildly until the police car was out of sight, then he slammed on the brakes and reversed up a rough foresters' track which wound through ranks of pine. When the trees obscured the road he killed the engine.

  "Big macho idiot," Laura said coldly from the back. "Now we'll be on everyone's most wanted list. We won't be able to travel anywhere."

  Veitch glared at her. "You haven't got any right to talk. We wouldn't be here if not for-"

  "Leave it out," Church ordered.

  Veitch grew sullen. "The moment he got a look at my record we wouldn't stand a chance of getting out of the area for days," he continued. "We can't afford to waste that time."

  "You did the right thing, Ryan." Church put his head back and closed his eyes wearily. "If things are as bad as they seem… if things are going to get as bad as we expect… the cops will have too much on their plate to worry about us. It might make things a little more difficult, but if they're not putting a dragnet out, I reckon we'll be okay."

  "You better be right," Laura said gloomily.

  Church recalled Shavi's apparent knowledge of the policeman's thoughts and turned to him. "You can read minds now?"

  Shavi shrugged. "It was empathic."

  "But you can get into heads, you've shown us that." Shavi wouldn't meet Church's gaze.

  "What are you getting at?" Laura asked.

  "I think Shavi should try peeling back the layers of your memory so we can find out what you really did see last night."

  Even Laura's sunglasses couldn't mask her concern. "Not in my head."

  "What have you got to hide?" Veitch asked coldly.

  Laura's face froze.

  "Ruth and I went through something similar when all this mess started." Church tried to be as reassuring as he could, for Shavi's sake as much as Laura's. "It wasn't so bad. And it really helped us to get all those trapped thoughts out in the open."

  Laura moved her head slightly and Church guessed that behind her sunglasses she was looking at Veitch, weighing up his words and her options; his barely veiled accusations made it impossible for her to back out.

  "Okay, Mister Shaman. You get to venture where no man has been before." Her voice was emotionless.

  Church clapped a hand on Shavi's shoulder. "It'll be okay."

  Shavi smiled at him tightly.

  They locked up the van and ventured into the pines until they found a spot where the sun broke through the canopy of vegetation, casting a circle of light. Laura and Shavi sat cross-legged in the centre, facing each other, while Church, Veitch and Tom leaned on tree trunks and watched quietly. Shavi had already eaten some of Tom's hash to attune his mood. He spent a few moments whispering gently to Laura; after a while her eyes were half-lidded, her movements lazy.

  The atmosphere changed perceptibly the moment Shavi leaned forward to take Laura's hands; the birdsong died as if a switch had been thrown, even the breeze seemed to drop. There was a stillness like glass over everything.

  When Shavi spoke, the world held its breath. "We are going back to last night, Laura. To the hotel, after the dance. You and Ruth had gone to bed early."

  "I wasn't in the mood. I'd had enough of Miss Prissy. And too many people were looking at my scars."

  "You both went into your rooms. And went to sleep?"

  "I lay down on the top of the bed. I was tired, the booze was knocking me out." Her voice was soporific. "I don't know how long I was asleep. Couldn't have been long. I heard a noise-"

  "What was it?"

  "I can't remember."

  "Try."

  She thought for a moment. "It was Ruth. She cried out."

  "What did you do then? Tell me, step by step."

  "I got up. I felt like someone had beaten me around the head with a baseball bat. I walked to the door… Actually, it was more of a stagger. I thought, `I'm glad Church isn't here to see this. I'd never live it down.' There was another noise. Sounded like a lamp going over. I thought I could hear voices through the wall. I stepped out on to the landing…" Her breath caught suddenly in her throat.

  "What was it?"

  Tears sprang to her eyes and trickled down her cheeks. "I…" She shook her head, screwed her eyes up as if that would prevent the images forming.

  Shavi's reassuring voice grew so low the others could barely hear it. "Concentrate, Laura. Focus on the interloper."

  "It was…" A shiver ran through her. "No, no. I see a large wolf. It reaches right up to the ceiling. Bigger. Passing through. It's growing to fill the whole hotel. It has sickly yellow eyes and it turns them on me. And it smiles… it smiles like a man."

  She started to hyperventilate. Shavi let go of her hands and put his arms around her shoulders, gently pulling her towards him until she was resting against his chest, w
here her breathing gradually subsided.

  "A giant wolf? She's making it up," Veitch hissed.

  They moved into the circle of light and squatted down, waiting for Laura to recover. She wouldn't meet any of their eyes. "That's what you get delving around in the depths of my mind. I told you I'd done too many drugs."

  "What do you think? A shapeshifter?" Shavi seemed to have gained renewed confidence from the success of the exercise; the faint, enigmatic smile Church remembered from the first time they met had returned to his face.

  "I don't think so." Tom's expression was troubled. "The wolf could be representational of whatever she saw. She might be converting her memory into symbols to help her deal with it."

  Church remembered his own experience of regression therapy to try to unlock the memories of the terrible sight beneath Albert Bridge, images so horrible his mind had locked them away. Although what eventually surfaced had proved to be the truth, the therapist had talked about false screen memories designed to protect the mind's integrity from something too awful to bear.

  "This is doing my head in," Veitch said. "It's like you can't believe anything you see or remember or think!"

  "That's how it always was," Tom replied curtly.

  "So how do we break through the symbolism to get to what Laura really saw?" Church asked.

  Shavi rubbed his chin uncomfortably. "I would not like to try again so soon after this attempt. I think Laura… both of us… need time to recover. The mind is too sensitive."

  "Yeah, and it's the only one I've got." With an expression of faint distaste, Laura rubbed her hands together as if wiping away the stain of the memory.

  "At least we know Laura saw something… someone," Shavi continued.

  "So do you believe me now, musclehead?" With her sunglasses on, Church couldn't tell if she was talking to him or Veitch.