Darker

by Simon Clark

  ‘Is Rosemary going to change into dry clothes, Amy?’

  ‘Don’t think so. Running – wheeee … fast as a horse.’

  ‘Where to?’

  ‘Don’t know.’

  ‘Oh.’

  ‘Dad does though.’

  ‘Your Dad?’ He frowned. ‘Amy, can you see him?’

  ‘Boys! Boys! Out of Rosemary’s way, she’ll knock you down, pow!’

  ‘Amy, can you see your Dad now?’

  ‘Of course, silly. He’s with Rosemary Snow.’

  ‘Has he been swimming?’

  ‘Yup. And now he’s running through the field with her.’ She didn’t look at Michael, just lifted the doll for him to see, then returned to moving its legs so it walked along the bench.

  ‘Whereabouts are they?’

  ‘Oh … there.’ Without looking up, she pointed behind her. She was more interested in the doll.

  ‘The cottage where we stayed last night?’

  Amy nodded, then made the doll jump up on to the bench’s back rest.

  Rosemary Snow jumped down from the fence. ‘Do you think we can sit down for a while?’ She panted and rubbed her side.

  ‘Just another ten minutes.’ Richard took a deep breath; sweat stung his eyes. ‘But we can walk now. I just want to put a bit more space between us and those apes.’

  ‘We can’t walk all the way to Yorkshire.’

  He looked grim. ‘Don’t remind me. Have you still got the money from the cottage?’

  She pulled the dripping bundle of notes from her pocket.

  Richard said, ‘With luck, there’ll be enough to get a hire car.’

  ‘If we can find somewhere to rent us one. We’re in the middle of nowhere.’

  Richard looked round at the fields and hedgerows. A stream meandered away into the distance. There wasn’t even a road. The clock in his head renewed its savage tick. Batting out the seconds that remained between now and nine o’clock.

  Gritting his teeth, he said, ‘Come on, if we head downstream we might reach a town before too long.’

  With Rosemary following Richard set up a hard pace; and he found himself praying for that miracle again.

  In the garden of Darlington House, Amy seemed more interested in the doll so, ruffling her hair, Michael said, ‘I’ll just go and get you a cold drink, pumpkin. Oh, and best play in the shade across there, we don’t want all this hot sunshine making you poorly.’ He noticed Christine and Joey shooting him suspicious looks. He pretended not to notice. He’d make sure they wouldn’t pose any threat to his plan.

  On the way to the house’s kitchens he stopped off at the head of security. Mitch Winter, a heavy, diligent man with his bull head shaved to the skull, was speaking on the telephone, a cigarette between finger and thumb of the other hand. On the walls of the office were framed maps of islands. All were small islands; all had, or had had at one time, tiny cloistered communities – Sark, Lundy, Pitcairn, Steep Holm. Interests reflect personality. Sometimes they reflect truths about yourself that even you’re not aware of. Ex-Marine, ex-assassin, ex-mercenary, Mitch Winter yearned to become an ex-member of this rat-race life. He hankered for a stone cottage tucked cosily into the fold of a hill that overlooked the sea: solitary cliff-top walks and an easygoing island population; he’d be on first name terms with everyone; evenings he’d spend sipping Guinness in an ancient inn with a dog beneath the table and his hands clean, at last, of other men’s blood.

  When he saw Michael he hung up and stood respectfully.

  Michael snapped out the words. ‘The girl’s father’s still alive.’

  ‘Richard Young?’ The voice was a surprisingly quiet growl.

  ‘And he’s with Snow.’

  ‘Do you know where?’

  ‘Back in Glebe Cottage in Devon. I want you to get those two idiots you sent down there to go over the area again.’

  ‘And when they find them? Make it look like an accident?’

  ‘No,’ Michael snapped. ‘Just tell them to kill the pair of them – strangle, knife, gun, sodomize them to death for all I care. I just want Snow and Young rubbed out. Now!’

  ‘But they can’t pose a threat. They’re only —’

  ‘They’ll be on their way here. It doesn’t take a genius to realize Young’ll work out what’s planned for tonight.’

  ‘I’ll get right on to it.’

  Michael headed off to the kitchen, eyes blazing. He was like a guided missile locked on to its target. He knew what he wanted; he knew he could get it. God help any poor fool who got in his way.

  Richard told Rosemary to grab five minutes’ rest and try to dry her clothes as best she could before they set off again. He reckoned they’d put three miles between themselves and the cottage so, for the time being, they should be beyond the reach of those hairy-knuckled thugs.

  By the stream grew a wild rose bush heavy with white blossom. He watched Rosemary take out the roll of bank notes and push them one by one on to the thorns like she was hanging out washing to dry.

  ‘How much?’ he asked, trying to unlace his trainers.

  ‘Two hundred.’

  ‘That’ll be enough to hire a car … damn.’ The laces had tangled into a wet knot. He used one foot to push the shoe off. Then he peeled off his socks and shirt. His body ached. Probably more from tension than exhaustion. He noticed a cluster of bruises down his chest and remembered being bounced down the hillside that morning like a tennis ball.

  He watched Rosemary peel off her wet jeans: they’d stuck to her legs like a second skin. As she pulled they dragged down her briefs, flashing at him a patch of jet-black pubic hair.

  He had to make a deliberate effort to look away. She made no effort to hide herself, as if the events of the last couple of weeks had knocked all the modesty out of her.

  Christ, all we need is for a party of ramblers to come along from the Holland-on-Sea Young-At-Heart club, or something, and they’ll think they’ve stumbled on the makings of an open-air orgy.

  He draped his shirt, socks and jeans over a branch, then walked by the rose bush with its strange money-fruit and went down to the stream to wash the smell of pool chlorine from his face.

  A voice ran through his head: You’ve got to reach Wakefield by this evening. You’ve got to stop Michael. You’ve got to get Amy and Christine and, yes, even Joey pain-in-the-ass Barrass away from there.

  How? How? How?

  Even after walking this far there was still no sign of a town. What now, Dicky Boy? There might be an isolated house. You find some old dear living alone, take her car.

  Would he break the law, maybe even end up hurting some innocent member of the public to reach Wakefield in time?

  He squatted there, gazing trance-like into the rippling water, the stream playing through his fingers; a dragon-fly hovered, electric-blue in the sunshine; a helicopter chopped the summer air high above.

  He knew the answer. Yes. This was survival. Deep down he knew he was obeying Nature’s rule to the letter. Nature didn’t want him to save a four-year-old girl with a passion for Tom and Jerry cartoons and white chocolate and Casper glow-in-the-dark stickers. A little girl who could be so downright bossy sometimes, or who could launch unprovoked attacks on her older brother, trying to bite his nose so hard it brought tears to his eyes. Nature didn’t want him, Richard Young, her father, to rescue a little girl called Amy Young. Nature wanted – no, Dicky Boy, Nature bloody well demanded he preserved his and his ancestors’ genes that she carried in her body. He was damn well slavishly and blindly obeying a billion years of evolution. Poets and moonstruck teenagers call it love.

  I’m obeying the programme that must be obeyed. Like that dragon-fly hovers there beating its wings, like that sparrow there on the branch exhausts itself in this heat finding insects to stuff into the greedy beaks of its clamouring chicks. That’s not parental love. That’s genetic programming. Like a dog or a rat or a human will die for their offspring, so that offspring can breed more and more of the s
pecies. We’re not parents, we’re damn’ postmen. Children are the envelopes that contain the genes, and humans are slavishly working to make sure the mail arrives safely at its destination. Just to satisfy that untiring, that uncompromising, that pitiless tyrant called Mother Nature – so it can fill the world from seabed to mountaintop with that thing called Life. What’s so bloody good about it? What does life bring but conflict, pain, disappointments, then, ultimately, death?

  ‘Richard. Are you OK?’

  He looked up at her. His eyes stung; all he could see was a blur.

  ‘Must be the pool chlorine.’

  As he wiped his streaming eyes he felt her guide him by the arm to the banking. There he sat on the grass, his head down. She put her arms round him and held him tight. For a second he sat like a chunk of ice, emotionally blocked until, at last, the feeling broke. Then he held her tightly, too, burying his face into her sun-warm hair and sobbed like a wounded child.

  Her closeness was a healing drug. He felt the humanity spread back into his arms, legs, through his whole body like a warming tide.

  Was life worth living?

  Yes, it bloody well was.

  And the lives of his family were precious too. He would win them back, and if he lived to be ninety and sat in his armchair at Christmas surrounded by happy children, grandchildren, great-grandchildren he would remember today. When he felt that great life force, running with an energy greater than a million nuclear generators, greater and more enduring than the stars themselves, when he felt it crackling with a breathtaking power through the willows, through the grass, the rose bush, the bird, the dragon-fly – and through himself; and through this battered and scarred girl that he pulled tight to him, feeling her heartbeat against his arm, her gentle sobbing breath against his neck.

  He lifted his head up so he could look into her shining eyes. ‘We’re going to get through this, Rosemary. And we’re going to be a team that even Michael can’t break.’

  A smile reached her lips. ‘Michael doesn’t know he’s bitten off more than he can chew. We’ll show him, won’t we?’

  ‘We’ll show him, kidda.’

  And before he could stop himself he kissed her gently on her lips.

  The softness of her lips was indescribable. Richard trembled, feeling something of that life force surge in a wave from her lips into his, then back again.

  For a moment they stayed in that same embrace, faces a hand’s breadth apart, looking into each other’s eyes – and reading something there that unrolled a great mystery.

  Richard sensed it was time to break the embrace. Rosemary smiled almost shyly now. She felt it, too.

  Although they no longer touched physically something had bonded them deeply. At that moment Richard felt closer to this sixteen-year-old girl than he had to anyone before in his life.

  As he moved back to find his clothes he noticed a change to her left cheek.

  Quickly, he looked again. For a moment he wasn’t sure what had caught his eye. Only that it looked different.

  Then he knew what was happening.

  Chapter 67

  Resurrection

  ‘Rosemary. Here! Let me see your face!’

  Startled, she looked up at him.

  ‘What is it? What’s wrong?’

  He heard panic drive through her voice.

  ‘Come here.’ He lifted her hair so he could examine her cheek.

  ‘Richard …’

  ‘Just a moment.’ He wiped her face gently with his handkerchief. ‘I don’t believe it; it’s coming off.’

  ‘What is?’

  ‘The scabs and the stitches. It’ll have been that soaking they got in the swimming pool. They’re just wiping off.’

  ‘The stitches?’

  ‘They’re probably made of some kind of polymer. They’re dissolving.’

  He was aware of her eyes, intense and earnest-looking, searching his face as if half-afraid he was playing some cruel joke.

  But he could hardly believe his own eyes as that disfiguring ridge of black scab came away as easily as if it were merely dried mud.

  After he’d finished she ran down to the water’s edge and crouched down to look at her reflection in the water.

  For a full minute she stared at it in disbelief. Then she came back up to him, tears filling her eyes.

  ‘It’s gone,’ she said in a voice that was full of wonder.

  ‘The scab would have flaked off naturally anyway.’

  ‘No. Not the scab.’ She stroked her cheek, eyes bright. ‘I had a birthmark. A big red thing, it was; shaped like a letter Z.’

  ‘It’s gone now.’

  She was crying. Richard wasn’t sure whether it was relief or sense of loss over something she’d carried since she was born.

  ‘I don’t believe it,’ she was saying and shaking her head. ‘After all these years. It’s gone … it’s just gone.’

  Richard realized that the birthmark wasn’t as trivial as he supposed. Her whole body shook with relief. For her this had been a miracle. And he’d seen it happen.

  She asked him again to look at her face. Was there any scarring? Would it look normal once the pinkness had gone?

  ‘It’s perfect. No more scabs; it’s not pitted; there’s no scar. All there is, is a smooth beautiful cheek.’

  ‘But my face was in such a mess. I was a Frankenstein.’

  ‘Nature’s done a good job healing the wound. Probably with a bit of help from the hospital’s plastic surgeon.’

  He sensed her spirits lift with a surge; her eyes brightened.

  Lightly she ran to get dressed. A bank note dislodged itself from one of the rose thorns and floated down to the ground. Cheerfully she picked it up. She had no pants beneath the T-shirt and Richard found himself being mooned.

  She realized, pulled the T-shirt back down, then shot him a grin that bordered on the cheeky.

  Richard smiled back. He kept the smile on his face as he pulled on his sun-dried socks. The smile felt artificial. Because the truth came thundering back.

  The time was 2:15. Wakefield was a solid five hours’ drive away: providing they got hold of a car; providing there were no traffic jams; providing there were no unforeseen hold-ups; and providing Michael’s apes didn’t catch them first.

  ‘The money’s dry,’ Rosemary called.

  He gave a nod. Then set off walking across the field. Rosemary Snow had to run to keep up with him.

  He was wondering what Amy and Christine were doing right at that moment.

  Chapter 68

  Leaving Michael

  At the same time as Richard walked through the Devon field Christine was talking to Joey.

  ‘Well, I have to tell you I don’t like it. Where on earth are Richard and Isaac? They should be here by now.’

  ‘Michael said they’d make a slight detour to pick up some reports from a researcher.’

  ‘But why not fax them? And why did Michael say all along we were going to Norfolk, then suddenly say the venue had been changed to this place in Yorkshire instead? I’m telling you, Joey, something doesn’t feel right about what Michael’s telling us.’

  ‘Nothing’s wrong. What have you seen to change your mind about Michael?’

  ‘A feeling. That’s all. A feeling deep down that Michael’s hiding something.’

  They walked away from the pond towards where Amy played in the shade of the tree.

  ‘I agree, it’s no barrel of laughs.’ Joey pushed his lank hair back from his forehead. ‘But it’s no different from what we’ve already been through this week.’

  ‘I know … well, I don’t know. Look, Joey, it just feels different. The way Michael’s acting.’

  ‘It doesn’t seem any different to me.’

  ‘That’s because you don’t spend enough time with your children.’ She looked up at his muddy brown eyes; there was that hurt, defeated look she knew only too well. She sighed. ‘Joey, he’s got the same look in his eye that Mark has when he thinks he’s pul
led one over on you. You know? He’ll be in his bedroom, supposed to be doing his homework and all the time he’s watching a wrestling video with the sound turned down.’

  ‘What do you think Michael’s up to?’

  ‘I don’t know, Joey.’

  ‘I’ll ask him when he thinks he’ll get this Beast thing under control again.’

  ‘No. Don’t do that. But I’ve been thinking we should do something.’

  His voice softened. ‘Like what, Sis?’

  She looked at the house, then back at her brother. ‘We should be thinking of taking Amy away from here. Without Michael’s agreement. In fact, without him knowing.’

  ‘But how will we get the Beast off our backs? It’s —’

  ‘Shh. Michael’s coming this way now.’

  He didn’t know the name of the town.

  He didn’t know the name of the old man.

  But Richard Young could have kissed the gritty pavement, then kissed the old man’s wrinkled forehead.

  ‘There’s one nearby?’ Richard repeated, not believing his ears.

  The old man scratched the wrinkled forehead. ‘Bradhall’s rent cars, yonder on Church Street.’

  Richard flashed Rosemary a look of triumph.

  ‘They close early on Thursdays. Bill Bradhall takes his family to Torquay on Thursdays; he’s got a sister who —’

  ‘Thank you,’ Richard said feeling near-overwhelming gratitude to the old man in his baggy grey cardigan.

  Richard and Rosemary crossed the street lined with shops and headed in the direction the old man had indicated. The man still talked as they walked away.

  ‘Turn left at Samuel’s book shop. Like I said, best be quick. He closes early today.’

  ‘Think we’re in luck?’ Rosemary asked breathlessly as Richard broke into a run.

  ‘By God, we better be.’

  Richard thought: The time’s coming up to 2:30. If we do get a hire car, and providing the roads are clear we’ve still got a five-hour drive in front of us. Hell, and it’s peak tourist season down here. What if all the hire cars are gone?

  Come on, come on. Bradhall’s, the old man said. Bradhall’s. Where the hell are they?