by C. J. Waller
A soft knock at the door broke through his brooding.
“Paul? You okay?”
It was Yolanda. This surprised Paul a little; he’d been expecting Mags, given she’d known him longer.
“Yeah, I’m fine. You can come in.”
She opened the door hesitantly and gave him an uncertain smile. “I… I just wanted to make sure you’re okay,” she said. “Mags and me, we’re going to have a drink and wondered if you wanted to, uh, join us?”
“Yeah, of course. Why didn’t Mags come up?” Paul asked.
“She’s just having a quick shower. I don’t think she really knows how to deal with all of this.”
Ahh, so Yolanda was the go-between, the neutral ground, so to speak. “I see. I kind of know how she feels. I have no idea how to deal with all of this, either.”
Yolanda seemed relieved at this admission. “Me neither. So, you coming down? She said she wouldn’t be long.”
“Sure. Give me ten minutes to get out of this wetsuit and I’ll be down.”
o0o
Mags listened intently, her ear pressed against the door. In the distance, she heard Yolanda’s footsteps fading away as she climbed the stairs to find Paul. She took in a deep, shaky breath. At last, she was alone.
Little tears gathered at the corners of her eyes as she limped over to the bathroom. It had been hard not to draw attention to the pain in her leg, but she didn’t want the others fussing. In a way, it had been a good thing emotions were running so high. People were focusing on Piers and the mystery of his disappearance and not on her earlier injury and that suited her just fine.
She closed the bathroom door and locked it carefully, giving it a good tug to ensure no one could just wander in. Then she began to strip off her now-dry wetsuit, leaving her injured leg until last. How on earth was she going to get this thing off it without screaming down the house? In the end, she decided to take the easy way out. So, she was ruining a three hundred quid suit, but that was preferable to potentially tearing her foot off.
The scissors bit into the cloth and the release of pressure made her calf throb. Mags gnawed on her bottom lip. She wasn’t going to cry out. She wasn’t even going to hiss. She was going to see to this leg, inspect it, clean it, dress it and then she would take herself off to a doctor at a more convenient time. It did pass her mind that leaving it probably wasn’t the best course of action, but the thought of someone from this god-awful little town going anywhere near her made her skin creep. Anyway, with any hope they’d be able to leave tomorrow; she’d stop off at a hospital then. At least she would be guaranteed half-decent service. Here, she wouldn't be surprised if they still prescribed trepanning and leeches to drive the demons out of her.
She kept up her internal monologue, trying to distract herself from what she had to do next. The wet suit now in ruined heap on the floor, she turned her attention to the bandage that swathed her ankle. It had an odd, rusty tinge to it. It must've been the water. Definitely. The thought of the wound seeping that colour made her stomach squirm.
She took up the scissors again and began to cut. The throbbing had stopped and, surprisingly, the pain wasn’t too bad. Still, she clenched her teeth in anticipation of what she’d find and peeled back the edges of the bandage. It came away with a faint sucking sensation, and tendrils of red-tinged mucus spun down and spattered on the floor. Her belly convulsed, forcing her to swallow down an acrid mouthful of bile. What was this stuff? It was thick and smelled faintly fishy. She let out a low groan. Whatever it was, it was disgusting and she needed to get rid of it, so she stuck her foot in the sink and turned on the tap. The cold water shocked her skin, sending a fresh wave of goosebumps crawling up her spine. She swallowed again and hesitated, reluctant to touch the wound. Instead, she let the stream of water wash over it and take that… stuff with it.
Slowly, pink flesh was revealed. That was actually a relief. A stuttering bark of laughter escaped her. Whatever that stuff was, it wasn’t hiding a horrendous form of gangrene, eating into her flesh. No necrotising fasciitis feasted there. No strips of skin gave way, revealing hideously rotted meat. Just skin. Pink skin, clean and healthy and-
She stopped. Her heart gave one, heavy thud as her fingers brushed against something hard and crusted. A sense of dizzy detachment settled over her when she felt another, and another, and yet another... She snatched her hand back, her eyes huge, her heart racing. The water washed away the last of the clinging mucus to reveal a concentric ring of nine crusted growths.
No, not growths. Scabs. Little scabs, left by the bite. She picked at the corner of one. It tore away from her skin easily. Rather than revealing a wound, a long, sickly grey-pink tube flopped out and squirmed. As if on cue, she felt a tingling sensation in her calf and the other eight scabs erupted, leaving her with a ring of glistening, wriggling tails. Where they buried into her, the skin looked red and bruised. Again, her stomach twisted and this time there was no stopping it. She threw her head over the bath and puked. As she did so, the little tentacles writhed, stirring up a blizzard of pins and needles.
She glanced back to her leg, propped up on the edge of the sink. The desire to vomit raised its ugly head again, but this time she managed to struggle it down. Gingerly, she pulled her leg out of the sink. The stench of puke was almost unbearable, but it gave herself something else to focus on as she dared to inspect the bite again. Now cleaned, it didn’t hurt, not really, nothing more than a strange fizzing sensation in her calf. Out of sheer morbid fascination, she went to touch one of the protrusions. It twitched and the fizzing started up again, this time reaching her thigh. Her breathing came in ragged gasps as she fumbled for the scissors once more. Fighting back her revulsion, she tweezered it between her thumb and forefinger and snipped it away from where it was buried into her leg.
Its response was immediate. Bright white agony infected her whole leg, sending an explosion of pain up her spine. It detonated in her skull, threatening to knock her out. She reeled, the stench of sick the only thing stopping her from passing out. She hissed through her teeth, her jaw welded shut by the ferocity of the attack whilst tears flowed unchecked down her cheeks.
Whatever it was, it had no intention of leaving her body. She sagged back, her head resting on the toilet cistern, and cried. The scissors dropped with a tinny clang from her hand, and the tiny dismembered tentacle spasmed next to it.
A tap on the door brought her back to her senses.
“Mags? Hey, are you okay? You’ve been in there for over half an hour. Yolanda and I are worried. You need help?”
Good old Paul. His single-minded idiocy might have got her into this mess, but he was a good friend, nevertheless. She took in a shuddering breath and tried to ignore the stump, no bigger than the eraser on the end of a pencil, as it oozed fluid down from her ankle and over her foot.
“Yeah, yeah, I’m fine,” Mags said. It was a struggle to keep her voice level, but she thought she did a pretty admirable job. “I’ll be out in a minute.”
“You sure?” Paul said. She could hear his doubt. “Have you been sick?”
“Uh, yeah, I have. Sorry. Today… Today has been a bit much, that’s all.”
Please don’t remember I was bitten, please don’t remember I was bitten, please don’t remember I was bitten, please don’t –
“Oh, okay. As long as you’re sure.”
Thank you, God. “Yeah, I’m sure.”
“Okay, then.”
She heard a whisper of cloth against wood as Paul moved away, followed by the murmur of voices as he went to talk to Yolanda.
Right. No time to deal with this now. Mags turned the shower on and rinsed away the sick. A few stubborn lumps refused to wash down the plughole so she mashed them down with her thumb. The tentacle followed. Quickly, she rinsed herself off and then dumped half a bottle of TCP on her leg. Again, the eight remaining tails did their dance of pain, but she was ready for it this time. She set her jaw and breathed heavily through her nose, counting ba
ckwards as little fireworks of pain burst behind her eyes. When they subsided, she dried herself and carefully wrapped another bandage over her leg.
No one need ever know.
Chapter Eighteen
The one thing this guesthouse lacked, Paul decided, was decent coffee. They’d decided by mutual agreement not to go down and talk in the common room, where the coffee was still dire, but better than the powered crap in their rooms, and so were now sat on the floor of the room Yolanda and Mags shared drinking bottled water and despairing.
“We can’t stay here,” Yolanda said, and not for the first time. “We need to get somewhere that has decent, reliable contact with the outside world. We need lawyers and an outside police force. Hell, we need the Met, or whatever the equivalent is up here. This place needs to be torn apart.”
“I agree,” Mags said. “But I don’t think any of that is going to happen, Yolanda. I don’t think they’re going to let us go that easily.”
“Oh? And how are they going to stop us?”
“They’ll just re-arrest us again.” She stared gloomily at the patterned carpet. “They’ll say Paul killed Piers, and that I helped. They’ll say you were in on it. Even though they know that isn’t true, that’s what they’ll say. I guarantee it.”
“But why would they do that? Why are they even doing this? Why do we have to stay here? Why?”
Paul held up his hand. Yolanda’s constant questions were beginning to give him a headache.
“Why are you asking me? I don’t know. All I know is Decker's not here, and we're not going anywhere until we find him. We know they’re hiding something, and he's involved somehow. We can't leave him here alone.”
Mags pursed her lips, but nodded. Yolanda, on the other hand, looked rebellious.
“Look, your dedication towards Decker is admirable and all, but I really do think we need to concentrate on getting out of here and getting help. They have no right to do this, to make us stay. We’re victims. I mean, where is Decker? They say he’s visiting family, but how do we know? They could’ve taken him anywhere...”
She trailed off and gave the carpet a sheepish look when she noticed the look of pain that crossed Paul’s face.
“I’m sure he’s okay,” Mags said, softly.
“Yeah, I’m sure he is fine,” Yolanda added.
“We don’t know that,” Paul said. His throat felt tight, his eyes hot. He blinked and coughed, as if that might ease it all, but it didn’t.
“Maybe we should go and ask someone?” Mags said.
“Ha. Yeah, like that would work. Who would we ask? I doubt we’d ever get a straight answer, not here. They’re all in on it. Remember when we first arrived here and Decker asked about his grandmother? Kelly said she’d never heard of her. But now, his family – the same family that aren’t supposed to exist – take him off God knows where to talk to him?” A sudden spark of fury ignited within him. “And we’re just supposed to take this. To sit here and take it all. You know, after we find Decker and we get out of here, I’m going to blow the lid on this place, blow the fucking lid right off and expose it for all to see. We'll make them pay. We'll make them pay for everything.”
“Yeah?” Mags said. “And how are you going to do that? They confiscated our gear. We have nothing. No footage, no interviews, nothing. It was all in the Camper. We don’t even have anything in cloud storage, since the internet doesn’t work here. Let’s face it, Paul – we’re screwed. Either which way, the best we can hope for is just getting the hell out of this place alive.”
“You really think it’s that bad?” Yolanda asked, her dark eyes huge. “That they want to kill us? Murder us? Why?”
“I don’t know about cold-blooded murder, but I do think they’ll do anything to stop their secret from getting out. And since we don’t have any hard evidence of anything any more, the point is moot… What? What is it?”
Yolanda gave Mags a self-satisfied smile, leaned over and pulled something small out from under her pillow.
“What is that?” Mags asked. “Is that… is that what I think it is?”
Yolanda nodded and handed it to her.
“It’s the camera. You got the camera.” Mags gave Yolanda an awe-filled look. “But how did you do it?”
“It was easy. When Paul dropped his mask, I caught it, unclipped the camera and palmed it. Everyone’s attention was on the two of you and I could tell which way the wind was blowing, so I thought it might be a good idea.”
“But... but they did a pat down when we were put in our cells. How did you hide it? You didn’t…” Mags' nose wrinkled in disgust.
“What? God, no! I put it in my boot, down the side of my sock. I took a gamble that they wouldn’t ask us to remove our shoes, given we weren’t exactly suicide risks. That’s why I shut up. I didn’t want to draw any attention to myself.”
Despite everything, Paul broke into a grin. “You're a bloody genius.” He held the camera up and admired it. “This means we have evidence. We have it. We can do it. We can find Decker, get out of here and blow this whole thing open! We can do it!” He leapt up. “I’ll go get my laptop. Hang on.”
He thundered out of the room and up the stairs.
“He could’ve just asked to use mine…” Mags said.
She got up and went to her suitcase. After rummaging through her clothes for a moment, she frowned and started pulling handfuls of t-shirts and underwear out.
“Where is it? It’s not here.” More clothes were scattered on the floor. “My laptop. It’s gone.”
“Gone? Are you sure?” Yolanda crawled over and started sorting through the clothes that now littered the room.
“Yes,” Mags said. “I always pack it in the middle of my suitcase so the clothes cushion it, plus it helps hide it a bit. But it’s not there.”
Both women looked up when they heard the returning thump of Paul’s footsteps down the stairs. He burst into the room looking livid.
“Someone’s taken my laptop,” he said.
“Mine, too,” Mags said.
“Bastards,” Paul hissed. “They aren’t taking any chances. Still, we have the camera – that’s something. We can always view the footage later.”
“Or we can use this,” Yolanda said as she pulled her own suitcase open. From a hidden pouch, she pulled out an iPad.
“You hid that, too? Yolanda, you are fast becoming my favourite person.” Paul took the iPad from her with one hand and pulled her into a crushing hug with the other.
“How… what… why didn’t they find it?” Mags asked.
Yolanda shrugged. “When you’ve lived in a bad part of a big city for any length of time, you soon learn how to hide things properly. This bunch of village idiots didn’t stand a chance.” She grinned and disentangled herself from Paul. “I’ve even got the cables – look. Now we can see exactly what’s going on.”
The elated mood crumbled. That the camera hadn’t been confiscated was something to celebrate, but the footage contained within it was not. Now they had the chance to confirm their version of events, they all suddenly felt reluctant to turn it on and view it. Because whilst it may exonerate them, it might also show exactly what happened to Piers and no one really wanted to see him die.
No one moved. No one spoke. They just stared. In the end, Paul cleared his throat.
“We owe it to him,” he said, his voice hoarse.
Yolanda and Mags simply nodded in response.
“Okay. Are you ready?”
They nodded again.
Paul took in a deep, steadying breath and wished Decker was there to support him. But he wasn’t, so he had to do this alone.
“Okay. Give me the cables.”
“You want me to do it?” Mags asked.
“I think I can figure out how to plug in a camera,” Paul said, with a watery smile. “Don’t need an electrician for that.”
The cables sorted, he handed the tablet to Yolanda. She quickly logged in and located the footage. She glanced at bot
h Paul and Mags, and clicked on the ‘play’ icon.
Everyone held their breath. At first, the footage was much like before – largely soundless bar the gurgle of the water, showing the sweeping underwater vista of the loch and the looming presence of the drowned church. Paul’s breathing quickened. On the screen, he could see Piers up ahead, a dark phantom floating against a backdrop of worn stone. His throat constricted when film-Piers turned around and gave him a thumbs up before swimming through the broken window. Beside him, he heard sniffing and realised Mags was crying again, but he did nothing to comfort her. He simply couldn’t. Nothing he could offer would soothe away this particular pain – nothing other than maybe time, and even then that looked a little shaky.
Film-Paul followed Piers, and the camera drank in the interior of the church once again as he took his time to take it all in. The memory of this moment had Paul reliving it – the sheer awe he felt at discovering such a place wasn't something he would soon forget. But this time fear lurked, intermixed with his awe, sullying the experience. Because he knew what was coming next.
“Are those the statues?” Mags asked.
“Yeah,” Paul said.
“They look really creepy,” Yolanda said. “Why mess with them like that?”
Paul shrugged and leaned in. The camera picked up every detail of those stone faces, re-carved to look like monsters. An ugly shudder crawled down his spine when his hand floated into view. He'd forgotten he'd touched one.
They continued to watch with bated breath as film-Paul's attention was drawn away from the statues and over to Piers, but just as they started to dive down, the footage stuttered and began to break apart into little blocks of grey, white and black.
“What the… no!” Paul whispered, struggling to find his voice. “No… what’s happening… why – why is it doing that?”
“I don’t know.” Yolanda stopped the footage and restarted it once, twice, three times. In the end, she gave up and let it run. Every now and again, a frame would clear and they would spy something that might have been a carving, or might have been a beam, but the rest was electronic nonsense.
