Tanners Dell: Darkly Disturbing Occult Horror

by Sarah England

  Jes watched and waited until Toby pulled open the can and sat down. “So…friend of Ruby’s, are you? I didn’t think she had any friends. Isn’t she banged up?”

  Toby nodded. “Can’t say I blame her having a go at that bastard, Paul Dean though, can you?”

  Jes shook his head, eyes narrowing. “How come you know Ruby? They haven’t let her out, have they? You’re not, you know, like in a relationship with her or anything?”

  “Nah, nothing like that! It’s more that I know Becky, the nurse looking after her. Ruby’s still in the nutcracker suite if you know what I mean? Probably forever now. I can’t say it’s surprising really, what with her background.”

  Jes never took his eyes off him. “Interesting. A friend of her nurse. So what’s all this about her being in trouble then? And a daughter, you say?”

  Toby nodded and took a gulp of lager. The guy was both shrewd and wired. No doubt he had some heavies working for him too: on this side of the line you came up against all kinds of psychos the police wouldn’t even be able to find let alone touch. You could be dumped in a skip before you knew it. “Aye. Like I said, Becky’s asked me to help because Ruby’s worried about her daughter.” He related what he knew about Woodsend, aware that Jes was scrutinising him intently; unnervingly. “I don’t mean to be rude but you’re a last ditch attempt at trying to get some information.”

  Jes leapt up. “You’re a copper!”

  Fuck. “Off duty.” He remained sitting but held his arms out wide. “Jes, I’m not interested in you, I swear. None of my colleagues know I’m even here – I’m off patch and off duty. I really am asking just as a friend. We need a lead – anything you can tell me for Becky and Ruby’s sake, not to mention this young lass, Alice. I won’t mention your name and I won’t quote you – I just need something that might help - anything. You’ve got my word.”

  Jes towered over him. “I don’t need this shit.”

  “No one does, but it’s desperate now. Really…” As fast as he could, Toby related all that Becky had told him, leaving nothing out and including what was in Linda Hedges’ diary. “So you see – everyone who’s tried to help is either dead or seriously ill?”

  Finally, Jes conceded Toby’s sincerity and sat down again. “Right. Okay. Well it’s worse than I thought then. I honestly thought, hoped, the whole thing would die out – that maybe it was just something me and Ruby would have to live with and try to forget.”

  “Tell me,” Toby insisted, less urgently now. “Tell me what happened there – right from the start. I want to do something about it but I can’t if I don’t know owt.”

  “Well there was no point in people like me and Ruby coming to you lot, was there? Even now it’s a dead loss from what you’re saying.”

  Toby waited.

  “Okay, well what I suspected was all in bits and pieces anyway – none of it could be proved. And every time I got close I got burned – very, very badly burned like you wouldn’t believe. But I tried.”

  “How do you mean, burned?”

  “Ill. Don’t ask me how the bloody witch did it, but man you’d get so sick you couldn’t fucking move. If you’ve ever tried to detox from smack you might have some idea what it was like. It stopped you in your tracks – you had to get the hell out to save your own skin – then sneak in through the back door again and hope they didn’t sniff you out… It was like that demon witch could smell your blood.”

  “Witch? Would this be Ida Dean? Not that anything can be done about alleged witchcraft.”

  He nodded. “Exactly. She’s Ruby’s mother, the poor little cow. No wonder she was fucked up and suicidal when I met her. We holed up in Tanners Dell, down in the mill for a while, but she’d wake up screaming the walls down, saying she didn’t know who I was and there were ghosts floating into her face and stuff. Drugs calmed her down. In the end though, we left and I took her to the family camp in Devon. That’s where we found out we had the same genes – my mother was good with her, got her talking, see? Anyway, when she knew we’d the same blood she upped and left. I still would’ve taken care of her but she legged it all the same.”

  “So how—”

  “Yeah, well she had no place else to go, did she? I found her in the mill again a few weeks later – it was the only place she knew to hole up in. And she was in a really bad way by that time – seriously bad, totally loopy, like she was possessed by the fucking devil or something – so I brought her here to Leeds, to an old mate’s as it was then. We were both addicts and she was desperate for a fix. It was my way of looking after her, I suppose – to take away her pain. It hurt like hell to watch. After that she might disappear for a few days, but she always came back. And sometimes she seemed to know who she was; but most of the time she didn’t. The last time she went AWOL I went looking for her as usual but I didn’t get to her in time. She’d already knifed Paul Dean in his bed.”

  “Hang on, I just need to understand something - could we rewind a bit? So you met her when she’d had this child already? She was fourteen, yeah?”

  “No, sixteen.”

  “Apparently not, no – she must have been fourteen, mate. She’s twenty-seven now and her daughter will be thirteen this year. That’s another reason we’ve got to act fast - because this child is going to get a satanic baptism for her birthday.”

  “Fourteen? And she’d already had a baby?”

  Toby nodded.

  “Jesus wept! So hasn’t this nurse friend of yours reported the child as ‘at risk’ or something? Got child protection involved?”

  “Yes but the entire case was closed down yesterday by my senior commanding officer. He says the girl isn’t in any danger from her parents, Ida and Paul Dean, so you—”

  “Ernest Scutts?”

  Toby blanched. “Er…yeah, but how did—”

  “Don’t tell me you don’t know? Oh for fuck’s sake, what chance have we got with you fucking amateurs? I spent years tracking these bastards and so did Ruby, and we were neither of us in a fit state! Yeah, Scutts is in the nasty little coven, as is the friendly local GP, and the Reverend Gordon who preaches sermons every Sunday in Bridesmoor. They’ve got it all sewn up and no one can touch them because of what that witch does to people who try.”

  What? Scutts? Holy crap… “And you’ve known about this for how long?”

  “Years. Since before you were born, that’s for sure.”

  “How? I mean, how come you’ve got such an obsessive interest?”

  Jes strode over to the fridge, handed Toby another can and snapped open one for himself. “My family are gypsies and I was born in Devon. My mother’s dead now but one summer when the camp was in Woodsend she went missing for several months and was never found. Meanwhile some of our women had miscarriages and still births – one of them committed suicide in the woods there. There was other bad stuff too and in the end they didn’t have much choice but to leave. All except Ida – she stayed because she’d got in with Lucas Dean.” He let the information sink into Toby’s brain for a moment. “Paul Dean’s disgusting old father. Looking for him was one of the reasons I found the old mill.”

  “Why would you be looking for Lucas Dean?”

  “Because of what he did to my mother. She managed to escape eventually, but not without having her life ruined.”

  “Why did she never report it?”

  “How could she? She was sworn to secrecy else there’d be revenge.”

  “By who?”

  “Cora Dean. Lucas’ wife.”

  “Really? How did she know your mother then?”

  “She helped her. My mother escaped while the coven was conducting a black mass. Somehow she got out – she doesn’t remember how because she was half dead after what they did to her, but she bumped into Cora in the woods at about five in the morning. What that woman was doing there at that time I don’t know, but she got her some clothes and told her to run and never ever come back. My mother managed, hitching rides until she found the family at an old
haunt in Devon. After that they went over to Europe to get as far away as possible from the curse they believed was on them. When I found out what those pigs had done to my mother though, I came back – decided I’d find out who they were and kill them.”

  “What happened?”

  “First I had to get to England and find the place. Then I got lodgings and started tracking down the Deans. I was all pumped up but on the very first day in Woodsend it went badly wrong.” He smirked to himself and took another swig of lager. “It was like ‘they’ were waiting for me…Anyway, I met this woman in the woods and something pretty damn nasty happened shortly after – I got so badly sick I thought I was going to die, and it took me a long time to get well again. Anyway, when I came back a few weeks later to try and find out about her, no one knew who she was. Man, it was weird. I couldn’t work out what the hell happened. Had she drugged me or what? So there I was, wandering down to the river to try and work out what to do next, when I saw this girl lying underneath the surface of the water, just waiting to drown and be taken out of the world. I saved her.”

  “That was Ruby?”

  He nodded.

  “Ah, so that’s how you met! Did your mother describe her time in captivity – did she say what they did to her?”

  “Not much. She’d blanked a lot out – but we’re talking ritual abuse.” He paused while he cleared his mind. “I’ve blinded myself with drugs all these years just like Ruby. You’re right though, they’re still committing rape and murder. They destroy people’s lives and they’re doing something else too – that woman, the one I just told you about – well she’s at the heart of it. I could tell you the full story about if you like, although you probably won’t believe it coming from someone like me.”

  “I’m keeping an open mind, Jes. Whatever I need to know…”

  Jes eyed him steadily as if weighing up the consequences. Eventually he said, “Okay, I’m gonna trust you with this so you understand what you’re dealing with. It’s probably best you’re prepared for some pretty evil shit because once you get involved they’ll throw every low down, nasty trick in the book at you and more besides. They’ll mess with your head until you don’t know who the fuck you are anymore.”

  “Okay.”

  “Right. Well on that first day in Woodsend this woman appeared in the woods. I turned a corner on the path and there she was, just standing there as if she’d been waiting for me. I stopped dead and stared at her like I was hypnotised. She was stunning - with this cascade of shiny, raven hair; all glinting eyes and full red lips. The whole place seemed sort of freeze-framed, all the birds stopped singing and all I could see was her – smiling at me – reaching out for my hand. I wandered back through the trees with her in a dream-like state, and we came out at a cottage. I couldn’t take my eyes off her. She had this see-through white top on with her shoulders wriggling out of it, and she kept touching herself - her neck, her hair, her body – while we sat in the garden drinking wine. Next thing I knew we were practically running upstairs to the bedroom. Her skin was warm and soft and tanned; my head was spinning and I was delirious, in a fever, for her. Anyway, I’d got my shirt off, pulling at her clothes, shoving myself into her and it felt like I was going to explode when…are you ready for this?”

  “Um…”

  “Well, I’m looking into her eyes while I’m you know… when suddenly they turn totally white – like not just the iris but the whole eye – no pupils – nothing. Just all white like they’d flipped round in her head! Next second she morphed into this cackling toothless troll with wild grey hair and wrinkled skin like an ancient hag’s. I threw her off and almost fell out of the house with this horrible, raucous laughter ringing in my ears, staggered onto the grass outside and turned back in disbelief. Like, you know, what the fuck was that? Well, I looked up and her window pane was solid black as if it had been painted out. I was, like, did she put something in the wine? What the fuck happened? And then it was like being hit with an overdose of smack - I was running away through the woods but my head was banging and I kept doubling up with stomach cramps. To be honest how I made it back to my digs I’ll never know – it was all in a kind of drugged-up blur - the ground kept rearing up and the air was static. I was lurching from tree to tree and there were giant spiders running up the trunks and bloody great bit pythons slithering across the path. Man, it was like the biggest psychedelic trip you could ever imagine…”

  “So that was Ida?”

  Jes nodded. “Exactly.”

  “She isn’t Ruby’s real mother, you do know that?”

  “Yeah, they’re all inbreeds but that old crone brought her up. What appals me though, and I mean really fucking appals me, is that the old devil himself must be my dad – the one who raped my mother.”

  “Do you know for sure? He might not have been.”

  “She was pregnant when she came back to the camp. That’s why they’d left her alone that night and she got the chance to escape. She was supposed to marry Nicu, but he wouldn’t touch her after that, so she spent the rest of her life alone and had no more children. That old bastard has to be my father. Which is another reason I won’t have children and nor should Ruby. I honestly think she’s in the best place now, you know. At least she’s being taken care of and helped.”

  “Except she did have a child.”

  “So you say. She never told me.”

  “I really need to speak to Cora. Do you think she’ll talk?”

  “That cowardly bitch looks after number one. Knew what was happening and just let it. Ruby said she’d take her shopping and give her a bath once in a while, but that was all. Cora could have helped her daughters and her granddaughters, yet she did nothing. Meanwhile she’s got dear uncle Rick living with her – a bad ass skank who kept a job at the mine until it closed. Now he spends his days in The Highwayman looking for prey. Any woman who drops in there for a quick drink on the way home is asking for trouble. As is anyone walking through the woods on a nice afternoon.”

  “I need to speak to Cora when Rick’s out, then.”

  “You’ll not get a word out of her. She’s mother to all three Deans. One of her daughters is now dead and the other is married to Derek. They’re all in the coven and she’ll not talk.”

  “Not even for Alice’s sake?”

  “Course not.”

  “Jes. If I manage to break this apart, will you testify in court?”

  “What do you know about black magic?”

  “Um…nothing.”

  “Thought not or you wouldn’t have asked.”

  “One final question - if you’re the son of old Lucas Dean then how come you haven’t turned out like the other three Deans?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe, just maybe – please God – I’m not his.”

  Toby stuck out his hand. “Thanks for talking to me, mate. I’m going to blast this apart one way or the other.”

  “I loved her, you know?” Jes said.

  Toby nodded, then scribbled his mobile number onto a scrap of paper. “This is going to happen fast now so let’s keep in touch.”

  ***

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Doncaster Royal Infirmary

  Tuesday

  When Becky walked back onto the ward she found Anna taking Callum’s pulse and she hurried over.

  “Is everything alright?”

  Anna began filling in his observation sheets. “He’s got a temperature again, and tachycardia.”

  With a pang of alarm, she realised Callum’s breathing was rattling quite noisily, and although he was propped up against several pillows he seemed to be struggling for breath. “He’s very chesty all of a sudden,” she said, grabbing another pillow to put behind him.

  “Yes. I’ll bleep the SHO,” Anna said, bustling over to the nurses’ station.

  Becky grabbed a chair and took hold of his hand. His health had deteriorated rapidly in the short time she’d left his side. How could this have happened? He was on antibiotics too.
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  “It’s a chest infection, isn’t it?” she said to Anna when she returned a couple of minutes later.

  “The doctor is on his way.”

  “Yeah, I saw him in the canteen. Anna…”

  The Sister regarded her with a deadpan expression and Becky, tired and worried, blurted out words she hadn’t intended, “You know I could do with some help here. Why aren’t you more concerned? Why isn’t he waking up? I don’t understand!”

  That woman was all neat and clean, just doing her job, while her own world was falling apart. She looked down at her crumpled clothing and tears pricked her eyes. How quickly our lives could unravel…

  To her surprise, Anna whipped the curtains round them both and drew up a chair. “We don’t know why,” she whispered. “It’s very odd.”

  Becky stared back. “Anna, you know I’m a nurse just like you – please tell me what you think is going on!”

  Anna looked directly into her eyes. “I think trauma. His mind - it does not want to wake up yet. It is my belief he will be okay when the time is right.”

  Becky nodded. “Really? I see, okay. Well yes, that would make sense.”

  Anna seemed poised to say more but stopped when the SHO suddenly burst through the flowery curtains. His hair was raked up in a rooster shape and pens, notes, stethoscope and bleeper all seemed to be falling out of his pockets. “Sorry, sorry to keep you waiting…now, how are you, old boy?”

  Anna stood up, efficiently relating the necessary information while he listened to Callum’s lungs. After a brief examination he said, “Yup. Let’s get a sputum sample and I’ll write up some IVs. Can we prop him up a bit more and get the physio over?”

  Anna bustled away and he turned to Becky. “Are you staying with him again today?”

  She shook her head. “I want to but I’ve been here pretty much ever since he was admitted and I’ve got to run a few errands. I’ll be back as soon as I can, though.”

  “Okay, well he should pick up soon now we’re getting some different antibiotics in.”

  “But why isn’t he waking up? Do you think it’s the trauma of what he’s been through?”