Dark Waters (Mephisto Club Series Book 1)

by David Longhorn

  Still, he thought, there might be something I can do.

  “So,” Malahide asked. “Is domestic violence an issue out here? I mean, with the remoteness, the whiskey, the long dark winters?”

  Father Hackett, the outgoing priest, looked up at the younger man. For the first time Malahide noticed that the whites of Hackett's eyes were road maps of broken capillaries.

  Oh God, he thought. The old fellow's a boozer himself. Foot in mouth, Michael.

  “Violence?” said the old priest tentatively. “No, never any violence here!”

  Hackett started showing Malahide around the surprisingly large parish church, which was clean and well-maintained. The newcomer had noticed a distinct smell of paint when Hackett had shown him in, so he assumed someone had been sprucing the place up for the new clergyman. A small display of wild flowers stood on the communion table. And, as they got closer, Malahide saw that there were also an array of seashells, beautifully polished and laid out in a complex pattern.

  “I can see the nautical tradition is well-represented, Father,” Malahide remarked. “Very creative.”

  He reached out to pick up a particularly impressive shell, turned it over, then put it to his ear with a smile. The familiar noise of his own blood captured and bounced back by the shell called to mind happy childhood days at the beach in Blackpool.

  Maybe this place won't be so bad, he thought. Fresh air, good diet, a chance to recharge my batteries before re-entering the fray. Not like I'll be here forever.

  “If you don't mind, Father,” said Hackett, reaching up and gently removing the seashell from Malahide's hand. Then the old man put it carefully back onto the table, taking what seemed to Malahide an inordinately long time to position the pinkish-white shell.

  “A place for everything, and everything in its place, eh Father?” he said. “Very laudable. I can see you run this place like a well-oiled machine.”

  Hackett looked up again, this time with a speculative expression. He seemed about to say something, then changed his mind. At the same moment, the main door of the church opened, sending echoes around the whitewashed walls. Malahide turned to see a dumpy lady, gray hair in a bun, enter with a basket covered in a tartan cloth.

  “Ah, Moira,” Hackett said, with obvious relief. “This is Mrs. Bell, Father Malahide. She is one of the pillars of our little community. She will see you are well looked after.”

  “Oh, now stop that Father,” said the woman, walking briskly up the aisle. She stopped and looked up at Malahide. “He's a terrible flatterer, that one! It's a team effort here, Father, with me and all the ladies looking after you.”

  “Well, that's very reassuring Mrs. Bell,” Malahide replied, smiling. “I was just saying what a neat, well-organized place this is.”

  “Quite so!” the woman beamed. “But it's Moira, Father, no need to be formal. We're all good friends here.”

  She turned to Hackett and whisked the cloth off the basket. Curious, Malahide looked inside. The light was poor but he could make out glistening movement. At the same time, he detected a fishy smell.

  “Lobster, for your dinner,” the woman explained. “Best if you boil them alive, and that's a fact!”

  Malahide was about to protest, but then saw Hackett's pleading expression. The old man was clearly willing his successor to say nothing.

  Can't change the place overnight, he thought. And perhaps I can kill the lobster more mercifully. There must be a hammer or something else I can use.

  “I can see I'm going to eat more healthily than I did in Glasgow!” he said brightly.

  The reaction clearly pleased Moira.

  “Oh, sure you will,” she exclaimed in her soft Hebridean accent. “You won't find any of those nasty big city shenanigans here.”

  “I'm sure I won't,” Malahide said. “And Jeff will be in paradise.”

  “Jeff?” Moira Bell looked puzzled. “You have a colleague?”

  “You could say that,” laughed Malahide. “Jeff's my cat. A rescued animal I brought from Glasgow.”

  “Oh,” said the woman.

  Obviously not a cat person, the young priest thought. Oh well.

  He glanced around at the communion table again. A question occurred to him, one that he might have asked at once if it had not been for the distracting shell pattern.

  “Where would the crucifix be, Father? Surely you don't need to keep it locked away?”

  “Oh no,” Moira said quickly. “It's just – that it needed a bit of a polish, didn't it Father?”

  Hackett looked goggle-eyed from the woman to Malahide and back. Then he nodded energetically. It occurred to Malahide that his bishop had not been entirely honest about the reasons for his assignment to Soray. Officially, it was because Hackett was getting too old and frail to undertake parish duties on a windswept Atlantic island. But the priest's behavior raised another possibility.

  He's going a big gaga, thought Malahide. Poor old bugger. So confused. Maybe it's the whiskey?

  ***

  Dan waited until everyone else went to lunch. Nisbet discouraged people from eating at their desks, as he considered it 'vulgar'. He always took a long lunch at a posh restaurant and sometimes didn't return to the office at all. This worked in Dan's favor. He promised to join the rest of the staff at the pub after he had 'sorted out a few things'. When he was alone in the office, he made sure Lisa was on the phone with one of her numerous friends. Then he went through Tim's desk and found nothing of interest. Dan sat in Tim's chair and ran a finger along the edge of the desk.

  In old movies, there'd be a secret compartment or something.

  Then a thought struck him. He got down on his knees and looked at the underside of the desk. Nothing. He removed each of the desk drawers one by one and examined their undersides. The third one had a business card Blu-tacked to the pale wood.

  “Gotta respect the classics,” he murmured.

  The card was made from creamy, high-grade paper, with a gold trim. One side was blank, the other bore a few lines of dark blue print.

  Mephisto Club

  Salisbury Square

  London E1

  Dan frowned. Tim had not seemed to be the club-joining kind, other than gyms or health spas. But Dan had only lived in England for a couple of years, and was still struggling with the confusing class system. Club membership was clearly important for the elite, so perhaps this was the key to the 'connections' Tim had mentioned. It occurred to him that perhaps the club would open doors for an American with ambitious plans of his own.

  “Don't go.”

  The words were barely audible, but they were accompanied by a slight breeze that ruffled the papers on Tim's desk and then played around Dan's ankles. He glanced around, but the office was deserted. He felt a sudden irrational impulse to look under the desk again.

  “Tim?” he whispered. Then he giggled, feeling childish. The only sound was the steady whir of air conditioning.

  Seeing things, then hearing things. I've been working too hard. There's your rational explanation.

  Dan put the card into his wallet and did not give it any thought until later, when he was journeying back to South Woodford. Hanging from the handrail with one hand, he took out his cell with the other and managed to type 'Mephisto Club' into a search. It came up blank. Cursing under his breath, he tried again. Despite repeated efforts with slightly altered spellings, the web still yielded nothing.

  Connections, he thought. A club so exclusive it can't be Googled. That's not bad. Not bad at all.

  ***

  The sun was a blazing eye, the sky a burnished sheet of steel. Dan's dream of Egypt was over-lit, dazzling. He was lost in the desert, out of water, alone and close to death. But he would not give up without a fight.

  He was crawling, his clothes in rags. He reached the summit of a vast dune and saw more dunes ahead, like the red-brown waves of some unearthly frozen ocean. But for the first time there was something else. A small, pale object lay in the trough between the hil
ls of sand. Dan tried to stand, stumbled, fell tumbling down until the sand leveled out. Then he crawled over to the pale shape.

  As he got nearer he saw it was a man wearing a white shirt, khaki pants, desert boots. The face was burned almost black by the sun, the skin tight over the skull, the eyes closed. But somehow, he knew it was Tim Burdus. Dan slumped down beside the corpse. He saw that Tim's hand was clutching something. It looked like a piece of parchment, rolled into a tube. He reached out for it, curiosity overcoming his horror. When he touched the hand it twitched, clutched her fingers.

  Tim opened his eyes. The cracked lips moved painfully.

  “My application failed.”

  “Tim!” Dan said. “Let me help you!”

  The man's mouth opened wider, he gave a heave, and made retching noises. Then hundreds of scuttling insects emerged from between the blackened lips. They were scarab beetles. Dan screamed, reeled back as the golden flood rolled towards him over the sand. He tried to beat off the golden beetles but he was too weak to get up and run. Soon the insects' sharp claws were digging into his body, climbing up over his chest, neck, face. Screaming, he tried to keep them away from his mouth, but already he felt legs and mandibles prizing his lips apart.

  Dan sat up abruptly, staring into the darkness of his small bedroom. The clock-radio by his bed told him it was two thirty-three. He gulped down a few mouthfuls of water then got up to refill the glass. In the cramped kitchen of the apartment, the noise of the faucet was shocking, thundering on the stainless steel of the sink. He let the water run for a few seconds.

  “Stress,” he told himself again, staring at his pale reflection in the window. “Need a break.”

  He looked down, already moving the glass under the stream of water. But the flow from the tap was not running clear. Instead it was a sputtering torrent of greenish liquid. Startled, Dan dropped the glass, which did not break but raffled in the sink. Retrieving it he got his hand wet. The tainted water was cold and somehow gritty. He tentatively licked the back of his hand. It was salty. He turned off the water, making a mental note to complain to the landlord.

  Why not send the old bugger an email now? Strike while the iron is hot.

  He got a carton of juice from the fridge then went back into the main room, sat down at his desk. As he fired up his laptop he took a swig from the carton, gagged, and almost spat it onto the computer. The juice was tainted with a foul taste.

  Salt. It's like brine.

  Dan took the carton back into the kitchen to pour the contents down the drain. Then he went into his tiny bathroom to get some mouthwash. As he closed the bathroom cabinet, he glimpsed a movement behind him in the shower cubicle. He saw a round, dark object rear up. Long black legs as thick as his fingers scrabbled noisily against the fluted glass. Dan turned, pressing himself back against the basin in panic. There was nothing in the cubicle. He reached out and tentatively opened the door. A normal-sized spider scuttled for cover, headed down the drain.

  Seeing things. Get a grip!

  After washing the salty taste out of his mouth, Dan went back to bed. As it was approaching the hour, he decided to turn on the radio to check the news. It was tuned to a light classical station, but when he slapped the button on top of the plastic box he did not hear music. Instead there was the sound of a concert hall, low voices in an echoing space.

  Recording of a live performance, he thought, leaning back into the pillow after turning off the bedside lamp. Not a long pierce, obviously – not with a news bulletin coming up.

  But the music did not start. Instead the voices grew slowly louder, until Dan could almost make out what they were saying. It did not sound like a concert audience at all. The voices were those of people who were angry, or in pain, maybe both. Dan sat up on one elbow and reached out to turn up the volume. But before he could touch the control, a single voice arose, insistent, loud, its words clear.

  “Leave us alone you bastard – we will skin you, boil you alive – turn you inside out – rip your balls off – leave us alone – you will be sorry – LEAVE US ALONE!”

  Dan sat bolt upright in bed, then stared at the clock radio. It read two fifty-five. He reached over and switched it from radio to standard alarm mode. Already the dream was fading, leaving only a vague feeling of panic, disgust, confusion. He recalled a voice, a desert, water, the thrashing legs of a spider. He shuddered. In a few moments, even the aftermath of the nightmare had passed, but he was still uneasy. He gulped down some water, began to get up then decided not to refill the glass. Instead, he turned over and tried to get back to sleep.

  He dreamed of sinking into dark green waters, of caverns where black sea-spiders lurked in caves filled with dead men's bones.

  Chapter 2: Ghosts and Strangers

  Work preoccupied Dan for the next few days, but when the weekend finally arrived, he decided to take a look at the Mephisto Club. It was, he calculated, a five-minute walk from the nearest Tube station. He had an Oyster card that let him travel throughout the city. It would only take a few hours. Saturday he devoted to the gym, shopping, and socializing. But on Sunday morning, he rose unusually early and set out for Salisbury Square.

  The place was not so easy to find as Dan had assumed. He got lost in a typically British labyrinth of streets that seemed to lack names. His phone was not helpful, and passers-by tended to be tourists or migrant workers. He was about to give up after failing to get comprehensible directions for the fourth time. Then, for the second time that week, he saw someone who could not possibly be there.

  “Melinda?” he said stupidly, staring at a young woman walking on the other side of the street.

  Same hair, same walk, but it can't be her. Can it?

  There was little traffic, so Dan found it easy to dash across the road. But by then the dark-haired woman, who had been walking at a brisk pace, had rounded a corner. He raced after her, to find himself alone in a shady square. A small private park occupied the middle of the quadrangle. He looked up at the nearest building to see a sign reading Salisbury Square.

  He banished all thoughts of Melinda and focused on finding the Mephisto Club. It turned out to be housed in a modest-looking building. Though architecture was not Dan's field, he guessed the club's headquarters to be Regency, built around the time of the Battle of Waterloo. It had a classical portico, modeled on the Parthenon and other Greek buildings, but with a touch of the Egyptian in the columns. This made it pre-Victorian, but not by much. If the club was that old, it might be one of the most prestigious in London. He took a few steps back to gaze up at the front of the building. There was no sign that anyone was inside.

  “Can I help you, sir?”

  Dan looked down to see a tall, gaunt figure emerge from behind a decorative pillar. The man was wearing a long coat with faded brass buttons, and had a row of medal ribbons. He had a few strands of gray hair on a mostly bald, age-spotted scalp. His face was wrinkled and the skin had a leathery look. Deep-sunken eyes, agate-black, regarded Dan with what seemed like mild distaste.

  A doorman, Dan reasoned, or concierge. Maybe they're open for business?

  “Good morning!” he said brightly, exaggerating his American accent. “Very impressive building! Lovely square you got here! Mind if I take a few pictures?”

  The tall man raised a shaggy eyebrow.

  “We do not encourage it, sir, but you are within your rights,” he replied, his voice deep and resonant. “I regret, however, that only the exterior of these premises can be photographed. No visitors are permitted.”

  “Aw, shucks!” exclaimed Dan, holding up his phone to snap a picture of the club's polished steel nameplate. “I was hoping to get a look-see inside one of your wonderful English institutions.”

  “Many fine buildings are open to the public, sir,” the doorman pointed out. “Buckingham Palace, for instance. The Tower of London. Also sir, you might like to consider the Royal Society, not to mention the British Museum–”

  “Been there, done that, got the t-shirt
!” Dan said loudly. “What I'd like to see is a genuine gentleman's club, you know? Part of the old glory days of the Empire – faded grandeur, all that.”

  “There is nothing faded here, sir,” the doorman said firmly, then flinched as Dan ran up the steps to stand beside the old man.

  “Okay, I'll just take a selfie!” Dan explained, snapping a picture before the doorman could protest.

  “Say, there, old-timer,” he went on, looking up at the man, “how long have you worked the door here, anyhow?”

  The doorman looked down. He stood half a head taller than Dan's five-eleven.

  “I have worked here for many years, sir.”

  Dan nodded politely, then wrinkled his nose. He could smell something, a familiar but still out-of-place scent. It reminded him of museums.

  “Formaldehyde?” he blurted out.

  The doorman took a step back, adjusted the cuffs of his coat.

  “Mothballs,” the old man said.

  Dan shrugged, no longer smelling the peculiar odor.

  Hell, maybe English mothballs smell like embalming fluid.

  “Say,” he said, “how would a regular guy like me get to be a member of a club like this?”

  The doorman smiled for the first time, reminding Dan of a phrase he had read about some British prime minister or other.

  'He had a smile like the brass plate on a coffin.'

  “In accordance with the rules,” the man said, “one would have to be nominated by a member of the club, and then vetted by the membership committee.”

  Dan grunted in disappointment. It was a typical British setup, one that effectively barred the merely rich or ambitious from joining the actual elite.

  “May I take it that sir is not acquainted with any members of the club?” the doorman went on, with a hint of sarcasm.