Dark Waters (Mephisto Club Series Book 1)

by David Longhorn

  “James Nisbet,” Dan said. “I know him. He a member?”

  The words were out of his mouth before he was even aware of the thought behind them. But his instinct proved correct. The doorman's mouth twitched, and he raised his chin a little.

  “I cannot divulge the name of members, sir. This is a private club. For gentlemen.”

  The last word was heavily emphasized.

  “He's a member, right?” Dan insisted. “So if my old pal James puts my name forward, I could join? In theory, at least?”

  “If,” the doorman said, making the one word sound like a knell of doom.

  Challenge accepted, Dan thought, taking a step back.

  “Well, it's been a blast!” he said. “See you again soon!”

  Dan turned and walked back the way he had come. When he reached the corner, he turned and looked at the Mephisto Club. The doorman had vanished. But at a second floor window Dan thought he saw movement, what might have been someone stepping back out of sight. Then, as he continued to walk, a ray of sunlight caught the glass, blinding him.

  ***

  Father Hackett left on the ferry on Saturday, and Malahide breathed a sigh of relief. He had spent three days trying to make sense of the old man's accounting system, or rather the lack of it. He had been surprised to find that the parish of Soray generated far more income per head for the church than some well-to-do areas on the mainland. But when he asked Hackett what the average take at the Sunday collection was, the old man had been confused and unhelpful.

  Oh well, Malahide had thought, I'll have plenty of time to straighten out the finances during the long winter nights.

  Malahide had been busy settling in to the small house by the churchyard, and had had little time to explore his parish. Soray Town itself seemed pleasant enough, and the locals were friendly, if somewhat reserved. He had expected this response to a newcomer in a place that was really more fishing village than town. But he also expected a decent turn out for his first morning service. The test of his popularity would be whether the numbers stayed up, he reasoned.

  “Never mind, Jeff,” he told the gray cat after returning from the ferry landing. “We'll settle in all right.”

  The cat was sitting on the windowsill. It gave Malahide a fathomable look, then lifted a leg and started washing its backside.

  “You be you,” Malahide murmured. “You'll thank me for the fish suppers.”

  The minor mystery of the crucifix was solved on Saturday night when Moira Bell turned up at his door with her now familiar basket. She had 'just dropped round' every day with food and home-made jam, and Malahide was certain she saw herself as some kind of unofficial ambassador from his flock. When she removed the cloth from the basket this time, however, she revealed something very different from a free meal.

  Gold, he thought. And jewels.

  “What on earth–”

  Moira reached into the basket and took out the strangest crucifix Malahide had ever seen. It took him a moment to realize that it was not a cross at all. Then he realized that conventional cruciform shape was there, but almost completely concealed behind a weird filigree of branching golden strands. The figure of Christ was wrapped in these shining strands, so that Malahide could not quite make out the form of the Redeemer. The confusion was increased by the presence of red and blue stones that seemed to be placed at random around the cross, rather than in a symmetrical pattern.

  Seaweed? Is that supposed to be seaweed?

  “Mrs. Bell, I don't think I've ever seen anything so – unusual.”

  “Ah, we have our own ways here, Father!” she said, handing over the bizarre object. “This is the Cross of Soray. It's very old and precious. Needs lots of loving care, like a living thing.”

  In the evening sunlight the weird cross seemed unreal, yet its weight convinced Malahide that it must be almost pure gold. The very idea was bizarre. Apart from anything else, the purest gold was the softest, and therefore most easily damaged.

  “Oh,” said Moira, reaching into her basket again. “And I made some scones for your supper. They'll go nicely with that blackcurrant jam.”

  Malahide took the Tupperware container and stood staring as the little woman bustled away, back down the lane into town. Then he went inside and placed the cross on the kitchen table, next to the plastic box. He sat down facing the golden oddity, trying to persuade himself that it was no stranger than the famous Black Madonnas. But it was not easy.

  “Who made you?” he murmured, running a finger over the glistening 'seaweed'. “And what on earth for? What do you think, Jeff?”

  The cat was nowhere to be seen.

  Now that the priest could examine the crucifix at his leisure, it did not seem any more conventional. Malahide had never concerned himself with the church's internal battles over doctrine, preferring to try and do good on what he thought of as the front line. But now he found the word 'blasphemy' nagging at him, despite its overtones of bigotry and intolerance.

  The actual style of the crucifix was bothersome, for a start. Malahide was no expert, but the visual impact of the object was more like that of a weird piece of modern art. The asymmetrical distribution of the stones was peculiar, as if they were meant to simulate some odd living creatures living among the 'seaweed'. The whole thing, in fact, looked slightly lopsided. Malahide found himself tilting his head to look at it, trying and failing to find an angle that made it seem right.

  But the main problem was that figure on the cross did not look much like any Christ Malahide had ever seen. The form depicted was almost in the conventional attitude of suffering so familiar to the priest. The arms were spread apart, the legs close together, the head lolling to one side, face downcast. But somehow, it did not look right. The expression on the small face was not one of noble suffering. Of course it was hard to make out, but to Malahide there was a slightly mocking feel to the expression. What's more, the face was beardless, yet very long hair almost streamed behind the head.

  And then there was the way the feet seemed to merge together. This might have been due to some problem with working such soft metal, Malahide reasoned. But somehow the elaborate detail elsewhere made his hard to believe. The hands, likewise, had splayed fingers and what looked like webs between them. There was no sign of wounds on the hands or feet. There were also weird slits under the rib-cage, yet the familiar single wound of the Roman soldier's lance was absent.

  Malahide seldom prayed for himself. But now he bowed his head, put his hands together, and asked God for guidance. All he heard were his own words, sounding hollow in the cramped kitchen.

  You don't have an opinion on this thing, Lord? Or you're delegating this one to me?

  “Fair enough,” he said, getting up. “New chapter, new setup, might as well roll with it.”

  He turned to the microwave oven to prepare himself some soup, put the kettle on for tea, unpacked Moira Bell's scones. As he worked he found himself constantly glancing back at the Cross of Soray, and felt a strange unwillingness to turn his back on it. Eventually he threw a tea-towel over the gleaming sculpture.

  “Forgive me Lord,” he said, glancing up at the bare light bulb. “But even if that is your only Son, he's giving me the willies.”

  ***

  An early start after a week of late nights was taking its toll. Normally, Dan would lie in on Sunday, get up late to check emails, have a light breakfast then go for a lazy jog in the park at around noon. It wasn't even eleven now and he was feeling beat. Rather than go straight home he stopped at a coffee shop near the Tube station. He ordered a latte and took a table by the window to watch the world go by.

  How can I make that asshole Nisbet nominate me for his club?

  However, Dan's attempts to formulate a plan were undermined by his memory of the young woman near Salisbury Square. She had almost certainly not been Melinda, because why would his first serious girlfriend be in London? Besides, he had not seen her for over twelve years. She would have changed, perhaps be virtually un
recognizable. He reasoned that the woman he had seen had looked very much like the teenage Melinda, which made it a coincidence.

  Yeah, but some people don't change much over time. And why wouldn't she be here? London is a global metropolis, not some backwater. And you're here. Aren't you?

  Dan leaned back in the undersized plastic chair and sighed. Tiredness was making his thoughts fuzzy. He had no pictures of Melinda, had cut himself off from her completely after their messy break-up. It had been during his last year in college that they had gotten together. He still felt pangs of guilt when he thought of how he had simply cut her loose and ignored all her subtle hints that she wanted their affair to mean something, to endure.

  “Hi, Dan! Fancy meeting you here!”

  He opened his eyes to see Melinda taking the seat opposite. She was exactly as he remembered her, with wavy hair and wide-set green eyes. Her mouth was still a little too full to be beautiful, her nose a bit too prominent. Someone – a bitchy mutual friend – had once described Melinda as a 'girl who just misses being really gorgeous, but then goes straight on past it for a good few miles'. The same friend had asked Dan just why he was 'dating out of his league'. He had wanted to retort that it was for love. He had not, and that had been the beginning of the end.

  “Oh God,” he said, sitting up.

  Heads turned at nearby tables. Melinda threw back her head and laughed, giving her familiar little snort.

  I called her Miss Piggy when she did that, he remembered. She called me Kermie.

  “It's great to see you too,” she said, beaming. “Still the charmer, huh?”

  “I thought I saw you earlier, but you went around a corner and–”

  Dan stopped, unable to form coherent thoughts. He stared at Melinda, who looked back with a mock-coy expression. Not only did she look exactly as he remembered, she was even wearing a Grace Slick t-shirt. He remembered the first time they had met and he had commented on it, leading a long, joshing argument about music. They had gone back to his place after that party.

  “Something wrong?” she asked, looking down at herself. “Or just being a pervert?”

  “That shirt,” he said. “Nobody keeps a t-shirt that long.”

  “There's this thing the young people have – it's called the internet,” she replied, archly. “You can order all this nostalgic crap. You should try it, get some of old Tom Petty albums on vinyl.”

  Dan laughed, feeling some tension going. She leaned forward, took his hand in hers. He felt the cool, very soft flesh of her fingers. A sudden surge of desire shocked him. He wanted to take her home right now and make love.

  “Oh no,” she said, smiling as she squeezed his hand. “You can't just jump back into things. Not after so long.”

  “Still reading my mind. And you haven't changed in other ways,” he said, wonderingly. “I've got a spreading gut and my first gray hairs but you haven't changed one bit.”

  “I explained about the shirt,” she said mockingly. “Nah, truth is I've been on this special health care plan.”

  The grip on his hand tightened, and the busy sound of the coffee shop seemed to fade. Now her fingers felt hard, bony, not merely cool but icy cold. Her face seemed to collapse inward, flesh vanishing as the skin darkened and tightened. Her full lips shrank, blackened, exposed a jagged row of yellow teeth. Her eyes shriveled, rotted away to leave empty sockets.

  “It's called mortality, Dan.”

  “Let go!” he said, beginning to panic.

  “I love you, Dan,” said the dead mouth. “Always loved you. That's why I want us to be together. Always.”

  “That's crazy!” he began.

  “They don't want me to have you, Dan,” she hissed. “That's why they won't let me look my best. The angry dead, the jealous dead. Don't listen to them!”

  She leaned across the table to kiss him, one skeletal hand clamped on the back of his head, pulling his lips towards her dead and rotting mouth. Maggots writhed in her eye sockets, and a bug scuttled out of one nostril.

  “No!” he shouted, jerking his head back.

  He looked around to see frowning or amused faces. A couple froze in the doorway, stared, then resolutely looked at the counter as they crossed the room. There was nobody sitting opposite Dan. His latte was untouched. There was a low laugh from somewhere behind him, then conversation resumed.

  Jesus H. Christ. I see a stranger who looks a bit like an old girlfriend and this happens. Maybe I should see a shrink.

  But the horrific death's head he had seen was impossible to forget. Dan decided to exorcise the day-mare by finding out what Melinda was doing now. He took out his phone and began to search. It was not easy, as he had no mutual acquaintances to draw upon. He had made a point of cutting all ties with his old college friends soon after graduating, deciding to make a clean break. After all, they had gone to different places, begun different lives. It had seemed like the right thing to do, though when he questioned his motives he could not find a clear one.

  Hell, he thought, I was just focused on the future, is all.

  But the question of why he had never looked up Melinda began to gnaw at him, even as he found no trace of her online. As his coffee grew cold, he became more and more frustrated with his failure. Daniel William Fox, with his fancy doctorate in art history, had tracked down hundreds of obscure items, but one human being was seemingly too much for him.

  She might have changed her name, of course. She could've gotten married more than once. And not everyone has a big online presence.

  It was only when he entered the name of his old college alongside Melinda's that he got a hit. It was from a newspaper report dated eleven years ago. A coroner's verdict on the death of a young woman who had recently graduated. The words were familiar from a hundred other minor news items. Depression. Alcohol. Pills.

  Dan put down his phone and stared out blankly at the pedestrians passing in the sunlight. It felt as if there was more than a sheet of glass between him and the world of the living. He remembered now, and understood why glimpsing the young woman that morning had shocked him so much.

  You knew she was dead, he told himself. You knew it all along. You heard it from someone, sometime. Blanked out who and where and when. But not long after she did it, you were told. You suppressed this memory. Pretended it never happened. So you could think you were a regular guy, a nice guy.

  “You bastard,” he muttered. “You lying bastard.”

  He left his coffee untouched.

  Chapter 3: Threats and Mysteries

  The incident in the coffee shop left Dan more shaken up than he would have admitted, if anyone had asked him. Guilt, shame, and confusion dogged him for the rest of the day. He went so far as to look up hallucinations online and found himself immersed in conspiracy theories. Then he got sidetracked and started watching old episodes of The X-Files, telling himself it was research, kind of. After several hours of struggling to separate fact from fantasy he decided to put Melinda's 'ghost' into the category of 'Might be going insane but let's not go crazy about it'.

  “Miss Piggy,” he said to the wall of the apartment. “You here, now? Watching over me, or whatever? If so, come and explain why you're haunting me.”

  As he expected, the girl he had sort-of loved and then deliberately lost did not appear. He felt another pang of guilt at treating Melinda's suicide so frivolously. On Sunday night, though, he slept well, and was at Nisbet's dealership bright and early.

  “Hi Lisa, anything for me?” he asked the receptionist.

  She jerked her head significantly towards the boss's door.

  “His lordship wants to see you,” she said. “He's having one of his tantrums about something.”

  “Message received and understood!” he grinned.

  “He's not alone,” Lisa added. “He's with somebody I haven’t seen before. Don't like the look of them.”

  Korochenko, Dan thought, stopping outside Nisbet's door to compose himself. I'm in the clear. Nobody can really prove anyt
hing about that Maglore. That’s the fun thing about the art world – built on pure bullshit.

  Dan squared his shoulders, knocked, and entered after Nisbet's querulous 'Come in!' He expected to see the thick-set Russian oligarch sitting before Nisbet's fancy desk. Instead, the visitor's chair was empty and Nisbet was standing by the window, looking nervous. But there was a stranger in the room. A small, slender woman with long, dark, wavy hair, leaning on the corner of the desk. Dan stopped, mouth open.

  “Hi Dan,” said Melinda, giving him an ironic little wave. She looked normal, alive again, except for the fact that she could not possibly be there. “Thought I'd drop in, see where you work. Nice!”

  Dan still felt slightly sick, took a step back.

  “I–” he began.

  Somebody closed the door behind him. Dan looked around to see the shaven-headed face of Vadim Korochenko. The Russian had evidently been looking at the paintings on the walls of Nisbet's office.

  “Ah, Mister Fox,” said the tycoon, with apparent bonhomie. “Such an apt name for such a cunning fellow!”

  “No more than you, sir,” Dan replied, feebly. He glanced over at Melinda, who showed no sign of disappearing.

  On the plus side, she's not a corpse yet either.

  “Daniel,” Nisbet said, “as I informed you last week our client is not entirely happy with the provenance of his painting.”

  Dan took a deep breath and turned to face the Russian, who was a head shorter.

  “In my opinion, the painting is a late, not particularly good, Maglore,” he said. “The price is a fair one in the current market.”

  “You would stake your life on this, perhaps?” Korochenko murmured, stepping forward, well inside Dan's personal space.

  “I would stake my professional reputation on it, sir,” Dan replied, trying to sound more composed than he felt.

  “Please, there's no need for unpleasantness,” Nisbet said, dashing round the desk, waving his hands in a placatory fashion. The Englishman's voice had gone up an octave.