When Darkness Falls - Six Paranormal Novels in One Boxed Set

by Shalini Boland

  He laughed. ‘Yeah, I can hook you up. What do you want? Beers and stuff?’

  ‘Pretty much.’

  ‘No worries, you just tell me what you want and how much and my brother will sort it for you.’

  ‘Thanks, Travis. Shall I take your number?’

  ‘Yeah, here you go.’ He picked up a pen from the counter and scribbled on the back of a flyer.

  ‘Cheers. Saturday then.’

  ‘Saturday.’

  Maddy found a great clothes shop with interesting alternative stuff. Nothing chain store-ish in sight, and she ended up buying way more than she’d intended. Then she raced around the supermarket, chucking crisps, sausage rolls and anything else that looked like party food into her trolley. The taxi was waiting outside for her and she sank into the back seat, pretty pleased with her afternoon’s work.

  *

  Keisha and Lois arrived Saturday lunchtime. They’d come by coach and then taxi, which Maddy paid for. Her friends were stunned by the house and Madison felt proud, awkward and strange all at the same time. She’d always been the underdog, the one people felt sorry for because she had no parents and no proper home and she’d hated their sympathy and pity. But she didn’t quite know what to do with this new attitude of respect and awe she now inspired.

  ‘I can’t believe you live here!’ Keisha screeched for the fifth time. Maddy gave them a tour of the house and asked if they wanted to choose their bedrooms. But Lois said she wanted to sleep in Maddy’s room and Keisha agreed. There was a long deep red velvet button back sofa which Lois bagged and they dragged in a single mattress and some bedding from the room next door for Keisha. Then they turned the music up and spent the next few hours getting ready.

  ‘You know Lois did some flyers, right?’

  ‘Flyers?’

  ‘Yeah,’ Lois said. ‘I did them round Tony’s after you rang and we been handing them out all week.’

  ‘This place will be rammed.’

  ‘Cool,’ Maddy said, feeling new tremors of trepidation.

  ‘Ben!’ Lois and Keisha cried together.

  ‘Come here, you cute boy. Let me kiss you.’ Lois held her arms out to Ben, who had appeared in the doorway. Ben reluctantly let himself be smothered in kisses, before pulling away.

  ‘Mads, what time’s everyone coming?’ he asked.

  ‘Won’t be till really late, Ben. But you can stay up. It’s your first proper party.’

  ‘Yeah, but none of my friends will be here.’

  ‘Sorry, shortie, but they’re too young. They wouldn’t be able to get here. Or be allowed to come, even. That’s the beauty of having a big sister looking after you. You get to do way more cool stuff.’

  ‘Yeah.’ But he looked a bit doubtful as he wandered away.

  At seven thirty, the doorbell chimed. Maddy, Lois and Keisha went to answer the door together. It was Travis. He had driven up to the house along with about fifteen or twenty other people in several vehicles and some of them had started unloading a PA system from a battered yellow transit van.

  ‘Just set it up there.’ Madison pointed to a large patio at the side of the house, in front of a huge lawned area where people could dance. ‘You can run the cable in through the lounge doors.’

  ‘Cool,’ Travis replied. ‘This place is unbelievable. Your parents away?’

  ‘Did you manage to get hold of the drinks?’ Maddy asked, ignoring his question.

  ‘Yeah, I got your message. My brother’s got everything in his car. Do you want him to take it into the kitchen?’

  ‘Please. It’s straight through, at the back of the house.’

  ‘I’ve told everyone about tonight,’ he said. ‘You said, the more the merrier.’

  ‘Yeah, I did say that didn’t I.’

  He laughed at the worried expression on her face. ‘Chill, it’ll be sweet.’

  As more cars and small crowds of people started approaching the house, little niggles of worry started making themselves felt in Madison’s stomach. It was only eight o’clock and the front lawn was filling up already. She followed Travis’ brother through to the kitchen where she popped the lid on a bottle of cold beer, tipped her head back and took several gulps.

  ‘There you are!’ shouted Keisha, walking into the kitchen as a deep bass line started up, shaking the house to its foundations. ‘Tonight’s gonna be the bomb.’

  Chapter Eight

  1881

  *

  The next day dawned grey and cold, with no sighting of the warm Anatolian sun that had accompanied them all the way from Smyrna. Alexandre shivered in the damp morning air as he washed and dressed in thick breeches, waistcoat and jacket.

  A mood of anticipation permeated the camp as everybody looked forward to viewing the site for the very first time. The two families followed Isik to the ventilation shaft. The area surrounding it had been cleared and they crowded around the narrow opening that had been cut roughly from the soft volcanic rock.

  Without delay, the guards secured a rope around a nearby rock and lowered Alexandre’s father into the depths of the Cappadocian earth.

  After a couple of long minutes, a shout came from below.

  ‘Very good! You can pull up the rope!’

  Harold went next and Alexandre peered down after him. Isik pulled the rope back up and looked questioningly at Alexandre. He hesitated. His father had not said he was permitted, but surely he could not object once he was down there.

  The rope squeezed his chest and dug in under his arms. Holding a lantern in one hand, he used his free hand to steady his descent and stop himself banging into the sharp sides. He shivered and inhaled the musty, damp scent of age-old decay.

  The light from above grew fainter and he looked up to see the shrinking features of Maman as she squinted down at him. The shaft widened out at the bottom and Alexandre’s feet finally touched uneven ground. He held the lantern out unsteadily in front of him.

  ‘Alexandre!’ Papa exclaimed. ‘Well, now you are here, come and look at this. We require your help.

  In the gloom of the cavern, he stepped over stones, rocks, dead birds, rodents and other fragments of debris.

  ‘What is it?’ he asked, holding out his lantern and looking directly at the spot where his father pointed. An entrance way had been carved out of the wall, but behind it sat a huge smooth slab of rock with a small hole through the centre of it.

  ‘The entrance is blocked,’ said his father. ‘Come. Help us push.’

  Alexandre set down his lantern and they put their shoulders against the slab.

  ‘This is not going to budge an inch,’ Harold declared. ‘My guess is the others are all the same.’

  Alexandre looked around the room and saw the same thing on all four sides – huge entrance ways blocked by slabs of stone which had been put into place from the other side.

  ‘Look,’ Alexandre pointed to a hole in the ground that he had almost put his foot into. It was in the corner of the room and was much smaller than the shaft they had come down, only a few inches across. Harold poked at it with a rod, clearing any blockages. He dropped a small stone into it and heard a skitter as it hit the bottom a couple of seconds later.

  ‘There is a lower level!’ His father could not keep the excitement out of his voice. ‘This legend of an underground city may indeed be based on fact.’

  ‘As long as the demons are not also based on fact,’ Harold smiled.

  ‘I want to try something,’ Papa said. ‘Pass me that rope, Alexandre.’ He took the rope and began to feed it through one of the holes in the stone slabs. ‘It is as I thought,’ he said after a moment. ‘This stone slab is no more than a few inches thick and the hole goes right through to the other side.’

  ‘There must be another entrance to this place nearby,’ said Harold thoughtfully.

  ‘I think you are right, my friend. Come, let us return to the surface.’

  The two families spent the next week in an agony of frustration; they could not budge the ston
e slabs no matter how hard they tried. Gunpowder would have been the obvious choice, but Alexandre’s father said they must try less destructive options.

  Marie-Louise drew up a plan whereby they would search the surrounding area for another shaft. They had managed to employ only forty three men from the outlying villages who would help them in their endeavours. It was a simple, but monotonous job. With sharpened sticks they would test the ground, tapping and prodding inch by inch, to try to find another opening. Isik’s guards would also join in the search.

  Victoria reasoned that if she were to build an underground city, she might first try to dig where water had already begun to erode the rock – in a cave. And so the workforce split their time between prodding the ground and hunting for caves. To ensure everybody did a thorough job, a large bonus was offered to the person who found the entrance.

  The weather was wet and cold and, after the initial excitement, boredom set in. Hours turned into days and days turned into weeks.

  *

  Thinking. This was something Alexandre had never really done much of back home in Paris. There had always been too many things to do and too many people to see. No time to reflect and ponder the universe. It was amazing how one grew to enjoy letting one’s mind wander over the views and the meandering, circling questions in one’s head – mainly questions about Leonora.

  At first he had grown restless, wanting to move on to the next view and the next thought. But then, as the days unwound he came to realise it was entirely feasible to allow oneself the luxury of wallowing in a single idea for as long as one could. It was liberating to realise time was not his master anymore. No omnibus to catch, lectures to hurry to, dinner engagements to be late for or errands to run.

  Everybody worked hard here, but clocks were not watched. Of course, Papa was conscious of the passing of time and worried about finding another entrance but, in the day-to-day scheme of things, life just unfolded.

  Nor did Alexandre mind the monotony of the work, or the continuing soggy weather. It suited his mood. He almost enjoyed his misery over Leonora. He felt … not quite love, but almost.

  He longed for a solitary look from her, for a small morsel of affection. Something to indicate she did not actually hate him and that there may be a chance for reconciliation. He burnt up with images of her long white neck, her slender arms and those pale, dark rimmed eyes that flashed scorn whenever she happened to catch his eye. He had never before felt so consumed with thoughts of someone else.

  She worked as hard as any man and was always the first to volunteer for an unpleasant or dangerous task. She was so far removed from the Parisian girls he had grown up around. A true original. What his friends would probably class as an ‘eccentric’. She was his beautiful eccentric. Well, not quite his, but there was still time.

  How could he make her talk to him again? He stabbed his stick moodily into the ground and thought hard about what he could do to win her back, but his mind was a jumble of thoughts and feelings. He could not think clearly. He needed a confidante, someone to talk to.

  Isobel would ordinarily have been his first choice, but she still wasn’t speaking to him, especially now the weather was so vile and they all had to pull their weight in the search process. As it was, neither girl would have anything to do with him, taking great pains to avoid being in his company. He might as well have been infected with the plague. His back now ached from bending and he stretched his arms above his head.

  ‘Aarghh!’ he growled in frustration and the other workers looked up at him in surprise. He jabbed the stick into the ground again with such force it snapped in two and a splinter of wood stuck into his finger, drawing blood.

  ‘Damn it to hell!’ He threw the stick down and strode back to the camp.

  One morning, soon after, Alexandre found himself working near his sister. He was pleased for the chance to try to patch things up and hoped she wouldn’t walk away.

  ‘So, Belle, are you ever going to forgive your errant brother?’

  Isobel glared at him, dropped her shoulders and rolled her eyes. ‘Oh, Alexandre, it is such hard work being cross with you!’

  ‘Then am I forgiven?’

  ‘Yes. But only because it is too tiring to keep ignoring you.’

  ‘Oh, I am relieved. It has been a difficult time with both you and Leonora against me.’

  ‘Yes, what did happen with Leonora? First she disliked you, then she really fell for you and now she seems to despise you more than ever. She will not open up to me, even though I have tried to prise it out of her. Why is she now so set against you? Whatever did you say to her on the journey?’

  ‘I made an error in judgement.’

  ‘Errors in judgement seem to be your forté at present.’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘So? What was this monumental error that sent the beautiful Leonora running from your open arms?’

  ‘I ... I told her about ... about Paris and the ball.’

  ‘Oh, Alexandre! You didn’t. You actually told her about Lily Bouvier? Do you have soup for brains?’

  ‘I know, I know. I am an imbecile.’

  ‘I cannot disagree with you there, brother.’

  ‘Do you have any words of advice for me? Any way in which I can win back her heart?’

  ‘Pray?’

  ‘Is all hope lost then?’

  ‘Let me think on it.’

  After days of drizzly damp weather, the spring sunshine had returned and it was really rather pleasant to stroll along together with no animosity between them. Birds chirped in the trees under a clear blue sky. They walked in silence for a few moments along stony ground which rose up on one side into a steep white escarpment.

  ‘What is it we are actually supposed to be looking for?’ Isobel asked.

  ‘Did you not listen to Papa at all?’ Alexandre asked and she gave him a look, so he went on to explain. ‘We are to try and find some type of entrance in the rocks. A cave or a sealed doorway. Anything which may lead down into the cavern.’

  ‘But there are rocks everywhere,’ she replied.

  ‘Yes, but caves. We must look out for caves.’

  ‘This is all so boring. But at least the rain has decided to leave us alone for the time being and my hair is not frizzing to oblivion.’

  ‘So will you speak on my behalf? To Leonora, I mean?’

  ‘I will try, but she is very close-lipped about you. I have already tried to find out what happened, but she changed the subject and gave me a cross look.’

  ‘Thank you, sister. And I am sorry you are not happy to be here. I will try to make it more enjoyable for you.’

  ‘Hmm,’ she replied, giving him a sideways glance.

  *

  Nothing appeared to be yielding any results for anybody. Not with Alexandre and Leonora, and certainly not with finding another entrance. Not prodding the ground, nor searching in caves. It all seemed hopeless. It was now mid May and Didier’s fears of failure worsened.

  It was Harold who came up with another possible solution:

  ‘If there is an underground city in the legend and we have found a part of this city, then some of the legend must be based on fact. We need to hear the whole legend from start to finish and, somewhere in the telling, it may make mention of a location. You never know, there may be a nugget of detail in the old stories that will point to an entrance or give us some kind of clue.’

  ‘Isik,’ Didier turned to the Turk, who was listening quietly. ‘Do you know of anyone who might know the ancient tales in their entirety?’

  ‘I will find out. But I am sure they will not wish to speak to you about this. Do not forget, most people are praying you do not find the entrance. I doubt they will want to help.’

  ‘All the same, it cannot hurt to try.’

  After a few days of asking around and greasing palms with coins and favours, Isik was told of an old woman, said to have lived for more than a century, who knew the legends word-for-word. She lived in a village, a day’s jou
rney on horseback to the north and east.

  ‘Papa,’ said Alexandre. ‘I wish to travel with Isik to find this woman.’

  ‘My son, I am sorry but the answer is no. We need every pair of hands here.’

  ‘You can easily do without me here. I am making not one jot of difference to the search.’ Alexandre was determined to persuade his father. He had started to feel confined and frustrated, needing to escape from the claustrophobic atmosphere of the camp where everyone was miserable and disheartened. Even Jacques’ and Freddie’s high spirits had been dampened of late. And seeing Leonora’s icy features everyday was making him irritable. Maybe a day away would give him some relief.

  ‘I know you are a grown man, Alexandre and I do not want to restrict you, but there is no way on God’s earth your mother will let you go off into the Anatolian desert without us.’

  ‘But we will be armed and away from the main routes. We will be safe. Papa, please, I am not a child. You can persuade her ...’

  ‘Enough.’ He held up his hand. ‘Let me think on it.’

  At these words, Alexandre knew he had won. He bowed his head and left his father alone to work on Maman who would not be at all happy with this decision.

  First thing the following morning, Alexandre and Isik left for the old woman’s village. As they travelled further away from the Silk Road, the area became more heavily populated. They passed through small towns and settlements set into towering cliffs, with hundreds of cave dwellings and rock-cut churches. From a distance they looked like great slabs of chalk-white honeycomb.

  Pillars of rock called fairy chimneys rose from the hillsides in between the houses, giving a magical quality to the scenery and emerald green grass made lush by the recent rain carpeted the lower levels.

  The two handsome men received suspicious glares as they cantered through the settlements, but Isik reassured Alexandre it was nothing to worry about. Travelling strangers armed to the teeth were never a welcome sight in any peaceful village.

  Alexandre had never really been given to thinking about the greater world and where he fit into it. He usually thought about the world and where it fit into his life. But travelling through the Anatolian countryside, seeing all these people in all these villages, well ... it set him thinking about all the people in all the villages in all the countries throughout the world and he thought about the insignificance of his own petty life.