The River Dark

by Nicholas Bennett

  Stupid!

  But there was something more, wasn't there?

  Fucking weed. The dope, the beer and the darkness. It's giving me the fear. I'm paranoid. Nevertheless-

  There had been a sense of knowledge, sentience. The jester had sensed him.

  John-o blew hard causing his windshield to steam; he wiped at it with his shirt cuff and shook his head. It had to be the skunk weed, he assured himself. That and the fact that he had been freaking himself out with all that backseat paranoia. The imagination was a powerful thing and too easy to influence. He remembered fear insinuating itself among a group of friends telling each other tall ghost stories, trying to outdo each other with the creepiest tale.

  And there he was- stoned, driving alone through the darkness of the countryside thinking paranoid thoughts.

  Fucking weed. His heart rate had slowed considerably. He laughed to himself. Tom and Greg would love this one. He passed another sign. Weirbridge two miles. A piss and a pint he thought. He reached for the stereo and unleashed Frank Zappa's voice once again.

  "Tied to the whipping post, tied to the whipping post-"

  Cool. He reached down to turn up the volume as his headlights illuminated the deer. He slammed down hard on the brake.

  Despite the cautious speed, the slickness of the road made the impact unavoidable. John-o closed his eyes against the inevitable thud and smashed windshield. The thud came but the deer did not career onto bonnet.

  The mini skidded to a halt fifty feet further on.

  John-o praised the God that he didn't believe in that he was alive and then said: Shit! He breathed hard, his heart racing again and put the Mini into reverse. He drew up to the place where the broken deer had come to rest. He could see the animal in his headlights. He got out.

  The animal was still alive, its rib cage heaving up and down rapidly. The deer's face was frozen in a grimace of pain and fear.

  John-o reached behind his passenger seat and pulled out his baseball bat. He stowed it there just in case. He had been jumped by gypsies before and wanted to be prepared for that happening again.

  He stood over the deer, its wide eye staring at him. He could see his reflection in its blackness. He` raised the bat above his head. He could hear Zappa winding down the song from the car.

  "Sometimes I feel…like dying."

  In the instant before the bat connected with the deer's skull, John-o saw his friend Tom staring up at him.

  *

  The King's Arms was the only pub in the tiny village of Weirbridge. Several locals glanced up from their fireside Dominoes as John-o brought some of the outside coldness in to the snug with him. He noted that they were all shoeless except for the barmaid who picked up their ashtray and brushed its contents into a silver bucket. Farmers, he thought, noticing the boot rack to the right of the fireplace. The barmaid smiled at him as he walked to the bar.

  "Lager, please," he muttered as he headed for the Men's toilets.

  Considerably relieved, he placed himself on a barstool close enough to the fire to feel its warmth without interfering with the old boys around the dominoes board. He drank in silence, smoking cigarettes and staring at the optics and his own disheveled reflection. He'd had quite a scare. He sighed loudly. But he was alright. He sighed again.

  "You alright, love?" The barmaid eyed him warmly while polishing a pint glass. "Look a bit pale around the gills."

  The door opened behind him causing him to wince at the chill on his back.

  "Yes, I-"

  "Evening, Joss," the barmaid said looking passed John-o. He turned to see a short but striking looking man struggling out of a waxed coat. His long matted hair, weather beaten complexion and filthy attire was in contrast to the rural smartness of the men at the fireside. He nodded in their direction and received murmured recognition. They looked as though they lived off the land. This man, Joss, looked as though he was part of the land.

  Joss picked up his ready poured neat whisky and sat on a stool along the bar from John-o. The barmaid returned her attention to John-o.

  "You were saying love?"

  John-o told her about the deer in the road but felt too stupid to tell her about the face of the jester he thought he had seen in place of a harmless road sign. He didn't think the way the deer's face had become that of his old friend, Tom Saunders, would go down to well either. This is how it happens, he thought; soon it will be filed away along with the rest of the miscellaneous unexplained in that part of the brain's filing cabinet labeled Things we can't explain (so let’s forget about them). He felt the presence of the man Joss moving closer.

  "Did yer finish ‘er off, put 'er out 'er misery?"

  John-o turned and met the man's gaze. His eyes were green and knowing; he was all browns and greens.

  "Yes, I did."

  Joss nodded approval. "How did yer do it?"

  "Baseball bat," John-o said and handed his empty glass to the barmaid. "Again, please."

  Joss roared laughter unexpectedly, causing John-o to start. "Hey, did yer 'ear tha'?" The men at the fireplace looked over with interest. "A baseball bat, no less!" Joss mimicked a baseball player swinging away at the plate and laughed again. He grinned at John-o and waved his hand at the barmaid. "One more fer me an' I'll get that!"

  "Thank you." John-o was too afraid of this man to refuse. He had the feeling that everyone else was too. The men at their game kept their eyes down. The barmaid had moved to the other end of the bar looking for something to dust. He had met a man like Joss once before when scoring dope at a new age traveller pitch. It had not been a wholly pleasant experience. Similar attire and matted dreadlocks as a result of wild living rather than affectation in homage to Marley or whoever else you worshipped. Clothes that seemed to grow off the man like weeds. The crusty had the same air of Nature's child about him; a man that could hunt, take down a rabbit with a well-aimed rock from thirty metres; a man who knew how to trap and live off the fat off the land without clinging to the edge of society waiting for someone to tell him what to do, what to eat, what to wear, what to think and what to believe. In the presence of a true independent- living a wholly independent lifestyle- as opposed to the armchair hippy brigade to which John-o belonged, pretending to be oh-so-different because they signed on and smoked grass rather then working for the Man. They were happy to take the Man's handouts though. The crusty had made him feel uncomfortable enough to decide never to return to that particular source no matter that the skunk was rocket fuel (that and the fact that the sight of a seven year old girl skinning up had disturbed him somewhat). It was nothing that the man said; it was his sheer presence. John-o felt as though his thin strips of rebellion had fallen away under the other man's scrutiny as easily as autumnal leaves fell from the trees. Joss brought back the same associations. He was not the only one in the pub that felt it either. The bonhomie of the local farmers had settled to a quiet murmur.

  Joss sat close to him and beckoned to him in a conspiratorial manner. John-o looked around awkwardly and then moved closer.

  "Tell me what else you saw," he said. The man's larger than life camaraderie was gone.

  "What do mean?" John-o stammered. He all of a sudden felt stoned again. Joss grinned knowingly.

  "I saw you from the woods. The way you raced into this place like the very devil was a'ter you!"

  John-o tried to smile it off. "Don't be-"

  Joss silenced him with a hand.

  "Tell me or don' but don' lie. I think you saw the coxcomb."

  "The what?"

  John-o looked at the man's face and realized that he could tell this man what he had seen without fear of laughter. He was not sure why he knew that but he did. John-o related the image on the sign, struggling to describe it.

  "It was like a joker. You know? A court jester? The first thing I thought of was of this creepy Jack-in-the-Box thing."

  Joss listened and nodded sagely.

  "Stupid, I know. Tired I guess-"

  "No, no, no. Not a
t all," Joss interjected. "You seen 'im in one of his joking guises. The hat, like the old court jester, is 'is coxcomb. It was a warning."

  "It felt like it knew me," John-o said, surprising himself. "It seemed to know something. I felt scared of it. Not just because of how it looked."

  Joss summoned the barmaid and refilled his glass. He swigged it back in one and began to put his coat back on.

  John-o was unsettled.

  "You be careful," the other man said.

  "Yes," John-o misunderstood. "I'll go after this beer."

  Joss stopped by the door and looked back at John-o. He walked back to him.

  "What you saw were real, alright," Joss nodded. "But I think you didn't heed that warning which was why you killed that deer."

  John-o drank deeply from his glass.

  "What you saw were as old as them ancient trees and the land that they grows in." Joss nodded at the darkness of the trees opposite the pub.

  "What was it then?" All of that paranoid fear had returned because of this man.

  "It was the Harlequin that you saw and you should be lucky that it was only playing with you!"

  "Harlequin? What's that?"

  Joss eyed him stonily, his hand on the brass handle of the battered oak door. He thought for a while. He decided something to himself.

  "Harlequin is a part of nature but it ain't at the same time. He only shows himself when he's up to no good."

  "Or as a warning?"

  "Yes, a warning that you ignored."

  John-o felt chilled again by what he had seen. He had a dark thought then.

  "What if it wasn't warning me about the deer?"

  Joss opened the door and let the night in once more. "Then God help you," he said. He stepped out into the night and John-o watched his fleet figure cross the road and head into the trees that formed the beginning of the forest.

  John-o thought of the ghost of his friend's face again. The moment before the baseball bat smashed into the deer's skull. At that moment, seeing Tom Saunders seemed to be the most important thing on Earth.

  5

  9.40. Measton.

  Jonathan Black waited for the sound of his wife's sonorous snores from above. They had been married for twenty years, more than long enough to know each other's routines. She invariably turned in first and would be unconscious within twenty minutes, sometimes less, depending on whether or not she took the valium of which she thought he was ignorant. That was a conversation he was happy to avoid. When all was said and done, they would be left with that all-important question: why would the wife of a successful man, a pillar of the community need a drug like valium to help her through existence? She had stood by him throughout his career, culminating in Headship of an improving school; the reputation of Measton High had definitely changed under his steerage and she had shared in his achievement. She attended parents' evenings and awards ceremonies, always immaculately coiffured, smiling at his side and shaking hands with local councilors. She was still an attractive woman- when she made the effort- and could charm the locals with ease, local people that would be alarmed to know certain truths about the Blacks. The valium was one thing but in that day and age what was the big deal? Everyone had issues, doctors dished out drugs that bred dependency like a grandmother giving out sweets to her grandchildren on a Saturday visit. Doreen Black was a woman of a certain age they would surmise. The change of life was hard for a woman, they would say. They would assert the difficulty of pushing her successful husband, fulfilling wifely duties that were tantamount to those of a politician's wife, while having to cope with her own raging hormones. They would have sympathy and respect.

  They would all be wrong.

  Jonathan Black hated his wife with almost as much passion as she hated him.

  It was an unspoken hatred. Neither of them felt inclined to change the status quo; it had suited them both well enough. They both knew beyond a shadow of doubt that the marriage would end eventually, probably when their university aged daughters were settled but they were both content to bide their time as long as, to all intents and purposes, they were a loving couple to the outsider, a role model for the one parent families that made up the higher portion of attendees on parents' evenings. As long as respect was maintained and neither of them lost face in front of friends, daughters and students' parents, all was well. When they were alone, he had his conservatory that doubled as kind of study, a few EZ chairs and a desk in the corner. Doreen had the rest of the house. They had slept in separate rooms for four years. As long as respect was maintained none of it mattered.

  But it was becoming more difficult for Jonathan Black. The recent events and their connection with the school made him want to call Susan Callaghan more than ever.

  It had started with the disappearance of Patricia Bourne along with an ex-student, Martin Clear. There were police investigations at the school, whipping the children up into a fervour of excitement as well as the inevitable mass hysteria that accompanies such awful events. Children that had never even spoke to the girl were now undoubtedly her best friend, or wallowing in the guilt of their previous dismissive attitude. For many of the students it was their first brush with death, if indeed his (and everyone else's) fears were confirmed. He had spent a lot of time talking to individuals and classes about their feelings and had been on the verge of delivering a well-written assembly on related themes when his Head of Year 9 had walked into his office and informed him that they had a big problem. Andrew Davies. Solid, dependent and popular with the students. Dull company for his colleagues. Mister Squeaky Clean. Following Davies' admission to his Year 9 students that he was a paedophile, the press had camped outside the school gates until yesterday he had taken the decision to close the school until events had calmed down. So many staff had gone off sick any way, unwilling or unable to deal with the stress requiring that he double up classes in the hall as it was. Parents had called him throughout the day and even at home (God alone knew how they had obtained his private number) demanding explanations. Why weren't police checks carried out? They were he assured them. He was fastidious about such matters. But no amount of reasoning could stem the need for someone to blame.

  He sat back in his reclining chair and thought about Susan again. No. She was off-limits. But more than anything, he needed to hear her voice.

  He had never closed his school before. Despite the need for some form of protective action for his staff and students (what else could he do?), he felt as though he had failed them somehow. The Davies business was not his fault either. He had gone through all of the usual procedures. There was no way he would have risked anything like this happening but, even so, he felt self-recrimination every time he considered the situation (which was all of the time) and no amount of rationalization could ease his mind. Measton was his school. It was everything to him. Since his youngest, Ali, had gone to university, it had become all the more important. He went in on weekends and during holidays feeling that, despite the extremely competent skeletal administrative staff, he should be there analyzing data, scrutinizing teacher performance, working on the image of his school. Even when he had taken Doreen on their once a year trip abroad, he had to wrestle with the desire to phone his PA to ensure him that all was well. Measton was more than a job to him. Teaching was his vocation. Measton would be his life's work. But now it was marred.

  Black went to his drinks cabinet and poured himself a liberal glass of Johnny Walker. He rarely drank during the week but there was no school tomorrow. He took a gulp of the neat whisky biting against the rush of heat in his head and chest. He had seen what drink could do to colleagues. Eric Callaghan was the most recent example. Susan's husband.

  He’d had little choice but to encourage Eric to take a sabbatical. His drinking had spiraled out of control after the instance with the pornography (bad luck really, Black had thought at the time. When the more sordid aspects of a man's life became public knowledge it was bad enough but for a teacher it was professional hell). Callaghan h
ad been unable to ride it out it seemed. His marriage was already on the rocks; the man himself looked increasingly unwell- his weight had ballooned and he had developed the tell-tale mottled and claret complexion of an alcoholic. Staff and students alike had complained about the constant stench of stale alcohol around his classroom. Often there was a lingering residue of the man long after he had vacated the staffroom. His appearance had suffered too. He looked unclean, crumpled, as though he had slept in his clothes. Parents had complained that books had gone unmarked for over half-a-term- what kind of school was he running? – and his lessons were increasingly ill-prepared. It was tragic the way this could happen, he had thought. Eric Callaghan had been a natural, a first among his peers when Black had taken the headship, popular and respected among the staff and student body alike. His results had always been reliably good. Then he had received a phone call from a concerned member of the public. Eric had been found slumped on the pavement- unconscious- on a school night well after midnight. "I think he'd wet himself too," she had confided. When Black had pulled Eric in for a chat, the man was a mess. Physically and emotionally. It was not long before Callaghan had broken down in front of the Head exposing his inner most worries and concerns with particular regard to his marriage. Black had listened with awkward understanding but the fact was Eric needed to take leave. Occupational Health needed to be involved too. Eric had looked at the Head then with bleary eyed realization: he was on his way out. His drinking had killed the only thing he had left, the only thing at which he had ever excelled. He had begged Black to give him a week to try to get things straight but the Head had refused.