The River Dark

by Nicholas Bennett

  The men that had been Martin Clear and Sean Hodgkinson stood motionless, looking dispassionately at the prone woman.

  A short time later, they stepped out into the alleyway at the side of Secondhand Bargains. Despite the elements, they were both coatless.

  10

  Ben felt the presence of another even before he heard the man's footsteps in the room.

  He should have known that something was wrong. The way Tracy had slurred her words, the vagueness of her expression and when he had entered her she had been dry. Tracy was never dry. She lay on her back starfish-like as he pumped at her. Usually extremely vocal in her appreciation and encouragement, her silence unnerved him. She stared at a space over his shoulder. At the sound of footsteps, he turned to see hubby standing next to the bed. He sprang off the bed and on to the opposite side; Tracy lay between them, unmoved, her legs still parted. She regarded hubby without emotion.

  Hubby’s mouth stretched wide and the voices began.

  Callaghan had been sitting in the rear seat of hubby’s Ford Orion that morning. He knew all about Tracy's affair and, when the hatred and rage had opened hubby’s mind sufficiently, the voices entered. When he had returned to the house following young Ben's departure, the smell of coitus still in the air, they found easy access into Tracy. It was easier if the darkness was already there. Hence, the ease with which they had penetrated the first one, the paedophile.

  Ben was easy too. Fear acted as a lubricant.

  11

  DCI Collins watched the fire crews drench the school in water, the wind blowing searing clouds of ash across the road to where he stood. Seven fire engines were parked with diagonal precision on the curbs and grass verges that ran around the perimeter along with police cars- their blue lights swirling, seemingly for dramatic effect; his men, heavily dressed in Day-Glo overcoats were already questioning the good people that inhabited the houses opposite the school. Many of these neighbours were elderly, having moved into the semi-detached residences following WWII. Homes for heroes. They had watched the school grow out a corn field and seen it progress through its rise and, inevitably, through its fall. The initial signs had come at the end of the seventies: the graffiti-scrawling-spitting crowds of truanting children smoking in the alley ways along the road, language deteriorating into vile swearing even among the youngest that donned the increasingly shoddy blue blazers with yellow trim. One of the oldest residents at eighty-three now kept his weeding and hoeing to weekends; he had long ago shied away from the abuse he would receive if he dared to raise an eye-brow at a coke can tossed into the gutter or aggressive foul-mouthed gangs picking on a fat boy at his garden gate.

  It was a sign of the times, Collins thought.

  He knew that he was getting older and that it is the constant gripe of the old that the world had become somehow less respectful, less innocent than in “their day”. But surely this was true. What was the version of gang rape when he had been a boy? What was the sixties' version of crack theft and joyriding, the Jamie Bulgers and Sarah Paynes? The moors murderers? Dennis Nielson? But surely they had attained such cult status as a result of their absolute corruption in a society that had- for want of a better way of describing it- been more innocent. With the level of crime today and the sickness and depravity that went with it, how many moors murderers would barely make the news? One off his younger colleagues, Detective Sergeant John Heaney, had held forth on this matter in the canteen that morning. According to the sage Heaney, it had always been the same but- with technology and media coverage being what it was- there was no longer any hiding the previously disguised darker side of society. Bullshit. And Collins had almost told him so but didn't have the energy or inclination.

  He noticed an elderly woman with a blanket wrapped around her shoulders openly weeping; a WPC comforted her and led her away from the smoke. Probably crying with relief, Collins thought grimly. Won't have to put up with the littering, swearing, bullying youth of today for a while.

  What was happening to the world? Never mind the world, what was happening to his town? He watched the firemen jogging back and forth from the darkness of the school's playgrounds, occasionally caught in orange footlights. Even in the rain he felt the heat stretching his cheeks into a fiery grimace; his clothes would stink tomorrow.

  It was then that the call came through via the same caring WPC. Presumably the old lady was sipping tea by then. The call informed him that a number of the more interesting cases at Rennick Psychiatric Hospital had escaped leaving the nurse in charge horrifically beaten- probably dead- and that was just for starters. Collins stared at the young officer, aware that his mouth had fallen open.

  The following day he would mark that as the moment in which he knew that this was not simply a spike on the otherwise gentle point graph of Measton crime but something more like a disease.

  Some would later call it The River Madness.

  12

  The blue neon glow of the cooler cabinet strip lighting provided light enough to see the length of the first aisle. There was no-one there. She knew that the overhead light switches were on the wall to her left and reached for them. She stopped. That would only inform the intruder of her presence. She didn't want that. She sighed heavily but silently to control her adrenalin. The voice within spoke up: just what are you doing any way, Mary? She saw the headline in the newspapers tomorrow. Have-a-go Hero Killed in Own Shop. She shook her head. There was probably no-one there anyway. She'd laugh about it with Miriam tomorrow. She stepped gingerly along the aisle, the heavy torch handle oily with palm sweat but comforting all the same and expected someone to leap out of the shadows at every turn. No-one did. You stupid bitch, she thought.

  Mary walked more confidently around the end of the aisle, expertly avoiding the pile of unsold tabloids that she had placed there at the end of business that day as she always did. Never mind the dark- she knew the place like her own hand. There was no-one hiding there either. The shop floor was clear; only the storeroom remained.

  The sound had come from the store room, she thought and the fear returned. She almost ran back to the connecting door then and headed back to the relative safety of her flat but Madman's steel held true.

  It was her place. Why should she feel afraid? Madman had won the place fair and square and this business that turned over a tidy but modest (and honest) profit- her family's one defining moment of fortune- was not going to be compromised by anyone. She walked around the counter and pushed open the door to the small kitchen beyond. She flicked on the light now unmindful of being seen or heard. The door to the store room remained closed. She put her ear flat against the wood and held her breath; she listened and could hear nothing but her own blood pulsing in her ears and the rain, a regular sshh on the rooftops of Cornhill. She gripped the doorknob and turned it slowly, brandishing the torch in her right hand.

  She pushed open the door and the light from the atrium that they called a kitchen cut a rectangle of brightness into the room. Neatly arranged silhouettes of dry goods stood to attention in the darker recesses of the box room. She flicked the light switch on the wall to her right. The shadows receded to reveal nothing.

  A breeze from the broken store room window made her freeze. She wheeled around expecting to see her assailant but there was nothing, only the shop beyond the two doors she had passed through. The window flapped inwards again, banging against the wall, scattering further musical shards of glass onto the concrete floor. She stepped to the window and closed it to prevent further damage to the frame. She noticed that the catch had snapped cleanly.

  Relief flooded through her, canceling the sickly adrenalin of fear in an instant.

  The catch had always been dodgy; she even remembered Madman mentioning the fact and that had been years before. Dodgy catch, the wind and her frayed nerves from that day's weirdness: an equation that resulted in fear.

  That done with, Mary's practical nature immediately took over. There was some thin wood upstairs, a remnant from a broken
draw that would do the trick- at least until she could pop down to Powers' Glass in the morning. She closed the store room behind her out of habit, walked through the kitchen and stepped behind the counter. She reached for the light switch to illuminate the interior.

  Before she could turn on the lights, Teddy the Ferry Boy reached out of the darkness and clamped his rope worn hand over her mouth.

  13

  Tom dressed as quickly as he could. Something was wrong. Very wrong. He had been given something to help him sleep that afternoon upon arrival at Rennick. That had been some twelve hours ago and he now felt remarkably refreshed, memories of the previous night vague but somehow easier to digest. He glanced at his watch; it was 00.45 according to his digital and yet the noises emanating from the other rooms suggested otherwise. He had been awoken by shouting. Nonsensical shouting. Then the sound of feet running along the corridor beyond his door.

  "STICKITINYOUREYESTICKITINYOUREYESTICKITINYOUREYE!"

  There had followed a sickening thud as bodies collided and hit the ground. Tom had leapt out of his bed, his open-arsed hospital robe flapping behind him and leant against the door in case someone tried to enter. He was at Rennick for fuck's sake- a nuthouse.

  A man screamed in agony, begged: "No, no, no- please!" Then a sickening howl of horror and pain and then a gut wrenching slam into the wall near his door.

  High-pitched laughter rose to a crescendo and ceased. Tom's chest heaved in and out, in and out. There were other noises too.

  In the distance a woman screamed; a repetitive slamming sound ended in a cheer as something- a door perhaps- caved in under the blows; above his room furniture scraped endlessly across the floor along with the slap of excited feet seemingly running around in circles; screams, grunts and snorts echoed around the halls; amidst all of this confusion a rational, authoritative voice told someone to Be calm, don't worry. It's not your fault. It's fine. Just- the voice was cut off by a roar, inhuman to Tom's ears. A woman- the same woman as before- screamed then. The other voices drowned her screams until it seemed to Tom that there was a mob upstairs.

  He shivered involuntarily.

  Tom felt naked in the hospital gown especially given the insanity that was taking place all around him. Thank fuck they put me in a single room, he thought and saw his clothes neatly folded on the chair next to the wardrobe. His old leather hung on the back of the same. He remembered then that he had a mobile phone in the inside pocket. Probably flat though; he hated the fucking things. An unwanted present from Jackie to keep tabs on him no doubt. He could have kissed her for it now though. He snatched at it, momentarily leaving the door unguarded. When he had his shoulder safely leaning against the door once more, he looked at the LCD; there was one bar of battery remaining. Thank fuck. He immediately punched in 999. Engaged. What the fuck? On the fifth try, he gave up; the battery had begun to flash on the LCD. Shit. Tom's father did not answer his home line or his mobile. Fuck. John-o picked up first time.

  "Alright, Tommy?" John-o sounded half-asleep.

  "No, I'm not," Tom rasped. "It's a fucking madhouse here!"

  John-o sighed. "I know, I know but you needed the rest. You had a shock-"

  Tom gaped at the phone. "What? No, no- I don't mean it like that-"

  "- and you'll feel a lot better tomorrow-"

  "No!" Tom practically screamed into the phone. "It's all kicked off! People are being killed in here. There's some kind of fucking riot!"

  The last thing he heard was John-o's oh-so-fucking-annoying-I understand-voice say "Look Tom-" before the battery died completely. Tom slumped to the ground, his head in his hands. He had to get out. He dressed hurriedly.

  The cacophony of chaos continued but it seemed isolated to the wing at the far end of his corridor. Bizarrely he could hear a telephone ringing- an oddly civilized sound given the circumstances. The phone stopped ringing and then there was a scream of such intensity that Tom's initial instinct was to hide under the bed. He didn't. He held his ground at the door, now listening for signs of crazies in the corridor outside. All was quiet out there, he thought. He opened the door.

  "Stick it in your eye," the dark haired man whispered.

  The first thing he noticed about the gowned figure that must have been standing with his forehead against the door, only and inch and half from his own head, was the fact that his eyes were rolled back revealing only the whites, no pupils. This was followed by the fact he appeared to have something in his mouth.

  The madman's pupils rolled back down into place; he opened his mouth and allowed the eyeball to slide off his tongue, sticking briefly on his chin- revealing a clouded blue iris- before it sloppily landed between Tom's feet. When he grinned, he showed blood-stained teeth with pink strands of what Tom knew to be human flesh hanging from his incisors. Tom stepped back as the maniac thrust himself forward screaming: "STICKITINYOUREYE!" He tripped over his untied bootlaces and went down, the lunatic following and landing on top of Tom, winding him slightly. He managed to get his knee up and thrust it into the man's prone testicles. The loon grunted and rolled off Tom and to the side giving him time enough to get a roundhouse swing into the other man's face. He felt the satisfying crunch of nose bones and struggled to his feet in time to kick the exposed, gowned figure in the ribs. After three swift toe pokes, he heard something snap and stopped. He had broken the crazy man's ribs. The madman leered at him and started to get up, mouthing nonsense. If Tom allowed him to get back to his feet, the other man would probably get the better of him, he thought. The nutcase was bleeding and broken, his breath coming in hitches where his ribs were badly splintered and yet there was no pain in those eyes only –what?- a mild amusement. Whatever remained of this man was pure sadist. Tom stepped forward to smash his fist into the other man's face and slipped on the eyeball. He overbalanced but did not fall but it was still enough for the nightmare before him to lunge at his throat and with insane strength pull Tom's face towards his mouth. The madman's mouth opened wide, revealing those recently used incisors and Tom knew the intention.

  His insane opponent wanted to bite into his eyes.

  He pulled with his neck against the other's irresistible strength but to no avail; his nemesis was too strong. He felt the hot excited breath of the other on his cheek, the reek of his breath filling his mouth and nose. Repulsed, Tom slammed his work boot onto the insane man's naked instep. The grip was immediately relinquished. The other man howled and fell to the ground reaching for his damaged foot. Taking only a second to decide, Tom turned and fled from the sobbing man.

  He had a free run down the corridor. As he rounded the corner, he saw the tunic-clad figure lay in his final death position. Where his eyes had been, there were now only bloody holes. Tom cried out in terror as he stepped over the man. The broken in window that had caused much of the repetitive slamming opened before him onto the strangest thing he had ever seen. Remarkably the security glass had been smashed and the iron bars before them had been bent into body sized holes. But that was only one part of the strangeness before him.

  Tom watched the white-gowned figures make their way through the rain-slicked grounds to the fields beyond and thought that they looked like ghosts floating through the downpour. Some ran, some staggered, others walked calmly as though off to fetch the morning paper; they all headed towards the river.

  Tom clambered out of the window.

  *

  14

  At one in the morning Measton sounded like New York. The rise and fall of police sirens along with those of the other emergency services caused the townspeople to leave their beds to make tea and look blearily out of their windows onto the street lit world of rain and unusual activity. Some saw the still-orange aura of the school fire in the distance and looked in wonder at this new Aurora Borealis. A white paneled van sped over

  Greenfields Road and down the long stretch onto High Street; a silver Jag followed. The drivers of the two vehicles had been in constant contact over the forty-five minutes it had taken t
hem to drive from Birmingham. This was the first of the news crews to arrive that night. The cameraman in the passenger seat squinted at a map trying to locate Measton Road and the burning school when the driver told him that there had been a change of plan and to find a village called Rennick. Apparently there was a riot at the mental hospital. Both vehicles skidded to a halt and executed a looping u-turn on the wide main street.

  The travelers moved their caravans to higher ground. They did not need their heightened relationship with nature to tell them that this was the best thing to do. It was obvious. It was the habit of their fathers and those before them to move when they felt it was necessary. That was who they were. That was what separated them from those who dwelled in Cornhill and the other districts of the town; they were unafraid to move. Their leader- Farley- had told them that there was going to be a battle soon so they all needed to feel strong. A move to higher ground would ensure that their children slept soundly and the old women did not worry. The foreigners wanted them out completely- having already taken much of their livelihood from the market gardening and fruit harvesting- and were planning to attack their settlement. As always, the eternal outsiders, they would be ready.