The River Dark

by Nicholas Bennett

  What was that?

  Weaver heard a noise from the hallway behind him and turned to face the door, thoughts of metaphorical woodland ways gone from his mind.

  He held his breath and listened. Nothing.

  He put Davies' notebook on to the coffee table and rubbed his hands together for warmth. Christ it was cold. Cold enough to see your own breath. He reached over and touched Mary's cheek. She seemed fine but he took off his coat and laid it over her peaceful form.

  He heard another creak from above and froze.

  Probably nothing. What could it be any way? Davies was dead. Weaver felt breathless with fear. He didn't know whether to move or stay put; he didn't know if he could move. He was conscious of his shaking hands and knew that it was not only as a result of the coldness.

  "Oh fuck," he muttered. The words seemed to spur him on. "I've had enough of this shit," he whispered and almost convinced himself that he was angry and that anger could carry him through but he knew that he wasn't at all angry. "Fuck it," he said again, repeating the mantra and took a last glance at Mary before leaving the room.

  4

  They heard the sounds of the running soldier's boots echoing along the high walls of the alleyway that ran behind

  Busted Lane long before he came into view. Without discussion the three men ducked into the shadows of an open gateway. Before the running man reached them, he stopped. They could hear him just around the bend, panting and half-sobbing. Collins stepped out of the shadows just as the soldier's silhouette came into sight.

  "What the hell are you doing?" Tom whispered harshly. Ironically it was this whisper that brought the soldier to a halt some fifteen metres away.

  "Who's there?" The young soldier sounded terrified. His rifle was at his shoulder in a blur of movement. "I've got a gun! I'll shoot!"

  "Shit!" John-o hissed so that only Tom could hear.

  Collins raised his hands and stepped slowly forward.

  "Halt!" The soldier screamed. Collins stopped but kept his hands raised.

  "It's alright son," Collins said soothingly. "I'm DCI Collins of the Cotswold Division of the Midlands Police Constabulary."

  The young soldier made a pah! sound of disgust and kept his gun raised.

  "Okay," Collins continued, still calm, "I understand that things have gone… a little weird in the-"

  "Fucking Weird?" Soldier spat back at him, still struggling for breath after his sprint from the river. "You don't know the meaning of fucking weird!"

  Collins sighed and shook his head. "Unfortunately, today has taught me a great deal about that word. If you'll relax, I'll tell you what I know about what's been going on. Then perhaps you'll begin to trust-"

  "Trust?" The soldier, a boy really looking wildly along the suburban alleyway. "I'll never trust anyone again after-"

  "I know what you mean," Collins soothed. "So, let's just relax. But first you need to know that I have two companions with me-"

  The rifle swung around in the darkness. John-o held his breath.

  "Who the fuck have you got there? Show yourselves!" The young soldier moved the rifle from side to side peering into the shadows. Collins remained maddeningly calm.

  "Okay, okay," he said, hands raised and then to the two hidden figures: "Come out slowly with your hands raised above your heads so Private- sorry, what's your name?"

  "Chris Jones," the young man replied in a voice that was barely above a whisper.

  "Okay," Collins said and beckoned to Tom and John-o.

  John-o felt the nausea of fearful adrenalin rising from his stomach. He and Tom got to their feet and took a step out of the shadows.

  "Show Chris that you are safe, boys," Collins cajoled warmly when a gunshot rapped through the night. Private Chris Jones hit the ground face down before the three men had even registered that the echoing report was a bullet at all.

  "Run!" Collins gasped. John-o looked at the twitching form in the darkness. Even in this light he could see the inky shadow of the blood that ran from Jones' throat. His mouth worked but nothing came out. Tom pulled at his arm.

  "Come on!" Tom shouted in his ear.

  Collins had already sprinted away. But John-o couldn’t move. He’d watched someone die. A real, breathing individual that had spoken to them only moments before. This was all wrong; this was not a movie; this was Measton.

  "Fuck's sake, come on!" Tom raged at him. "Do you want to fucking die?"

  John-o sensed the approaching figure and looked up to see a man shaped movement in the alley way. He also heard something that he could not quite grasp; something that accompanied the figure's gravel crunching footsteps as it approached: whispering. That got him moving.

  John-o and Tom soon caught Collins who stumbled in a pothole sized puddle as they passed him. John-o heard the old man curse in between laboured breaths. He almost laughed out loud at the hilarity of it all. The laughter dried up when he felt something whip passed his cheek and saw the brickwork crumble to his left before he actually heard the gunshot crack and whine. Collins passed him once more moving remarkably quickly for an old man with a gammy leg.

  "What the fuck is going on?" Tom gasped to his left. Then the alleyway opened out onto Willow Road and they were brutally exposed by streetlights. Their feet sloshed through the gutters as they pounded towards the corner of Willow and

  Acorn Avenue. The roads were more like streams now; the flood drains had been overwhelmed by the deluge. Tom, about to have a heart attack he was sure, risked a look over his shoulder before he followed his companions around the corner into Acorn Avenue. He saw three figures stride out of the alley way, all of them wearing the same camouflage as Jones, as they raised their rifles towards his retreating figure. He ducked around the corner and another bullet bounced off the oily pavement inches from his left foot as he sprinted. "Where are we going?" Tom panted as he drew alongside the flagging police man. Between heaving breaths, Collins managed the words Polly Road.

  The three men knew that they did not have long to reach the safety of another corner. The soldiers would be rounding the corner and would have them in their sights within seconds. Collins felt his left leg tearing at his pain threshold but gritted his teeth against it and redoubled his efforts. He could not remember the last time he had run so wildly; certainly not since before that particular afternoon in the dog days of summer, 1976. At that moment, despite his terror, regardless of the fragility of his grasp on reality, he felt rapturous joy fill his being: what it was to run, what it was to run- as if for your life- was something that he, like all boys, had felt as a matter of course back in the days when there was always someone out to get you from a rival street or gang, always a race to be run and won, if for no other reason than for fear of losing; it was ever present everywhere in a boy's life up until the illusion ended and time instructed you to put aside childish things, when life ceased to be a game, when life became serious. And then you forget. You forget that feeling. The exhilaration of desperation or fear or simply the thrill of speed with utter abandonment. Nature makes you forget because, if you remembered what that freedom to run felt like, you would never stop, you would never-

  Collins jerked forward as something slammed into his shoulder; he stumbled but did not lose his footing. The nerves in his shoulder and upper right arm screamed as he rounded onto

  Polly Road. He clutched his shoulder and felt the warm ooze of his own blood. Not far now.

  Tom skidded around the corner onto

  Polly Road and bounded after the policeman. He saw Collins clutch his shoulder but the older man did not slow down. He must have pulled a muscle. He heard a gunshot and felt his ear explode with fire. He stumbled on the sodden lawn and felt John-o's hand under his armpit. He continued to sprint across the neatly manicured lawn of backstreet suburbia. Collins skidded to a halt in front of a well-lit house and jumped over the hedge. Seconds later, Tom and John-o joined him. They followed his hobbling figure to the front door and through it as Collins pushed his way in
side. With hardly a pause, Collins pulled the door closed and reached over to the wall and flicked the lights off extinguishing the illumination of the hallway and stairs. The three men leant against the wall breathing hard.

  "You've been shot," John-o rasped at Collins. The older man hushed him.

  "Let's wait until they go by," he whispered.

  They waited in the hallway, struggling to control their breathing, the streetlights outside distorted by frosted glass. A thin sliver of light from under the closed lounge doorway gave them enough to see the silhouettes of the men next to them. Tom reached up and grimaced as he felt his ear. It was still there- a mess, but still there. Tom and John-o felt Collins tense in between them and strained to hear. Footsteps scraped by on the pavement of

  Polly Road. They waited breathlessly to hear the door handle rattle but it never happened. The infected soldiers had gone by.

  "Okay," Collins sighed. "Let's- no!" John-o froze, his fingers millimeters from the light switch.

  "Okay," he muttered. "I get the point."

  Collins sagged in the semi-darkness.

  "Let's get him sat down," Tom said. As though the words ended Collins' resistance to his injury he fell against Tom and John-o. They supported him and shuffled towards the lounge.

  They saw the dark-haired woman sleeping soundly on the couch. Tom and John-o deposited the unconscious Collins in the nearest armchair and heard the door close behind them.

  Both men turned around.

  A filthy, yellow skinned creature grinned at them. Tom noticed that the man wore a smock not unlike the one that he had worn at Rennick; only this creature's garment was torn and hideously soiled. He stank of raw sewage and something worse- spoilt meat perhaps. The insanity radiating from its eyes made John-o want to run but this thing that had once been a man blocked the door. In its filthy, broken-nailed hand it gripped a short kitchen knife, the point poking into the side of his captive's head.

  The man with the knife held against his temple was David Weaver. Weaver's terrified eyes darted between the two men. The yellow creature nodded and opened its pink mouth to communicate. Tom saw that its teeth were coated in a green and brown slime as though it had been eating mud.

  The creature opened its filthy mouth and the voices filled the room.

  *

  Chapter 14

  1

  A vigil was taking place at the Heaney household. At the Detective Sergeant's insistence, the boy had been taken to the place where he belonged: to his mother's house, the house that, up until recently, the four of them had shared as a family. Before the fall that was, before his indiscretion. But this was still home.

  The crucifix above the single bed, the same old Spitfire wallpaper that he had failed to smooth correctly leaving ripples here and there in mellow lamplight; his soon-to-be ex-wife on the opposite side of the bed clutching her long lost rosary beads muttering The Angelus. Paul lay between them so pale as to seem transparent, as though he was in danger of altogether disappearing into the white pillow behind his head. The parents sat as they had so many times throughout Paul's infanthood during nights of high temperature or summoned from sleep to his bedside when he had called out from the confines of some nightmare or other.

  Paul lay still, barely breathing. Heaney would have given anything to hear his son cry out or even scream to help him find a way out of this- a waking nightmare- situation.

  Paul had eventually closed his eyes. Somehow that was easier to deal with; the dead-eyed stare was too much like death for comfort and with the other bed empty beneath the Spiderman bedspread, death was a thought that he would not allow to enter the room.

  Paul had not spoken since they had pulled him from the rowing boat that afternoon. At first he stared vacantly at nothing in a way that was horribly reminiscent of Andrew Davies catatonic state when they had ferried him off to Rennick. The paramedics had been called away from the Heaney's almost immediately upon placing the boy in his bed. It seemed the madness was escalating. The doctors on call were not answering; Maureen had listened to several messages and then had called for help from the place that she had wanted to go to from the beginning of the whole nightmare.

  Father O'Brien entered the room and sat on Andy's bed looking over Maureen's shoulder at the catatonic boy. Heaney felt resentment at the Catholic priest's closeness to his ex-wife and felt a sliver of cold jealousy but pushed it away. He hadn't felt that for a while. He looked at O' Brien quizzically.

  "The Archbishop will return my call directly he's out of Mass," the priest said. This is fucking ridiculous, Heaney thought and was about to tell Maureen Paul needed doctors not priests, medication not prayer when O' Brien said: "I could hypnotise him though, if you'd allow it."

  "Why?" Heaney asked. "What good would that do?"

  O' Brien shrugged. "At the very least we may find out what happened to Andy and Damien," he said. Heaney looked at Maureen. Maureen nodded as Heaney had known she would. Christ, she'd go and meet the very Devil himself if she thought it would bring her boys home safe. But then, so would he for that matter.

  "I have had experience in this field," the priest continued. "I have a Masters in psychology and a far bit on hypnotherapy. It is a technique that I have used before in cases of disturbance to the mind which, of course, has a detrimental effect on the spirit itself."

  "I don't know," Heaney replied, shaking his head. "What if it does more damage to him? I mean- what will it do to him?"

  "It can't harm him, can it, Father?" Maureen whispered; her bloodshot eyes were wide and fearful. "It won't make him worse will it?"

  "Have faith, Maureen," O' Brien said reassuringly. "The Lord loves this child and will not allow him to come to more harm, I am sure."

  Heaney noted the grateful half-smile on his wife's mouth and said nothing. Instead, his mind returned to the Rennick tapes- to the silently screaming Davies, to what Horton had palely referred to as "a kind of Electronic Voice Phenomena, EVP for short", and to David Weaver hearing his own name among all of that vile profanity. Heaney was not sure that he would be able to handle such filth from his own boy's mouth; Maureen’s mind would surely snap.

  Maureen began to pray again and he noted with alarm that she was rocking to and fro like a patient from the wards of Rennick.

  "What's the process then?" Heaney asked the priest.

  "Hypnosis is not as scary as many people think," O' Brien said and walked to the foot of Paul's bed. "The process of healing by trance state is the oldest form of psychotherapy and often the most simple and effective." The priest had adopted the role of teacher; he actually put his hands behind his back and stared off to the left as though considering his next words to a theatre of under-graduates. "It is not the mind control that dramatists and fantasists would like us to believe it to be but rather an enhanced state of relaxation that enables conscious communication with the subconscious."

  "How will this help Paul?" Heaney wanted to know. O' Brien considered the policeman for a moment before answering.

  "It may not help at all," he said. "If Paul is too far under now, he may not respond to suggestion. You see, the participant must be aware of what is going on around him and must also be agreeable. Paul knows me well so he will, I hope, trust me. Trust is very important."

  "What will you say to him if he responds?" Heaney wanted to know exactly where this was going. He didn't have the same level of trust in O' Brien as his ex-wife; to a degree, the way she had moved back to the church with the fervour of a little Irish Catholic girl had been one of the many blocks that had appeared in their union in the final years. It seemed that as his belief in God had waned, hers had risen and stronger than ever.

  "Well. We need to go back to the day's events in order to find out what happened to them, I think. Hypnosis back to the moment of anxiety or of the there and then is very common in order to help the sufferer come to terms with the moment of crisis. It could be days ago or- more often- years. The majority of our psychological angst stems from the c
hildhood years as I am sure you know."

  "What’s the Church's position on hypnotherapy?" Heaney asked. O' Brien shrugged.

  "You're asking the wrong man, John," the priest said. "The Church and I are not of the same mind about a lot of things. Besides, the day when the Catholic Church would dismiss hypnosis as a result of its moral and mystic character is in the past fortunately."