‘...I’m sure you see the sense of my decision.’
Anderton nodded like a sheep.
‘Good. Now, then, how about a little drop of something in your coffee to set you up for the day?’
***
‘You OK this morning?’
It was Kate who asked David as they sat at the breakfast table, the warm autumn sunshine flooding in through the window.
‘Sort of.’
Kate raised an eyebrow.
David munched his toast, ignoring this invitation to explain himself.
She reached across the table and placed her hand on his. ‘I'm sorry, David. I've been a real pain recently haven't? I don't know how you put up with me.’
Because I want you, thought David. Roll telecine of thrashing bodies and delicious moments of interlocking thighs. He said nothing. His silence was more than diplomatic. He reasoned that it would draw Kate on further.
‘There's something inside of me that blames me for Michael's death—well, not his death exactly, but his destruction. Oh, I know that sounds melodramatic but it's true. He was gradually destroyed.’ Her eyes moistened as she shook her head sadly. ‘You see, I can't forget that I loved him once. That thought haunts me. Oh, as you know, I didn't love him at the end, but perhaps I should have done. For better or worse, y'know’ She struggled with a fleeting wry grin, but it had vanished by the time she added: ‘These thoughts won’t leave me. I feel so... responsible.’
David ached to respond to these statements. He could have counteracted her strange obsession with a thousand arguments, but he didn't try. He wanted her to do all the talking. He wanted to hear it all. His comments would only form barriers, stop the flow. This was Kate's release—therapy if you like. She hadn't talked so freely before and he wanted it all to come out, to let the matter seep from the wound.
‘When I met you, when I slept with you, I did so because I was in need of comfort. Oh, of course I found you attractive, attentive and all that, but it wasn't loving or sex I was in need of—it was comfort.’
She fiddled with her teaspoon.
‘Michael was being particularly beastly at that time. His work wasn't going well and mine was. He called himself a 'kept man'.’ She broke off and this time managed to smile broadly. ‘But, of course, you know all this. It's ancient history. I'm talking to you as if you were a stranger.’ The smile faded. ‘Not a stranger, of course but... someone who just doesn't know fully how I feel inside.’ She gave a bitter laugh. ‘I’m not sure I know myself. Oh... what the hell am I trying to say?’
David left the question unanswered.
‘I don't know,’ she continued after a pause, shaking her head and staring out of the window, the light brushing her delicate features. ‘I just want you to know that I love you, David. I didn't intend to at first but it sort of happened and the mixed up jumble in here,’ she touched her brow, ‘is of my own making. It's got nothing to do with my feelings for you.’
‘I woke up last night and you weren't there beside me. I just felt awful... so alone. I almost panicked. It was like the time when I was a little girl and my father had taken me to the park. I went to feed the ducks. I became engrossed in following some baby ducks around the pond with my bread crumbs, and when I turned round my father wasn't there. I was terrified and began shaking with fear. In my panic I thought I'd lost him for ever. Of course, he was on the other side of the pond keeping an eye on me, but I didn't know that. I felt so isolated. Living with Michael made me feel like that in the end: alone and lost. I don't want that to happen again. Oh, God, all this must sound absolute gibberish.’
David permitted himself a shake of the head. This was better than he had anticipated.
‘Last night, I reached a sort of crisis, David. I have been dwelling on Michael's death so much that I thought I heard his voice; I thought I heard him call out to me. Not only that... but I actually thought I saw him—out in the garden. Now I know you must think I'm crazy.’
David's mind shot back to the moment he had arrived at the cottage the previous evening and how he'd seen what he first imagined were two figures on the lawn. Suddenly his mouth went very dry.
‘As I lay in the dark last night,’ she continued, ‘I realised that if I'm not careful, I'll be heading for a complete crack-up, so I gave myself a good talking to.’ Her eyes brightened as she gazed directly at David. ‘This is day one of the new me. Well, not completely new, but I'm determined to put all the sadness of Michael and the mess of our marriage behind me. I've forced myself to realise that I can't change the past, and as long as I think I can, it will haunt me—destroy me. But I can influence the future. It won't be easy and I don't expect to do it overnight, but will you stay and help me?’
For an icy split-second David had the urge to say: ‘The hell I will.’ But the moment passed swiftly. He squeezed her hand. ‘Of course,’ he said softly.
‘Thank you,’ Kate leaned over the table to kiss him, sending her cup and saucer crashing to the floor.
She grinned. ‘Passion with you is always noisy.’
‘Let's go to the bedroom; it's much quieter there.’ he said.
***
Morning had also found its way into the studio. Michael's portrait shimmered in the bright sunlight—the pale blue eyes stared out fiercely with a malevolent glare.
FOUR
Monday morning. But only just. The big hand had not yet strayed in the darkness to one on the clock. All were sleeping. Kate and David coitally entwined after a renaissance weekend of walks, wine and loving. Timothy, back in his own bed, slumbered deep. But Rob Moore was once more in the realms of dark dreams.
He found himself walking in a dim forest whose trees were tall, straight and strangely smooth like overgrown pencils. They grew close together in a tightly packed formation. In fact, as he made his way through the gloomy forest, guided only by the thin shafts of daylight which fought their way through the thick spread of interlacing leafy branches high above his head, the trees seemed to be closing in on him. Imperceptibly, the gaps between the trunks were diminishing. And yet his feet propelled him on. Deeper into the forest.
Now, in order to progress further, he had to brush against the sides of the trees, his naked arms scraping against the bark. Their touch was clammy and sticky, like no trees he knew. While trying to contain the sense of panic growing in his stomach, he continued to press forward through the ever narrowing gaps.
Soon he was having to squeeze his way between the trunks, the sticky barks leaving dark traces of a greasy jelly-like substance on his flesh. It was ice-cold and it stank. The stuff filled him with revulsion, his stomach heaving with the smell of it, but he couldn't turn back now and he certainly couldn't stay where he was—he felt sure that if he did, he would be crushed by the trees. How he knew this, he couldn't comprehend. But he knew it.
It became a real struggle to force his way through them, pressing his body against the sides, his gorge rising as the foul jelly smeared his face. The trunks of these trees didn't feel like wood at all. They had a different texture somehow—soft and pliable. They felt like... they felt like... flesh!
The roots were now intertwining with each other like the tendrils of some obscene sea creature, further hindering his progress as he kept catching his foot in their spiny network. He stumbled, his face scraping against one of the trunks and he gave out a yell of disgust as some of the jelly substance brushed his lips. He spat furiously to rid himself of the obnoxious stuff. He knew these damned trees wanted him and he realised that it would not be long before he would be crushed by them—crushed and then absorbed through the sticky bark.
He would feed them!
He felt the scream that had been welling up inside him about to burst from his lips when quite suddenly, he squeezed his way out into a clearing.
He was free.
It was as though he had passed through an invisible barrier that was holding the trees back. They ringed the clearing in a perfect circle, standing trunk by trunk as thou
gh on guard.
With a frantic flapping of his hands, he scraped and pulled at the vile jelly which still stuck to him, the stuff stubbornly clinging to his fingers. Eventually, rubbing his hands in the grass at his feet, he rid himself of the worst of it and it was then that he saw the cottage. There it was, standing in the forest clearing. Hansel and Gretel eat your heart out. This dream, he thought, must have been concocted by the Brothers Grimm.
His heart lightened as he surveyed the fairy tale cottage. All was still and silent. The door was open and there was a large welcome mat placed on the threshold. The cottage seemed to beckon to him—inviting him to enter.
Rob moved forward down the path, beginning to smile. He was enjoying this part of the dream. He no longer felt threatened or in danger. However, as he neared the front door of the cottage, something caused him to falter, something which at first was intangible, something faint on the air. It was not distinct enough to be definable, but as he took a few more uncertain steps, the sense of it assailed his nostrils and almost overpowered him. From the open door of the cottage came the foulest odour he had ever encountered. The power of it made him retch. Then he recognised it; it was simply the virulent smell of rot and decay. As he fell back from the doorway, he looked up, re-examining the front of the cottage. Then he froze in terror. It was as though a veil had been lifted or one of those gauze back-drops used in stage shows to reveal the hidden scene behind. Now he saw clearly what he at first he thought had been a cottage.
It wasn't a cottage at all.
What disordered short-circuit of his brain had convinced him that it was a cottage? That was of no consequence now. With growing horror, he saw what the thing really was. With smooth walls of skin and black vacant eye sockets as windows, it was a face—a huge, almost human face. And the aperture he had thought was a doorway was its gaping maw.
Good God, it was a face. The face of a rotting corpse.
That face.
Saliva now drooled from its mouth while billows of fetid breath issued forth from the darkness beyond, rolling in sickening waves over Rob. As he stood, frozen with fear, on the threshold of this monstrous thing, he was suddenly thrown off balance by a sharp movement of the ground beneath him and then he felt himself lifted up in the air. As he struggled to keep his equilibrium, he realised with a chilling comprehension that the mat on which he was standing was no mat at all, but the slimy tongue of the monster mouth which was now carrying him into that dark, gaping cavern. He was about to be devoured. As the warm, clammy darkness engulfed him, he threw back his head and screamed.
With a violent jolt forward he sat up in bed. He was ice-cold and drenched in sweat. He did not move for some time, listening to his own thundering heartbeat slowly lessen and feeling his body gradually unclench itself. Everything was still. Fiona slept peacefully at his side, stiff as a corpse. His scream had not penetrated her unconsciousness, although it had been loud enough to wake the dead.
He ran his hand across his wet brow wiping the perspiration away.
Then he heard the laugh.
It wasn't loud. But it was there in the room, somewhere in the shadows—deep and mocking.
What now? thought Rob, What the hell now?
***
Arthur Crabtree slept soundly in his bed. He slept on his back, his mouth open and his cheeks slightly bloated, looking like a blind fish out of water.
His glasses, teeth and toupee rested on the bedside table. All was at peace with Arthur Crabtree. But unbeknownst to him, even in his calm, untroubled slumber, forces were at work on his mind.
***
Out of the shadows at the end of the bed, Rob discerned one more substantial than the rest.
It moved slightly.
Nearer.
The laugh came again, gentle but sinister and cruel. It emanated from this patch of gloom, there could be no doubt about it. This shadow... which Rob knew was no shadow at all. It was something more... real. As it moved again, it looked like a man or rather the shape of a man.
Now he could hear it breathing—a forced stertorous breathing like the painful gasps of an asthmatic... or a dying man. And he could smell it. His body grew rigid again as he recognised that sickly odour that came to him from the darkness at the end of the bed: the smell of his dream had followed him into reality.
The shadow moved again, this time catching a beam of moonlight which filtered through the net curtain. It gave just enough light for Rob to see the face. This time there was no surprise. However irrational the whole thing was, he knew it had to be him. In the creamy light that horrendous visage leered at him with grinning mouth and eyeless sockets.
He grabbed Fiona's arm. He wanted her to see him, too. He wanted someone else to share his madness. He tried to shake her into wakefulness, but she remained immobile. He shook her again, hard this time, and called her name out loudly, but she did not move.
‘Fiona, for fuck's sake,’ he cried in wild desperation, dragging his wife over on to her back and pulling her up into a half-sitting position. His heart nearly ceased to function altogether at the sight that now met his eyes. Fiona lay slumped against the pillow, her mouth frozen in a twisted grimace. Her eyes were open, but with only the whites visible. But the thing that really shocked him, held him in paralysed thrall, was the sight of the black-handled knife which had been plunged into her left breast, and the dark pool of semi-congealed blood which was forming an obscene pattern around the hilt.
Once again he screamed. And once again with a violent jolt forward, he sat up in bed drenched in sweat.
***
Dawn came.
Arthur Crabtree woke, knowing this was the day for the real contact. He had been troubled for some days by the messages and he knew he would have to respond soon if only for his own peace of mind. But as he busied himself with dressing, he realised these vague feelings had now become a compulsion. The forces within him left him in no doubt.
It must be today.
What he did not realise as he straightened his toupee in the bathroom mirror and examined his tired, grey face was that this dull, autumnal day was to be his last.
***
With a hard, unwavering stare, Nelson Parker, Head of Popular Drama at Paragon Productions, eyed his writing team of Vernon and Sons seated around the highly polished table.
There were four writers in the room, two of whom were David Cole and Rob Moore. They had only exchanged the briefest of greetings that morning. David had been late in arriving and Rob, pale and drawn, seemed tired and preoccupied with his own thoughts. He now sat doodling on his pad, his mind miles away. David naturally assumed that he was concerned about the nature of this special script panel meeting.
‘I will not beat about the bush, gentlemen,’ said Parker slowly, removing his spectacles and placing them on the polished surface of the table where they mirrored another pair. ‘At present Vernon and Sons is in dire trouble. The episodes of the last month were, for want of a better word, crap. Crap with a capital K!’ After allowing a brief pause for his considered opinion to have its calculated effect, he leaned forward in a dramatic pose of earnestness and confidentiality. ‘You have been far too complacent of late about what we can serve up to the viewer. We are in a very competitive field: the TV screens in this country are awash with soap. If we intend to keep on top, we're going to have to come up with better material than the garbage we've been doling out recently. We are a joke on social media and the viewing figures are plummeting. Quite honestly, it is voiced abroad that it is already too late to save the show... that it's had its day and it's time it was put to rest with a swift and decent funeral. The knacker’s yard awaits.’ Parker paused and allowed himself a grim smile.
Ben Hughes, the youngest of the writers, opened his mouth to comment, but the gimlet eyes of Nelson Parker froze him before he could speak.
‘To put it precisely, gentlemen.’ he continued, ‘we have three months in which to improve upon these figures or V and S is for the jolly old chop.’
<
br /> No one spoke, but the atmosphere in the room had changed into one of unsettled gloom. ‘Three months,’ Parker repeated for emphasis. ‘And I had to fight the powers that be bloody hard for that.’
David knew, of old, that a string of rhetorical questions would be trotted out like various tired exhibits at a murder trial to be considered silently before Parker was really ready for discussion. David had not needed Parker to tell him that Vernon and Sons was dying a slow death in front of a diminishing audience. He already knew. The storylines and the performances had been forming a solid mediocre rut for some months now. Most of his own ideas and suggestions had been thrown out by the others on the script panel and by Rob Moore in particular as being too outré or too daring. Rob, as script-co-ordinator, had the final say and he wasn't in the business of taking risks. It was too cosy a number to let David's 'way out' ideas rock his own little boat. David, rather than fight this opposition, had accepted these decisions and meekly gone along with the predictable plotlines that were agreed upon; he had grown tired of the show and was already looking for fresh pastures.
‘Well, you are the bright boys,’ said Parker with a tired smirk, throwing his arms out to them in a half-hearted gesture. ‘If anyone can save the show, you are the ones who can do it. You are the ones who have to do it. So, gentlemen, I'd like to hear your ideas.’
He put his spectacles back on, sat back and glared at them. Ben Hughes made to offer something, but was again silenced by Parker's stare. He must be a distant relation of Medusa, mused David.
‘Before you start, I would say this: I do not want to fall back on the old save-the-soap chestnuts of a wedding, a surprise affair or even a sudden death—no Grace Archers need apply.’
The Darkness Rising Page 4