‘With pleasure,’ came the rasping reply.
A table lamp snapped on, bathing the room in pale light—it was a light that dispelled shadows and softened contours.
‘Satisfied?’ said the voice, the owner of which could now be seen clearly.
Rob did not know exactly what he had expected. Michael was dead, for God's sake and although he had seen his face, his dead face, leer close to him in his dreams, nothing in his imagination had come close to the horror that faced him now.
Standing in the corner of the bedroom, smiling, was the rotting corpse of Michael Barlow, the tatters of a suit hung from the decaying body; the face was virtually fleshless, but small patches of putrescence which had once been skin clung to the slimy skull. Both eye sockets were now dark voids. The thing however was breathing: the shallow rib cage rose and fell emitting a thick gurgling sound and, as it opened its mouth, the foul stench of rot was expelled.
‘Not a pretty sight, eh?’ said the thing, shambling a little closer to Rob.
‘What are you?’ Rob asked as he felt his brain shutting down. The corpse held out an arm to touch him. He flinched and pulled back.
‘That's no way to treat an old friend; and let's face it, Robby, you and I are old friends. We share many memories together. Do you remember?’
Rob closed his eyed and groaned. One tattered vestige of his mind clung on to the wild hope that this indeed was another of his crazy nightmares.
‘I'd better warn you,’ the thing continued as though interpreting this thought, ‘I am not a figment of your imagination. This is real. I'm here. I've got through at last.’
Rob now felt totally adrift from his reason. He shook his head as if to shake his addled senses back to sanity. ‘You're dead. Why come back? What are you after?’
‘To settle a few old scores, shall we say. And for Kate.’
‘Is this what you mean by settling old scores?’ Rob turned, his fear converting to anger as he pointed to Fiona's dismembered corpse on the bed.
‘Yes, Rob. I thought you'd like my handiwork. Oh, the number of times you told me you how trapped you felt with Fiona. How she disappointed you as a wife. How you longed to be free of her.’ The creature laughed, its obscene chest rippling with the effort and the dark mucus dripping from the corners of the mouth.
‘Well, I've done the job for you. Now you're free of her. You're on your own at last. No more nagging Fiona.’
The truth of this statement overwhelmed Rob and he felt a dry gagging sensation in his throat. Fiery tears pricked his eyes as he sank wearily on to the corner of the bed.
‘Yes, Rob, old boy.’ Michael's voice was soft and smug. ‘I suspect that now you realise that, in fact, Fiona was your support. Your crutch. The truth was that it was you who held her back. You were the one who needed her like a blind man needs a white stick. That is the truth. I knew it a long time ago. A pity you didn't. But you know now don't you, Rob, old boy? Don't you?’
Rob Moore’s supply of words had dried up. He had no coherent response. It was all true what this thing had said. Oh, he had known before but had kept it locked in a corner of his mind and only occasionally had he unlocked it to examine, usually when he was depressed or drunk—or both.
On later reflection he would always deny what he knew was the truth. And the truth was that he had been the one who had destroyed the marriage. Fiona had not only supported him in the early days but made sacrifices in her own career so that he could climb up the greasy pole in Television Land. And in the end, he had been the one to shut her out, to cast her aside for a series of trite and tasteless affairs with empty-headed secretaries and bimbo starlets. He had been the real bastard. Poor Fiona had been the victim. No wonder she turned away from him and became… what did he call her? The ice maiden. And yet in her own way, she still stood by him. What a prize arsehole he was. And it was this decaying corpse creature standing before him now that had caused him to really face the truth at last.
My God, what was happening to his world? Everything was disintegrating. Logic had been blown away. Here was dead Michael Barlow standing before him in the flesh—the rotting flesh. ‘The time has been that, when the brains were out, the man would die and there an end.' What did it all mean? Why had he been dragged out of the real world into this hellish parody of life where the dead walked—and killed.
One question did spring into his ravaged mind to ask the fiend that now confronted him.
‘What do you want of me?’
‘Ah, I'm glad you asked me that. It saves me having to raise the rather delicate subject myself.’
The mock politeness and reasonableness by which this creature talked increased Rob's sense of insanity, creating further erosion of his crumbling mental structures.
‘I feel rather like Cinderella.’ Michael continued, his breath still thick and heavy as though every word had to fight its way out of the dead mouth. ‘You see, like old Cinders, I want to go to the ball, but as you can observe, I have nothing to wear. However, you, Rob, my old friend, shall be my fairy godmother and provide the necessities.’
Rob frowned and the corpse shook once more with merriment. The dark eyeless sockets bored into him.
‘In simple terms, I want your body. I can hardly move around like this. It's hardly decent. So you see in your dying minutes you will be playing a most significant role in my resurrection.’
***
He was on a cross, arms outstretched in the classic pose. Nails were being hammered into the palms of his hands. They sank into the soft white flesh but there was no pain; only the sound of the hammering bothered him.
Bang. Bang. Bang.
The noise ricocheted around his brain.
Bang. Bang. Bang.
He screwed up his eyes, eclipsing the view of the violence being done to his hands, but in the darkness the hammer blows sounded louder.
Bang. Bang. Bang.
He woke.
The hammer blows continued.
Bang. Bang. Bang.
Full consciousness flooded over him. Someone at the door. David struggled up from his sprawled position and staggered towards the knocking. He caught a glance at the clock. Nearly one. It must be Kate. Can't find her key again. God, she's late.
Bang. Bang Bang.
‘Coming my lovely,’ he called in a silly voice, warming with anticipation of seeing her again. He slipped the catch and pulled back the door allowing the dim amber light of the hall to spill out on to the porch, where a dark shape was waiting for him. It wasn't Kate.
‘Good evening, sir.’ said the figure in blue. ‘May I come in?’
***
Timothy Barlow was fighting it: the strange feeling that was invading his body. He wanted to scream out with uncertainty and fear. But he didn’t want to be removed from his dormitory again; he didn’t want to gain a reputation for being odd. They could be very cruel to you at St. Austell's if you were odd.
His body was chilling up as though he had been injected with ice crystals. And there were cramps in his legs. He bit his lip as he squirmed in distress trying to control the spasms of pain. Whatever happened he must not disturb the other boys who were now filling the air with the heavy breathing of sleep. In time the discomfort would go away and then in the morning everything would be normal again.
At the far end of the dormitory a door opened and a sharp rectangle of yellow light slid into the room.
Silhouetted there was a tall slim figure. A torch beam flashed.
Tim forced himself to lie still.
The prefect crossed the threshold, his shoes producing an eerie clipping sound on the parquet floor like some phantom horse. The torch beam swept crazily across the room, falling briefly on Tim's bed.
He held his breath, his body coiled in anticipation. The rough blanket felt like the rasp of sandpaper on his sensitive skin, but he did not move.
The torch beam moved on; and then like a film playing in reverse, the figure, after a moment's pause, retreated backwards, snapping off
the torch before closing the door.
Hot tears sprang to Timothy's eyes as he flung himself on his back and dug his nails into the palms of his hands. Outside a cruel moon shone down uncaringly as the scent of evil floated abroad.
***
‘How did it happen?’
‘Difficult to say, sir. An eye-witness said that she just seemed to lose control of the vehicle. It veered right across the road, mounted the pavement, smashed through a hedge and down a thirty feet drop. The car was a write-off. It’s a miracle she wasn't killed on impact.’
‘My God.’ David put his head in his hands. He felt weak with shock. Tiredness began to weigh down on him. He just wanted to go back to sleep, to hide in the warm security of unconsciousness. And then a painful thought flashed into his mind. ‘She's not dead is she? You're not trying to break this to me gently are you?’
The eyes in the expressionless face of the policeman flickered for a moment; he spoke in low matter-of-fact tones. ‘No, sir, but she is in a bad way. As I said before, she's in Intensive Care.’
‘I must see her.’
The policeman nodded. ‘We can run you to the hospital now.’
‘No, no, I'll go myself.’
‘Are you sure you're in a fit state?’ the policeman said looking pointedly at the half-empty bottle of scotch on the coffee table.
A touch of irritation reared in the numbness of David's senses. ‘Of course I'm capable. I've only had one drink. Do you want to breathalyse me?’ He found his voice rising in anger.
‘I was just thinking about the emotional upset, sir. You've had quite a shock to your system.’
David ran his fingers through his hair. ‘Yes, I'm sorry... I'm just not thinking straight.’
‘I understand, sir. Now are you sure that we can't run you down to the hospital. It'd be no trouble.’ The policeman rose, his raincoat rustling unnaturally in the quiet.
‘No. Thank you all the same. I'd prefer to go on my own.’ David forced a smile. ‘Don't worry, I’ll be all right.’
‘Very well, sir. We'll be in touch with you presently regarding the accident, but I'll leave you now so you can get off to the hospital.’ He retreated to the door and then turned back briefly. ‘I hope everything works out OK,’
David nodded dumbly. He didn't trust himself to speak. A well of sadness and despair was rising up inside him. He somehow knew this was the end of it all. Kate would never regain consciousness. She would die leaving him feeling guilty and alone. And only a few hours earlier he had been predicting the golden dawn of their new life. And now…
He stood for a moment unable to move locked in his own thoughts and then the sound of the police car starting up and driving off broke his reverie. He must get to Kate. Quickly.
Whatever was going to happen, he must be with her.
***
Rob knew he was dying. He could feel it and strangely enough it didn't frighten him. Had he been able to consider fully the implications of what was happening to him, he probably would have felt the same. Life held nothing for him now. He had glimpsed hell and its horrors, and he welcomed the embrace of the great oblivion—the blessed peace.
The remnant of Michael Barlow came closer to him, breathing the foul stink of death—the smell of sulphur, rot and decay. The dark eye sockets held him in thrall, transfixed to the bed while life was slowly being sucked out of him.
Rob felt the power of movement fading as though controls were being switched off in various parts of his body. Already his lower half was paralysed: no feeling, no function, nothing. He had lost the use of his fingers also. They were just sticks of lifeless bone and tissue.
Then the arms.
A chilling cold gripped his body where sensation was left and then, incredibly, he could feel his heartbeat slowing down. It was then that a kind of panic gripped him. He must speak before his mouth and vocal chords were struck by the creeping malaise of death.
‘Why are you doing this? What do you want?’ His mouth moved in slow motion, the words emerging in a slurred fashion as though he was very drunk.
‘I can hardly start my new life as I am,’ came the reply. ‘What would people say?’
The thing that had been Michael Barlow gurgled with delight. ‘As I said, I need new clothes for my body, or to be more precise, I need a new body.’
Rob opened his mouth to say more, but it remained open, slack and useless. The tongue was now lifeless. For a moment his eyes flashed wildly, the brain carrying the full burden of panic for the now dormant body; and then came the final inexorable blackness.
Like a marionette with severed strings, the body of Rob Moore slumped back on to the bed, his arms spilling loosely across the cover close to the corpse of his wife.
For a moment there was stillness. The scene was held, like a madman's painting.
And then the body began to move once more. The flesh started to ripple and undulate like the throbbing of some life-sized maggot. Hands twitched and the head seemed to expand, balloon-like forcing the eyelids open and exposing the bulbous whites of the eyes.
A gargling and gurgling sound issued from the throat while green bile escaped in a fine trickle from the corners of the mouth. The noise rose in intensity gradually transforming into a loud human cry, which wracked the whole body causing it to thrash about the bed as though caught in the throes of some violent fit.
Then, once again, there was stillness.
In that bedroom, with the creamy moonlight still falling through the window on to the inert forms of Rob Moore and his wife, there was quiet. The grotesque replica of Michael Barlow was gone. The only evidence of his having been there was a putrid mess by the side of the bed and several ragged shreds of clothing scattered by it.
After some moments in that silence, that awful silence, the inert figure stirred. The chest rose and fell in quick succession. Rob Moore was breathing again.
Slowly but with ease the body sat up. The eyes flickered open; the pupils gradually settled into a wide fixed stare. They were those familiar sardonic eyes but somehow different.
The face grinned and laughed. It was an unfamiliar laugh. The shell of Rob Moore had accepted its new tenant.
***
Far away across the darkness of England, in the darkness before the streaks of dawn lighten the sky, Timothy Barlow screamed.
EIGHT
David loathed hospitals. He had never been a patient in one himself, but he hated them instinctively. To him, they made one confront the reality of death. Here was the incontrovertible evidence of the mortality of man. Here amid these white sheets and hushed corridors were rooms crammed with the ill and dying. They were the domain of twisted, damaged bodies, haggard faces and bedridden creatures with were being destroyed from within. There was something wrong with your world if you were in hospital, even as a visitor, as he was now, for you were helpless. All one could do is to watch the healing or the decay on the sidelines—like some ghoulish spectator sport.
There was about the phrase Intensive Care, he thought as he entered the cocooned world of the hospital, something that made you lower your voice when speaking the words. A ritual utterance that allowed one to be ushered into the sanctum of the terminally ill. A staff nurse led him down the long polished corridors with the squeaky floors and dim lighting, dotted at regular intervals with reminders of illness, diseases and death: people in wheel-chairs, on stretchers, with walking-frames, being helped to totter, in grim dressing gowns, from one place to another. As a patient in such places, you had to leave dignity at the door.
They reached the private side ward where Kate was. The nurse asked him to wait outside a moment while she went in and checked how things were. Moments dragged by. Hushed hospital moments that almost anaesthetized the senses. The pervasive antiseptic smell assailed his nostrils causing his head to throb with the power of it. His mouth grew dry and his stomach queasy as though all parts of him were being invaded by the antiseptic stench of attempted healing.
At length a ward
sister in dark blue appeared with a starched rustle and tight regulation smile. ‘Mr. Cole? Hello,’ she purred softly. ‘Are you the husband?’
No, I'm the lover.
‘No, her husband is dead. I'm a close friend.’
The sharp eyes of the sister prompted him for further information. He didn't give it. With a dead husband already established, he wasn’t about to identify himself as ‘her partner’. It would do little for Kate’s standing as a patient.
‘May I see her?’
A hesitation and then: ‘Very well. But only for a moment. She is unconscious, of course. She's in a state of shock. There is some internal bleeding and at present we do not know the extent of her injuries. We will have to wait until her condition stabilises before we can carry out further examinations.’
The words just flowed over David's head. He just wanted to see her. He said so again.
When he did see her, he cried. Spontaneously and unselfconsciously, he cried. It was an awful sight: Kate lay in a high-sided cot like a giant baby. Her face was deathly white, her dark hair scraped back showing the purple and amber bruises and blood spots near the hairline. She had tubes coming out of her mouth, nose and arm. Her hands were bandaged and laid down delicately by her side. This wasn't Kate. This wasn't the woman he knew. This was some kind of Frankenstein’s monster.
He wiped away the tears with his sleeve and leaned over the bars of the cot, ‘Kate’, he said softly.
The body lay still, the face frozen as in death.
David had striven all his life to be in command of his own situation - to control and arrange things as he wanted them. That was one reason why he'd never married. That kind of commitment spelt doom to his kind of independence. What he was only just coming to realise was that it wasn't the legal commitment that stifled the spirit of self-sufficiency but the emotional one—and unknowingly he had made one to Kate. So now he was helpless. He knew that he could not say or do anything which could change, influence or ease the situation. This is what happens when you care for someone. This sensation of helplessness was almost as painful as seeing Kate as she was now.
The Darkness Rising Page 10