by Stephen Laws
“And Duvall?” asked Cardiff. “What does he do?”
Rohmer smiled, ignoring the question as he continued.
“We know what’s happening. But not why it’s happening. And even though we’ve issued ‘D’ notices on these events, it’s only a matter of time before we have a panic on our hands.”
“D notice?” said Jimmy.
“It’s a clampdown on press reports,” said Cardiff. “A joint agreement by the media and the Government not to report on particular matters.”
“Which is why none of the reporters clamouring around your office block earlier tonight will see their stories in print.”
“You say you don’t know why this is happening,” said Cardiff. “How is it happening, then?”
“You know that the code name for our operation is Darkfall. Well, that’s the name of our tri-partite investigation team: a team with statutory powers to override investigations such as yours, Cardiff. It’s also the term we’ve applied to the phenomenon which results in these disappearances.”
Thunder boomed in the sky overhead and Rohmer looked at the ceiling again. He had a look of intense concentration for several seconds. And when he spoke again, it was almost as if in reverence.
“That’s what a Darkfall sounds like.”
He paused, while the thunder died away—and this time his voice was clipped, precise and businesslike.
“A Darkfall is a particular kind of storm. Quite how the storm is generated is still something that we’re investigating, although we have some idea of what causes its generation. All storms contain a force which we take for granted. A force that provides us with food and warmth and light . . . and upon which we’ve become very dependent, maybe to our cost. Because although we’ve harnessed that force, know how to generate it and use it—it is still essentially a force about which little is known in terms of its effects on us.
“I’m talking about electricity.
“There’s a positive side to that force. The elements I’ve just mentioned. But there’s a dark side to that force, too. And a Darkfall storm seems to embody those dark elements.”
“A Darkfall is an electrical storm?”
“Basically, yes. But it has particular characteristics. It builds and remains in a very localised position. It is particularly fierce and is accompanied by a peculiar state of darkness. By meteorological means we’re now able to identify where such a storm will occur with greater efficiency and to take steps for keeping that area clear of people—or to arrange for controlled evacuation. But there are still occasions—such as this—where the phenomenon eludes us. The storm builds to a particular intensity. Its central ‘core’ is where the phenomenon occurs. And anything within the storm ‘funnel’, as we call it, can be subject to the phenomenon or anything which passes through it. The electricity within that storm is released by lightning. We believe that the phenomenon occurs when there is a lightning strike.”
“Lightning struck this building?”
“Yes, I believe so. More than once. On the first occasion, your partygoers disappeared. On the second, your forensic team upstairs.”
“What the hell happened to them?” asked Jimmy.
“The Darkfall strike generates what we can only call at this stage a chemical reaction. It’s a chemical reaction which affects inert compounds such as concrete, steel, plastic—and living tissue.
“Skin contact is the means of absorption. Anyone who is unprotected and is touching anything connected with the building would be absorbed. The inert compounds react with living tissue and absorb the entire body. Can you imagine what happened here? The Darkfall storm had been building for quite some time, generating itself, growing stronger. Energy was released into the building by a lightning strike. Anyone in direct flesh contact with a wall or a floor would have been affected—sucked into the fabric of the building in just the way that Mr Devlin described.”
“But not everyone would be touching . . .” began Cardiff.
“There would have been a panic. People would have grabbed door handles to get out and been sucked into the fabric of the door. No one would have realised what was happening.”
“It must have been like Hell in here,” said Jimmy.
“Flesh contact,” said Cardiff. “But what about their clothes?”
“The chemical effect extends to what a person is wearing once the effect begins. And once it begins, their clothes, bones, teeth—all of it will be absorbed. But there would be no effect, say, on the shoes on your feet or the gloves on your hands if you weren’t already in flesh contact ‘With a door or a wall . . . or even a light switch . . . when the lightning strikes. In fact, all a person would need to do in the middle of a Darkfall storm would be to remain calm, not touch anything—unless he or she is wearing gloves and wait for the effect to pass. Gloves or shoes would effectively protect one from the effects. But have only one centimetre of bare flesh in contact—and the building would absorb you. You’d be sucked in, absorbed and fused with the steel and the plastic and the concrete—fused into the very fabric of the building itself.”
“But those screams we heard?” said Cardiff. “I heard one of my men calling my name. They’re still somehow alive after that, Rohmer. How the hell can that be?”
“Oh yes . . . they’re alive. Absorbed, bonded in the building in a way we’ve yet to establish. But they’re still alive. Occasionally . . . very, very rarely in fact . . . there is a vocal effect such as the one we’ve heard, such as the one that Mr Devlin heard. We don’t understand it. It happened in the Leeds factory . . . and we took a wall to pieces after receiving positive readings of a ‘presence’ in the fabric of it. (You saw Frye taking readings earlier, did you not?) We took that wall to pieces with supreme care, with an almost surgical skill. Brick by brick, plasterboard by plasterboard . . . until all we had left was a pile of rubble. And no sign of anything living within it. And yet . . . and yet . . . we still had a life-form reading from that pile of rubble. Whoever had been absorbed into that wall, was still somehow there was still somehow alive.”
“Hellish,” said Cardiff.
“Yes, it is Hell. Have you read Aldous Huxley’s Heaven and Hell?” Rohmer smiled indulgently. “No, perhaps not. Well, he points out that many of the punishments described in the various accounts of Hell are punishments of pressure and constriction. Dante’s sinners are buried in mud, shut up in the trunks of trees, frozen solid in blocks of ice, crushed beneath stones. The ‘Inferno’ may be psychologically true—Darkfall, Cardiff, is a literal Hell. But I believe this Darkfall effect can also explain a lot to us about our superstitious past. I believe that the cases of hauntings recorded over the centuries are actually the results of a Darkfall. Imagine it. A Darkfall storm on or near some kind of human habitation; let’s say . . . an old country house. The owners disappear . . . sucked into the fabric of the building. Fused into the brick and the stone for an eternity. Over the years, that ‘vocal’ effect is heard. Sounds of torment from the people imprisoned there. The sounds of screams from an invisible source. What is our average listener to believe? What else but that the sound is being made by a ghost . . . by a haunting.”
“Why is Gilbert so frightened?” asked Cardiff at last.
“He’s always frightened on these investigations.”
“The Darkfall’s still active, isn’t it? That’s what he’s frightened about?”
Jimmy shuffled uneasily in his seat.
“No, the Darkfall phenomenon has dissipated. We would have picked up readings on arrival. And if we had, we would certainly have cleared the building and got out of here until it dissipated.”
“That storm still looks as if it’s building up to me,” said Jimmy.
“It’s just a storm now,” replied Rohmer. “Not a Darkfall.”
“Gilbert is keeping his gloves on,” said Cardiff. ‘
“Like I said to you—he’s always nervous.”
Jimmy was looking long and hard at Pearce, who had retained an expression o
f disdain and scorn throughout.
“Who’s the lunatic now, Pearce?” he said.
Pearce returned a hard stare, pushed himself from his seat and held out a hand to Rohmer. “Let me see your ID again.” Rohmer proffered it nonchalantly and Pearce sat again, scrutinising it as if examining the small print.
“So anyone touching the wall . . . ?” said Cardiff.
“Or any of the inert material within it,” continued Rohmer.
“. . . would be . . . just, sucked into . . .”
“The wall, the floor, the furniture . . . whatever. Yes.”
“Living flesh, bone, tissue . . . even clothes, fused into the building fabric. Sounds . . . bloody ridiculous.”
“Plastic surgeons use titanium for accident reconstruction work. The bone fuses with the metal. That’s a scientific fact. So it’s not so unbelievable as you think.”
“But how are they still alive?” asked Cardiff. “The process should kill them, surely.”
“That’s what we’d like to know.”
“The hand,” began Pearce, handing back Rohmer’s identification. “What about the severed hand upstairs . . . ?”
And then something exploded outside. Something that was most definitely not thunder and lightning.
Something that exploded with a sound of rending metal and shattering glass.
“It’s another bloody lightning strike!” exclaimed Pearce as they leapt from their chairs.
“No,” said Rohmer tightly, striding to the door. “Not a lightning strike. This is something else.”
And then they were all in the corridor, heading for the reception area.
SIX
Gilbert and Frye were standing up against the glass panes of the reception area, staring out into the storm-ravaged night. Duvall was already pulling open one of the main doors when Rohmer and the others rushed down the corridor towards them. Wind whipped at Duvall’s hair and the lapels of his greatcoat as he squinted out into the rain-slashed darkness, trying to see what in Hell had happened.
“Duvall?” snapped Rohmer as they drew level.
“Outside,” replied Duvall. “Something’s happened outside at the police cordon.”
Cardiff rushed to one of the reception windows, closely followed by Jimmy Devlin. Pearce seized Jimmy by the cuff to haul him back. Jimmy pulled sharply away.
“I’m not going to make a break for it, Pearce. You don’t have to worry.” .
“Christ . . .” said Cardiff in a hollow voice, when he saw what had happened out in the storm.
“What is it?” asked Pearce, in a tone of voice which suggested that he didn’t really want to know.
“Keep Jimmy here,” said Cardiff. Rohmer was already pushing out through the front door after Duvall.
“Like hell,” began Jimmy.
Pearce restrained him with a hand on his chest, and for an instant it looked as if long-awaited violence might flare up.
“Be a good boy, Jimmy,” said Cardiff—and vanished out into the storm. “
Jimmy pulled away again and joined Gilbert and Frye at the windows. When he saw the devastation, his mouth dropped open.
“Bloody hell . . .”
At first, as he battled across the outside pavement and through the raging wind, Cardiff was convinced that a bomb had been detonated on the forecourt outside the office block. There was a ruined tangle of what seemed to be exploded machinery lying where the police cordon had been; a jumble of twisted wreckage wreathed in guttering blue-yellow flame which suggested petrol. leakage.
A car! thought Cardiff as he battled across the road, the blurred figures of Rohmer and Duvall just ahead. It’s a bloody car bomb.
There was no sign of the two policemen who had been on duty at the cordon. The car seemed to have been driven directly at that cordon, where it had exploded. Apart from the tangled wreck of the main body of the car, Cardiff could see twisted chunks of metal lying in the roadway and in the pavement. The black and white wooden pole used as the cordon had been completely shattered; shreds of wood lay scattered in the rain. Cardiff screened his eyes from the rain as he drew level at last with the other two men. The guttering blue-yellow flame within the shattered shell of the car was snuffed out at last by the rain and the storm-wind. Smoke and steam gushed and hissed from the shattered windscreen and side windows.
“Who would want to drive a car bomb at the cordon?” shouted Cardiff above the sound of the storm.
“Not a car bomb . . .” mouthed Duvall.
“What?”
“It’s not a car bomb. Look . . .” He pointed back to the office block, and Cardiff could see the indistinct blurs of the other faces in reception, looking out. “If it had been a car bomb, it would have blown in those windows.”
“But it’s a car, isn’t it?”
“Yes,” shouted Rohmer. “It’s a car. But it didn’t blow up.”
“Then what . . . “
“It fell,” shouted Rohmer. “It fell from a great height.”
Vincent Saville, thought Cardiff. Injuries consistent with a fall from a great height.
“And my men?”
“Dead,” said Duvall, moving closer to the wreck. “It fell directly on top of the cordon.” He wafted smoke from the side window as he peered into the devastated car. The smoke and steam was being sucked from the wreck by the storm wind anyway, and as it cleared Duvall suddenly shrank back from the shattered car window.
“Rohmer . . .”
Cardiff could see for himself what Duvall had discovered. There was a charred and blackened figure in the driving seat crouched behind the wheel.
“God . . .”
The shape seemed too big for the seat; hunched, gnarled and blackened, it was still shrouded in hissing steam, but despite its swollen size the shape of a man or woman for all that. Charcoaled fingers still gripped the wheel . . . and the stench of cooking flesh would have been unbearable, if not for the greedily sucking wind of the storm.
Once, Cardiff could have imagined himself throwing up at the sight of that horror behind the wheel. Some secret part of him wished that he could, because in that recognisably human act of revulsion, his own humanity would be reaffirmed. But the horror was only doing to him what it always did. It registered the further damage being done to him. But his initial feeling about this office-block incident was reaffirmed.
Death was here.
Madness and Death.
Perhaps soon, he would meet them both and ask that one question that he longed to ask: Why? ‘
Within one eye socket of the indeterminate monstrosity behind the wheel something that could have been an eye popped loudly and viscous yellow fluid streamed down the corpse’s ravaged face.
“Shit!” Duvall recoiled further from the car in disgust; his cool, hard demeanour slipping for an instant.
Rohmer was looking up into the sky as the vortex of smoke and steam was greedily sucked skywards into the black roiling clouds of the storm.
“It fell?” shouted Cardiff angrily.
“Yes.” Rohmer still searched the ravaged sky.
“How can . . . ?” And now Cardiff’s anger really flared. He grabbed Rohmer by the arm and swung him around so that he was forced to look him in the face. “Two of my men are dead! Dead! So how can a fucking car fall out of the fucking sky, Rohmer? You mean it was blown off the motorway over there and into the forecourt. Don’t you? Don’t you?”
“It fell,” said Rohmer simply.
Duvall broke Cardiff’s grip on Rohmer.
“People and cars don’t fall out of the sky,” said Cardiff.
“In a Darkfall—they do,” replied Rohmer—and now he was striding back through the biting wind towards the office block. Duvall followed closely behind, coat flapping in the wind and the rain.
Cardiff turned back to the car. The swollen monstrosity behind the wheel shrouded in the smoke and steam of its own cooling was surely much too large to have once been human. Surely that hideously charcoaled horror should have shr
unk as it cooked and disintegrated.
Vincent Saville, said the voice in Cardiff‘s head. He just fell out of the sky.
Angry at his ineffectiveness and at the way Rohmer had made him a bystander in this nightmare, Cardiff followed them back through the savage whirlwinds towards the office block.
SEVEN
“It wasn’t Cardiff at all, was it?” said Jimmy. “It was you.”
“What?” Pearce had shoved Devlin back into one of the upholstered reception seats; keeping one eye on him, the other on what was going on outside. -Gilbert and Frye were still glued to the rain-streaked glass.
“You’re the one who set me up. Fingered me for those burglaries. Cardiff might have been in charge, but you’re the one who provided the evidence.”
Pearce walked over to him, looking down. There was undisguised contempt on his face.
“Don’t get cocky with me, Devlin. That Rohmer fella might have the proper ID and he might corroborate your funny story, but don’t think I’m falling for any of this crap.”
“All that time inside for something I didn’t do.”
“You were robbing that jeweller’s, in case you’d forgotten.”
“No use denying that. But I didn’t do the other jobs you accused me of, Pearce. What was wrong? Did you have a few unsolved crimes that needed tying up?”
“You’re a thief, Devlin. Always were, always will be. And it’s my job to catch thieves and lock them away.”
“Even if it means planting evidence?”
Pearce cast a look back at Gilbert and Frye, to make sure that they weren’t listening. When he looked back at Jimmy, he had a smile of disdain.
“Even that.”
“They’re coming back,” said Frye.
All attention turned to the main reception doors again. Jimmy felt curiously detached from what was going on; detached from whatever in hell had happened outside. This was just another jigsaw piece in the bizarre events of ‘the night. He had known all along of his innocence of the crimes for which he had been committed. Now that Pearce had openly stated that the evidence had been planted, he wasn’t reacting in the way that he’d ever have guessed. Far from leaping from his chair and seizing Pearce by the throat, a curious fatigue seemed to have settled in his bones. Perhaps it was also something to do with the fact that this tall, blond Government man had corroborated his story about what had happened in the jeweller’s on that night. The knowledge that someone, somewhere in Government circles, had known that what he’d seen and experienced had really happened, should have been enough in itself to send Jimmy into a righteous rage. There had been times, after all, while he’d been serving his stretch in prison that he really had wondered whether he had hallucinated it all; wondered whether he was losing his mind. Even now, he had never returned to the shopping mall. The walls of his cell had given him nightmares. The echoing sounds of Mac’s voice coming from those walls in his dreams had shaken him awake, clutching at the sheets, sweat oozing from every pore.