by Ian Woodhead
“This is none of your concern,” he whispered. Barry sighed and hurried out of the house, thankful to be away from that horrid place. If his mum saw the state of that house, she’d have a nervous breakdown. He turned around and saw his muddy footprints on top of the layers of muck already covering the tiles. They’d know that someone had been in here.
“Maybe they’ll think I’ve killed their doggy!” he gasped, wishing he’d never entered the house in the first place now. Barry closed the kitchen door, judging by their complete disregard for cleanliness, they probably wouldn’t even notice. He looked over to the van, unsure of what to do. He couldn’t leave the dog there, he just couldn’t. Barry hadn’t even checked to see if Fang was still alive.
“It’s not my problem,” he muttered, trying not to cry. Those other papers needed delivering and there was still the mystery of where Mrs Banks had got to. He rushed over to the main gate. At least Mrs Banks was kind to him.
He pulled his hand off the gate when Barry heard a single pitiful howl coming from behind him. “Oh no,” he cried out. Barry could not leave that poor doggy in this disease-ridden pesthole.
As he approached the van, he found that there was nothing underneath, no bloodied dog, nothing. He knew that the dog had been there, he certainly hadn’t imagined it. He raced around the side, thinking that perhaps, Fang had crawled away. There was nothing on the other side except more wet mud.
“I think I’m losing my mind.” Barry looked up, towards the cowshed and squinted, he did not believe this. The dog was in there. He could clearly see it lying in the straw, licking its legs. He grinned, it was obvious now, the silly dog must have knocked a tin of red paint on his back. He shook his head and smiled, not believing he had been so daft.
“The last papers await,” he said, walking over to the cowshed. He’d need to say hello to Fang before he left though.
As he approached the doors, he became aware of a very sour, rotting aroma coming from inside the building. Barry saw no sign of the dog. “Fang, where are you, boy?”
A single deep bark answered his cry.
That didn’t sound like either of the farmer’s dogs, he thought, frowning. The farmer only had the two. Barry shrugged. It had to be fang. He stepped into the cowshed, trying to catch sight of the dog.
The boy screamed when the doors slammed shut and he felt a multitude of hands pawing his clothes. As his eyes adjusted to the darkness, he could make out over a dozen human shapes sliding along the floor like grotesque serpents.
“Did you like my dog impression, Barry?” inquired a soft voice just by his ear.
Barry spun around and shrieked at the sight of the crimson-eyed farmer smiling at him. This couldn’t be happening to him, it had to be a nightmare, Barry must have tripped up and was only dreaming all this.
“Woof.”
The man pushed Barry back. He yelped as he stumbled over a moving body. The others all suddenly turned and moved towards the boy.
“Leave him alone!” boomed another voice.
All the figures around Barry whined as one. They got to their feet and raced over to the far wall. He sat up and saw the farmer had yet to move away. A huge man jumped over a wooden wall and strode up to the farmer.
“I see you still have a drop of defiance running through your thin blood.”
The farmer backed away.
“I think it’s too late to show your humility,” replied the giant, closing the distance between them.
“I’m sorry!” said the farmer, dropping to his knees. He bent over and started to kiss and lick the man’s muddy boots.
“Enough!” shouted the giant. “Get away from me, you vile slug.” The man then turned to stare down at Barry. “You are not from my flock.” He took one step towards the boy, leaned down and picked up Barry by the front of his shirt.
“Please, let me go. I’m only a paperboy.”
The giant nodded. “I am correct, you are unsuitable. You cannot join us.” The giant gently placed him back on the straw.
The giant turned away. Barry scrambled back. He had no idea what was going on here but there was no way that he was going to stay.
“Unlike my brethren, you are an outsider.” He spun around and raised his arms in the air. “My darlings, you have been beseeching for sustenance? I offer the outsider to you. Go, go feed on the child.”
Barry shrieked as a dozen crimson-eyed creatures fell on his body.
Chapter Nine
When his eyes flickered open and the beige blur eventually coalesced to form an off-white artex ceiling, Dan became aware of two anomalies. He had no idea whose house he’d crashed in and last night’s memories had just vanished. Dan ran his tongue along his teeth and failed to find evidence of any leftover takeaway food, coupled with a lack of hangover, he seriously began to worry.
He slowly blinked, then stared at the light-fitting directly above his head, realising that the deep-seated fear had not just landed on him, that unease had been with him, clinging to his skin like an unwanted coat ever since he woke up. He now found that irrational panic exacerbating.
“What the fuck is wrong with me?”
Dan cried out when a slender arm suddenly landed on his thigh. He jerked around and saw a large mass of matted blonde hair sticking to the white pillow beside him. Just how much had he drunk last night not to remember pulling the girl of his dreams?
“You have already explored that country lane, you knob.” He spluttered, still not believing this. Even that unease lifted, just for a moment when he lifted the quilt and saw acres of firm sensual, naked flesh. He allowed his eyes to drink in the glory, while he wracked his memories, trying to locate the beginning of this drama.
No matter how hard he tried, nothing but a crimson mist jammed his thoughts.
“Fuck,” he sighed.
Dan slowly sat and gazed around the strange bedroom, looking for any object that might trigger his stubborn memories and allow him to actually remember if they really did make love last night. Their intermixed clothes were scattered across her carpet. He did notice the amount of dark clay adhering to the soles of both their boots.
Alison moaned in her sleep. Dan turned and automatically ran his fingers down the side of her face. He jumped when she cried out and gasped. Oh crap, the poor lass must be having a nightmare.
His own unease slowly crept back up his spine, making him shiver. Dan lay back down and wrapped his arm around her warm body. “Alison, wake up.” She moaned again before turning around to face him.
“Hello,” she whispered. “Please hold me, I’m so scared.”
He gazed into her dark green eyes and saw tears bleeding out from under the orbs. He blinked rapidly when he saw they were the colour of bright red arterial blood. Alison open her mouth, she choked back a terrified sob and violently pushed him back.
Dan fell back and landed face down on her pale green rug. The dam broke; he attempted to scramble under the bed, trying to stop the cascade of last night’s recollections overwhelming his mind. “What have we done?” he said, sobbing out loud. The terrible fear of what he saw flow into Terrence’s screaming body now gripped his heart with a freezing-cold iron fist.
“Get away from me, you monster!” she wailed, running to the door.
“Alison!” he shouted, looking over the edge of the bed. “Please don’t leave me here. I’m not a monster, it fucking controlled me. That thing climbed inside my head.” He shuddered and whipped his head around feeling his stomach wanting to eject the contents of his stomach.
“Oh god!” she whimpered.
Dan felt her arms wrap around his chest.
“I’m sorry, I’m so sorry. I opened my eyes, I didn’t see you,” she stammered. “I saw the face of that thing leering at me.” She squeezed him tight. “I dreamed about that dirty fucking monster all night. It was doing horrible stuff to me.” Alison buried her face in his shoulder and wept.
He took several deep breaths, listening to her soft cries. The need to comfort the
girl helped him to adjust to their plight. His stomach began to settle and so had his missing memories. That unease had not moved though. It stayed with him, eating into his body, and making Dan question his very sanity. “I’m not going to let anything happen to you, Alison.” Hearing those words spoken aloud did alleviate some of the fear. The dark feeling lost some more of its potency when she slid around and gently brushed her lips across his.
“Thank you for not running out on me.”
Dan pushed her back. “Why would you even say that? I’d never leave you, Alison.”
She kissed him again. “I’m sorry; I guess last night’s nightmare still hasn’t left me. I feel like a frightened mouse, Dan.”
He nodded. “So do I and it isn’t just from what happened. I feel as though something has taken up residence in the back of my head.” Dan desperately tried to stop his tears from flowing. “Something very cold and fucking evil.”
“What’s happening to us?”
He shook his head, unable to answer her. Dan kissed her then slowly stood up and walked over to the window. He noticed a couple of people aimlessly wandering about on the street below. There was no purpose to their actions. They both looked as though they were still asleep. He knew the old man; he used to help out at the butcher’s shop until last year. The man always had a cheery smile and an ocean of silly jokes ready to dispense to anyone willing to stop.
The man just fell to his knees and rolled over, the double-glazing muted the sounds, but Dan just knew that the old man was crying. The other person, a youth with bleach blond hair stumbled past before running over the road and disappearing into the launderette.
When he turned back around, he found that Alison had already dressed.
“We can’t stay here,” she said. Alison looked at her wall clock, tutted then dug out her phone. “I’m not sure what time my parents are due home.”
“Does here not like guests?”
Alison now looked as though Dan had told her that he’d just slaughtered a basket of kittens. She hurried over, picked his clothes off the floor, and pushed the bundle into his hands.
“This is the first time I’ve been in my bedroom for over a week. Yes, dad does not like guests.” She kissed him once. “If he found you in here,” she dragged her eyes down his body.” If he found you in here with nothing on, he’ll try to kill you.”
“Okay, we can go to my house, if you like. We need to work out what to do.” He dropped his clothes on the bed and reached for his socks. “It’s okay, my parents are nice.” Dan bit his lip when he realised what he had just said. “Oh crap. Sorry, I didn’t mean it to sound like that.”
Alison sighed and sat on the bed beside him, she passed him his other sock and rested her arm on his leg. “It’s okay, baby.” She slowly caressed the inside of his thigh. “My dad is a fucking bastard and I wish he’d just die, and I want my mum to fall into his grave for letting him do what he does.” Alison stiffened at the sound of a door downstairs slamming shut.
“Hurry up,” she hissed.
Dan threw on the rest of his clothes, watching Alison rush over to the door. She pulled it open and peered through the narrow gap.
“They’re both in the kitchen. I think I can hear mum crying.”
He pulled on his boots, feeling guilty when some of the dried mud fell onto her carpet. “Is it safe to leave now?” Try as he might, Dan could not clear away the feeling that he’d just worked out the reason why this gorgeous young woman shunned any form of relationship. He hoped to God that it wasn’t true.
“They’ve shut the door. Come on, we need to go right now.”
Alison dragged him out of her bedroom and he quietly followed her down the stairs. As he reached the bottom, he heard the sound of weeping but it wasn’t a woman crying. He looked at Alison who in turn, gazed at the shut kitchen door. She shook her head from side to side before grabbing the cuff of his shirt and dragging Dan out of the house. She left the front door open and practically ran up the garden path. Alison kept glancing back.
“It’s okay, they’re not following us.” He followed her through the gate, running to keep up with her. “Slow down, I still haven’t fastened up my laces.”
She suddenly stopped dead, took one more look over Dan’s shoulder before leaning against a brick wall. “Why was my dad crying, Dan? That bastard has never cried not fucking once. Even when…” Her voice tailed off.
“What’s wrong?” He followed her gaze and saw a middle-aged man, sitting on a doorstep with his head in his hands. Even from where they were, Dan could hear him crying. He looked across the street and saw at least a dozen other villagers either crying or huddled against walls.
“Oh fuck,” she muttered, “They are all feeling what we feel.”
“Yeah, like we’re all sitting on death row.” He stood and took hold of Alison’s hand. “Now you know why your parents were crying.”
“Take me to your house, please.” She looked into his eyes. “Do you know a short cut, away from all these people?”
“Why?”
“Just look at them, Dan. Everyone is staring at us, that’s why. They know what we’ve done. What we have released.”
His blood ran cold when he saw three familiar young men striding towards them. Dan tightened his grip on Alison’s hand as Samuel Lane marched across the empty road and stopped directly in front of him.
“You have fucking killed us all, you stupid little shit.” The man glared at the pair of them. “Why couldn’t you just leave alone?”
“My family have joined him,” muttered Karl. He sighed. “They’ll come for the rest of us when it gets dark.”
Dan opened his mouth.”
“Don’t even bother trying to explain,” Samuel hissed. He turned around and pushed the other two across the road. “If I see you two again, while the sun is still in the sky, I kill you both myself.”
Dan dragged Alison away, heading towards the park, aware that every villager in sight was now staring at them. He didn’t need to be a mind reader to know that they all agreed with what Samuel had just spat out.
“I think I’m going to be sick,” she whispered.
“Look, don’t you fret, sweetheart. We can figure this out; we just need some quiet and a bit of time. I promise you that my mum and dad will stick with us.” He remembered the frightened face of that old butcher and suddenly saw the image of his dad hiding under the kitchen table while his mum had pressed her body up against the washing machine muffling her screams by pushing a tea towel into her mouth.
“We’re nearly there,” he said. “Our house is the last terraced one. Can you see the tall bright blue fence? I helped to paint that with my dad when I was about seven.” The sound of his voice distracted Dan from thinking what he would discover when he opened the front door. “You should have seen the state of me. “I looked like a tiny purple alien.”
“Wait!” she said, pointing to the side of him. “Look at that old woman. She doesn’t look like the sky is about to fall on her head.”
Dan stopped and watched the woman slowly stroll over to the lake in the middle of the park. She halted by the edge, opened a clear plastic bag, and emptied some bread crusts onto the water’s surface. Alison was right; she didn’t look as though she had a single care in the world.
“I know her. She moved into the house opposite ours about a year ago.”
“She’s not local?”
Dan shook her head. “No, my mum told me that their family moved up from south London.”
“Do you think it means anything?”
He gazed into her troubled face; no doubt, Dan looked as fucked up to her as he did to Alison. “I can’t think straight. Come on, I feel so exposed out here, let’s get to my house.” Dan led her out of the park and crossed over the street. There were a few more villagers close by, all huddled around a stationary milk float. After the glares they received earlier on, Dan had no wish to undergo that trauma again.
Mrs Crabtree, the old woman who lived
two doors down, chose that moment to open her front door. She stood there, clad in her pink dressing gown and gazing in confusion at her doorstep. “Sweetheart?” she said to Dan as he hurried past her gate. “Have you seen the milkman? He’s not usually this late.”
He pointed behind him, flashed the woman a nervous smile and pulled Alison into his garden.
“There was nothing wrong with her either.”
“Yeah, I noticed that,” he said, reaching for the door handle. “Mrs Crabtree has lived in our village for over thirty years.” He opened the door and pulled her inside.
The aromas of cooking bacon and eggs for his father’s breakfast and the sound of his sister’s annoying moaning were absent. He looked up at the wall clock as he entered the kitchen. This time yesterday, they were all here. His unease gripped his throat, why should he have thought that just because he’d returned to familiar surroundings that everything would magically be all better?
His mum wasn’t hugging a kitchen appliance with a tea-towel stuffed in her mouth but he felt that, wherever she was, she probably wanted to do that. Alison hadn’t moved from out of the hallway. “It’s okay, you can come in, if you like.”
She ventured into the kitchen and looked around, her eyes finding a family snapshot of them on holiday at Butlins a few years ago. It was the only picture in the house where was Chelsea was smiling.
“You’re a proper family,” she murmured.
Dan hurried over and brushed his fingers through her hair. “And you’re now part of it.” He said, smiling. “My mum will adore you, Alison. You’ll see. As soon as this weirdness is over with, we’ll start from fresh.” He kissed her. “Everything is going to be all right.” Dan pulled out Chelsea’s seat and invited her to sit down.
“I’m going to check upstairs. I won’t be long.” Dan left her in there and rushed out into the hallway. Wondering where he had dug up all that blind optimistic rubbish. Deep down, Dan knew that whatever was going on, it was a bit more serious than some minor quarrel with the neighbours or getting involved in a pub fight. As each moment passed, that unease ate into him like a malignant cancer, threading its way through every part of his body.