by Simon Clark
‘Kym. Can you hear me? Knock once for yes … twice for no.’
‘So Fabian hasn’t lost his sense of humor,’ Fisher muttered. ‘Uh, sorry, Josanne. I keep forgetting you and him are … you know …’
‘An item? Fabian can be brusque at times. But he’s OK. Once you get to know him you’ll realize you can trust him with your life. Right, candid revelation over. I’ll find the others and tell them what Cantley told me.’
‘OK, I’ll head down to the runway. That’s the only way to get into the centre of the marsh without getting your feet wet, as far as I know.’
For a moment Fisher crouched to pat the short black fur on the dog’s back. Both man and canine watched Josanne as she walked back in the direction of the house. The path took her through unkempt grassland into the all encompassing mist. In a moment she became an ill-defined shape, as if her body was evaporating into the cold, damp air. A moment later she’d vanished.
A plaintive call drifted through the grey fog. ‘Kym … Kym … Just give us a shout if you can hear …’ That was Sterling’s voice. Now that’s a guy you can trust with your life, Fisher thought. I’m not as sure as Josanne that Fabian could be depended on in the same way. For a moment, Fisher remained crouched as he patted the dog. Jak’s amber eyes watched his face expectantly.
‘You know we’ve important work to do, don’t you? We’ve got to make sure that Kym’s safe.’ He murmured the words softly as he scanned what landscape was revealed in this murk of swirling water vapour. Diffuse silhouettes of trees. A stretch of overgrown lawn. A clump of spiky hawthorn. Hell, who’d willingly live here so close to a swamp? The poor bastards sent here by their families wouldn’t have had much choice. They were probably elderly parents who’d become temperamental if not downright insane. Yeah … out of mind, out of sight. Pun intended.
Fisher rubbed Jak’s head. ‘But then ours isn’t to reason why, is it?’
The dog gave a small ‘Yip,’ in the back of his throat.
‘So you agree with me? You know, Jak, I think we’re going to be friends. Come on.’
Fisher guessed the direction of the swamp even though he couldn’t see it. Just keep heading downhill, he told himself. Follow your nose, too. You can smell it. Jak followed as if he’d known Fisher for years. They fell into the same stride. Even paused together when they heard an unfamiliar noise. Apart from the others calling Kym the only sounds appeared to be the cry of water fowl. Although the house rose up massively just a hundred yards or so away Fisher couldn’t make out even its outline. This murk drowned everything but a few square yards of damp sod and the trees around him.
The smell of stagnant water grew stronger as the shallow incline levelled off. Sure enough, within seconds the vertical oblong of the old bunker resolved its grim presence from the vapour. Fisher decided it reminded him of a prehistoric monument. You know the kind. Carved with pagan runes and the scratched outlines of eviscerated men and severed heads. Hell, this chill seeped through your clothes all the way into your bones. Meanwhile, Jak walked alongside, sometimes circling round, but always keeping in a kind of holding orbit no more than twenty paces from him.
‘You like it down here as much as I do, don’t you?’ Fisher told the dog. ‘And that isn’t much.’
A narrow trackway of rough grass linked the runway with dry land. As far as he could tell the rest of this strip of concrete was surrounded by liquid mud and interconnecting pools of water. Thrusting up from the water, were hundreds of grass-topped tussocks. They appeared like great heads covered by shaggy hair in the misted gloom. He could have been watching aquatic phantoms rising from the swamp.
Fisher walked out onto the airstrip with the words, ‘Jak, this is the kind of place where your imagination can run away with you. Hell, it can run away with you to a place where no one can hear you scream, then rip your arms and head off.’ His grim chuckle caused the dog to look at him. ‘See what I mean?’
Thirty yards wide, straight as a rule, the apron of flat concrete ran ahead until it vanished in the mist. He walked for perhaps a hundred yards. At either side of him the swamp lay just two or three inches below the lip of concrete so it awarded him the impression of strolling along a long island; one that was as flat as a table top. From the distance came the sound of three ringing tones. Chimes from that blind clock in the heart of the old house stalked out across the marsh to find him here. That’s some clock … some damned weird clock …
As he walked along the edge of the runway he peered into what stretches of the swamp he could see. Its glistening black pools appeared more viscous than water. Liquid appeared to have a different consistency here. There was a thickness like blood. Methane bubbled to the surface from decaying vegetable matter. At intervals a bulge would deform the surface, then it would rupture with a popping sound to release the marsh gas. More than once he heard an object swirl. As if a fin had broken the surface, or even a scaled leg … After it had happened a dozen times just beyond the cordon of visibility his imagination supplied images of green tentacles emerging from one of the lagoons to writhe in the air. All it needed was for him to wander within striking distance …
‘See what I meant about runaway imaginations, Jak?’ The dog sniffed at the air. What do the tentacles of swamp monsters smell like? Fisher felt the tug of a smile on his lips. What a place. What a weird, unfriendly, inhospitable sink hole of a place. Would Kym willingly have strolled down here in the mist? You don’t do that for fun. You only came here for some compelling reason. Perhaps to drown yourself in the swamp. Jesus, that muck would suck you down in seconds.
He cupped his mouth with his hands. ‘Kym… Kym!’ No echo. His voice left his mouth to die in the swamp. ‘Kym!’ Then he paused. ‘She wouldn’t have killed herself, would she?’ Then, did he know anything about her? Only that she was from the Czech Republic; she was well educated; she was ambitious. She didn’t appear depressed when he saw her last night. Maybe a little on edge. As if she needed company. Jak sat down again, so he squatted beside the dog. It felt good to be in the animal’s company. It was like enhancing your own senses, so you were more aware of the world around you. In a constant state of readiness the dog’s eyes flicked in the direction of every sound, no matter how faint.
Yeah, even hearing the big green tentacles that his own imagination had wickedly supplied.
‘Something’s not right here,’ he murmured to the dog.
Jak gave the answering yip as if he agreed wholeheartedly with the human’s observation.
When Fisher reached into his pocket he felt a hard square wrapped in foil. He pulled it out. Chocolate? He’d forgotten all about that. It must have been kicking around with the loose change, lint and old train tickets for the last couple of weeks. When he peeled the silver wrapping away, a line of thought started in his head. Kym had seemed unsettled. Then she had every reason. Yesterday afternoon she had an electric shock from the clock. When he’d spoken to her later she’d told him the jolt had knocked her cold. She’d also become troubled when she recalled a dream she’d had while unconscious. In the dream she said she’d been stabbed – skewered, she’d described it – by a barefoot man with an emaciated face. She’d also recalled another detail. The man’s forehead had been scarred. The injury was the shape of a crescent moon; it had even been pale yellow in colour.
The strangeness of it all was enough to prompt him to say the words aloud, ‘Now that’s odd. Cantley’s forehead had a scar. It was a crescent shape.’ He frowned. How could Kym dream that she was murdered by a stranger yesterday? Then today he and Josanne encountered a thin-faced guy with what appeared to be the same shaped scar on his forehead. That’s not coincidence. So?
‘So, Kym’s seen Cantley before she suffered the electric shock. She must have seen him yesterday … because she only arrived yesterday morning. Then why didn’t she mention that she dreamt about a stranger she’d seen yesterday? Instead, she talked about the man in the dream being someone she’d never met before.’ Fisher turned round.
A sensation that someone was staring at him made his back itch. In the murk he could make out a dozen rabbits hopping to and fro. They were perhaps ten yards away. For some reason they weren’t fazed by the presence of a dog. Come to that, Jak watched them with a detached interest as if noting they were there but had no interest in chasing them.
‘What to do, Jak, old boy?’ Absently he broke the chocolate in half. One chunk he held out for the dog who gently mouthed it out of his hand. Fisher ate the other piece. Melting chocolate flooded his mouth with sweetness. Maybe it was the kid in him but he still loved chocolate. Only this afternoon he was too preoccupied to appreciate it. So what had happened to Kym? Now he began to attach more importance to her dream after that zap of voltage yesterday afternoon. Can an electric shock scramble your brain so much that you act out of character? Maybe even wander off with amnesia?
‘Nothing for it, Jak.’ He patted the dog as he stood up. ‘I’m going to have to come clean about Kym turning up at my room last night.’
With Jak at his side he headed back in the direction of the house. This time the rabbits scattered. A dozen dwarfish forms that fled from the concrete raft of the runway to hop from tussock to tussock before vanishing into the silent wastes of the marsh.
CHAPTER 17
Josanne stepped into the shower stall. The cold fog had seeped through her clothes to leave her skin damp after being out in the grounds. Fabian and Adam had drifted back to the kitchen for hot coffee. That left Marko, Belle, Sterling and Fisher searching – not to ignore Jak, of course. If anything, the dog was the most effective component of the search party. Jak had found her when she’d been walking by that cluster of buildings with Cantley. She hadn’t liked the man one bit. Jak’s arrival had been a relief.
Jets of hot water pummelled Josanne’s skin. It flooded through her hair to chase away the chill left by the mist. Oh, this felt good. Erotically good. Sexy. She loved the heat of a hot shower. It was an infusion of body heat. As if a giant living being breathed new life into her. After soaking her body under the embracing heat of a shower she could fearlessly face the world again. She soaped her neck. Stiff muscles began to relax. The scent of soap banished the wet earth smells that had filled her nostrils during the search. And as for Kym? They were deluding themselves, weren’t they? Surely no one imagined the woman would cheerfully stride into the house now with a ‘Hello’, in her Czech accents, then declare that she’d enjoyed a marvellous walk. Josanne lifted her face to relish the prick of focused water jets. The simple ritual of bathing cleared her mind. We can’t search the entire grounds; even the house is big enough to hide a gang of escaped convicts. Weird Mr Cantley isn’t going to help; he’s probably huddled over his fire in a cave somewhere grilling water voles for supper, or whatever he does here. So what’s the answer, Josanne?
She spoke the words aloud into clouds of steam. ‘Fetch the police.’ With that sense of urgency pushing her, she turned off the shower, then stepped out onto the mat. Steam billowed in the bathroom as densely as the fog outside the windows. But this was a luxurious warmth. It cleared her mind. She knew what she’d tell Fabian as soon as she was dressed. ‘I know we can’t telephone the police from here, so I’ll drive to the nearest village. No buts. I’m going to report Kym as missing.’
Josanne wrapped a soft towel around her head, then a big white towel around her body so it ran down from beneath her arm to her knees. She used another small towel to dab her face.
Uh, here they come again. The chimes pealed through her room. Josanne glanced up at the walls, searching for an opening that admitted the sound. She saw nothing. Yet the chimes came through clearly. One, two, three. So, three o’clock. If she dressed quickly she could be driving away inside ten minutes. How long to reach York? An hour? It couldn’t be much further than that. Her clothes were still damp, not to say muddy from scrambling over fences. Not ladylike, she thought as she gathered the clothes into a ball and threw them in a corner, but, as the saying goes, time’s of the essence. It would be dark by the time the police arrived here anyway. If Kym lay out there hurt she’d be in danger of exposure. Quickly, Josanne went to her closet. There she pulled out a sweater and a pair of black trousers that she laid carefully on the bed. She was about to unwrap the towel from her body but then noticed the curtains were wide open. Although she could see nothing but the hawthorn and the stifling grey wall of fog, she didn’t relish glancing up from slipping on her underwear to see Cantley’s face pressed to the glass. With a sweep of her hands she closed them. Then she returned to the dressing-table where her hairdryer lay in front of the mirror. Today there’d be no time for make-up. Sitting on the plush stool, she pushed the cosmetics’ bag aside as she picked up the hairdryer then clicked it on. When she pulled away the towel from her head she shook her head so her hair unstuck itself a little from her scalp. Now she was face-to-face with her mirror image. It matched her movements as she adjusted the temperature control of the hairdryer then raised it to play the stream of warm air over her head. Thankfully, her olive skin still glowed despite the concern that had begun to eat into her. The sooner she learned Kym was safe the better. Before she picked up the comb she pushed the black curls on her head with her fingertips so the rush of air from the dryer could evaporate the clinging remnants of moisture.
What stopped her she didn’t know. In the mirror her reflection turned as her eyes lifted toward the ceiling. Her movement was driven by instinct. Surely she’d heard nothing. But what was that? A sense of arrival almost; as if she expected to hear a knock on the door. Or the window. Or … She thumbed the button on the hairdryer. Its motor slowed; the rush dropped to a whisper, then faded to silence. What was it? There was such a disconcerting sense of imminence. Of an event about to happen? It even made her teeth tingle. The inside of her ears itched. Her heartbeat increased. With exquisite sensitivity she was aware of her blood pulsing through her arteries.
He’s sitting on the bed behind me.
Who? Cantley? She half expected to see that burning stare of his. No. She was alone in her room, so there was no way that—
It started. A soft sound at first. Almost something sensed rather than heard. A pulse of white noise; a shimmering sound that ghosted through the air. Like the hum of a tuning fork without the percussive tap that caused it to ring.
‘It’s the clock,’ Josanne said aloud. ‘The thing’s chiming again.’ She glanced at her watch. Twenty past three. No way the clock should be chiming again.
But listen to it? It’s a surreal chime. A vibration of the bell rather than a simple strike. The phantom note shimmered. It swelled in volume then receded, before swelling again. A moment later the note decayed on the air into a mutant glissando. Then the blind clock in the house within a house – the strangely named Good Heart – sounded the chime with confidence. The chime rang clearly through Josanne’s room. It was sharper than usual; louder, too.
‘Stupid thing,’ she breathed. ‘You’re the only clock I know who can’t tell the time.’
Chimes pulsed through the air. One, two, three, four… they were insistent. A forceful expression. As if they issued a statement. Five, six, seven …
She hissed, ‘Damn clock. Someone should rip out your wires and shut you up for good.’ Eight, nine, ten. ‘Shut up, you idiot,’ she said more loudly. Then, dismissing the recalcitrant timepiece, she switched on the hairdryer. Immediately, however, she switched it off again. There was a soft hissing. Frowning, she looked round the room. A hiss like escaping air … or water.
Surely I haven’t left the shower running? she thought.
The chimes didn’t stop. They grew faster. More insistent. They were a pulse of brassy sound now that began to rag on her nerves. She swivelled on the stool to look in the direction of the bathroom door. Damn … No mistaking that, girl. You idiot. You’ve left the shower running.
Water pressed through the gap beneath the closed door. It darkened the carpet.
Damn. All she wanted now was to drive to York to report K
ym’s disappearance. Last thing you want to do is spend half an hour mopping up water.
‘And you can shut up,’ she told the chimes. They pulsed faster now. Their sound grew harsher. A metallic jarring note. She hated them; they jangled against her head with so much force they hurt her ears. As if in harmony with the raucous chimes, the table light flickered. For a second darkness swamped her room. Then the lights brightened again. The fluctuation in power did nothing to interrupt the chimes. They must have struck a hundred times by now. Gritting her teeth, she strode across the room to the bathroom door. Now she could hear the hiss of the shower above the chimes. Damn thing must be at full power. The plumbing had turned rogue, just like the clock. She reached the door. There, she put her hand on the handle. It vibrated. Whether with the force of the shower or the volume of the chimes she didn’t know.
Josanne turned the knob, the door held shut as if pushed from the other side. She shoved harder. The chimes rose into a savage clanging. Taking a deep breath, she shoved even harder at the door. The resistance increased for a second, then vanished. She almost fell as the door swung open. My God, water streamed over the shower tray. It had been dammed by the door, so now a wave ran at ankle height over the carpet. This water was cold. It smelt of the stagnant morass of ditches in winter. The shower curtain billowed with the force of water jetting into the ceramic tray. Turn it off, then get help to clean this mess up. The thought ran through her head as she stepped forward. The chimes grew faster … louder. A pulse of sound that became a furious bellow. At that moment water erupted from the toilet bowl. She stared at it; her eyes so wide with shock that the skin stung at their corners. Water wasn’t simply overflowing; this was a geyser of black water filled with noxious decayed matter. The force of it staggered her. The fountain struck the ceiling so hard a liquid that stank of marshland pools sprayed her face. Black splotches violated the towel she’d wrapped around her.