Dark Harbour: The Tale of the Soul Searcher

by Joseph Kiel

  Eddie paused eating for a moment and removed his baseball cap. His head was itching, as it often did with wearing the hat all day. It was necessary to shield himself from the world around him and all the arseholes in it.

  His hair was very black and would get rather wiry if he let it get long, so Eddie kept it quite short. His skin was a deep olive colour and even in the dead of winter he would look like he’d just come back from a fortnight away in the Maldives. Eddie had an inch long bullet of metal through his right eyebrow and he would often fiddle with it, twisting it round so that it would almost tear out of his skin.

  The neon fish continued to hum as the light flashed off and on. Darkness then light, darkness then light. An endless cycle. Looking down the road, he could see a string of amusement lights along the promenade. Many of the bulbs had blown though, and were left to sway pointlessly in the wind. Typical for this dead end town. Everything was left to ruin.

  He turned away and then saw that there was another hungry soul next to him. Eddie replaced his baseball cap and the dog with the wide brown eyes continued to stare at him.

  ‘Fuck off,’ Eddie said to it.

  The dog didn’t move, instead misinterpreting Eddie’s words as an invitation. He stepped closer to the stranger with the lovely smelling chips and licked his lips.

  ‘I said fuck off, you stupid mutt.’

  Eddie couldn’t see a collar on the dog. Despite its gentle nature, it looked a little wild, like a wolf that had just trotted out of the woods. He had no idea what breed it was.

  ‘You just don’t get the message, do you? Stupid animal. Here,’ Eddie said as he stabbed a chip and then flicked it across the pavement. The dog mooched over to it and quickly licked it up. He then returned to Eddie and looked up at him with those big eyes.

  ‘Oh, for God’s sake. Here you go then. Have the fucking things.’ Eddie placed the tray on the ground and let the damned dog eat the rest of them.

  At that point, the chip shop owner came outside. ‘Don’t know whose he is. Been lurking round here a couple of days now,’ he said to Eddie.

  ‘Looks like a stray. Smells like a stray.’

  ‘I’ll call the pound in the morning, I think,’ the shopkeeper said before turning to go back inside as a couple of drunken students came stumbling along.

  ‘Hear that, doggy? Tomorrow they’ll come take you away and put you to sleep. It’s going to be your lucky day.’

  The dog, which had finished eating already, looked up at Eddie and cocked his head as though Eddie had just been telling him how lovely he was. Eddie shook his head then set off for home. He soon heard the pitter-patter of paws behind him.

  ‘Look, just go home you stupid fucking animal!’

  The dog wouldn’t take his eyes off him though, staring at him like he was his best friend in the whole universe. He certainly was a quiet soul too, a bit like Eddie.

  ‘You’re not coming with me! I don’t want no flea-bitten dog.’

  He turned away once more, but the dog just kept following.

  Chapter 1.6

  There was barely any light in the rat-infested factory when Devlan returned, not that he needed any. Devlan could see exceptionally well in the darkness, when he wasn’t wearing his shades. He had a pizza box stuffed under his arm - barbecue chicken and peppers - bought with the money Floyd had given him. He sat on his grubby mattress with a mouth full of saliva and opened the box.

  In the gloom he heard scuffles, as though the bricks and rubble were suddenly coming to life. The rats were congregating, one of them even sitting next to him on the mattress. A quick flick of his arm and Devlan could have easily grabbed it, but tonight the rats were back to being dinner guests rather than being the dinner itself. He tossed them his crusts. Neither Devlan nor his rodent roommates had eaten so well in a long time.

  When he finished eating, Devlan propped himself up against the wall at the end of his bed. He had some thinking to do, had to delve into his vast memory banks and retrieve whatever he could about this treasure that Floyd now wanted him to search for, this Akasa Stone.

  After half an hour of meditation on the subject, every corridor that he went down in his mind had led to a locked door. He’d known a handful of people who’d searched for the stone, but also remembered how they’d only discovered disappointment. It was a game for fools, for rainbow chasers. Deluded by its mystical lustre, the searchers of the illusive Akasa Stone had never fully understood what it was they were looking for. Perhaps this treasure wasn’t going to allow itself to be found by just anyone.

  Floyd wouldn’t be aware of the true esoteric nature of the stone. Hardly anyone was. Devlan didn’t actually know anyone who fully knew what he knew, no one who was still alive now.

  Perhaps by some sort of beginner’s luck, Floyd had stumbled upon the true resting place of the stone. Devlan hadn’t known anyone else to scour the sea; everyone just assumed the treasure was to be found within the town somewhere. If it were to be found in the sea, how would that explain the people who’d claimed to have seen it? Then again, what value was their word? Who were these people?

  With his mind going round in circles and the pizza laying heavy in his stomach, Devlan’s mind began to drift away. The room was ice cold as it always was at night but Devlan was now numb to the sensation. Being in the cold so much, the rugged vagrant eventually became the cold.

  Memories still floated around and around in his head, like diseased fish in a stagnant pond. They’d suddenly dart this way and that as they escaped the larger predators that emerged from the murky blackness, the grotesque thoughts and visions that had been unsettled by his reminiscing.

  Devlan was used to bad dreams, had come to accept them as part of himself. He now knew to embrace the harrowing nightmares that plagued his mind like flesh-hungry zombies, wanting to eat away whatever hope and humanity clung to his soul’s fabric. The low resonation of his existence was never meant to vibrate higher than the animalistic thought forms that he often meandered within. Devlan was clearly a freak of nature in his body, and the same had to be so for his mind.

  Within the nightmarish sensations, he submitted himself to sleep, facing the deathly, decaying visions of people he once knew but now long gone, now rotting within the grim recesses of his aberrant mindscape.

  Chapter 1.7

  ‘Where the heck is Eddie?’ Michael asked Larry as they sat down in the lounge back at the flat.

  Danny had gone to get himself a glass of water before going straight to bed. Larry held a can of lager as he would often keep drinking until the moment he finally went to bed. Michael, on the other hand, wanted to wait up until everyone was home and safe.

  ‘He’ll be back soon. Stop worrying! You sound like an old woman,’ Larry replied, taking a sip of his beer.

  Michael frowned and turned to the window. As he got up, his wallet fell from his trouser pocket.

  ‘Hey, lost your wallet,’ Larry said as he immediately reached over and grabbed it. Instead of handing it back to him, he looked at it thoughtfully. ‘You know, you can tell a lot about someone by looking at the contents of their wallet.’

  Michael shrugged. ‘Go ahead.’

  ‘Hmm… a total of 43p.’

  ‘There you go. Obviously a student.’

  ‘What’s with the jewellery?’ Larry asked as he withdrew a silver necklace.

  ‘That’s the Virgin Mary. You know, that person who gave birth to Jesus?’

  ‘Think I heard of her. Cash cards, library card, someone’s phone number! Want to enlighten us?’

  ‘It was a lad in my video group.’

  ‘Oh, a lad then,’ Larry said like someone out of a Carry On film.

  Michael rolled his eyes while Larry smirked. He was about to close the wallet when he saw one last item in there. It was a business card. It was black and rather plain, yet the name on it was somewhat intriguing. In the middle of the card was a red flame with two eyes peering out from behind it. Although only a simple outline, there was a
perceptible menacing anger emanating from those eyes.

  ‘Halo of Fires? Who the hell are they?’

  ‘Oh, that. That’s something I’m researching.’

  ‘Who are they? I’ve not heard of them,’ Larry said as he tossed the wallet back to Michael. He kept hold of the card.

  ‘They’re just another one of Dark Harbour’s shady little secrets.’

  ‘Oh, I’m with you now! Do you meet up at a secluded layby and hump each other like…’

  ‘No! Not like that!’

  ‘So, what then?’

  ‘They’re an organisation of thugs. They… go and see to people’.

  ‘To…?’ Larry prompted him.

  Michael pressed his fingertips together in front of his mouth. It was somewhat difficult explaining Halo of Fires to his friend, what with Larry being an outsider. This organisation was in fact the one thing about his hometown that he was not entirely proud of, the black cloud that ruined the tranquil blue sky.

  He’d found the card a few months back, at church of all places. As he sat there waiting to receive Communion, the card was at his feet, the vivid black colour standing out against the dusty wooden floorboards. He was quite disgusted to think that a member of the congregation had most probably dropped it. Why would they have had such a thing?

  As he’d picked it up, he’d immediately felt the synchronicity. The week before, they’d been set their main Journalism assignment for the semester and Michael was deliberating about whether to do his project on the Fires. Over the years he’d heard many lurid stories about them, but there was one story that had stood out in particular, a story passed on to him by his older brother.

  Seeing the discovery of the business card as a message that he should pursue this particular subject, Michael felt that it was more than just a simple college project that he was about to undertake; God had called him for an important life assignment and Michael had to shine his torch into the darkness.

  He didn’t like Halo of Fires. He didn’t agree with what they stood for. He’d seen first-hand what they were capable of and, for that reason, he saw them as a bunch of bloodthirsty, mindless desperadoes.

  ‘I guess you could call them professional vigilantes,’ Michael resumed. ‘If you want to get revenge on someone, if someone has done you wrong, then you can call these guys and they’ll… sort them out.’

  Larry was quiet for a moment, not expecting to have received such an intriguing reply. Suddenly the town didn’t seem so tame after all. ‘I see. And have you ever called them?’

  ‘Hell no! That’s not why I had the card. I just found it somewhere and picked it up out of curiosity. But then I did have an idea for something.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘My Journalism assignment. I’m doing it on them.’

  ‘Cool. Will you need this anymore?’

  ‘I guess.’

  But Larry didn’t give it back to him. ‘What sort of things will they do? They go and chop people up into little pieces with a chainsaw?’

  ‘I’m not quite sure. I knew a lad at school who once contacted them. There was a teacher he didn’t like. Picked on him all the time. Lad couldn’t take it anymore so he calls them… and the teacher gets a knock on the door one night. Heard a lot of stories about them at school to tell you the truth.’

  ‘Fascinating,’ Larry said, sincerely for a change.

  ‘Something like that,’ Michael said as he peered through the curtains.

  ‘Well, I’ll keep them in mind. In case anyone kicks my arse at pool, eh?’ Larry said as he slipped the card into his pocket.

  Part 2: Halo of Fires

  Chapter 2.1

  Imagine that you have a teenage daughter and she’s recently all grown up, wearing lipstick and breast-hugging tops. She’s now at the stage where she’s learning how to get attention. One night she meets up with her friends because one of them is throwing a party, her parents away for the weekend. While she’s there she meets a player, and he gets a lot more friendly with her than she wants him to. It gets past midnight and you wonder why she hasn’t come home yet. Eventually the front door opens and there she is, looking like she put her hand into the cage of the cute little lion cub and got her hand bitten off. You notice her smudged lipstick, her ruffled hair, and maybe one or two bruises. What stands out most of all, and what sends the raging anger coursing through your blood is her crying. She’s sobbing because she never thought her first time would be like this.

  So what do you do about it? Call the police? How long would you wait for them to get down from their office that’s in some other town twenty miles away? And how much trust would you have in them to actually do something about it? Or are they just going to tell you she was asking for it anyway?

  Now imagine that there was another option open to you, another organisation that you could contact. Imagine you could go to these guys, tell them what happened, and ask them to go and visit the tosser in question and beat the living shit out of him. Wouldn’t that be a more satisfying response to your problem? It’s an option open to people in this town in the form of a skilled vigilante organisation.

  Some people here hate Halo of Fires, others laud them. Some of the more philosophical people see them as a necessary darkness, a presence that encourages people to stay in line more so than any threat of a hellish afterlife. The organisation has been around for years, and in this dog-eat-dog world it doesn’t appear to be a service that is going to die out any time soon.

  Henry Maristow, the man in charge of Halo of Fires, is known as the Seraph of the organisation. He’d initially been brought aboard well over twenty years ago by a local lawyer, Alan Hammond, who wanted another Seraph alongside himself. Alan had seen Henry as the ideal man for the role, mainly because Henry knew the underground of Dark Harbour rather intimately.

  Alan Hammond had been the brains and the heart behind Halo of Fires, creating a morally conscious force that would aid victims by seeking out justice through vengeance. His alliance with Henry meant he could recruit the perfect soldiers of karma and ensure their endurance in this perilous town.

  When Alan passed away, Henry became the sole Seraph. With age increasing and energy decreasing, Henry still held onto the original tenets that Alan had asked his friend to stay true to. There were many things that Alan had asked of him. Promises had been made.

  Henry had needed something to believe in. He’d needed a way to escape the evil Network that he’d previously belonged to, and which had forged a burdensome tangle of chains that weighed heavy in his memories.

  Through his transformation, Halo of Fires has continued to thrive, mainly due to the exceptional force of personnel that Alan and Henry had brought together. There was one member in particular who brought a special kind of energy to the organisation, taking things to another level. He just had something within him. Something extraordinary.

  ***

  The tolling of the church bells signalled to the town that it was ten in the evening, and to Vladimir that it was time to get moving. He stood up in his darkened room and stretched out his arm as he slid on his long, black faux leather coat. Glancing at the mirror beside the window he took in his reflection, just to check all was in place.

  Vladimir never wore anything but black: a shirt with long cuffs that covered the backs of his hands, his coat, trousers, and boots that were routinely polished. His hair was virtually black too, short and a little wavy, slicked back with a dab of hair wax. His eyes were also dark, like black buttons, the iris almost indistinguishable from the pupil. Vladimir always looked immaculate and his colourlessness was so vivid.

  Before he would look too deeply at his reflection, which was bathed in the pale moonlight streaming into the room, he gazed out of the window. The moon was full tonight, hanging in the sky above the waves of the harbour like a searchlight looking for wayward souls.

  The vigilante lived in an inconspicuous chalet on the edge of the town, up on the hills. He had an all-seeing view of the town and the sea from
his living-room. It felt as though he could look over things here, and boy did it need looking over.

  People never came round to his place, not even the other guys at the Fires. In fact, they didn’t even know where he lived. That’s the way that Vladimir wanted it for he liked to completely withdraw from the world here and cut himself off from the constant disappointments of humanity. At home he would mostly spend his time reading – books on philosophy or history. Whilst he had a television set, he would only use it to watch the news so he could observe the slow erosion of society and the growth of crime. When it came to frivolous entertainment, Vladimir never allotted any of his precious time to it. It was all a complete waste because it did nothing for him. He wouldn’t have a clue which song was at number one in the charts or which X-Men film they were up to.

  The antique clock on the wall began to chime too. Hanging above the mantelpiece, almost as the centrepiece of his room, the clock was a constant reminder to Vladimir that time was always ticking, and that he had to make best use of it. Lifetimes were empowered within finite portions of the infinite. It was as if he could feel every second of his life go by, and on some level he could hear the demon that constantly taunted him by pointing out all the work he had not yet done, the endless wrongs that were still to right.

  He still had plenty of time before he would meet up with his colleagues but he decided he would set off anyway. Vladimir was eager to get to work. He always was. He picked up his keys from the desk, patted his pocket to check he had his phone, then left.

  In his rank of Throne, Vladimir was leader over the Powers, the guys who worked on the front line. He’d been the Throne for a couple of years now, and he hoped to move up to the rank of Seraph one day.