My mind churned over with jumbled images and spiraling landscapes. Sleep took hold of me but my dreams were troubled. I ran away from something inescapable, as though I was running through maple syrup from an ever closing, unseen assailant.
Furious hammering on the outside of my bedroom door awoke me after what felt like another ten minutes sleep. The pale sun shone through the curtainless, cross shaped window and I blinked into the haze of a white sky glaring through the glass from outside.
“Wilde Man, get up,” Smith’s voice boomed from the landing, outside my door.
“Jesus, won’t that guy ever leave me alone?” I groaned, shielding my eyes from the daylight. I was still tired and had a slight headache from the wine and whisky I’d drunk the previous night.
I hauled my ass out of bed, coughing violently and opened the door a crack. Smith’s unshaven, sullen face appeared in the narrow gap.
“You look like shit.”
“You don’t look so hot yourself,” I countered. “What’s up? Why all the freakin’ noise at this time in the morning?”
“We need you to get dressed, man,” Smith sighed. “Gera’s gone missing. He’s not in his room but all his gear is still in place. We need to organize some kind of search.”
“What do you mean, he’s gone missing?” I was confused.
“It means - we don’t know where he is, genius. What do you think it means?” Smith spoke in a slow tone, pulling a crazy face. “Now, come on, put on some damn clothes.”
“All right, give me a minute,” I groaned and closed the door on him.
I’d hoped for a day relaxing in front of the fire before we continued on our trek across the harsh, snowy landscape. No chance of that. I washed in the sink and brushed my teeth but didn’t bother to shave. I pulled on some clean clothes, checked my M-9 and gathered some full magazines in my belt pouches, then threw on the cold weather jacket.
Smith, Wingate, Cordoba and Batfish were already standing in the landing all dressed and geared up ready to go on the search. Batfish’s face was pale and she looked extremely worried. It was unlike Gera to go off on his own without telling anybody. I paid a visit to the bathroom while the others waited.
“Okay, so what’s the plan?” I asked, glancing around the faces of my companions while we stood on the landing.
“He wasn’t in his room this morning when I went to check on him,” Batfish babbled, her voice cracking with emotion. “It looked like his bed had been slept in and all his stuff is still in there.”
“What about his weapons?” I asked.
“All still there in his room,” Smith confirmed. “I’ve locked all the spare weapons and ammo in my room and I’m keeping the room key on me.”
“And you’ve checked around the castle?” I knew I was asking obvious questions but sometimes people overlook the simple facts.
“I’ve looked everyplace,” Batfish whined.
“We’ve been looking around for around an hour,” Smith chipped in.
“Have you told Alex or any of the others?”
“No sign of any of them, at the moment,” Wingate said. “Maybe they don’t get up too early.”
I knew how they felt. I’d still be in bed if it was up to me. Gera was an early riser and had probably gone to find some breakfast or just gone to explore the castle. It would take longer than an hour to search the whole of the huge castle interior.
Gera’s room, as I recalled was next to mine.
“I didn’t hear him moving around during the night,” I said and went to open his bedroom door.
“Oh, I’m in that one,” Cordoba stammered. She seemed a little uncomfortable. “Gera and I swapped rooms soon after we turned in. I…wanted to be next to you, Brett.” Her gaze turned to the floor in embarrassment. “Just in case I couldn’t sleep, you know?”
Smith smirked and flashed me a wink. I felt my face redden slightly.
“And I suppose Gera would want to be nearer to Batfish’s room.” I quickly tried to diffuse the uncomfortable situation.
“Well, it really don’t matter who wants to be next to who,” Smith said, helping me out. “The fact is, Gera’s missing someplace and we need to find him. We also need to quiz these fucking castle goons about what the hell was going on last night.”
“Go easy on them,” Wingate scolded. “They haven’t actually done anything wrong, Smith.”
“I’m going to get some fucking answers.” Smith drew his M-9 and checked the magazine. “One way or another.”
I knew Smith’s history and how he was capable of extracting information from people using unpleasant methods. If the castle dwellers were playing some kind of game then they’d chosen the wrong guy to start pissing off. Smith would wipe them all out in one brutal gun totting rampage if he felt threatened.
“Okay, let’s go find our friend,” Smith growled and stomped towards the staircase.
We followed Smith back down the staircase and through the corridors to the Great Hall. Still nobody else occupied the room. The fire had died out and there were no signs of life. The castle seemed eerily silent.
“Let’s split into two groups,” Smith suggested. “Me and Wilde Man will take the lower floors and work our way up. You girls start from the top and work your way down. That way we’ll cover the whole of the interior.”
“That could take hours,” Wingate groaned. “This castle is huge. And that means we’ll have to troop all the way back up that staircase again.”
“It’ll cut the time down,” Smith argued. “We can meet in the middle floors someplace. How about in the dining room? That was roughly in the center of the building. We’ll try looking outside if we still can’t find Gera.”
“All right,” Batfish sighed. “Just holler if you find Gera or anybody else.”
The three women trudged out of the room to commence their search from the top of the castle. I didn’t particularly like the malevolent glint in Smith’s eyes. He was riled up and I knew somebody was going to suffer.
Smith glanced at me with a steely glare. “Right, let’s go and find out what’s really going on in this fucking castle.”
Chapter Twenty-Four
Smith drew his M-9 as we marched across the Great Hall to the doorway leading to the corridor. We hadn’t seen much of the castle interior and the passageways and various staircases resembled a rabbit warren. Finding anybody who didn’t want to be located was going to be a difficult task.
I had the feeling Smith wanted the girls out of the way so they wouldn’t hold him back if he came across anybody who he wanted to question. I could guarantee his methods weren’t going to be pretty.
“Where do you start?” I groaned, glancing around an empty, stone walled reception room.
“We’re going to start from the bottom of this place and work our way up. I’m going to search every inch of this damn place until I find somebody,” Smith growled. “I don’t know if those people are hiding but I’m going to find out what the hell is going on.”
We moved through several more empty rooms and some containing stacked up furniture and piles of dusty cardboard boxes. Another corridor led us to the main reception area at the castle’s front entrance. The desks remained unoccupied, with blank computer monitors sitting on top.
Smith holstered his M-9 and pulled a golf club from a white sports bag leaning against one of the reception desks. He swung it through the air one handed, the bulbous head making a swishing noise.
“I never got the whole golf thing,” he said. “Wasn’t it Mark Twain who said ‘golf is a good walk spoiled?’ Whoever said that was damn right.”
“I have no idea,” I replied. I had my own bad experiences with golf some years previously. “My dad was a keen golfer. He used to play in Ireland.”
Smith ignored my family memoir and carried on swinging the club in different directions and combinations, using it like a martial arts weapon.
“I don’t think that’s how you are supposed to hit a ball down the fairway, Smith,
” I mocked.
“These things would be better used for cracking heads than hitting stupid little balls around,” he said, tossing the club into the air so it spun end over end.
I gazed through the front entranceway windows across the snow covered driveway, towards the portcullis gate. A crowd of zombies still huddled in front of the portcullis, reaching through the latticed gaps.
“What do you think has happened to Gera?” I asked. “What’s your best guess, now we’re away from Batfish?”
Smith caught the golf club one handed then shrugged. “I don’t know but it don’t look good for the poor guy. It’s a goddamn pity, I liked Gera. But don’t worry, if I find out they’ve wacked him, I’ll make them pay. Every last one of them.”
I smacked the brass reception bell with palm of my hand. The bell chimed a hollow ring but obviously no smiling receptionist appeared from the offices at the rear.
“I’ll bet it cost a bundle to stay in this place,” I said, glancing around the summit of the dark wooden, double staircase standing behind the reception desks.
“Well, it’s free of charge now,” Smith sighed. “Come on, let’s carry on our search.” He carried the golf club with him, swinging the end across the floor.
We moved away from the reception area, through the deserted bar and lounge. Tables and chairs were scattered and upturned as though there had been an almighty scuffle in the area. Old blood smears stained the cream colored carpets between the wrecked and overturned furniture. I remembered Maddie saying how they’d struggled to clear the castle of the undead during the past few months.
French windows looked out onto what I guessed had been the castle’s gardens and lawns, situated between the castle and the outer wall. I imagined a bunch of golfers, dressed in their bizarre clothing mingling in the bar, sipping a few Scotches and chatting about the rounds they’d played during the day. Another human activity probably lost forever.
Smith eyed the various bottles of Malt Whisky behind the counter but resisted the temptation to indulge at such an early hour. We trawled more deserted function rooms and storage areas until we found a wooden trapdoor in the center of the stone floor inside a small chamber. Smith unlocked the heavy, cast iron bolts and we lifted up the trapdoor, revealing a downward spiraling stone staircase.
I glanced at the black abyss below then back at Smith. “You’re not seriously suggesting we go down there?”
I knew the answer when Smith clicked on his flashlight.
“Okay, you’re the one with the light. You can lead the way.”
Smith nodded. “All right, if you’re too chicken shit to go first,” he teased.
He stepped down onto the stone steps and began to descend. I hopped down behind him, following downward into the blackness.
“What the hell are we getting ourselves into now?” I muttered.
“Gera could be down here,” Smith whispered. “They might be holding him prisoner.”
“Why would they do that?” I scoffed.
“Who knows, kid? There’s some pretty fucked up people left in the world that seem to throw logic out the window.”
We followed the winding staircase around a central stone column, moving deeper underground with every step. The air was musty and smelled like a crypt. I brushed cobwebs away from my face as we moved slowly downwards. Smith’s flashlight beam seemed to only illuminate a dark void below us. I drew my M-9, feeling uneasy about the whole situation. Smith still carried the golf club, using the end to brush away thick cobwebs in front of his face.
Finally, the staircase leveled off and we reached the floor space of another dark, stone walled corridor. The chamber was around eight feet wide with more passageways running into darkness on either side.
“What the heck is this place?” I whispered. “Looks like something from a horror movie.”
Smith trod slowly forward and I closely followed. I didn’t want to be left behind in the dark. The underground chamber was the stuff of nightmares. I imagined medieval people being tortured in horrible ways down there. Smith stopped and shone his flashlight down each of the adjoining passageways. They snaked off in twisting routes, leading into total blackness.
“Hello?” Smith called down one tunnel, his voice echoing eerily.
I hung at Smith’s shoulder, near enough to hop up on his back.
“There’s nothing down here, Smith. Let’s go back,” I whispered. I had the sensation that something was crawling down the back of my neck.
He sighed. “I guess you’re right, kid. There’s not much to see down here.”
“Good, I’m glad you agree,” I muttered. “This place is putting the goddamn shits up me.”
We turned around and shifted places so Smith led with the flashlight. We took a couple of steps forward but then stopped in our tracks when we heard a ghostly hiss gust from the darkness behind us.
Chapter Twenty-Five
“What the hell was that?” I whispered in Smith’s ear. “Something croaked behind us.”
“I know. I heard it too.”
“What do we do?”
“Have you still got your gun drawn?”
U-huh,” I muttered, feeling the hairs prickle on the back of my neck.
“I’ll turn around slowly and point the flashlight back down the passageway. You turn with me and take aim with your gun but just make sure not to blast my head off, okay?”
“Got it.”
We shuffled around one-hundred and eighty degrees again. The light beam flashed across the rocky walls and all I heard was Smith’s and my own heavy breathing. I moved half a pace to Smith’s right and raised the handgun, pointing the barrel down the line of the light beam.
I felt Smith recoil slightly, which jolted my aim to the right before I could fire a shot. Several emaciated creatures were illuminated by the flashlight beam, moving towards us, one behind the other in slow jerky movements. Their skin was dull gray and ripped and torn in patches and strips, as though they’d been stabbed and hacked at during their time alive. Parts of the ghoul’s limbs were missing, such as legs, feet, hands and arms, hampering their movements. Their faces had deep grooves in vertical slices down their faces and some were missing eyes, teeth, ears and noses. The creatures had endured bites but had not been killed during a feeding frenzy. The cuts, slices and gouges inflicted on their bodies were too clean, as though the injuries had occurred before death and before they were infected.
“What the fuck…?” Smith whispered.
“Looks like those things were tortured before they died,” I muttered.
“All right, Columbo, just shoot the ugly bastards, will you?”
I re-aimed along Smith’s flashlight beam and fired one shot at the nearest ghoul. The round hit the creature slightly above the bridge of its nose. The back of the head instantly shattered, spewing out a discharge of decaying brains and congealed blood into the disfigured faces of those behind. The pursuing zombies stumbled as the lead figure’s body fell into their path, knocking them off balance like bowling pins.
“I don’t think I’ve got the stomach for this, this morning,” I wailed.
“Ah, come on, let’s get out of here,” Smith groaned, turning and bundling me back through the passageway. “They’ll never catch up with us as long as we keep at a steady pace.”
We trotted back up the staircase. Smith kept shining his flashlight behind us every couple of minutes to check the ghouls weren’t close behind. The open trapdoor was a welcome sight and I was glad to get back above ground. Smith followed me through the opening and we slammed the heavy door back over the gaping hole to the cellar come torture chamber. Smith slammed the bolts back in place and we crouched silently by the trapdoor, breathing heavily for a few moments.
“What in the hell happened to those things down there?” I asked, still regaining my breath.
Smith shook his head. “I haven’t the faintest idea but somebody cut them up real good. Whether that was done before they turned, I couldn’t say.”<
br />
“It looked like they’d had their limbs hacked off before they were even bitten,” I gasped. “What kind of sick fuck could do something like that?”
“Like I said, kid, we’ve met some pretty freaky people along the way. This kind of situation can turn people’s heads so they become fruit loops.”
I reached for my pack of cigarettes. “Jesus, I just want to get out of this place now,” I said, offering Smith the pack. He took one and we both lit up on his Zippo.
“We can’t leave until we find Gera,” Smith stated. “This place is like a maze. He could be anyplace around here.”
“More like a house of horrors,” I added.
We turned our heads towards the doorway to the chamber when we heard a high pitched scream from somewhere nearby on the ground floor. The shriek was solitary and lasted for around two seconds.
“What the hell was that?” I whispered.
“Come on, kid,” Smith said, crushing out his cigarette underfoot and grabbing his golf club. “Let’s go take a look.”
We padded out of the stone chamber and crossed through a themed hunting room, with various animal heads hanging on placards from the walls. The sight of those lifeless eyes staring out at me from those dead animals caused a shiver to run down my spine. Smith and I stopped when we exited the hunting room and stood in a long, wooden wall paneled corridor, glancing left and right.
“Which way now?” I asked.
“I don’t know,” Smith grunted. “It’s impossible to tell where that scream came from.”
“Christ! We’re lost inside this damn castle,” I spat.
“We can’t get lost,” Smith protested. “We know all the routes will lead us back to the entrance or the Great Hall. It’s just a question of how long it takes to find the right way.” He pointed left and we padded slowly through the corridor.
The Left Series (Book 4): Left In The Cold Page 12