Nobody answered and we listened for any sound of footfalls but heard nothing. Smith drew his handgun and I followed suit. The zombies outside the spooky old castle seemed the least of our worries. It was the living inside the medieval fortress that was our immediate concern.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
The walkway led us by several dark empty rooms that hadn’t looked inhabited for a number of years. Loose single light bulbs hung between curtains of spider’s webs in the center of the ceiling spaces. White paint flaked from the small, wooden window frames, which didn’t allow much light into the rooms.
The corridor opened out into a wider area that circled around another inner staircase. We looked down below and saw a burning fireplace in the center of the room and an outer door at the far side. A big cushioned sofa and two chairs sat opposite the fire but nobody occupied the furniture. A half drunk glass of wine stood on a small table next to the sofa. It was as though somebody had got up and left the room the moment they’d heard Smith and I approaching.
“This place is beginning to feel like a ghost town,” I sighed. “Where the hell did everybody go?”
“Let’s just keep moving on,” Smith muttered. “Sooner or later, we’re bound to come across somebody.”
We shuffled further along the corridor and turned at a right-angle, heading to our left. My blood almost froze when I felt a bony hand on my shoulder and I spun around to face my assailant with my handgun held at the ready. I recognized the scrawny figure of Joan, standing a few inches away from me. She’d lurched from the doorway of a room on the right side of the passageway.
“Back the fuck off,” I hissed. “Or I’ll shoot you in your damn ugly face.” After the debacle with Rory, I wasn’t in the mood to be pissed around. Smith turned around, also raising his M-9.
Joan leapt backward, holding her hands beside her head. “Don’t shoot me,” she pleaded. “I’m trying to warn you.”
“Go on,” Smith growled. “Warn us about what, exactly?”
“You need to get out of here, while you can,” Joan insisted. Her face was screwed up with intensity. “These people here are not what they seem. You can’t believe anything they say. ”
“I’m not in the mood for riddles, ma’am,” Smith sighed. “Just cut to the chase.”
I lowered my handgun and Smith did the same. Joan visibly breathed out a relieved sigh and lowered her hands by her sides.
“Everybody here is…not what you’d call normal,” Joan stammered, searching for the right words. “They play a little game with everyone who comes to the castle. Some leave by escaping and some don’t get so lucky.”
“How comes you’re still here then?” I quizzed.
“I have nowhere else to go. The castle is the only safe place for miles around,” she explained. “I came here around four months ago, before the winter with a few other survivors but they’ve since left or disappeared. The person you really need to be wary of is…”
“Joan, what are you doing around here?” boomed a voice from behind us.
Joan immediately clammed up and looked sheepish for talking to us. Smith and I spun around to see Alex McNeil standing in the passageway behind us.
“You know we rarely use these parts of the castle, it might not be safe here,” he said.
“Do you know you have a dead girl hanging from a staircase, back there?” Smith said, gesturing back down the corridor with his M-9.
Alex looked confused. “A dead girl?”
“Yeah, and it looks as though she’s been there a while,” I added. “Young girl about twenty, dark brown hair in a white dress and green sweater.”
“That’s Shona,” Joan wailed. “She came here when I did. I haven’t seen her for a few weeks.”
“Joan, shut up,” Alex snapped. “Now, go back to your room and I’ll get Davie and Mo to go and cut her down and bury her in the castle grounds.”
Joan briefly glanced at Smith and I in turn and the fear in her eyes was evident. She shuffled off down the passageway towards the inner guts of the castle. Alex stood around ten feet away from Smith and I with a look of contempt on his face.
“Sorry about her,” he said, nodding down the corridor after Joan. “She’s delusional and lives in a bit of a dark fantasy world, I’m afraid but she’s harmless enough. What happened to you two, by the way?”
“We ran into the local whack job, Rory,” I explained.
“Ah, him,” Alex sighed. “He isn’t the easiest guy to get on with.”
“Oh, you think?” Smith said, reaching into his jacket pocket for his pack of smokes.
“So, what about this dead girl, Alex?” I pressed. “Like, who the hell was she and what the fuck is going on inside these four walls?” I was going to mention his violent criminal background but I thought I’d leave that trump card if we needed it later.
Alex sucked in air and shook his head. “She came here with Joan and a few others, some months ago and we haven’t seen her in a while.” He talked as though he was being interviewed by the police. Everything seemed matter of fact and slightly recited, as though he was telling us about the weather. “Shona seemed in a bit of a distressed state on the few occasions I saw her and one day, she simply disappeared. This apocalypse thing does some weird shit to people’s heads, you know? Maybe once she was safe inside the castle the reality of the new world dawned on her. It’s not for everybody this alternative lifestyle.”
Alex was a good talker and he had me almost believing what he was saying.
“So, how come nobody found her? She’s been missing for a while and nobody thought to look for her?”
Alex sort of chuckled. “As you know, it’s a big place. People can become easily lost in all the different sections. We barely use this end of the castle so that’s probably why Shona decided to take her life there. It was somewhere where nobody would find her to stop her from doing it.”
“All right,” Smith sniffed. “There’s some crazy shit going on here that doesn’t concern us but we’ve lost one of our people and just want to find him so we can move out of here.”
“You’re leaving?” Alex seemed astonished.
“Too right,” Smith sighed, lighting his smoke and handing me one. “This damn place is far too freaky for us.”
Alex laughed. “Oh, you get used to us after a while.”
“No thanks,” Smith snapped, lighting my smoke. “Now, about our friend, Gera. Have you seen him?”
Alex’s eyes bulged and he blew out, shaking his head. “Nah, not since last night. As I say, it’s a big place. He could have gone for a wander and got lost in the towers or the cellars somewhere.”
“Yeah, the cellar,” I said. “That’s another thing. How come you’ve got zombies down in one of the basements?”
Alex looked bemused again as he raised his eyebrows. “News to me, pal. Which one?”
I tried to remember the route but couldn’t think of the exact location. “Back there, someplace,” I sighed, half turning back down the passageway. Alex seemed to be explaining away or denying any involvement in the strange goings on.
“Have you seen the rest of our party? The three girls?” I asked.
Alex again shook his head and went to speak but I cut him off.
“It’s a big place, right? Okay, I got it.”
Alex sniffed. “Okay, must dash. I’ll get Davie and Mo to remove that girl’s body.” He half tuned away. “Join us for lunch in the dining hall, if you fancy it. Mrs McMahon has promised a really good fare. It’ll be served up soon.”
Smith nodded. “We’ll think about it.”
We watched Alex skip away along the passageway while we finished our cigarettes. The guy still seemed amiable enough but I couldn’t help thinking he was hiding something. I didn’t trust him. I didn’t trust anybody in this place.
Chapter Thirty
“Maybe we should crash this lunch date and see who turns up,” Smith said. “At least we can get some answers from whoever’s at that dinner table.�
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“Do you know the way back to the dining hall?” I asked.
Smith shrugged. “Alex went right ahead so we’ll head in that direction.”
I sighed and slid my M-9 back into the holster. I was fresh out of ideas and didn’t know where the hell Gera or the others were. It seemed like we were on a wild goose chase and we were unearthing more mysteries than we were solving. We crunched out our cigarettes underfoot and carried on through the passageway.
It took us around twenty minutes through a series of twists and turns and dead ends along the passageways before we found ourselves back in the dining area. A few of the castle residents already sat at the table and acknowledged us with a nod as we entered the room. Maddie, Davie, Mo, Chloe and Trevor sat at the far end of the table, the two females facing the three males.
“Hey, Brett,” Maddie called, with a beaming smile on her face. “Are you joining us for lunch? Come and sit next to me and tell me what you’ve been doing all morning.” She patted the seat of the chair beside her.
I glanced at Smith and saw him stifle a smirk.
“My God, what happened to your faces?” Maddie gasped as we approached the table. “You look like you’ve been in the boxing ring.”
“We ran into the resident psycho, named Rory,” I huffed.
“Oh, sorry about him,” Maddie said, as I took my place beside her. She leaned closer to me as I shuffled my chair under the table. “He’s a bit weird,” she whispered. And then she did an odd thing. She licked the inside of my ear. I felt embarrassed but thankfully, nobody seemed to notice.
Smith sat opposite me, next to the smiling, genial Trevor, who harbored a sickening secret of his past misdemeanors.
“Has anybody seen the others in our party?” Smith asked, in a loud voice. “The guy and the three girls we were with last night?”
Everybody at the dinner table murmured negative answers or shook their heads.
“Aw, has Bwetty lost his little girlfriend?” Maddie squawked in a childlike voice.
She grabbed my arm and pulled me closer to her. I felt awkward and laughed nervously. I didn’t know if she was just having some fun with me or genuinely hitting on me. I was never very good at reading women.
“Nobody has seen them, huh?” Smith continued. “Anybody know anything about a dead girl who’s hanging by her neck in the staircase near the back of the building? Shona, I think her name was.”
I noticed Chloe baulked at the news and Mo looked decidedly uncomfortable.
“Oh, yes,” Trevor said. “I remember her. Dead now, is she?”
Smith turned to face him. “Dead as a Thanksgiving turkey, pal.”
Maddie leaned closer to me and rested her head on my shoulder. “Your friend is being a bit of a bore,” she whispered.
“You people don’t know much, do you?”
“What’s your point here, pal?” Davie growled. He was obviously getting a little pissed with Smith’s questions.
“My point is, people seem to go missing inside the castle, outer gates seem to be opened without explanation, people wind up dead, there’s psychos and zombies roaming about the cellar and nobody seems to give a damn,” Smith ranted.
“Listen, mate, you don’t have to stay here if you don’t like it,” Davie countered, leaning forward on his chair with a look of intensity on his big face. “It’s a tough world out there and it’s also tough in here. If you don’t want to stay, then get tae fuck, youse away.”
His last insult had me slightly baffled but I got the gist of what he meant.
“Ooh, is there going to be a fight?” Maddie whispered sarcastically in my ear. I ignored her and hoped I wasn’t going to be involved in any more dust-ups for a while.
Smith glared at him through his non-swollen eye. “Has Alex told you to go and cut that hanging girl down yet?”
“Nae, he has not,” Davie snapped. “I didn’t know she was dead until you just said.”
Right on cue, Alex sauntered into the dining room, with his hands tucked into his pants pockets and a beaming smile across his chops.
“What’s going on, boys? Not having a little disagreement, are we?” he asked.
“He started it.” Davie jabbed a meaty finger in Smith’s direction. Mo muttered something in agreement.
“I was just sharing the news of the dead girl, with them all here.” Smith gestured around the table.
Alex’s smile dropped from his face. “Yes, a very unfortunate incident, I’m afraid. We’ll have to go and sort it out this afternoon.” He glanced at Davie and Mo.
Mrs McMahon emerged from the kitchen, wearing oven gloves while carrying a big steaming dish. She had a smug smile on her face but the look of self-satisfaction soon faded when she saw Smith and I. It was obvious by her body language she didn’t like us.
“Ah, here’s Mrs McMahon with our delicious lunch,” Alex lauded.
She placed the dish, containing a pastry crusted pie on the table and the others slopped the food onto their plates. Maddie served me up a helping and passed me a plate. Mrs McMahon gave Smith a portion of pie and he prodded at the meat and pastry but winced every time he took a mouthful. His jaw must have been aching and I was having trouble eating as well due to my swollen nose.
“I see you’re having a wee spot of bother eating that,” Mrs McMahon snapped at Smith.
He gazed up from his dish, flashing a sarcastic grimace.
Sighing loudly, Mrs McMahon rose from the table and went through to the kitchen. She returned a couple of minutes later carrying a bowl of soup and slammed it down on the table in front of Smith.
“I think you’ll find that easier to eat,” she hissed, with an expression of contempt. “It is last night’s leftovers but it’ll still be okay.”
Smith grunted a response and tentatively began slurping a few mouthfuls of the soupy substance.
Alex tried desperately to lighten the mood with some irrelevant banter but we weren’t in the mood for small talk.
Smith tired of trying to eat a few minutes later. He shoved the half eaten fare across the table. “Come on, Wilde,” he said. “We need to find the others.” He rose from his chair.
I nodded and went to stand.
“Aw, you’re not going already, Brett,” Maddie wailed and grabbed my arm.
“Sorry, I have to find my friends,” I murmured and carefully shrugged off her grip.
Smith marched away from the dinner table, receiving a stern glare from Davie as he moved by. I followed as he headed down the staircase to the Great Hall.
“What was all that about?” I asked when we were out of earshot.
“What?”
“That spat you had with Davie?”
“I was trying to rile them up a little and gauge their reaction. See who came out of the woodwork and had the balls to throw a few fucks back at me.”
“Right,” I sighed. “And that was useful because…?”
Smith shrugged. “Just to see where the land lies and whose camp these people are in.”
“Oh, okay.” To me, Smith had just alienated us further.
“If there is any bad shit going down in this place, I want them to come after me next,” Smith seethed. “I want to find out exactly what the hell is going on in here.”
Smith was never very good at winning friends and influencing people and now he had just riled a few violent, dangerous people. If they did come after us, we had nowhere to hide.
Chapter Thirty-One
Smith and I followed the passageway and the winding staircase back up to our rooms in the tower. We wanted to check on Spot and see if anybody had returned to the bed chambers. Smith stopped ahead of me on the landing and put his arm across to indicate for me to cease moving. He drew his M-9 and I wondered what was going on now. I pulled out my own handgun then moved my head around Smith. I was met by the sight of our bedroom doors all standing open and our baggage laying scattered in the entrances and around the floor space.
“The bastards have been through o
ur gear,” Smith seethed.
We cautiously plodded further into the center of the landing and peered into each room in turn. All our backpacks had been rifled through. Spare clothing, tins and packets of food, and equipment littered the wooden floors. The weapons and spare ammo were all missing and poor Spot had disappeared from Batfish’s bedroom.
“They’ve taken the dog as well,” Smith growled. “It’s all gone, the cash, the weapons and ammo, every fucking thing.”
“How did they get in?” I sighed, feeling sickened. “We locked all the doors before we left this morning.”
Smith studied the door jambs and the locks. “The doors haven’t been forced open. Whoever it was must have had sets of spare keys.”
“Shit, what do we do now, Smith?” I rubbed my hand over my face in exasperation and panic. Our safe refuge had quickly turned into a horrendous nightmare.
“We go back down into that fucking dining hall and start stomping heads. That’s what we’re going to do.”
“Do you think it’s all of those guys or just a handful of them or just one person?” My head spun with the permutations of the situation. After all we’d been through, who could do this to us?
“I don’t give a fuck,” Smith spat. “They’re all as bad as each other.”
“Hold on, Smith,” I said, trying to think and act rationally. “We can’t just march down there and start a war with these people.”
“Huh?” he grunted, glancing at me with a disbelieving expression.
“Don’t forget, whoever took our stuff is now more armed than we are.” I didn’t want Smith to stomp off on some half assed revenge mission and cause a shootout inside the grim castle.
“What do you suggest then, wise ass?” Smith glared at me, nodding his head as he spoke. “Go down there and play happy fucking clappy hippies with your guitar playing girlfriend?” He jabbed his gun at me and I knew he was extremely pissed off by his tense body language. Smith was at breaking point and the red mist was definitely descending over him.
“Smith, we need to calm the fuck down and take a minute to think, here.” I pressed down on the air between us, trying to stop him acting wildly and getting us all killed. “If they’re fucking with us, we need to fuck them back, as you mentioned before.”
The Left Series (Book 4): Left In The Cold Page 15