New Title 1

by Jeffrey, Shaun

  “Fuck you.” Ratty spat in his face.

  “Now do you see what his parents have to cope with?” Drake said, wiping his face and pulling Ratty outside.

  “Do you have to be so rough with him?”

  “It’s the only thing they understand. Have a nice day, Miss Black.”

  Ratty didn’t know what the hell was going on, and from all accounts, neither did Chase.

  He looked back at the house, hoping to persuade Chase not to let Drake take him, but she had already shut the door.

  ***

  Tears rolled down Chase’s cheeks. She didn’t know why she was so upset. She hardly knew the boy. It was just something about the way he was hauled away that worried her. She leaned against the door, half slumped, ashamed at the weakness she had shown in front of Drake. She should have spoken out more. Demanded to accompany them. Demanded to leave Paradise herself. But that wasn’t how she was. She was too weak, too used to skirting conflict to take a head-on stand, especially against someone as menacing as Drake. That was why she needed Jane.

  She hugged her stomach and waited for the tears to stop before going into the kitchen and starting the breakfast she had intended to make for Ratty. Why would Ratty have lied about his granddad? Why would he say his granddad was still living in Paradise when he wasn’t? It didn’t make any sense. The thoughts turned over in her head as the overcooked sausages split like cauterised fingers in the frying pan.

  Turning off the heat, she slopped the sausages onto a plate with half the fat from the frying pan, quickly put her trainers on and ran out of the house. She couldn’t let Ratty go on his own, not with Drake. Whether or not he was lying was irrelevant. He had been visibly scared, and she knew only too well how that felt.

  Running down the lane, she threw a cursory glance at Belinda’s house. The curtains were drawn and smoke curled from the chimney but there was no sign of Belinda.

  At the intersection at the bottom of the lane, she looked both ways, but there was no sign of Drake or Ratty. She glanced at the fog in the field beyond, at the church in the distance, toward the surgery, but there was no one around. Where could they be? she wondered, biting her bottom lip. It was like a ghost town.

  Movement in the hedge to her left drew her attention. Leaves rustled as something disturbed them. Frowning, Chase approached the hedge, expecting a bird to fly out when she suddenly caught sight of a dirty face, masked by the foliage. The eyes were hollow pits, the cheeks drawn and thin; there was something about the face that she couldn’t quite put her finger on.

  “Hello, are you coming to see me?”

  Startled, Chase turned to see Adam jogging toward her dressed in jogging bottoms and a sweatshirt. Sweat beaded on his forehead and he seemed out of breath. “No, I ... erm, have you seen Drake and a young boy?”

  “No.” Adam shook his head.

  She glanced back at the hedge, but just as she’d feared, the face had disappeared so she didn’t mention the person she thought she had seen in case she had just imagined it, in case she was succumbing to the madness that seemed to grip the village.

  “How are you feeling today? Have you come to terms with the news I gave you?”

  She whirled back on Adam. “You mean about being pregnant? You can say it you know, and no, I haven’t.”

  “Well, if you want to talk.” He shrugged. “Remember you’ve got an appointment.”

  “Yes, I know.” After a moment she said, “Actually, you can help me. Do you know who used to live in High Top Cottage before me?”

  “Yes, that was Albert Rathbone. Nice old chap.”

  “What happened to him?”

  “Happened, what do you mean?”

  “It’s easy enough. Where is Albert Rathbone now?”

  “I think he went to live with his son.”

  Chase nodded. “That’s what Drake said.”

  “And you don’t believe him?”

  “Yes ... no ... I don’t know what to believe any more. You see, Drake came to the house for Peter Rathbone.”

  “Peter, he was here?”

  “Yes, he came to the house. Do you know him?”

  Adam frowned. “Only through the missing person report I had. And where is he now?”

  “That’s what I want to know.” She quickly explained about Ratty turning up at the house, although she omitted to mention his outlandish story.

  “Well, you head toward the church and I’ll go the other way to see if we can find them,” Adam said when she finished.

  Chase was fond of Adam, but she felt strange, knowing that he knew she was pregnant with another man’s baby. She wondered if he could love a woman carrying another man’s child and she sighed. This wasn’t the time to be thinking about her love life – or lack of.

  “We’ll meet back by the pond in twenty minutes. Okay?” he said, jogging backward as he spoke.

  Chase nodded and walked toward the church.

  She intended to question the vicar, but she remembered the last time she had been in the church. Would the vicar be drunk again? Would he even remember her last visit, and if so, would he be embarrassed?

  Sunlight dappled the road through the patchwork of leaves above and in the distance she noticed two people standing further up the lane, and although she should have felt relieved to see someone, she wasn’t. Even at this distance, she felt there was something wrong with them, something that the eye couldn’t see. She knew she was being foolish, but she couldn’t help it. As she watched them, she thought that she saw one of the figures roughly push the other one over.

  Walking out from beneath the shade of a tree, sunlight stabbed her eyes, making them water and she blinked and rubbed them. When she looked back up and her vision had refocused, the two people had disappeared, but a demented chuckle was delivered to her on the wind like a warning.

  Increasing her pace, she hurried to the church and ran inside, causing the vicar, who was walking down the aisle, to look up, startled. For a brief moment she thought that she saw a look of fear on his face, but it dropped away as quickly as it appeared. He looked sober and even managed a weak smile. Did he remember? she wondered. Or is he just putting on a brave face?

  “Hello again. It’s Chase isn’t it?” He held out a podgy hand, which Chase shook, slightly repulsed by his sweaty palm.

  “Yes. How are you?” She didn’t want to broach the subject about the last time she had seen him, but she felt there was a sense of embarrassment about him, as though he remembered.

  “I’m glad I’ve seen you.”

  “Oh, why’s that?” She was expecting an apology, a need to purge the soul.

  “How’s your friend?”

  “You mean, Jane?”

  The vicar nodded.

  “I don’t know really. She’s gone home.” She wanted to mention she had come around the other day to use the phone to call her, but that would give flesh to the unspoken issue, giving it life, making it real.

  “Really? I was sure I saw her yesterday with Drake and Moon.”

  “Well, you must be mistaken. If she was still here, she would have contacted me.”

  “Would she? What if she couldn’t?”

  “And why on earth wouldn’t she be able to? What are you implying?” Chase felt a knot of fear twist in her stomach, or was it the unborn baby moving? How big would the foetus be after four months? Why was he putting doubt in her mind?

  “Unto the woman he said, I will greatly multiply your sorrow and thy conception; in sorrow thou shalt bring forth children.” The vicar bowed his head and shook it.

  Chase didn’t like the implied meaning of the vicar’s rhetoric. Did he know she was pregnant? But how could he?

  “I don’t understand what you mean,” she said. Was everyone around here mad? The sooner she got out, the better.

  Casting furtive glances around the church, the vicar motioned for Chase to follow him outside, which she apprehensively did.

  His long gown fluttered like wings as he strode purposefully
between the headstones toward the far corner of the graveyard, near to the bank of fog. When he stopped, he gestured to a grave with his arm. “There is no truth in him. When he speaketh a lie, he speaketh of his own: for he is a liar, and the father of it.”

  Chase looked down at the fresh grave the vicar indicated and read the simple inscription on the headstone:

  Albert Rathbone

  1920-2011

  CHAPTER 13

  Chase stood with her mouth open in disbelief before finally finding her voice. “It can’t be. This isn’t the man who lived in High Top Cottage. Drake told me he was living with his son. So did Adam.”

  The vicar shook his head and took a hip flask out of his pocket. He offered Chase a drink, which she refused with a shake of her head before he took a large swallow himself.

  “I don’t understand what’s going on.” She couldn’t take her eyes from the inscription.

  “And ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free.”

  “What truth?”

  “This. The truth.” He gestured at the grave, then at the fog.

  “Tell me what you mean.” She sank to the floor, thinking of Ratty and his insistence at the tale he had told her. Remembering the look on his face as Drake hauled him away, she began to cry.

  “Don’t you get it yet?” the vicar said, taking another swig from his hip flask. “We have made a covenant with death, and with hell are we at agreement.”

  “Just tell me what you mean.” Chase had had just about enough of the vicar’s oblique preaching.

  The vicar shook his head. “And God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes; and there shall be no more death, neither sorrow, nor crying, neither shall there be any more pain: for the former things are passed away.”

  “Please, just tell me what the bloody hell’s going on. What do you mean?” She wanted to slap him. She remembered that according to his diary, Albert Rathbone had done just that: Forgive me Father, for I have twatted a man of the cloth. She now knew how he felt.

  The vicar took another drink. “It means if you’re stupid enough to seek the truth, don’t expect to like what you find. Albert Rathbone searched for the truth.”

  Chase looked down at the grave and a chill climbed up her spine with icy claws.

  “If you still want answers, go to the old farmhouse on the far-side of the hill and seek an audience with the fool. God save us.” Shaking his head, the vicar walked away, mumbling to himself.

  Chase stayed looking at the grave for a few moments. She didn’t understand any of it. The more she thought about it, the more tangled the story became and the more she regretted letting Drake take Ratty away.

  Who was the fool? Was it the Raggedy man whom Albert Rathbone had made a final reference to in the diary: Raggedy man knows.

  With a head full of questions, she walked out of the graveyard. There was only one way to find out.

  The sun had now risen high in the sky, the light diffused by the clouds that had drifted over the horizon, making it hard to see where the fog stopped and the cloud started as it all fused to become a smothering blanket of whiteness.

  As she left the graveyard, she noticed Adam’s receptionist, Patricia, walking toward her carrying a bunch of flowers. Seeing Patricia reminded her she was meant to be meeting Adam by the pond and she bit her lip, wondering whether to just carry on to the abandoned farmhouse, or whether to keep her appointment?

  Patricia was frowning.

  “Hello again.” Chase smiled, although inside, she was churning up.

  Patricia stopped walking and glared at Chase. “I was taking these to the graveyard,” she said. “But I think I’ll just give them to you instead.”

  She held the flowers out and Chase looked at them: White lilies.

  “Sorry, but why would you give them to me?” She frowned.

  Patricia scowled. “Because they’re for dead people.”

  Chase didn’t realise her mouth was open until a fly flew into it, making her gag and spit. “I beg your pardon?” She wasn’t sure she had heard properly.

  “Dead people. Dead people. Dead people,” Patricia sang.

  Chase took a step back and Patricia took a step forward.

  “Dead people. Dead people ...” She flung the flowers at Chase before skipping away toward the church, still chanting her macabre litany.

  Chase stared at the flowers scattered at her feet, shaking her head in disbelief. First Belinda had thrown cakes at her, and now Patricia had thrown flowers. What next? What the hell is going on? she wondered.

  Beneath the black sky, the farmhouse looked even more decrepit. Nervously, Chase approached the swinging front door. She couldn’t believe she had plucked up the courage to come out here, but she needed to know what the hell was going on. The last time she had been here, Jane had accompanied her, bolstering her bravado. Now she was alone. All alone. Thunder rumbled in the distance, a celestial drum roll that shook the ground and startled her.

  Unsure whether to enter the building, Chase stood on the threshold, holding the door open as another peal of thunder played percussion to the raindrops that began to fall, sizzling as they hit the rusted metal panels on the barn. In the darkening atmosphere, the interior of the building appeared to come alive with shadows. A rancid smell filled the air. A sudden wind blew past her, snatching the door from her grasp and slamming it against the frame. The house shuddered. Hesitantly, she opened the door back up, noticing objects suspended from the rafters of the room swinging like incense holders. She narrowed her eyes, trying to make out what they were before a flicker of lightning illuminated the scene, and she wished that she hadn’t seen it after all: dead animals; rabbits, squirrels and pigeons hung up like a grotesque mobile hanging from a crib.

  Chase felt sick. She backed away from the door, clumsily tripping over rubble on the floor, her balance suddenly precarious, causing her to flail her arms like a windmill as she began to fall. Snatching at empty air, she fell backwards to the floor, her head smashing onto a brick. Pain suffused the horror and a flicker of lightning illuminated a dirty, gaunt face peering down at her before the darkness of oblivion claimed her.

  ***

  “So are you going to tell me what’s going on?” Ratty asked as Drake dragged him through the fog.

  “You ask too many questions,” Drake growled.

  As the wind picked up, it parted the fog like curtains revealing they were at a barrier in a perimeter fence guarded by men in army attire, their guns levelled at the floor as they saluted Drake. Imaging devices covered their features, making them look like bug-eyed insects.

  Passing through the barrier, Drake dragged Ratty toward a small, squat building. He punched a code on an electronic keypad and the door slid open. Ratty was about to protest, but Drake pushed him inside and the door slid shut with a laughing emission of compressed air.

  “Your new home,” Drake bawled from outside.

  Inside the building it was dark and Ratty picked himself up off the floor and reached out his hands to feel his way around. His shins banged into something and he muttered a curse before crouching down and feeling what he had bumped into. It felt like a bed. He squashed his hands down on a hard mattress, testing it when his fingers brushed against warm flesh. He recoiled in shock, a small squeal of fear issuing from his mouth.

  “Please, please don’t hurt me,” a voice whimpered.

  “Izzy, is that you?”

  “Ratty. Oh my god, Ratty, it’s you.” Ratty felt arms encircle him as Izzy hugged him and a tear rolled down his cheek. He was glad she couldn’t see him in the dark. He wanted to kiss her, but he didn’t dare in case she felt his tears.

  “What are you doing here?” he asked when she finally released him.

  “I was following the road, like you said, but they found me. I didn’t hear them coming, but they had those goggles on, you know. Ratty, I’m sorry. What are they going to do to us?” She sniffled.

  Ratty shook his head. “I don’t know.” Slo
wly his eyes adjusted to the dark and he could just make Izzy out as she sat on the edge of the bed. She had her face in her hands and he could tell she was crying.

  He sat down next to her and put his arm around her shoulder. “I won’t let anything happen to you, I promise.” He only hoped he could keep his promise.

  He thought about Chase. Why hadn’t she believed him? What was it about adults that made them think they had the monopoly on the truth? Did you have to reach a certain age before they took any notice of you? Before, in their eyes at least, you left behind childish things.