by Guy N Smith
Moving towards the door, not a retreat, more of a tactical withdrawal by troops who had conquered and had no reason to delay longer, a parting hail of glassware. And then they were gone.
Mule Skinner kicked his bike into life, heard the other machines follow his example. He let out the clutch, eased forward then picked up speed. He did not look back, his companions were no longer his responsibility. Their mission was accomplished, nothing else mattered. It was time to go.
Five bikes burning up the suburban roads, a crazy weaving array of blinding headlights as they negotiated the evening traffic, strung out, bunching together, stringing out again. A desperation to keep up with their leader. Failing.
Mule Skinner saw the approaching flashing blue light, was already taking evasive action, knew that the police car would do a U-turn on screeching tyres and pursue them. He hunched low in the saddle, saw a gap in the oncoming traffic, a trundling articulated lorry with a car overtaking. Somehow he made it through the narrow space in between, never once eased his pressure on the throttle. A glance in his mirror and he saw the start of the pile-up. But it was none of his concern; somewhere he heard the calling of a place that transcended death commanding him to return there. There was no way he could disobey.
Too late the overtaking car driver saw the lorry pulling out, the police vehicle swerving into the nearside, coming out again. He braked, a worn tyre throwing the Escort into a skid. Slewing, a rear wheel catching the tail of the lorry. Spinning. Four bikes doing close on a ton and he knew there was no way he could avoid them, whimpering and panicking, resigning himself to his fate.
The Escort buckled, the bikes ploughing into it. One cut straight through it, Gun-toter instantly beheaded as he hit the torn metal of the roof at neck height. Cherokee and Tobacco Joe were airborne, broken bodies that still lived and were cruelly denied oblivion. Up and still going up, flailing arms and legs, coming down again in a macabre sky-dive, thudding on to the tarmac, dead before the wheels of the jack-knifing trailer flattened them and smeared their remains across the highway.
Whisky Mac might have made it. Driving relentlessly, oblivious of the fate of his companions, his features a mask of blank expression; the evening's events were gone from his memory and all he knew was that he had to catch up with Mule Skinner. They had been summoned to return to … he hit the police car head on, a crunching impact that ploughed his machine into the bonnet, hurled him against the windscreen. A fly squashed on a window, a bloody unrecognisable morass that obscured the driver's vision. Next second they had gone under the snaking artic, a mangled heap of mobile metal that suddenly exploded, a coffin in the cremation furnace.
Death and destruction littered the road for several hundred yards. A grinding of metal terminating in the roar of flames; and the cries of the injured, drowned a few minutes later by the wail of approaching ambulance and police sirens.
Mule Skinner sped on, his speedometer needle flickering on 105, goggled eyes fixed on the road ahead; overtaking, cutting in, overtaking again, senses numbed, oblivious to everything except a call that could not be denied, unaware that the others were not following in his wake, that they were dead. Even that knowledge would not have brought a spark of emotion to his features.
He cut on to the A51, did not even hear the blare of angry horns, neither saw the flashing headlights; a homing pigeon relying on its instinct, landmarks meaningless in the single beam of his headlight. He just knew where he was going.
He hit the sand quarries without slowing, dust clouds flying from his spinning wheels but somehow they maintained their grip, sank in the soft surface of the Lady Walk but still kept going. Now his speed was checked, down to sixty, and a grunt of impatience escaping his compressed lips. Faster, faster: your master calls.
The big mound: earlier that day he had chickened out, bypassed it, but now he did not hesitate. The machine roared, slid, but the sheer willpower of its rider drove it on. He could barely see but he did not need to, knew when he hit the summit, went straight into a crazy descent down the other side.
The motorcycle churned to a halt, had to be pulled out of the sand by brute force, by muscles ten times stronger than they would have been a few hours ago. Mule Skinner kicked the starter, forced it to fire. It was sluggish but it obeyed, whined on downwards until it found firmer ground. Only then did the rider hesitate, a split second in which he surveyed the expanse of black water at the bottom of the gentle slope. Larger than before, more beautiful. Oh, so beautiful, calling him on.
Gripping the handlebars, a stunt rider mentally whipping his mount for the final assault on some seemingly impossible obstacle; bracing himself. The front wheel hit a protruding rock, machine and rider airborne, a wild cry of exhilaration. It was as though he was suspended in mid-air, denied that which he had striven for, trying to force the bike downwards.
Then he hit the water, its coldness refreshing to his sweating body, aware that the bike had left him but that was OK because he had no further use for it.
Down, down. Blackness enveloping him and then he felt hands reaching out for him, fingers gripping him with welcoming reassurance. It had not all been in vain and he had nothing to fear because he had obeyed them and returned here when his work was done.
He was not alone.
CHAPTER SIX
‘How s your hand?’ Pamela asked.
‘About the same as Carl's face.’ Chris Latimer nodded to where Carl Wickers sat in an armchair, a strip of Elastoplast down the length of one cheek. At least neither of the girls had been hurt, Jesus, he'd never forget last night, that guy tugging a dart out and his eye coming with it like a speared mussel. Those terrified faces streaming with blood, somebody with a severed artery, a fountain of crimson spraying the ceiling. Everybody screaming hysterically.
‘I don't see how the Sucking Pit can have any bearing on all this.’ Carl's expression was one of bewilderment. ‘Christ, I know those lads, they come from the council houses on the other side of the village. Nuisances, but not really yobs. You'd find a hundred or more of their kind in any of the towns round here. They just live for their bikes and their CBs. If they can go to the quarries on a Sunday afternoon and knock hell out of the sand mounds they're as happy as pigs in clover. The worst thing they ever do is to go into either Tamworth or Lichfield at night and ride round and round the streets, making a bit of a nuisance of themselves, but they've never been involved in any real trouble. Now they've smashed the club up, injured people, caused a crash on the dual carriageway killing four of them, a car driver and two policemen.’
‘You might just have hit the nail on the head.’ Latimer's eyes narrowed. ‘It happened to be a Sunday night. The odds are, then, that they were burning up the quarries earlier in the day. In which case they were in the proximity of the Sucking Pit …’
‘I don't see what that has to do with last night.’
‘What about that JCB driver, then?’
‘He rode his machine over a patch that was weakened by subsidence,’ Carl Wickers replied, his scepticism obvious to the others. ‘It collapsed and buried him alive.’
‘That's one solution.’ Latimer shook his head slowly. ‘But I remember the Pit as it used to be, Carl. I felt its evil then just as I sensed it the other afternoon when I was unwise enough to go for a nose around there. An ancient burial ground and I know the forces which lurk down there. You can't destroy them with just a few hundred tons of rubble. It should have been exorcised although I doubt whether that would have been successful, it's so powerful. Let's just suppose that those lads were messing about down there, came under the Pit's influence. I saw their expressions in the club …’ He paused, decided not to mention the big youth's likeness to Cornelius. ‘I thought at first they were high on drugs. But I'm sure they weren't, and neither had they been drinking. It was as though they were … hypnotised!’
‘Try telling that to the police.’ Carl's laugh sounded hollow. ‘They're still busy trying to find the fifth guy, Peter Hasden, known to his CB col
leagues as Mule Skinner. He escaped the accident and rode on, hasn't been seen since. Never returned home.’
‘My God!’ Latimer stiffened. ‘It figures.’
‘What does?’
‘That he returned to the place which spawned the evil.’ Chris Latimer's voice sunk to a whisper. ‘If he's gone back to the Sucking Pit then I just hope you'll take my theory seriously.’
The frogman licked his lips nervously, tried to think of a reason why he didn't have to go down there. Maybe the kid's dumped his bike in the Pit, tried to throw us off the scent; panicked because he's caused one fuck of an accident. Then find his bike, Bradburn. And after that show us his tracks where he walked away. He couldn't hide them in all this soft sand, unless of course he was airlifted out!
Reg Bradburn knew that he would have to dive. The only alternative was to say. ‘No, I'm not going because I'm shit scared.’ He almost said that but his pride won the struggle. When you were out of work you needed some kind of a morale booster.
‘He's down there, all right,’ the tall CID inspector stated; in the same tone of voice he might have said that the weather looked like keeping fine. ‘Not satisfied with what he'd already done he came back to the quarries for a crazy burn-up. You can see where he lost control on the slope back there, then just rode blindly down. Probably never saw this pit hole until he hit it.’
Reg Bradburn adjusted his mask, tested his oxygen supply. Now the others were shut off from him as surely as if he had already gone below water. He shuddered, felt slightly sick. It reminded him of those days at primary school when he went to the baths for swimming lessons. What are you standing about for, Bradburn? Get in the water, boy! Bloody hell, things hadn't changed much over the years. Twenty years after learning to swim he had become an instructor at the Chasewater aqua club, albeit an honorary appointment. Masochism, he had to be mad. He'd found bodies below water for the police three times in the last year. Now whenever somebody was missing they called him in to search canals and filthy marl holes.
This is the bloody last time, and I mean it. A promise which he knew would be broken next time. He tried to work out why he kept on doing it. In decent waters it was exciting, exhilarating, venturing down into another world, a beautiful silent place where you were somebody, not just another number in the dole queue. You escaped reality for a short time. Down there you were your own boss, nobody had control over you.
He stood on the edge of the water, looked down. The blackest hole he'd ever seen; a yard below the surface and there would be no daylight. He adjusted his lamp, switched it on. One more look behind him. Hoping, praying. ‘I don't think we'll bother searching this one after all, Bradburn.’ His prayers weren't answered, the detective nodding, a mute. ‘Get on with it, then. What are you waiting for?’
Reg Bradburn braced himself, forced his thoughts to switch to Judy. It was a technique he employed on unpleasant dives such as this. Fix your mind on a bird, try and get a hard-on. You never did but at least you kept your sanity down there. Corpses weren't nice things to bump into unexpectedly. You hoped you didn't find one but until you did you thought erotic thoughts.
He lowered himself gingerly over the side, shivered at the penetrating coldness. Judy was the best thing that had ever happened to him since he and Marlene had split up, a marriage that was a failure from the moment they left the church. Judy was different; uninhibited, she'd slept around and didn't make any secret of it, but she had only gone from one feller to another because she couldn't find one to settle down with. She'd had a baby when she was still at college, forced her to pack up her studies and ruined a promising nursing career. Even in these so-called enlightened times there was still a stigma. ‘That's the girl who had a baby when she was at college. Lost it, too. Good thing.’ Bastards! That was how people were, pointing fingers and whispering behind your back. Just as those cops were talking about him now. Bradburn's getting chicken, you know. Fuck 'em!
It was blacker than he'd thought, a watery world of eternal night. Even his light had difficulty in cutting a path through the Stygian blackness. Keep thinking about Judy, boy, that first night you dated her.
She worked in a scruffy snack bar in town, a place that was once a transport cafe until they altered the traffic flow and cut out the heavy lorries. Dirty floor, unwashed crockery littering the tables until the cups were in danger of falling off. Judy wasn't posh but when you've had a failed marriage to an upper class woman you look further down the scale in search of something more approachable.
Reg had been prepared to settle for a kiss and a cuddle in the lay-by on that first night, was determined not to even feel at her tits through her tight-fitting sweater. God, she was hot stuff, opening her mouth wide and inviting him to French-kiss her. Then, without warning, she'd had a deliberate feel at him, squeezed and rubbed his hardness inside his trousers until he'd almost ejaculated.
He jumped as his hand touched something, swung his lamp. A piece of timber, rotted and heavy so that it couldn't make the surface, slime growing all over it. Phew! The globules of moisture on his face were icy. Keep thinking of Judy or you'll flip your lid.
‘I'm desperate to be fucked.’ She'd said it just like that. Another girl might've said. ‘I'm desperate for a smoke.’ Or a drink. But Judy made no bones about her physical needs, half ran his zip as though he might not have taken her seriously.
So they had clambered over into the back of his old Viva. A bit cramped but Judy was undaunted, slipping her clothes off with a dexterity that told him it wasn't the first time she had been screwed in the back of a car. But he wasn't worried about that.
Strewth, he'd got an erection going over it all again in his mind, one of the few occasions he'd managed it underwater. Maybe this place wasn't so bad after all, a kind of turn-on. It did things to you if you let it.
And suddenly he saw Judy! Amazement, trying to make his brain accept what his eyes saw, but logic rejected it. It was impossible! It couldn't be her, and whatever, the naked girl floating in the beam of his light had to be dead because nobody could possibly live down here. He stared, tried to make out the features but something cast a shadow across the pallid face and he could not be sure. He hesitated. Her body arched backwards, came up, legs opening and spreading wide, and this time no obstructing shadow obscured his vision of her lower body.
Oh God! Instinctively his fingers reached out, tried to grope between those thighs but they floated tantalisingly away from him. He grunted, sensed his erection straining inside his tight-fitting wetsuit. The bitch!
She was disappearing into the blackness; he made a despairing lunge, caught up with her again. Damn it, her face was still in shadow. He couldn't be sure. ‘Judy!’
Laughter, mocking him, those shapely legs kicking open again, firing his lust, back-pedalling away from him. That sensation in his lower regions was building up, the beginning of an orgasm like those erotic dreams he used to have as a boy, waking up to discover his pyjamas saturated. It was happening again now, just like a dream. Judy, I need you. Taunting him, he knew she was laughing even though he could not discern her features. It had to be her, though. But she had never acted this way before; usually it was she who took the initiative, was ready and naked for him when he came back into the bedroom from the bathroom. Sometimes when he was tired she wouldn't let him sleep, or awoke him in the middle of the night with sensuous fingers that had erected him in his sleep.
‘Stop being so bloody stupid!’ A shout which she could not possibly have heard. His frustration was building up to a peak; in seconds he would be ejaculating and there was no way he could stop it. ‘I'll fucking well kill you for this!’
In those few seconds he meant it, experienced a desire to encircle her neck with his fingers and squeeze the life out of her. That was how these cheap tarts got murdered, teased fellers until they couldn't stop themselves from unleashing a terrible lusting fury.
You've got to catch me first, Reg. Come on, then.
He made a grab for her, his fing
ers almost grasping an ankle but the limb appeared to melt back into the dark waters, materialised again a yard or so further back. Tinkling laughter. Come on, Reg. Her fingers came in between those open thighs, began to stimulate the pink flesh beneath the sparse hair. Oh Jesus, he couldn't hold back a second longer.
His orgasm hit him like an underwater detonation, the full force of it shuddering every nerve in his body, convulsing him. He kicked and flailed wildly, threshed the water around him so that his view of her was distorted, a water nymph changing shape, laughing cruelly. Once he thought he caught a glimpse of her face but it was gone before he could fully recognise it. All the same he was sure that it was Judy.
Christ, he couldn't ever remember climaxing as hard and as long as this before. Like that time he had first masturbated, an electrifying experience, a frightening one, too, because it had gone on and on so that he had thought it was never going to end, wondered what he had done to himself. But that was nothing when compared with this. His back arched until he feared lest his spine snapped, and throughout it all he was conscious of the shooting liquid warmth inside his wetsuit. You bitch, I'll kill you for this!
He reached his peak with devastating force. Then, gradually, the feeling subsided, an overwhelming weakness that left him treading water, a sapping of both mental and physical strength. The beam of his light appeared to have dimmed to an insipid yellow that penetrated only a few feet into the black cold water around him. He peered, strained his eyes, but saw nothing except for a few strands of floating dead vegetation.
‘Judy… Judy!’
A silence except for the roaring in his own ears. She had to be here somewhere.
He swam around, realised the futility of those shouts inside his own headpiece. God, he felt tired, it was almost too much of an effort to swim. Just float, let the water take you. But it did not because there was no current. Nothing but blackness beyond the range of his light.