by Paul Starkey
“Oh God…oh God, I’m sorry…I’m sorry.” She began to crouch, intending to drop into a foetal position, pity her only chance now. She whimpered like a dying puppy.
The lights came back on.
The flare was so intense that at first her eyes played tricks on her, and she saw a dark man-shaped shadow standing over her and, beyond him, she saw a second shadow, this one lower to the ground, on all fours. She almost screamed, but the cry died in the back of her mouth when a few blinks revealed nobody standing over her, no giant dog in the distance.
She crouched there for several seconds, her eyes stinging from tears, her cheeks damp with them, breathes coming in quick little gasps as she tried to understand what had happened.
She was alone though, that much was certain, alone in the cellar and, when she peered up the staircase, she saw the door closed tight as it had been the last time she’d seen it.
Slowly she got to her feet, still reluctant to release her wrist she had to use her elbows to help lever her to an upright position. Her eyes scanned the room. Nothing, nobody. Only then did she dare to look at her hand. The green circle of glass looked innocuous, as if she was merely holding it in her palm. She might have almost have believed the red fluid that seeped out from beneath the glass was wine if it weren’t for the pain.
She was alive though, and thankfully alone. Checking the floor she spotted the screwdriver. She would reclaim it soon. First she was going to hop over to where those boxes were situated, the plastic crates looked sturdy enough to sit on, and then she’d take a look at her hand, then check her foot. She was down, but she wasn’t out.
She wiped the tears away with her sleeve. “Idiot,” she muttered with a smile.
A hand rested gently on her shoulder. “Hello, Luce,” came a raspy voice, the words carried along on a nicotine scented breeze.
The lights went out. Lucy screamed again. This time the scream didn’t end quickly.
Chapter thirty three
As she descended the main staircase, Chalice was glad she’d taken the lead. In reality there hadn’t been much option, she was in charge after all, but beyond logic, beyond machismo, there was one undeniable benefit. With her back to the others none of them could notice the look of discomfort, if not outright fear, that she knew currently resided in her eyes. She was a good actress—you had to be in this business—but tonight that didn’t seem to matter, tonight every mental trick that usually helped compartmentalise her doubts and fears was failing.
As she stepped down onto the parquet floor she mused that some missions were just jinxed. Some missions failed, not through poor planning or betrayal, but through simple bad luck. But what was going on here was beyond bad luck. Bad luck didn’t wrest doors off their hinges, and she couldn’t help but remember the bedroom door slamming earlier when she and Lucy had left Brendan’s body there. Her mind was engaged in psychological warfare with itself. Part of it was trying to accept the truth of what was going on here in White Wolf House, but the rational side of her brain was fighting a fierce propaganda campaign.
It was a draught, earth tremors, badly planed wood, sunspots…
The Uzi banged against her back where it hung from its sling as she walked towards the door that would lead to the downstairs corridor, and thence to the kitchen and the cellar. The sensation should have been annoying, but she took comfort in it, the solid reliability of cold metal death.
The Beretta was clutched in both hands, angled towards the floor, as she walked. The Uzi had greater stopping power, but the Beretta was more manoeuvrable.
Not that it matters, sang a voice in her head, you could have a bazooka and it wouldn’t make any difference.
There’s no such thing as ghosts, countered the Goebbels in her head.
Keeping the gun tight in her right fist she reached towards the door handle with her left hand. There was a moment’s hesitation before she touched metal, and she was prepared to leap back if the door were to suddenly spring open. She fought the pause and won; taking the door handle she turned and pulled.
The door didn’t slam back in her face; it opened normally, without so much as an eerie squeak. When fully open it didn’t spring back into its frame, it was content to rest against the wall while she stepped through.
She took a few steps down the corridor before pausing, affording just enough room for the others to cluster around her. The lights burned all along the ceiling above, but there was no denying that somehow they were dimmer.
“What’s up with the lights?” asked Cheung as if reading her thoughts.
“Faulty wiring, a dip in the supply maybe,” said Ibex.
The American’s ideas were pure bullshit, as anyone who stared closely enough at the lights could tell. When you focused on one you could see that it blazed brightly. Only when your eyes drifted away did the light fade. It was as if some miasma of dimness hovered between the lights and the floor, as surely as mist, though even more nebulous.
“The screaming’s stopped,” said Tyrell. She heard concern in his voice and she understood why. Lucy’s plaintive wail had accompanied them all the way down the stairs like a horrifying siren song, tempting them to run, to throw caution to the wind and rush to her aid, whilst at the same time invoking caution, like the foghorn of a lighthouse. While Lucy screamed she was alive though. Now…
“I’ll go, if you like,” said Cheung suddenly pushing past others to stand by her side.
She glanced at him. He looked scared to death, white as the proverbial sheet. The SIG clutched tight in his fists, and she noted beads of perspiration sliding down the side of his face. She wondered if his sweat felt as cold as the drops she felt snaking their way along her spine. There was steel in his eyes as well as fear though.
She smiled. “You’re a good agent, Tom. Whatever happens here you should know that.” She looked ahead. “We all go. We stay together.” And without another word she started walking towards the kitchen door.
The furthest bulb flickered and went dark.
She heard a whimper behind her, it sounded like Felix but she couldn’t be sure.
“Still think it’s faulty wiring?” she whispered mockingly over her shoulder. If Ibex heard her he didn’t respond.
She took another step, and the next furthest bulb popped, this time she heard the faint tinkle of broken glass raining to the floor. The bottom end of the corridor was now cloaked in sheer darkness. She could no longer see the base of the back staircase, nor the doorway on the left that led to the utility room. She looked up, and gauged that another three or four steps would see most of the corridor plunged into darkness, assuming he pattern continued.
She had no reason to suspect otherwise.
She should have been terrified, but curiously she was just annoyed.
“Cheap tricks!” she yelled. The corridor wasn’t cavernous enough to provide an echo, but still her words seemed to resonate within the darkness.
“And now you’re chiding ghosts,” said Ibex, and a moment after his words a slow handclap followed.
“Shut up, Quintus,” said Tyrell.
John’s tone had been firm but she knew it was flimsy, as likely Ibex did. The American didn’t bite back though, and he stopped clapping.
As the sound of claps faded, they all could now hear something else; the steady, rhythmic sound of something breathing within the darkness; something that didn’t sound human. It was too deep, and seemed to emanate from near the floor. Chalice peered into the gloom, trying to see what was there, either the form of the creature or, if nothing else, the misting of its exhalations in the chill air.
She saw nothing.
“It’s just a dog,” said Ibex.
His rational certainty was starting to really grate. If the notion that had been percolating at the back of her mind for a while now proved even remotely true, she decided the urge to put a bullet in his skull might be too tempting to resist.
She smiled. Again with the planning of other people’s murder.
&n
bsp; “It’s not a dog,” said Tyrell. “It’s…this is going to sound crazy but I think it’s a…”
“Wolf,” said Cheung. “It’s a bloody great wolf.”
“You’ve seen it too?”
Cheung nodded but didn’t look back towards Tyrell. “I think so. I definitely saw something earlier, outside. A man and what I thought was a dog, but it was too big. And there was a magazine in the kitchen, a paranormal magazine with a picture of a bloody great phantom dog or wolf on the cover.”
Chalice cocked her head to one side. “Well there had to be a reason the place was called White Wolf House,” she mused.
“Have you people been listening to yourselves?” said Ibex. “Ghostly wolves? I know this mission’s been a cluster-fuck, Chalice but…”
“John,” she said sharply, cutting Ibex off mid rant. “The next time Quintus opens his mouth shoot him in the leg.”
“It’ll be a pleasure.” And she heard the tell-tale click of a hammer being thumbed back.
Ibex shut up.
She straightened her shoulder. “Ok, I’ve had enough of this,” she said. Jabbing the Beretta into the waistband of her jeans she swung the Uzi forwards on its sling, nestling the butt of the weapon against her hip even as her thumb moved to slide the lever from safe to fully automatic. She was adept enough with the gun that she could tug the trigger just enough to loose three-shot bursts, but she wasn’t going to do that now. She was going to pull the trigger back all the way and bathe the end of the corridor in hot metal. The gun’s firing rate of 600 rounds per minute meant it would empty the 32 round magazine in just over three seconds.
She angled the barrel of the gun slightly downwards. If there really was an animal down there she didn’t want to just fire over its head. Not that she expected the bullets to have any effect, still she hoped…
Her finger tensed against the trigger. “Everyone hold your fire unless I say otherwise,” she ordered.
The breathing continued. If the creature had noticed the weapon in her hands, then it either didn’t understand, or didn’t care.
Then the far light came back on, the breathing vanished, banished by the illumination flooding the corridor, the dimness banished now as well. There was nobody and nothing in the corridor, nothing at the bottom of the stairs. The only sign that anything untoward had happened was the fact that the second furthest light was out, and she could just make out fragments of glass on the floor, reflecting the light.
“You see,” said Ibex. “It was noth…”
The rest of his sentence was lost in a thunderclap.
Felix screamed and Cheung cursed. Chalice spun on the balls of her feet. Ibex was backed up against the wall. His eyes were wide and staring at the smoking gun in Tyrell’s hand. The barrel of the gun was pointing at the floor, and a neat round hole was in the carpet. If anything Tyrell looked more shocked than Quintus as he stared dumfounded at the bullet hole.
“John?”
He looked up and forced a smile. “Sorry, I assumed you didn’t actually want me to shoot him in the leg the first time, but figured it’d shut him up anyway.”
She glanced Ibex’s way. “Seems to have worked, but let’s conserve ammo from now on,” and she smiled back at him, feeling something of a hypocrite considering she’d been about to waste thirty times as many bullets. “Let’s go.” And she started off down the corridor with a renewed sense of vigour.
She had no illusions that her bravado with the Uzi had had any effect on the…she had to force herself to think the word ghost. No, the ghost had had no fear of 9mm parabellum rounds. It had departed because it suited its purpose to do so. She was certain they hadn’t seen the last of it, but still, vanishing like that implied it wasn’t ready for a full frontal confrontation just yet.
She banished thoughts of spooks and concentrated instead on more earthly concerns. The group followed her to the kitchen door. She eased it open but didn’t step inside. The lights were on, though she was sure she’d extinguished them earlier, and for a moment she wondered if Lucy had got free. If she had then the scream might have been the bait in a trap, and the traitorous little bitch might be crouched inside grasping a kitchen knife.
From this angle Chalice could see the cellar door. It looked closed. Still, caution was a virtue. “Tom,” she said. “We’re going in on three, just you and me. I’ll go right, you go left. Ok?”
He lifted the SIG in both hands and nodded solemnly.
“Ok then. One…two…three!” As she called the final number she stepped into the room and angled to her right, dropping into a crouch as she did so to cover half the room with the Uzi. Behind her she sensed Cheung do likewise to the other half of the room.
Nothing. She stood up and surveyed the room further. The door to the utility room was closed, as was the other door, the one that led to the side corridor. She winced at the blinds, which were rolled tight, inky, rain splattered darkness all she could see beyond the windows. She wanted to go lower the blinds, to provide less of a target, but she fought the urge. If there were snipers out there then they’d likely have thermal imaging equipment anyway, so the blinds wouldn’t provide any concealment. Besides, with each passing second she was ever surer that there was no external enemy. No, their only foes were already inside the house with them, and not all of them fell into the category of the supernatural.
She slung the Uzi and drew the Berretta. Calling out that it was ok for the rest to come in, she left them to it and went over to the cellar door. The key was still in the lock, but still she expected the door to move when she turned the handle and pulled. It held fast.
“She’s still down there, isn’t she?” said Tyrell, voice tinged with cold dread.
Chalice said nothing. Her hand wrapped around the Beretta’s grip was slick with sweat, but wiping it dry would entail holstering the gun, and as flimsy a weapon as it likely was, she wasn’t about to do that. Instead she turned the key and opened the door.
She had to step back anyway to pull it open, but she went back further than she had to, sidestepping to the left just in case Lucy was inside and had found a weapon.
Only silence came hurling out of the gloom.
“No lights. Not a good sign,” said Ibex helpfully.
“Everyone stand back.” Chalice opened the door fully and took a cautious step closer to the darkness. “Lucy?” she yelled.
The word didn’t echo back to her, it merely descended into the gloom and died a muffled death.
“Lucy, are you ok?”
Nothing.
Chalice licked her lips. There was a chance Lucy was pulling a fast one, and clearly she’d shown herself to be a conniving bitch of late, but Chalice knew this wasn’t the case. In part it was instinct, but more so it was the smells that had finally begun to waft up from below. Without a pause she stepped into the doorway and flicked the lights on. The Beretta tracked down the stairs, but she quickly decided she’d have no use for it. Lucy lay on the floor some distance from the bottom of the stairs. Chalice couldn’t see much beyond her legs, but the way they were splayed didn’t engender hope.
She looked back at the others. They had drawn together, like prehistoric cave dwellers, huddling together for warmth and security. Even Ibex had drawn close. He’d also contrived to be at the back of the group.
“I need someone to come down with me.”
Felix Carmichael’s eyes seemed to be growing wider with each passing moment. “One of us…”
Ibex clapped him on the back and the young man almost jumped out of his skin. “Don’t worry, son. She doesn’t mean you. Or me.”
Ibex was spot on, and her eyes drifted back and forth between Cheung and Tyrell. Neither man looked especially thrilled at the idea, but she could see it in both their faces. They would do it anyway.
In the end Cheung stepped forwards first. Tyrell tried hard not to let relief show in his eyes. He seemed to have aged again. His skin had turned sallow, the dark circles under his eyes spreading like oil slicks.
>
“You stay up here, John.” She smiled. “And keep everyone in this room.” Her gaze flickered towards Ibex as she said it.
“Actually,” said the American now, stepping out from behind Felix. “I was going to volunteer to go down with you as well.” He was smiling. Despite the fact that he’d removed his glasses it made little difference to what you could—or rather couldn’t—see in his eyes.
Tyrell looked like he wanted to shoot at Ibex again, and in fact his gun hand lifted, just a fraction. Chalice nodded towards him, then turned her attention to Quintus. “Fine,” she said. The flicker of surprise on Ibex’s face was barely noticeable, but she enjoyed it anyway. “I’ll go first, then you,” and she pointed at him. “Tom will bring up the rear.”
The corners of his mouth lifted in a most disagreeable manner. “Why, Chalice, a man might imagine you didn’t trust him.”
“I trusted Lucy.” This was all the explanation she was prepared to offer. Without another word she stepped through the doorway and began her descent into the cellar.
It was amazing what a difference a single step could make; yet the moment she stepped over the threshold, she was in no doubt that Lucy was dead. Death had a very particular smell, elicited a very particular feeling in those who encountered it. The smell was mostly the pungent odours of urine and shit, with death came an initial relaxation of muscles, including the bladder and the sphincter. Rigor would set in eventually, but limpness came before stiffness. As if a body was almost relieved life was over. No more pain, no more struggles, no more disappointments.
The smell was almost overpowering, yet it was tempered by other scents. Mustiness; mothballs, dust and, there at the edge of her senses, the metallic smell of blood.
The air was cold too, and Chalice had too much first-hand experience of dead people to imagine it was purely down to the cellar walls. She vividly remembered the same chill hanging over a small Palestinian village, and that had been in the desert, under the blazing sun, yet still death had made it seem arctic.