The Dark Corners Box Set

by Robert Scott-Norton

  Malc considered his options and decided that this called for the direct approach. He stepped out from the gatehouse and strode towards the man who now had his back to him as he slid open the door of his van.

  The rain helped mask the noise of Malc’s approach, so that as he got to within ten metres of the man, he still hadn’t been heard.

  He was about to speak when the man turned, a box of objects in his arms. They took in each other quickly. The man with the box realising that the stranger in front of him didn’t belong here and almost dropping his box in surprise.

  Malc meanwhile quickly confirmed that he didn’t recognise the man, but he did recognise the nature of the objects in his box. There was no reason for those candles and the goat’s head that he could think were for reasonable purposes.

  “Who the hell are you?” the man with the box of occult objects asked. His face had curled into an ugly snarl.

  Malc replied the best way he knew how.

  He swung his fist and felt his knuckles crack as they connected with the man’s cheek. He stumbled, then dropped the box to the tarmac, hurt and anger burned on his face.

  Malc ducked as a fist swung towards him. It missed but the second swing struck him in the chest and he cursed, thinking he would have to apologise to Him later on.

  Unencumbered by his box, Malc’s attacker lunged. Malc fell and the larger man was on top of him, fists clumsily striking. The man was strong but no fighter, and Malc brought his knee up, hoping to strike the man’s groin. It connected and Malc huffed in satisfaction, using his momentary advantage to roll the man off him and strike a well aimed fist at his head.

  Even Malc winced as the man’s head struck back against the tarmac, and his fighting ceased.

  Shit. He hadn’t meant to knock the guy out. And although he had his suspicions, he still didn’t know who this guy was.

  Climbing off him, Malc nursed his hand and returned to the van to search through the box his assailant had abandoned. He hadn’t been wrong. The candles and the head and the ritualistic herbs made it obvious that he was part of something more dangerous that a simple ghost hunt. It seemed this building was an irresistible draw for the Adherents.

  The group needed help. It would be very rare for an Adherent to be working alone. There would be others inside, possibly more than one.

  A noise behind him caused him to spin. He tumbled back against the van in shock. The man he’d felled had recovered far quicker than Malc would have expected, but it wasn’t the site of the assailant that bothered him.

  It was the two shadowmen standing beside him.

  22

  Interlude

  Seth put his pyjamas on and got onto his bed, sitting on top of the covers for a while, wondering if his parents would remember their promise to come and tuck him in. He ran a finger over the spines of the pile of books beside his bed, considering which to read again. After a minute he picked up his battered adventure story set in a vampire forest and despite having read it at least six times already, he turned the cover back, ready for the story to come. He’d stay awake for as long as he could.

  Kelly was out again. This was typical for his sister who had become such a familiar object at the police station that his parents and the officers were now on first-name terms.

  Malc had been sent home, and he’d been sent up to his bedroom whilst the grown-ups talked—had spent the rest of the evening watching TV in his bedroom and not listening to his crying mum on the phone to his dad, pleading for him to come home from work early. Seth knew that Dad was getting in trouble for all the impromptu time off work he’d taken, but only because he used that information against Kelly when they argued.

  There was no scratching any more from the thing in his room: the door that shouldn’t be there but was. Neither his family, nor Malc could see it, and it had become such an enduring fixture in his bedroom that he’d become used to it. The other thing that used to keep him awake with the scratching was here with him now. It was always with him, more or less. A companion, hitching a ride. It would make itself known to him periodically and when that happened, he had flashes of security and friendship, even though knowing at some deeper level that the relationship was not something he would ever be able to tell another living soul about, not even Malc whom he trusted with all his heart.

  A tuna sandwich had been brought to him and Mum had tried and failed to coax him downstairs. He wasn’t interested in sitting there amongst the stony atmosphere his parents generated.

  He fell asleep.

  When he woke up much later, it was dark and someone had tucked him in under the duvet; the book of vampires placed on top of the stack beside him. With blurry eyes, he checked his watch beside the bed. Half-past twelve. What had woken him? He lifted back the covers and got out of bed, confused by how chilly his room was. His breath hung before him like spectral clouds. The house sounded strange. Like walking outside in new snow sounded strange, everything was muffled. It made him feel distant, less grounded, like a part of him was still trapped in his story book.

  Was Kelly OK?

  He’d fallen asleep before she’d made it home and that worried him. But then he heard the snoring from his parents’ room, reasoned that they wouldn’t have gone to bed without her being home, and considered himself a chump for worrying.

  But still he felt compelled to look in on her. Make sure she was home.

  The door to her bedroom was ajar and there was no light from inside. She never slept with her door open. Kelly liked her privacy.

  His stomach rumbled as he crossed the landing and nudged open her door with his foot. The curtains hadn’t been closed and the amber blaze from the streetlight outside filled her room with a cold fire.

  The bed looked like it had been slept in but Kelly wasn’t there. His sister had slunk out.

  The posters of Kelly’s favourite pop stars had been removed from the walls. Little tears of wallpaper remained where the blu-tac had dried and refused to give up without a fight. She’d done this last week in a fit of activity, only justifying her actions by telling Seth that she wasn’t a baby anymore. Maybe he should wake Mum and Dad. Let them know she was missing.

  He thought about Kelly’s boyfriend. Wondered whether he’d snuck over and coaxed her outside. Her parents hated the boyfriend. They had not even allowed him in the house and Seth didn’t know his name. Once, he’d seen Dad chase him up the driveway cursing obscenities he’d never heard him so much as mutter under his breath before. It was good riddance as far as Seth was concerned. The boyfriend was older than Kelly, and he’d had to walk past him once on the way back home from Cubs. He’d smelt odd like whatever aftershave he was wearing had a life of its own. It reminded him of Sunday school. The boyfriend had tried to ask Seth questions about what he got up to, what games he liked to play, but stranger danger was very much the topic of the month at school. It had been the anniversary of Ben Simms’s disappearance after all.

  Seth hated living like this. None of his friends had such crazy families. They were all cosy and mostly got along. Why did Kelly always have to be the centre of attention?

  Why was he even bothering to be upset? What was the point?

  He returned to his own bedroom, left his door wide open, got into bed, drew the duvet up tight under his chin, and closed his eyes.

  The bedroom door swung closed. It clicked on the latch as something drove the handle down.

  He mustn’t have opened it fully. Mum had probably left a window open somewhere, and it got caught in a draft.

  Cautiously, Seth went to the door, this time making sure it was all the way open. He grabbed his vampire book and did his best to wedge it under the door—not perfect but it would do.

  This time, he didn’t even get to tuck his chin under the covers before the door swung closed. He watched it happen; the book getting dragged against the carpet, pages ruffling, then ripping, then getting pushed to the side, useless.

  Seth wasn’t stupid. He wasn’t about to get out of
bed again.

  Then he understood who had made the door move.

  He’d named his hitcher Charlie. Seth thought it suited him.

  “What’s the matter?” he hissed, not expecting a reply—Charlie never used words.

  The door opened. Then clicked shut again, then open, this time fully. Seth got the idea and left his room. “What is it?” He kept his voice low. Now that he knew who was trying to communicate with him, the thought of waking his parents left his mind. They didn’t know about Charlie—they couldn’t ever know.

  A nudge at the back of the neck and he stepped away from the pressure, towards the stairs. And so Seth was led downstairs to the kitchen. The hedge was low at the end of the garden and this afforded him a view of the hospital. A sinking feeling formed in his stomach. “I don’t know what you want me to do. Is it about Kelly?”

  Kelly had been found loitering around the grounds of Ravenmeols Hospital twice before. He’d seen the tunic the boyfriend wore under his coat and figured he worked there. Maybe she’d gone to see him up at the hospital. Kelly liked a drink and had come back home drunk frequently. If she’d gone there to meet him, Seth reckoned that that was what she was doing.

  “I don’t care what she does. Let her get on with it,” Seth sighed, then he glanced at the back door keys Mum kept on a ribbon on a hook and found he couldn’t take his eyes off them.

  “I mean it, I don’t care.”

  Seth turned his back to the door and took a step back to bed when a faint chink made him turn.

  The back door key was on the floor.

  Charlie didn’t want him going back to sleep. With shaky fingers, Seth picked up the key and fitted it in the lock.

  He woke up in the middle of the field between his own garden and the landscaped lawns of Ravenmeols Hospital. Startled by the sudden switch in location, he realised his arm was bleeding from scratches across the skin. They looked like they might have been caused by the blackberry bushes he would have had to clamber over if he’d travelled from his garden to here.

  “Was that you? It’s not funny. Don’t do it again or I’ll tell Dad about you.”

  It was cold out here. As cold as his bedroom sometimes got, but with no walls around him, nothing to ground him in security, he felt exposed and also a little ashamed. He hadn’t been given the chance to put a coat on or even a dressing gown so stood shaking in the field, his feet wet and sore from the grass and stones he’d walked across.

  He’d spent years staring out on this building and realised he’d never been so close to it as he was now. The idea thrilled him a little but mostly terrified him. It wasn’t the tired building that scared him—it was the faces that he knew were by those windows looking at him. He’d never noticed the bars on the windows before now—from a distance it all merged. He was grateful for that.

  Reading newspapers was something only parents did, but he’d noticed the photos of the hospital on the cover of the local paper a few weeks ago and asked Mum about it. She’d been amused by the news that they might be pulling the place down. Patients would be moved out, found new homes. But why? She didn’t know.

  Seth found it hard not to be pleased by the news as well.

  Another nudge, in the small of his back this time.

  Another blackout.

  When his vision returned, he knelt over and vomited on the tarmacked stretch of road he’d found himself on. The hospital was still in front of him, but closer and the angle had changed. Seth realised he was now at the back of the hospital, a back entrance perhaps. The road he was on led towards a pair of impressive wrought-iron gates, the kind that his parents had on the end of his driveway, but these ones were almost as tall as his house. Well, maybe not, but impressive all the same. Barbed wire curled along the top.

  Rustling from the vegetation behind caused Seth to turn around, wishing Charlie had thought to pick up a torch for the pair of them. As it was, he had to try hard, with the poor light from the half-turned moon, to see much at all. Seth wanted more than anything to go back home and get back into bed. Too old to kid himself that he might still be asleep, he wasn’t too old to want his parents by his side.

  He stepped cautiously towards the gate. The metal was deathly cold under his hand, and it inched open with the gentlest of pushes. Someone had left this unlocked deliberately.

  The gates opened into a courtyard that lay in the heart of the hospital complex. It may have been a safe outside space during the day, but now it was dark and confined. Seth didn’t want to go in there, but another nudge at the back of his neck was threat enough. If he didn’t enter willingly, he suspected he’d black out for a third time and wake God knows where.

  The attic windows were black and empty, but Seth could make out dark figures ambling past lit windows on the first three floors. Fear coursed through him. All it would take would be for one of those figures to take an interest in those back windows and they’d see a small boy standing in the middle of this complex. What would they make of him? What if he couldn’t find the right words? He was feeling so anxious, his heart beating so rapidly beneath the flimsy material of his pyjamas, he was sure they would hear him.

  Never been so close.

  He started along the building adjacent to the gates, keeping his back to the wall with his eyes straight ahead.

  “What now?” he hissed.

  A nudge on his left side encouraged him to edge right. Then, he saw a curious thing; the attic floor wasn’t deserted. A green glow emanated from a few of the windows and in the glow of the light, Seth could discern the outline of a man staring out into the courtyard.

  Seth didn’t dare breathe. Had they seen him?

  Seth shivered. There was something brutal about that posture and Seth had no doubt that the face was looking right at him. None at all.

  Seth ran back for the gate but they were already closing. A dull clang sounded as the gates met the centre post and Seth began to cry.

  “Please, I want to go home.” His whimpering was intensified by the freezing air surrounding him. “Please, Charlie,” he asked one last time.

  Seth took the bars in his boy hands and tugged, using every inch of muscle he could wield, but Charlie didn’t relent. The gates wouldn’t budge. Instead, a nudge in his gut, like someone poking him. Tears ran down his cheeks and his eyes stung with the fear he would never be allowed to leave. His hitcher had cheated him. For months, pretending to be his friend when all he really wanted was to spring this cruel trap on him. He was a prisoner inside the hospital.

  There was a door in the wall of the building he was crying against. It swung silently open.

  Seth nervously stepped forward.

  “Hello,” he breathed.

  They weren’t likely to be patients in here. Surely they would all be locked up in the main building.

  Wouldn’t they?

  He stepped across the threshold, preferring to face whatever was in here over the exposure he faced in the courtyard.

  Someone was in here with him.

  The building was little more than a storeroom. A lowly extinguished light bulb hung from a wire ahead of him, half way along a short hall that led off to a room to the left and right. He peered ahead, trying to make sense of the shadows. His eyes hadn’t always been so good in the dark and he suspected that somehow Charlie was helping out.

  The door behind him slammed shut, startling Seth.

  A noise came from the room on his right. It could have been a cry.

  “Hello?” he asked.

  Seth edged around the door and paused at the threshold, not daring to believe his eyes.

  A girl slumped on the floor, back against the wall. Her left sleeve had been rolled up and a thin black strap had been tied around her upper arm. A metal box with a needle and some other small objects he didn’t recognise.

  He ran to his sister, putting his hand under Kelly’s chin to lift it from her chest. Mumbles came from her mouth. And spit. Bubbles of spit and mucus dribbled down her chin and from her n
ose. Also what looked like thin lines of blood trailed from her nostrils to her lips.

  She was barely alive.

  “Kelly,” he murmured, hardly daring to believe his eyes. His parents would be so pleased that he’d found her. So happy to have her back home again.

  Until the morning. Then there would be questions. Probably more visits from people whose cars he recognised. They would call the doctor out. His dad would stay off work for a few more days. His mum would be on the phone to Cath, crying.

  The brain processes things so fast that sometimes it gets ahead of itself. Seth’s brain was working faster than it had ever worked before, and even as he took a step back towards the exit, the guilt poured in.

  When she spoke, it made him jump. Head slumped down on her chest, lips barely moving, the words came like a breeze through the leaves. A moment of lucidity. “The Adherents are close, Seth.” And then her lips stopped moving. Seth ran to her, knowing this was his first dead body and yet refusing to believe his sister was gone.

  “Wake up,” he urged. “Stop messing around.”

  Her brain had slumped and wasn’t showing any sign of moving again. Seth held her hand and lifted her arm, surprised by how heavy it felt. How lifeless. Then that made sense didn’t it. She was all lifeless now.

  Seth felt raw.

  He blacked out again, and this time, when he came to, he was even colder, back in his home, standing outside his bedroom door, wishing his feet weren’t so cold and sore and wondering how long he’d been gone this time.

  Snoring continued to his right. Dad could sleep through anything. He should wake him.

  But he hesitated. He’d held her hand. Kelly was dead. He’d been there as her life had ended.

  Dad would want to know how he’d found her. He’d have to explain about Charlie and Dad wouldn’t believe him. He’d think Seth was part of this. There was always that burning anger whenever Seth brought up the subject of Kelly’s boyfriend and what made Dad so angry about him. Would Dad be angry at Seth as well?