The Dark Corners Box Set

by Robert Scott-Norton

For the first time since he’d been a child, Seth got to see his hitcher as a shadowman, standing before him. It had left him.

  A force pushed him back, away from the melee and he sat winded on the blistering hot roof and watched as Charlie took on the hospital’s shadowmen. Only a slight size difference distinguished Charlie from the enemy, but he didn’t need to watch to know that one against six was not fair odds. Charlie didn’t stand a chance.

  Adam’s arm snaked around his neck, and Seth was suddenly fighting for his life again. Kicking out with his legs, he tried to find some leverage to fight back against his attacker, but all he succeeded in doing was kicking up gravel. His hands scraped up a handful.

  “So much for your guardian,” Adam hissed, spittle hitting Seth’s ear. “Whoever he was, he’s about to be no more.”

  Seth threw the gravel behind him, aiming for the source of the voice. A cry of surprise. The grip relaxed, the hands left him, and Seth scrambled across the roof. He looked around, taking one last look at the nightmare that had unfolded here tonight.

  His shot with the gravel had been desperate but had disoriented Adam. He stumbled, cursing, but stumbled in the wrong direction. The flames took hold of his robe like they were tinder and suddenly fighting Seth was not his priority. Awkwardly, he tried to lift the robes up over his head, but they must have been heavier than they looked and he quickly got caught with his arms wrapped in material, all the while flames consumed, alive in a way that real fire wasn’t.

  A rumble underfoot and the roof shook. Seth staggered but kept on his feet as the cracks expanded. Now gaping holes were between him and the exit to the stairwell. The escape route was gone. He continued backwards, his only option the north of the roof. The ladder Judy had travelled down, blocked by fire and missing sections of roof.

  And Charlie had put up a good fight, but even that was proving hopeless. The fighting shadowmen were moving too fast to track reliably, but several had circled Charlie and were all laying into him. And then that encircled shadowman was no more.

  Charlie was gone.

  The void in his chest suddenly felt even more powerful, threatening to consume him.

  No way out.

  The shadowmen, realising that their sport had ended, turned as one to Seth and they advanced. A body wasn’t to be wasted. A body gave one of them a new chance of mortality. Seth looked at Adam. He’d freed himself from the burning robes but he was exhausted, sweat poured from him and desperation had taken hold. Their eyes met. Hatred passed between them, a line connecting them and Seth realised there was one way out, one way only. There would be no escape from this that meant he could win. All he could pray for was that he wouldn’t lose.

  His heel clicked against the tiny ridge at the edge of the roofline. He glanced down at the ground and saw her. His sister, Kelly, waiting for him.

  Seth took the last step.

  And fell.

  36

  Seth took the last step, felt the space under his foot, then tipped forward off the edge of the roof into the darkness.

  That initial drop when the ground beneath his feet was no more made him gasp, but then the chill air rushed past his face, pulling at his features, making it impossible to draw another breath. His eyes stung with the cold. Random thoughts flitted across his mind.

  Twenty-eight was no age to die.

  Will his parents come to the funeral? Will anyone?

  Time slowed, letting him experience the full terror of the moment. He could still hear the shouts of rage from the rooftop he’d exited a second earlier, and the fire blazing. If he survived this fall that sound would haunt him.

  The people he’d saved would remember that sound as well.

  Coming to the hospital had been a mistake. But, it had been his mistake to make. Even if the invitation hadn’t been offered, he’d have found his way back here one day. Seth’s path often felt uncomfortably laid out. He didn't believe in fate, never wanted to entertain the idea. And yet, and yet… his life had come full circle.

  He didn’t think he was about to scream.

  The night air on his bare skin did little to ease the discomfort from his torn back. Blood rushed through his ears, his heartbeat fought the pressure, reminding him he was still alive. There was hope. Being alive meant he still had a chance.

  The ground was racing towards him.

  Did he do good tonight? He hadn’t been able to save them all. He’d tried and failed. What would his parents think of that? Who’d remember to tell the press that Seth Loomis had tried to save these people tonight?

  To hell with his parents. No, to hell with them all.

  The pain from his back slowed his thoughts and dragged him back to real time. He hadn’t avoided injuries from the things on the roof. A hospital visit would be in order. But then, as the ground was still getting closer he changed his mind. He might be travelling to the hospital that night but there would be no treatment. No rushing blue lights. No resuscitation.

  The ground was now very close indeed. He could see the flecks of gravel.

  Shit, how close was he?

  He opened his mouth to scream.

  And then the scream didn’t come.

  Instead, the scream became an idea.

  And the idea had a memory, and the memory was of the one thing that had haunted him for almost twenty years. If he was going to die, he would die with this memory.

  He opened his mouth and said, “I’m sorry, Kelly.”

  The hard tarmac blurred in the blink of an eye. A new shape was before him. A door, just like the ones they’d had in their old house. A bedroom door perhaps.

  With a burst of green void energy, the door flung open filling the night with its light.

  Seth fell. And kept falling. The door slammed closed behind him.

  37

  Judy saw it all from the ground. Malc was desperate. He wanted to go and save his friend but Judy had grabbed his arm and told him it was suicide and then Seth had fallen and that was that—another dead body.

  Malc pulled himself free, and then he was running to the spot on the ground where Seth had fallen.

  “Wait!” she cried after him, then she was running and wasn’t sure why. There was no chance of surviving a fall of that height. No chance at all.

  Alisha was shouting at them and pointing up at the roof. “The flames have gone!”

  Did that make any difference anymore? One more trick the hospital had pulled, or was that Adam’s doing? She didn’t know, found herself not caring. She just wanted to get to the body and protect Malc from the suffering he was about to experience. She approached the spot where the body had fallen and was ready to hold Malc and steer him away from the mess that was left of Seth.

  Only, there was no body.

  Malc began to run around the perimeter of the hospital building, searching for his friend. “Seth!”

  Judy called for the others to come and help look, and without question they came, eager to help find the one that had saved them. These people were cold, terrified, and broken, and yet they continued to look long after it became obvious that there was no body to find.

  “Something happened. Another trick of the hospital. He never fell.” Malc was grasping at straws. She didn’t need to see a body to know that her new friend was dead. In her heart, there was a missing beat for him.

  “He might still be up there, injured,” Alisha suggested. Malc nodded, and he rushed to the door they’d escaped through.

  “Locked.” He bashed it with his fist, then charged it, only succeeding in bruising his shoulder.

  The blue lights approaching took them all by surprise. Alisha ran to the back gates where they stopped and was soon joined by the rest of the party.

  “We’re through here!” she called, relief breaking the barriers of the tears she’d been holding back.

  A car engine was running on the other side of the gates. A door opened, then closed again and a torchlight suddenly shone through the gaps in the gates.

  “We g
ot a call that something was going on here.” The voice came from a woman with the built in authority of someone who knew how to take charge of a situation.

  “We need help. We’re trapped in here, there’s a man trying to kill us, satanists or—”

  She broke off then as the courtyard gates were pushed open—the same gates that had been locked earlier when she’d tried to leave with Seth. Had they really been locked or had that just been another one of Seth’s lies to keep her here? A short stern looking policewoman in a high visibility jacket slipped through the opening. She faltered as she acknowledged the lack of clothes on everybody except Malc.

  “I will need you all to step back and keep your hands where I can see them.” She shone a huge torch in their faces one by one, lingering on Malc.

  “I need someone to explain what you’re all doing here. This is private property.”

  Judy stepped forward, and the torchlight snapped to her. “It was a ghost hunt. But the people that organised it tricked us and tried to kill us.” Judy surprised herself by how sane she made the absurd sound.

  “Is that right?” The policewoman spoke in a deadpan manner, not acknowledging that she accepted any of what she’d just been told. “I’m Inspector Goulden. I’m calling for some more assistance.” And she got on her radio.

  The police took charge of the scene and the people. An ambulance was the next vehicle to arrive, and the paramedics dished out blankets to the survivors. Judy took hers gratefully then settled on the back seat of Inspector Goulden’s car, glad to begin feeling warmth again in her extremities. Another two police cars turned up. Policemen were scouring the area for Seth and Adam Cowl. Torchlights crisscrossed around the courtyard. After a time, Judy noticed torchlight from the top of the building. She wanted to get out and tell them it wasn’t safe to even be inside the hospital, but as she made a move, Malc sidled up to the door. “I don’t think the hospital will do anything now. It must have expended a lot of energy during that last confrontation. It won’t like all this attention.”

  “But even so, the fire.”

  “I’m not sure that was real.”

  ‘It felt real.”

  Malc shrugged. “We’ve all seen things we thought were real tonight.”

  “And what of the rest of it? You’re saying Adam wasn’t real?”

  Malc’s face curled into a grimace. “Oh no, Adam was real.”

  “And the hitchers?”

  Malc nodded.

  “There are people in that building now. We have to warn them.”

  “Like I said, the hospital is spent. The hitchers won’t want anything to do with that building for a while.” His phone beeped, and he checked it for messages. “It’s from my wife. She called the police when she realised I’d snuck out. I’d told her that Seth had been offered a job here. She must have put two and two together.”

  “You knew this place was dangerous. You and Seth—you both knew.”

  His eyes were staring, like he was seeing things from his memories, things that were no longer there. “We were school friends. I’ve known him since we were kids.”

  “And this hospital. You knew what was going on.”

  “I didn’t. I only thought it was a bad idea for Seth to come here. His sister died here when he was a boy. They found her in one of the outbuildings. Drug overdose. There was talk of a boyfriend but he went missing and no one ever saw him again. Seth knew this place was no good for him, but I guess he thought he might be able to put some demons to rest.”

  But all he really did was help raise some new ones.

  “How long do you think we need to stay here?”

  Inspector Goulden appeared at Malc’s side. “You’re free to go. Do you want me to arrange you a lift home?”

  38

  Judy woke with a scream. She’d been falling to her death. She didn’t think she’d need to consult a dream expert to establish why that might have been on her mind. And as happens every morning, in those first few seconds between sleepy and full on welcome to your life consciousness, she found a moment to not be scared of anything.

  When it all came back to her, she froze, trapped beneath the duvet, not wanting to check the clock radio for the time in case it was still the middle of the night.

  The door to her bedroom was ajar, a creak on the landing outside, then of footsteps heading downstairs. Beside her on the bedside table, a mug of ever so slightly milky tea, the perfect way her daughter made it for her.

  It had been two days since the hospital and Jemma knew most of what had happened. Judy had left out the more disturbing elements, basically anything to do with the Adherents, but Jemma knew about the deaths and that the police were investigating. Judy thought that it made sense to get this all out in the open because the local paper would be all over this. But there had been nothing, she’d checked. Perhaps news about the hospital was just not that interesting.

  No, that wasn’t it. There was more to it than that and when she caught up with Malc, she’d ask him about it.

  The police had been low key about it all. She’d gone back to the station the morning after the nightmare, and given a full statement, and Inspector Goulden had nodded throughout and been kind as you’d expect, but she thought the whole thing had been some elaborate prank gone wrong. She’d not said as much but she tried to insinuate that Seth Loomis was known for putting on paranormal shows and conning members of the public out of their savings. When Judy had tried to explain that she’d been approached by Roy Oswald and not Seth, the inspector waved a hand and said that Seth and Roy were possibly in this together.

  The police had found no bodies at the hospital and this wasn’t being treated as a murder investigation.

  So, where were they?

  Seth, and Roy, and Johnny—they were all missing.

  And then there was Michael.

  He’d been in the ritual sanctum. She remembered seeing him when she was trying to open the Almost Door. So, what happened to him? And why had they found it so difficult to remember him at all? The hospital or something the hitchers could do? There were no guest lists they could find, no evidence that Michael ever existed. He hadn’t spoken about having a family but she supposed that none of them had really made an effort to share anything personal. But there must be someone that would miss him and they would get in touch with the police and it would all be sorted out.

  Judy got out of bed and checked the time on the clock. 7 o’clock. Fine, she would get up, make them both a bacon butty, as long as Jemma hadn’t come good yet on her threat to go vegan, and then she’d drive Jemma to school—her friends too if that’s what she wanted. Today was about making things as normal as possible.

  She pulled the chain on the beside light and the shadows were cast out. The police hadn’t found any records yet of the ghost hunt. If they hadn’t found any, it either meant there were none to be found or that someone else had taken them first.

  Yes, she’d definitely drive Jemma to school, today and for the next few days at least, just until the police came back with some sensible answers to the questions of what happened at the hospital.

  As she reached her bedroom door, she glanced back at the bedside table and sighed. In the top drawer she found what she was looking for, the blank notebook Jemma had bought her for her last birthday, unused, and a matching pen. Quickly, she ripped off the cellophane and dropped it on the floor. Then, opening to the first page, not even noticing the heavy high quality paper, or the delicate flower artwork decorating each page corner, she scribbled today’s date at the top of the page, then underneath, wrote the first line of her address.

  She looked around the room, trying to see beyond what her memories told her to be true, and counted.

  On the next line of the page, she wrote.

  BEDROOM, 1 door.

  39

  Malc still hadn’t fallen asleep. After an hour of tossing and turning and trying not to wake Georgia, he had just about resolved to get out of bed and make a hot drink when Joe’s
cries came. Georgia didn’t move but her breathing altered.

  “I’ll go,” Malc whispered then went to check on his son.

  The clock on the landing showed him he’d been awake for far longer than an hour. It was ten past three already. If he could get Joe back to sleep quickly, he still might get a few hours’ kip before he needed to get up. After the incursion at the hospital, his associates had summoned the group together for a ‘friendly catch-up’. He couldn’t get a sense of which way the wind was blowing but the presence of Adherents at Ravenmeols would necessitate some action on their part.

  Joe was asleep when Malc checked. He looked peaceful enough despite the covers half on the floor. The lava lamp night light they had in the corner of the room was busy making globulous orange patterns and some of that pattern spilled onto the adjacent wall bringing it to life.

  His son’s skin was cool in a way that made Malc check it twice. He drew the duvet back up and covered Joe again, tucking him in tightly, then kissed his forehead before withdrawing, leaving the door ajar.

  Malc’s skin prickled like a fly had landed and had got busy crawling. Idly, he scratched at his arm and looked back to the bedroom. Strange, how standing out here on the landing, he felt impossibly tired, yet lying in bed next to his wife, he had enough energy to write sermons and run several back-to-back coffee mornings with the flock.

  Coffee.

  He made a mug of instant and stood in the dim light of the kitchen, looking out at the back garden. A dismal night, drizzle, low winds. That notched the idea of a crafty fag.

  Navigating the downstairs of the vicarage in the night was second nature to him. He’d never been one to be afraid of the dark, despite everything. Perhaps it was the knowing that made things less scary. But things were different now weren’t they? His friend had vanished and suddenly there was no one close who understood. He’d always meant to come clean to Seth about his extra-curricular activities, and after seeing him in action at the hospital, Seth had given him that accusatory look and realised there was a secret between them.