Sendak shouts to the nearest kid, one of the girls who fell. Michelle, he thinks her name is.
‘I can’t let go of these handles. I need you to take the keys from my pocket and lock this door.’
The girl looks at him as though he’s the monster. She just wants to run.
The blade is wiggling, the creature trying to work it free, Sendak keeping the doors pulled tight to prevent precisely that.
‘Now, goddamn it. Now.’
The girl shudders in response to his shout, but obeys nonetheless. Figures. When people are scared like that, they’ll follow orders simply because it’s the only thing that makes sense, a way of telling themselves that there is still some kind of process in control.
She extracts the ring of keys and starts fumbling though them. They all look alike.
‘Blue tag on the end. Says DR.’
There’s another thump, the reverberation enough to drive the doors slightly apart and free the blade. It comes through again a fraction of a second later, lower down, close to where Michelle is trying to fit the key into the lock. It cuts her wrist: nothing serious, but enough to draw blood and cause her to drop the keys.
‘I need this door locked,’ Sendak shouts. ‘Someone help her.’
‘It’s okay,’ Michelle says, tremulous. ‘I’ll manage.’
She reaches down to the floor and discovers that the keys are lying in a puddle of blood seeping under the doors.
‘Oh God.’ She starts to weep but doesn’t flinch from lifting the keys.
‘Mr Guthrie,’ she says, picking out the right key a second time and twisting it in the lock. ‘He saved me.’
‘He saved everybody,’ Sendak corrects. ‘And now you have too.’
He steps away from the door and looks at the milling shambles in reception. Mrs McKenzie, Heather and himself are the only adults present.
‘We need to get to the games hall,’ he announces, but they’re barely listening. They all stand and look at each other, not responding. Some of them are very close to losing it. Nobody wants to go first.
‘It was a demon,’ one of them says, almost hysterical. ‘A fucking demon.’
‘Come on, people,’ Sendak urges. ‘Let’s keep it together.’
He makes his way towards Heather, still squatting protectively beside the trembling and catatonic Gillian. She represents precisely how ‘together’ everyone else is likely to be very soon. They need someone to take the lead.
‘What the hell is in there?’ Heather asks frantically. ‘She said the Devil killed Liam. The kids are shouting about demons . . .’
Sendak holds up a clenched fist: signal for Stop.
‘The games hall has no big windows, and just two exits to control. We secure it first and deal with the weird shit that don’t make sense later.’
Heather nods. Got it. She gets to her feet and puts on her practised teacher voice. ‘Games hall. Everybody. Now,’ she commands. ‘Two abreast, but don’t run.’
‘Mrs McKenzie, you help Gillian get there,’ Sendak orders. He turns again to Heather. ‘You, come with me: double-time.’
XXI
Deso’s running, flat out and blind, into the darkness and the trees, and it’s only as he feels the cold of the air shorten his breath that he realises he has no idea where he’s running to. He’s just been following the figures in front, couldn’t even say for sure who they are. There’s people running behind him too, doing the same. He doesn’t know who they are either because he hasn’t dared look back, hasn’t risked slowing down. None of them knows where they’re going: they only know where they don’t want to be. As a cloud blows in front of the moon and dims what little light they can see by, Deso is aware that while they may have escaped the building, they have given no thought to what they might be running towards.
‘Hang on,’ he urges the two in front. ‘Slow down.’
They either don’t hear him or simply aren’t minded to take stock quite yet. A scuttling sound from not far beyond their periphery abruptly changes their minds. They pull up, turning around. It’s Rosemary and Bernadette. Deso looks back now too. He sees Cameron and Marianne. Beyond them, way beyond them, he sees the outbound facility, flickering lights and music still spilling from the side door they escaped through. It looks as though nothing happened. He doesn’t know what he was expecting to see - flames and pentagrams and shit, maybe - but it’s almost possible to imagine the party still going on, people inside laughing about some elaborate trick.
Except he can still taste Fizzy’s blood from when it sprayed his face, can still see the knife going into Fizzy’s naked flesh. It was dark, the lights were flashing, but he knows he saw Fizzy die just as surely as he saw Dunnsy die.
They all just stare at each other for a few moments. Nobody wants to say anything: it’s as though they all know what they witnessed, but it will only become real if someone verifies they saw the same thing.
‘We need to find some cover, some shelter,’ Deso says. ‘We’re wide open out here, and I’m fuckin’ freezin’. We should head back towards the buildings.’
‘Back?’ Bernadette asks. ‘That’s where that thing is. Or did you miss Philip getting carved up by a bloody demon?’
Deso wipes some of Fizzy’s blood from his face and holds his palm up to Bernadette.
‘I didn’t miss that, no,’ he says, trying his best to swallow his anger.
There is another scuttle in the blackness, the sound of a threatening low growl.
‘Deso’s right,’ agrees Marianne. ‘We can’t stay out in the open. We need to get back inside for protection.’
‘I’ve got my protection right here,’ says Bernadette. She reaches inside the collar of her blouse and pulls out a crucifix, suspended on a silver chain around her neck.
‘Oh for fuck’s sake,’ Deso says. ‘What’s that meant to do? It’s monsters we’re up against here, not fuckin’ Protestants.’
‘I know what I saw,’ Bernadette insists. ‘We all know what we saw. Father Blake was wrong: there are demons. I don’t know what brought them down upon this place, but I do know that faith is the only thing that can save us.’
‘Have you any holy water on you as well? I’m sure they’re shit-scared of that too.’
Deso starts to walk towards the facility. Marianne and Cam are turning back that way also. Rosemary is left next to Bernadette, looking unsure which option to take.
‘Come on,’ Marianne urges the pair of them. ‘You’ll be sitting ducks out here.’
‘I’d rather place my trust in the power of God than in the integrity of those buildings,’ Bernadette insists.
Deso turns around. ‘Walls can be breached, it’s true,’ he concedes. ‘But nothing fails like prayer.’
Rosemary shakes her head. ‘I can’t believe you’re reckless enough to be . . . blaspheming after what we’ve just seen.’
‘And after what we’ve just seen, I can’t believe you’d want to be standing out here, just waiting to be—’
Deso hears a scrambling sound and senses movement in the air, just too late to react as something pounces from the darkness, knocking him to the ground with a startling snarl of aggression.
He feels a pain in his back: sharp but shallow; a pre-pain, in fact, only the hint of how much it’s going to hurt in a few seconds from now. He’s been slashed by its claws, a glancing blow when it battered into him. He’s hit the deck with a bone-jarring wallop, the frozen ground biting into his bare skin. He rolls on to his side, but the demon is too quick. It pounces again, landing on his chest, and swipes a talon towards his neck. Deso throws up an arm. It gets batted away by the impact, but it saps the momentum enough to prevent the intended effect, that of ripping his fucking throat out. The demon reaches off to Deso’s left and locates a stone, about the size of a grapefruit. It raises it as high as its scaly arm will reach, and is about to bring it down when it suddenly hears something and glances to Deso’s right.
Bernadette has stepped forward, thrusting her cr
ucifix towards the demon with her outstretched hand, chanting:
‘Pater noster, qui es in caelis, sanctificetur nomen tuum. Adveniat regnum tuum. Fiat voluntas tua, sicut in caelo et in terra . . .’
The demon seems almost hypnotised by her voice, its gaze fixed upon the out-thrust statuette. Its eyes flash, a low growl beginning to grow in its throat. It sounds angry, but to Deso’s ears, it could also be fear.
Over Bernadette’s shoulder, Deso can now see a second demon converging on the group. It is also seemingly hypnotised by the crucifix, also very agitated by the sight, to the extent that it stalks past the frozen figures of Cameron, Marianne and Rosemary, to take up position on the other side of Bernadette, equidistant from where its partner is straddling Deso.
‘Panem nostrum quotidianum da nobis hodie,’ Bernadette continues, her voice tremulous but clear. ‘Et dimitte nobis debita nostra sicut et nos dimittimus debitoribus nostris. Et ne nos inducas in tentationem, sed libera nos a malo. Amen.’
Upon this final word, both demons - plus two more Deso was unaware of - suddenly attack Bernadette with a yowling, hissing, rending ferocity. They tear her apart in a blind rage of claws and teeth and knives and stones. There’s something worse than primal brutality here: there’s fury, there’s bloodlust, there’s hatred.
Suddenly rendered invisible to the brood, Cam and Marianne take their cue and flee. Deso gets to his feet and grabs Rosemary, spinning her away from the awful sight and dragging her along with him.
‘Just keep running,’ he tells her. ‘Don’t look back. Don’t look back.’
‘I hate to admit it,’ says Kane as they approach the dormitory blocks, ‘but I’m starting to think Guthrie was right about not cutting them quite so much slack. We opted to turn a blind eye to the booze, allow them to let off some steam, but these kids are all suffering various degrees of post-traumatic stress disorder. They’ve got some seriously horrible emotional effluent backed up. It shouldn’t surprise us if one of them flips out and starts talking about the Devil - despite your best efforts.’
‘Yeah,’ agrees Blake. ‘One of those occasions when your intention backfires because instead of defusing an idea, you realise you’ve inadvertently introduced it to the mix. If I’d been talking about ghosts up on that hill today, then that’s probably what we’d be hearing about from overwrought and tipsy teens.’
‘Speaking of which . . .’
Kane tilts his head to indicate the double doors, from beyond which they can hear the sound of female whimpering.
‘Let’s go and find out who threatened to scratch whose eyes out, shall we?’ Blake says.
‘Probably over a guy, too, who’s oblivious of the pair of them.’
Kane pushes the left-hand door but it jams only a few degrees in, something blocking it. He gives the right one a try, same result. He pushes again, more forcefully, senses some give and slides it open a few inches. He can see a pair of legs on the ground.
‘Way pished,’ he says. ‘Guthrie is going to be serving up the biggest helpings of I-told-you-so for—’
Which is when he notices the blood smeared along the tiles behind the sprawled body.
‘Fuck,’ Kane says. He shoulders the door and slides the legs out of the way just enough for them both to step through the gap.
‘Roll him on to his side,’ Blake suggests. ‘Make sure the airway’s open.’
They crouch down and take hold of the body, hauling it a half-turn and revealing its face. Kane thinks it’s Liam Donnelly, but he honestly couldn’t say for sure, even though he’s known the kid since he was twelve.
‘Jesus Christ,’ Blake says. ‘Jesus Christ.’
Kane gets back to his feet in a daze. He looks at the blood trail, sees it smeared along the floor for a few yards. It ends - or presumably begins - against the wall opposite the tributary corridor, leading to one further bedroom and the emergency exit. Kane walks slowly, reluctantly closer. Still he can hear the whimpering. He reaches the junction. There is more blood outside the bedroom door: drops and pools rather than smears, a few fragments of glass scattered among them. He takes a few steps further, looks inside the room, and promptly throws up.
Blake arrives behind him. Kane signals for him to get back. One look at Kane bent over a pile of puke is enough to convey that he doesn’t need to see what precipitated it.
Still they hear the whimpering. Blake pursues the sound, passing the tributary corridor. Kane steadies himself and turns to follow. It’s only as he sees his oldest friend pass out of sight around the corner that it occurs to him that they both ought to be scared.
‘Repeat: there are confirmed fatalities and we are under savage and lethal attack. We need armed back-up and we need medics . . .’
Sendak has the phone cradled to his neck, speaking as he flips through a ring of keys. He finds the one he’s looking for and unlocks a drawer in his desk, on top of which sits a white box marked ‘Medkit’, alongside an aluminium baseball bat. After rooting around in there frantically for a few seconds, he gives up and sets about locating another key. There’s a look of exasperation on his face, and Heather suspects it’s not because he can’t find whatever he’s searching for.
‘Two . . . ? They’re what? You gotta be kidding me. You gotta be fucking kidding me. Fuck.’ With which he violently slams the phone down.
‘Two what?’ Heather asks. ‘Cops?’
‘Two hours. That’s for armed back-up. Would be close to ninety minutes by road from Inverness even if they were ready to roll out right now.’
‘Can’t they take a helicopter?’
‘They are taking a helicopter. But they have to wait for it to come up from Edinburgh. And don’t even ask about the paramedics. Pile-up on the goddamn A9 at Kingussie, so they’re all a half-hour south of dispatch, and Raigmore Hospital’s air ambulance just left for Shetland. Isolation ain’t so splendid now, huh?’
Sendak finds what he’s been hunting for, which turns out to be another key. He uses it to unlock a heavily padlocked cabinet on the wall behind his desk, revealing a pump-action shotgun and a box of shells.
‘I’m gonna do a sweep, see if there’s anyone else left alive.’
‘What do you need me to do?’ Heather asks, and hopes it doesn’t sound too much like she’s dreading the answer.
He holds out the shotgun towards her.
‘Get your ass to the games hall and hold the fort.’
Heather recoils like he’s holding a snake.
‘I’ve never . . .’
‘Don’t sweat it,’ he says, thrusting the stock into her hands then reaching for the carton of ammo. He places the box in the crook of her arm and slings the medkit around her shoulder by its strap. ‘Pick yourself a spot in the room with a clear view of both doors. Then you make sure the safety’s off and shoot anything that don’t knock politely.’
How the fuck did that happen? Rocks is left asking himself. Girls truly are incomprehensible. He’d been specifically intent upon not trying his luck, planning to take it slow, let her know with all sincerity that he’s not just after a bit of winching, and the result is he ends up going way further than he’s ever been with any lassie before.
He just wishes he had stopped her before he came - though to be honest, nothing on this earth was going to make him stop her before he came. He never wanted to come so much in his life, and doesn’t think he ever did come so much. It nearly hit the ceiling, felt like it was jolting through his entire body rather than just his knob. As soon as it was over, though, he suddenly felt really self-conscious, like the private world the two of them were cocooned inside just evaporated and they were left with a slightly squalid reality. He can hear the muffled music again, it having faded out while they were, well, you know.
He has this awful feeling of failure. He’s afraid he’s cocked it up: literally. It’s got to hit her too, surely. She’s going to be affronted, think he’s a creep.
‘Oh God, I’m sorry,’ he says.
‘Don’t be,’ she
assures him. ‘Unless this is the part where you dump me.’
‘I was more worried it would be the part where you dump me - or at least run away screaming. I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have let you do that.’
‘Says who?’
‘I don’t know. It just feels . . . I don’t know. Not wrong, but it’s like there’s something telling me I ought to feel it was wrong.’
‘It’s called Catholic guilt. As the caterpillar chooses the fairest leaves to lay her eggs on, so the priest lays his curse on the fairest joys. That’s how Blake put it.’
‘Father Blake said that?’
‘No, William Blake.’
‘Who’s he?’
‘Poet. Painter. He painted The Ghost of a Flea, that picture Mr Hazel has on the wall behind his desk in the art department.’
‘Oh aye. Gave me nightmares in first year. Big baldy scaly bastard, with a mirror.’
‘That’s the one.’
Caitlin’s face darkens a little, suddenly very serious. ‘You can’t tell anyone about this,’ she says. ‘I hope you realise that.’
‘I wouldn’t,’ he insists. ‘God, not for a second, seriously, I wouldn’t . . .’
‘I know you wouldn’t. I’m saying you can’t, even if you wanted to.’
‘Why not?’
‘Because nobody would believe you.’ She grins again. ‘There have to be some benefits to being the wee quiet lassie.’
‘Unless they’d heard about Bernie’s big sister,’ Rocks replies.
Caitlin gasps a little and they both laugh.
She begins buttoning up her blouse.
‘We’d better be getting back to the party,’ she says.
‘Yeah.’
They both make themselves look respectable, then head for the door. Rocks stops just before opening it.
‘So you’re definitely all right about this?’ he says. ‘You’re not feeling . . . a bit awkward.’
Pandaemonium Page 29