Ben took the collection of twelve stories down, looking at it curiously before opening the back page on the black and white photograph of himself as he had been, youthful, arrogant, with a few less puffy circles beneath the eyes. He scanned the brief biography, seeing again how perfectly that one line summed up his present state of futility: he is currently working on his first, much anticipated, novel.
A first novel that had been over three years in coming, only to go down with about as much grace as a lead balloon. And now he faced a second failure, this one two years overdue. There was a certain amount of inevitability to the treadmill; the way each fresh crop of talent trampled over his still-born literary corpse year after year until it was lost in the dim background of the book graveyard, with the new book itself unwritten, and seemingly unwriteable.
Ben sighed and put The Swords of Scorn back on the shelf without looking at the stories, sliding it into its niche beside Uneasy Streets, and turning his wandering attention back to the desk, the mug of tepid coffee and eventually, the keyboard.
He knew full well how it was going to go. He was going to sit here for fifteen minutes or maybe half an hour, or however long it took to realise he was wasting his time filling the pixelated wastebasket with the half-pages of disjointed jottings.
Scooby, his old black Labrador, lay in front of the family room's open hearth, his head resting on his paws, nose sniffing occasionally as the logs burning in the grate popped sporadically, showering sparks. The guttering fire lent the room a warm, mellow light; it served as an inner adversary to the growing darkness outside. Amber shadows stretched lazily over the sharp angles of the furniture.
Downstairs was laid out without the hindrance of walls, each room leading directly to the next in an open, airy floor plan. Everything in the workroom not wrapped in firelight was touched by the screen's harsh white tint.
Around eleven o'clock he began to type.
There was no natural flow to the words, no staccato rattle of letters racing to tell the story in his head. His fingers tapped out individual clicks that were followed by long silences, but little by little the spaces in between began to shorten.
Ben scowled at the screen.
With the fire dwindling, Scooby tired of his nest, raised himself slowly and took to prowling in his curious, bumbling gait, back and forth between the picture window in the family room and the benches marking the beginning of the breakfast area. The weight of his backside and the heavy sway of his belly bowed Scooby’s back legs, causing him to move with a clownish waddle.
Ben looked at Scooby with sadness so deep and distressing it surprised him. The moment was broken by the sound of Scooby's skittering claws on the kitchen's linoleum floor and a full-throated bark.
“What is it big fella?” Ben called through to the kitchen, expecting a knock at the back door any second. The noise continued unabated. Ben shifted uneasily in his seat. There was an element of savagery to the Labrador’s barking that suggested more than just the usual scary monsters playing up on a dark night.
“Scoob!”
The dog emerged from the dimness of the breakfast room's benches into the flickering orange of the family room. He was putting on a show for Ben, ears pricked, head erect, and chest sucked in, a sound in his throat that wasn't quite a growl, and constantly turning back to the darkness of the kitchen.
“Come on, Scoob. Here!” Scooby whined, but wouldn't move. “Come on, what's wrong, champ?” Ben murmured reassuringly as he slapped his thigh for the old Labrador to come. Reluctantly, Scooby sidled up to him, resting his head on Ben's knee, waiting patiently to be scratched.
Ben put his hands around Scooby’s jaw, felt the dog's rigidity for a second, then felt him collapse softly against him. For several seconds his body seemed to shake with small aftershocks.
“Okay champ, what is it?” Ben soothed as he stroked Scooby’s neck, calming him until he felt the tremors pass. “One of the ladies out there waiting for you?”
Scooby, knowing what was expected of him, wagged his scraggy stub of a tail and barked; a different sound altogether from the one a moment ago.
“Well I guess that's okay then, but only this once, okay? Right, now scoot.”
Scooby obediently picked up his head and shuffled back over to the fire, his backside swaggering, tail wagging back and forth with all the whip of a puppy's, and settled down on the rug.
After a minute or so Ben followed him back through.
Scooby was snuggled up by the fire, enjoying the little warmth it still gave off.
Ben went through to the bathroom to ease the pressure in his bladder, then moved through to the kitchen to make a fresh pot of coffee and snack on a couple of chocolate cookies, pausing on the way to switch on the stereo. Robert Cray's distinctive vocal was a still hot smoking gun by the time he had settled down in front of the file again, drawn back to the title page and the book that would not be written.
Ben fired up the browser and started sifting through the junk on the internet, ego-surfing mainly, though occasionally he stared at the road wrecks that were message boards dedicated to books and films and celebrity gossip and just about every sexual deviation he could imagine - without absorbing, or caring about any of it. The clock on the wall chimed the arrival of midnight.
Scooby shuffled through from the family room and hunkered down beside Ben's feet, wriggling around until he found a comfortable pocket of warmth to settle over, happy just to doze.
- 5 -
Frank Rogan didn't switch on the torch as he moved out to join the darkness. By keeping the light out he hoped to slip from the farmhouse into the undergrowth unseen. Behind him, the lounge window flickered to the dance of the television set.
The night was as quiet out as it was in, the air muggy. There was no one on the gravel drive between the house and the barn. Ghostly, purplish clouds swelled to fill the blue-black sky above the stacks of Longrigg Papermill lit up like a carnival at the bottom of Moses Hill. Only the very edges of the old farmhouse chafed against the blackness, the rest of the walls were gone. In the centre of the driveway the twisted shape of Hangman's Oak lived up to its name. So then, cautiously, Frank turned on the torch and played the beam across the dark spaces around him. Again he saw nothing out of place. Nothing out of the ordinary.
Straining, he listened for any out of place sounds instead; footsteps; raspy breathing; hushed voices in the darkness. Nothing.
Assuming his instinct unreliable and that there was no midnight prowler after all, Frank turned, about to go back inside when he caught a sudden flurry of movement out of the corner of his eye: a swift black smudge, indistinguishable from the countless others, darting from behind a stand of weather-worn planking to the deeper darkness of the barn, where it ducked out of sight again.
“Is someone there?” he called out. He didn't expect an answer, and wasn't disappointed.
The gash left by the open barn door was filled with a burnt-out black that swallowed the torch’s faint light. Frank swallowed hard and headed for the barn. Thirty feet from the open door nausea filled his belly. He had to stop and tell himself to slow down. The torch beam picked out the shape of a tarpaulin draped tractor.
“Is that you, Billy?” he asked the darkness. The familiar scents of wet hay and mice clung to the air. Squinting toward the hayloft, Frank ran the beam over as much of the barn as he could without stepping inside. When nothing moved, he stepped quietly into the barn and reached for the night-light switch. Three low-wattage bulbs winked on. They were barely bright enough to throw a dim film of illumination over the interior and failed to lift any of the heavier shadows that had gathered in the angles and crannies.
Frank was about to call out again when he heard something. Something, a gut feeling, pulled his eyes towards a ladder rising between the empty stalls.
“Is that you, Billy? Come on son, enough's enough,” Frank called out, the slight echo of his own voice dissipating to nothing.
An unused feeding trough ran
close to the rough boards of the loft's eaves, its shadowy side untouched by the weak light. Frank's growing uneasiness had him kneeling to run the torchlight under the trough. Hard packed dirt was covered by rotten straw. Nothing moved, though rats, or any other vermin escaped from the woodpile might have been a blessing right then.
The steps leading to loft were nailed to a supporting beam. Frank hesitated. One rung at a time, he climbed up.
In the centre of the loft a more conventional set of stairs went up again, into the cupola of the main barn. These steps were covered with clusters of mouse droppings and more rotten straw.
“Billy? Billy? If you're up here boy, I'll bloody well have your hide. It’s not funny…” Frank felt his voice trailing away as he ran the light across the loft's half-formed gallery of ghosts. Apart from bales of rotting hay, decaying cobwebs and dust, it was empty. “Billy, you fuckin' ree-tard!” The old man snapped suddenly, “If it is you, you'll wish to God it wasn’t by the time I've finished with you, lad. You hear me? You'll be wishin' to God you were buried back there with your Ma.”
With the torch jammed under his arm, Frank started back down the ladder. The erratic light picked out something carved into one of the support beams, old and yellowed by the passing of years. Frank stopped four rungs down, and ran his thumbnail through the carved letters: F. R. LUVS R. S. In a heart, with an arrow through. And that simple carving from one forgotten yesterday was enough to thaw him for a flicker. “And I never stopped,” Frank mumbled, his thumbnail lingering on the two letters of his Rosie's name. The tears came again, as they always did, when thoughts of her crept up on him sideways.
He took the last few rungs slowly, watching his footing. At bottom he danced the beam across the interior one last time, lingering on the support beam, then turned his back on it - and Rosie’s ghost - allowing the familiar weight of emptiness regain a foothold in his thoughts.
Frank lifted a corner of the plastic tarpaulin to expose the half-assembled machinery of the tractor underneath. He shone the light into the darkness beneath the rusted chassis. There was nothing but a crushed Lemonade can and the crust of a half-eaten sandwich under there.
Behind him, in the darkness, something moved.
Frank wheeled around, the arms of panic opening to engulf him with that single, grating sound: a footstep.
“Who’s there?”
Only the trailing edge of his own echo answered his cry, but when that faded he caught the quiet sound of breathing. Light beam roving wildly, Frank held his breath and waited. He had almost succeeded in convincing himself that the distant footstep was down to his imagination when it came again; a soft, sliding footstep.
“It's not funny anymore, Billy,” Frank called uncertainly. The dragging footstep came again, a little closer. “Oh, Jesus… Come on Billy, enough's enough. I didn't mean it. I don't want to hit you no more, I promise… On Mamma’s grave.”
Behind him, a clink as something struck metal.
He spun around.
There was no one there.
“Oh, Jesus… Billy, you're scaring me, Billy…”
Beyond the barn doors, a low, feral snarl broke the night’s silence.
Frank made no attempt to imagine who or what was there. Driven purely by fear, he blundered out through the doors. He heard a peculiar whimpering. It took him a moment to realise that he was hearing the sounds of his own, terrified voice.
“Holy Jesus,” he managed, seeing someone standing in the farmhouse doorway waiting for him. Though the stranger was directly in front of him, Frank couldn't see his face. The strange touch of the parlour light made him look tall: a statue of shadow. No matter what monster Frank considered his son, he couldn't mate the two together. The silhouette in the doorway moved, stepping out from the porch.
A hot, urgent growl had him turning again as another shape lurched out from beneath the branches of Hangman's Oak, dragging its feet across the loose gravel as it robbed Frank of a second way out of the triangle. For a second, it seemed to stumble but then it was up again, bringing itself forward on all fours with a curious, near lupine, swiftness.
Behind him, Frank heard the gravel scraping footsteps of a third man.
His heart was like a rock pounding against his breastbone. Something settled in Frank Rogan's stomach. He knew he was going to die, and there was nothing he could do about it. The cold certainty of that knowledge clamped a hand around his throat, refusing him even one last breath.
“Ple-”
The one at his back took him down. The suddenness of its attack sent him sprawling face first to the floor. Frank felt a weight settle on his back and pin him down. Then all three shapes were swarming over him. Pulling. Tearing. They pressed his face hard against the gravel. Loose cinders bit into his cheek. Frank thrashed and kicked and flailed uselessly, trying to dislodge the burden from his back. A foot came in, catching Frank under the eye. He felt the cartilage in his nose rupture and tasted coppery wetness in his sinuses even before it reached his tongue. A second kick fractured the bone in his cheek. The foot came in again, taking him under the jaw this time. He gagged and choked, coughing up a mouthful of blood. The strength of the blow ripped something inside his throat. Blood welled in his mouth, suffocating him.
Frank could see nothing now, the weight of his attacker keeping his face pressed hard against the drive.
He tried to twist his head. Immediately the thing on his back jerked it backwards. He felt the inflamed skin of his cheek rip as it was dragged across the gravel. The foot came in again, this time crunching into the side of his neck. Pain exploded in his spinal column and fanned out through his skull. The kick sent a kaleidoscope of black dots swimming across his vision. Through the haze Frank saw the wild, feral eyes of a lunatic staring at him hungrily. Suppurating sores clustered around the lunatic’s mouth.
For a timeless second, the two of them stared at each other, eyes locked in a twisted parody of a lover’s farewell. Frank heard fabric tearing. Heard snarling, shouting, panting, as if his attackers were excited by his helplessness. Felt the hot touch of rough hands clawing at his skin. Nails raking along his back, opening him up like some textbook of anatomy.
With their hands inside him, Frank Rogan’s world came to an end.
- 6 -
Snakes of rain slithered down the windscreen as Monk Sanders swung the Land Rover around hard and started up Moses Hill.
The wheels juddered over the fingers of a weather-beaten cattle-grid. A sheet of newspaper skittered across the track, the wind whipping it up and tossing it over the Land Rover's roof, carrying it higher, until it tangled with an overhanging branch where it whipped and wriggled like somebody’s lost laundry. In the passenger seat, Richie Dickinson gazed out across the dark countryside. Neither man spoke, preferring the solitude of silence to any strained camaraderie they might have shared.
The track gradually steepened. The slick sound of mud parting under the wheels joined with the rhythm of the rain beating on the windscreen, the squeal of the wipers, and the intermittent hiss of static from the radio.
On either side of the Land Rover, the woods thickened. The leaf laden tunnel of branches swept lower, scraping the Land Rover's roof as it jounced and juddered over the muddy ruts, stone and rubble that sprouted from the weed-covered track.
The darkness outside was almost complete. Their dipped headlights left the swelling night to be captured within the tunnel of shadows and trees. The trees themselves were nothing more substantial than outlines of leaves rustling and branches swaying to the rhythm of the night. Richie scanned the rows of eerie wardens. The higher they climbed the more intense the darkness became. Ranks of gnarled, twisted trees stretched back all the way into the heart of who knew where.
“Monk,” Rob Duncan reported over the radio, “No sign of them in the Village. Looks like they're headed your way. Over.”
Sanders reached out for the radio with his free hand. “Thanks for the heads up, Rob. Over,” his usually flat Marylander's ac
cent sounded oddly alive.
“Hey, that's what we're here for, Big Guy. Out.”
The rain, thinned to fine gauze by the leaves above, drizzled down the windscreen. Up ahead, he saw a single patch of damp, yellow light come to life in the window of an old caravan parked at the roadside. The caravan stood amid a sea of weeds and strangled grass. The insipid yellow light leaking through its small window cast a sickly pall over the dirt path leading to its door. A plastic milk crate smothered by weeds acted as a makeshift step. As they neared, Richie saw someone looking out through the window, obviously drawn by the sounds of their approach.
Two haunted eyes dominated the watcher's pale, too narrow face.
Monk twisted the headlights onto full beam. The watcher flinched away from the window.
“Gotcha, you fucker,” Monk smiled his satisfaction. Within that smile Richie Dickinson saw something innocent and almost childlike die as the look began to spread across Monk's suddenly predatory features. The sheer speed of the transition chilled him to the core. The combination of ice and fire exploding behind Monk's eyes was hypnotic. Something was happening here. Something he didn't like.
The headlights swept across the undergrowth, picking out an old corrugated iron shed. Flakes of jaded paint were peeling back to expose a tarnished underbelly of rust.
Three-inch high rain soldiers marched across the track's thick, spreading puddles. The rain was loud, spattering the windscreen, drumming on the roof, smacking the cinders, pattering through the leaves and the trees behind them. Richie could just about make out the faint outline of a solitary tree straight ahead, its trunk and spindly limbs twisted into a macabre gallows and the swinging body of a hanging man.
Trapped in the glare of the headlights honeysuckle, climbing roses and clematis crawled over the front of a farmhouse.
“They’re here,” Monk said softly as he swung the Land Rover into the driveway and stood on the brake. They stopped a handful of feet from the twisted trunk of an oak that had been scarred by fire or lightning, or possibly both. The bark had been ripped open and a jagged cleft exposed the rotten interior. But Richie wasn’t looking at the tree. His eyes were fixed on the head that had been wedged like a Christmas bauble in the cleft.
Sufferer's Song Page 2