by Lex Sinclair
Eric gazed outside and saw the fog wasn’t as dense as earlier.
‘Okay,’ he croaked. ‘Just gimme a hand up, would ya?’
Immediately, Diana rose and put her arm around Eric’s waist and his left arm over her shoulder and on the count of three hoisted him up off the leatherette booth onto his unstable legs. He swayed unsteadily for a minute doing his utmost to regain his balance. Then, using the tables and counter, Eric gradually crossed the fish bar and restaurant to the exit door and peered outside.
‘There’ll never be a perfect time to go outside,’ Diana said over his shoulder.
‘If I was armed I wouldn’t be so hesitant.’ He paused for half a minute. Then he said. ‘I’m just concerned about that Sara girl in the shop next door. I can’t see her anywhere but that’s not to say she’s not out there watching for us to emerge.’
He pivoted unsteadily and squinted in the direction of the counter. ‘Do me a favour, see if there is a large cutting knife; there’s gotta to be somethin’ like that ‘round here we can use.’
Hurrying, Diana went round the counter and into the kitchen.
Eric waited for two minutes and then moved on stiff legs to the counter.
Diana emerged white as sheet, holding a large bread knife with another hand clutching the black handle bloodied at the stump where the person whose hand it belonged to had been hacked off.
‘Fuck!’
‘It’s just one thing after another,’ Diana said dropping the sawn off hand clutching the bread knife onto the counter. ‘If you want it you can pry the hand from it. I’m not touching it.’
Swallowing with difficulty, Eric said, ‘Go and get yourself a knife, as well.’ Then he pried the dead fingers from the handle, cringing at the sounds of bones snapping.
Diana came round the counter carrying a serrated cutting knife, shaking her head in revulsion at the lifeless hand lying palm up on the counter. ‘We need to go.’
‘I know.’
‘Where’re we gonna go first?’ Diana wanted to know following Eric to the door.
‘I’m gonna try dispatch again and turn the headlights on both cars on. That’ll help us have a clearer perspective. The Meadow Garage is next door. But after the shop and this place, I might decide to give it a miss. Behind us are the slaughterhouse and the meadows turned into the working sites and then the woods. On the opposite side of the road are most of the houses and the old church and graveyard. Further down the road is the cul-de-sac and the Rhos Meadow Primary School. I very much doubt that Tulisa would be down there though. There’s also the cornfield where the livestock started dying. It’ll get really cold, mind you. There’s only two of us.’
‘Why’d you have to be so bloody pessimistic?’ Diana barked.
‘I’m being realistic,’ Eric said. ‘Or,’ he added. ‘I could try and turn the patrol car round and head back down into Pontardawe and see if I get some reception to contact the station from there.’
‘I’m not leaving,’ Diana said.
‘If we’re gonna find Tulisa, a search team is better than two people wandering round aimlessly in the dark with nothing but a torch between them, freezing to death in the process. That’s not practical.’
Diana shoved Eric aside and opened the door. She stepped outside onto the gravel parking bay and scanned her surroundings. The fog had lost its density but still lingered like cigarette smoke in a small room. In spite of this, she could see the garage and the caravans for sale behind the wire-meshed fencing. To her right the eight petrol pumps stood deserted and unused. She moved forward as effortlessly as the tide coming in at sunset.
On the main road she could just about see the two cars: hers and the patrol car and that had crashed right into the rear, denting and buckling metal and showering the blacktop with glass from the headlights and brake lights. There was no way Eric could know for certain if the patrol car was even safe to drive, let alone do a U-Turn and head down the long hill into the town of Pontardawe.
She edged closer, stepping off the Texaco garage site and onto the road. She listened for the sounds of a crying child that might have been Tulisa, lost amidst the fog in a place that haunted her dreams.
Eric followed her out to the main road wielding his bread knife, snapping his had to and fro, watchful for Sara or anyone else who had become one of the infected that might cause them harm. A part of him felt like shoving Diana in the back, returning the deed she’d done to him. However, a big part of him had gained a wisdom no amount of experience could have given him in such little amount of time. Instead he watched her back until he came up alongside her.
‘She’s out there I know it,’ Diana said, her words trailing away into the swirling fog and the wind shrieking in the distance like a banshee.
Eric laid his right hand upon Diana’s shoulder and squeezed gently. ‘I won’t give up on you or Tulisa,’ he said. ‘But I have to go as far as I can away from here to get help.’ With that said in a trembling voice, Eric Leibert headed down the main road and disappeared out of sight as the road meandered round a sharp bend concealed by the overhanging tress and shrubs.
As he cornered the bend, Eric nearly fell off the edge of the land that had suddenly dropped into a chasm that could well have been a black hole. The intangibility of this scenario in spite of the tangible evidence yards in front of him disappearing into the profound nothingness sent Eric’s fragmented mind reeling into the realms of terror madness.
It was too surreal for him to comprehend rationally that he merely stood transfixed, gaping into the impenetrable black hole. His vision zoomed in and out in rapid succession and Eric knew a sever infliction of vertigo had overcome him. The black hole threatened to swallow him one instant and discard him the next. The notion he’d had of driving into another town where he’d be able to get reception to contact the local police station had dissipated taking with it all sense of hope he still possessed.
On legs as stable as chopsticks, Eric pivoted, feeling dizzy and fragile. The biggest mistake of his life and career in coming this way through Rhos Meadow as a short cut back to the station so he could get home earlier and have something to eat with his doting mum and watch TV he believed would be his last mistake as well.
Rhos Meadow had felt like a whole different realm to the one he lived in the moment he arrived. Now the small town actually was a whole different realm from which there was no means of escape.
Rhos Meadow is the town of the dead.
Jack Zane had told Tulisa that and she’d told her mum. The words resonated in Eric’s mind on merry-go-round.
The second Diana had told him the tale of a boy called Jack coming to see her daughter when she was in work and had to leave her unsupervised and the things he told her only an adult could have known curdled Eric’s blood and made him shiver involuntarily.
First there was the impenetrable wall of fog that had not been forecasted that he’d driven into and induced a crash. Then there was distressed and stranded Diana wondering where the hell the most precious thing in her world had disappeared to after the little girl had told her about this place in vivid, accurate detail that no child could possibly have know.
A ghost however...
Eric’s thoughts trailed off into the possibility of things he’d never even considered because he thought them imprudent at the best of times.
Things like ghosts, poltergeists, and the supernatural was make-believe. A scary story to keep you warm by the fireplace on a cold winter night, he thought.
Like tonight, his mind suggested.
Only he remembered his mum tutting at him in disdain at how he’d laughed off the accounts and evidence of UFO’s, heaven and ghosts, and hauntings and anything paranormal. Now, he was the one who felt naïve. After all, he was the one standing on the edge of the abyss, testicles shrivelling at the unbelievable yet tangible reality
facing him.
Whirling around in a state of panic, Eric ran back to the Texaco garage. His breath came in short gasps. His legs were leaden with exhaustion. The fog engulfed him. He cried out. ‘Diana! Diana!’
He halted alongside his ruined patrol car and panted. He truly believed he’d lost Diana to the fog and the fading daylight. He might as well have fallen headfirst into the black hole. The haunted small town itself had been swallowed up into the abyss separate from the world it had once belonged to.
Eric yanked the driver’s door open and turned the headlights on and the flashing blue beacon. At the sight of Diana heading towards him he brayed laughter and leaned against the vehicle keeping him upright.
‘What happened?’
Eric shook his head, still smiling. ‘I thought I’d lost you.’
Diana frowned. ‘And I thought you were leaving us to go and get the cavalry. So, what happened?’
Once he’d got his breath back and his thudding heart resumed its rhythmical beat, Eric explained, as best he could, about what he’d seen and nearly fell into had he not been looking.
‘So we’re stranded,’ Diana said matter-of-factly.
‘Looks that way.’
‘That’s why there’s no reception on your dispatch or on our phones. Rhos Meadow is the town of the dead, and therefore the town itself has died, faded into the nothingness, like a black hole, separate from the world as we know it.’
‘Is there any way out?’ Eric asked.
‘I don’t know,’ Diana said. ‘But Tulisa might know. She’s known things no living person could possibly have known. If there is a way out then we need to find her and let her guide us.’
‘If the town is dead why are there still residents running about trying to kill us?’
‘From what Tulisa said, they died because of the hydraulic fracturing operation which spread like a virus in their small town, killing each and every one of them. When a person dies in a fit of rage their soul cannot move on. But they’re not exactly dead. They’ve just been contaminated and devolved - for want of a better word - into feral beasts.’
‘Zombies,’ Eric said. Then he said. ‘But zombies are just fictitious creatures; corpses brought back to life by witchcraft.’
‘Or it could mean a person who appears to be lifeless, apathetic, or totally lacking independent conscience. Or something similar, like rabies. Their bodies are still functioning, albeit not to the aptitude they once did. But the brain remembers what happened and the basic emotions are still evident, none more so than rage.
‘Put yourself in their position: you die because of some governmental decision that overrides the protests of the residents and in doing so they become contaminated - infected - and suffer dire consequences. The last and most prominent emotion would be rage directed at anyone who is still fully alive.’
‘They want us to suffer the same fate they suffered,’ Eric said.
‘I was angry at you, remember? Because you weren’t acting immediately and risking yourself to save Tulisa. Imagine how they must’ve felt.’
The flashing blue beacon illuminated them and the surrounding blacktop main road. Eric could see a little better now the lights were on. However, darkness had descended and the fog still lingered.
‘Do you have any ideas where Tulisa might have gone?’
Diana shook her head. ‘D’you still think she was kidnapped?’
‘Whether she wandered off on her own accord or was snatched, we have to find her. I could be wrong, but she is the key to getting us the hell outta of this godforsaken place.’
9.
THEN
January 4, 2013
Bobbie Hopkins and his wife Abigail were the last to leave on the frosty winter night that had been the day Greg Zane had never knew he’d have to face until it fell into his lap. The day of the funeral service for his only child, Jack Zane.
A hollow cavern where his heart used to beat kept him motionless in his armchair by the picture window. He watched dully as Bobbie reversed his Ford pick-up down the drive and carefully backed onto the road and then driving out of his peripheral vision.
Greg had not cried during the service. Instead he sat stone-still staring at the small oak coffin on a pedestal reflecting the flickering light from candelabrum perched on the altar communion table. His young son was lying in that box, eyes closed, face pallid, tailored in a black suit and tie similar to the one Greg wore.
When the rest of the congregation of mourners got up to sing the hymens Greg remained seated. He didn’t want to sing. He didn’t want to be sat on a cold, hard pew listening to the reverend that never even met Jack let alone know him speaking about a boy who was with Jesus now. Greg didn’t believe Jack was with Jesus. Greg believed Jack was lying stone dead in a box waiting to be lowered into the earth later on.
Jack didn’t do anything wrong. He didn’t lose his life playing with a shotgun or drinking an excessive amount of alcohol or taking drugs. He’d had a glass of water from the tap and Greg had found him thrashing about on the floor convulsing and frothing at the mouth, inadvertently chomping down on his tongue and dying before getting to the hospital.
Outside the ground was solid. Languid and sporadic snowflakes dropped out of the grey sky. Greg took a sip of his Jack Daniels. The pain and anguish of his son’s sudden, excruciating death festered inside him like a malignant cancer. The short glass felt as heavy as a concrete block. Keeping his head upright had become a task. More snowflakes drifted in a downward spiral until the snowflakes multiplied and in their tens and thousands in a heavenly cascade.
Greg watched it, tears brimming in his red-rimmed eyes. Jack would have loved to have seen the snowfall. He’d get dressed and go outside and tilt his head up and meet the snowflakes as they brushed his face with the lightest of touches. The snow made Jack smile. The snow made Jack happy. This knowledge made Greg remorse, still.
Probably due to the profound melancholy gnawing away inside him, Greg’s mind reminded him of the incident when he and Bobbie and ventured into Tony and Amy’s house and fled at the macabre sight of dissected body parts and innards in the white porcelain bathtub.
They’d gone to police station in Neath and told the uniformed officer behind the desk what had happened. Greg had needed to sit down and calm himself, doing his utmost to get rid of the horrific images cruelly replaying themselves on a never-ending film reel in mind. The officer disappeared into the room behind him, and when he emerged the superintendent listened intently to what Bobbie had said minutes ago, word for word.
‘And why did you trespass in the first place?’ the superintendent had asked.
Bobbie had glanced over his shoulder at Greg then, incredulous. ‘We were concerned. Last time I’d seen his wife she looked like she was coming down with something really serious and no one had seen Tony for months.’
‘So you just broke into their home uninvited?’
Bobbie shook his head at the taller man. ‘No,’ he’d said through gritted teeth. ‘The door was already open. We though it didn’t look great. We called out to them and there was no answer so we went in and made sure they were all right. What’s the problem?’
The superintendent opened his hands out to say he didn’t mean offence. ‘I’m just trying to get the facts, gentlemen. I can, however, see that you two are both shaken up by what you saw - or thought you saw - and we shall go to their house and investigate. But in future I suggest you phone your friend in the first instance instead of wandering into someone else’s home. Friend or no friend, if I knew that someone had been into my house when no one was home I’d be more suspect of them than anything else. But, like I said, we’ll take a look.’
Forked lightening and stars floated in Greg’s vision. He sat bent over with his head between his knees, inhaling and exhaling.
A police by the name of
Parker approached the men five minutes later jangling the keys to the patrol car outside. ‘You guys come with me and let’s try and sort this out,’ he said in an unwavering voice.
Greg remembered following Bobbie and Parker outside, wincing at the sudden bright light, temporarily blinding him. Then he’d got into the back of the patrol car with Bobbie and watched the world pass by as they drove to Amy and Tony’s plush residence.
Parker had the window down on the passenger side and the gust of wind was refreshing. Greg had fought off both nausea and dizziness. Now he sat with his head leaning against the glass no longer resisting the leaden eyelids closing.
The police car rolled to a halt right outside the shaded two-storey house. Parker killed the engine and opened the back door. Bobbie and Greg got out. Then Greg asked if he could stay outside. Parker regarded him closely then. Greg knew Parker was deciding whether or not to acquiesce to Greg’s request in case Greg was considering taking off. But the pallid, weary expression told Parker that Greg would be barely able to stride let alone run away.
‘Okay. Stay by the vehicle at all times.’ He turned to Bobbie and could see the front door was ajar. ‘You stay behind me.’
Bobbie nodded.
‘Where was the body, did you say?’
‘Body parts,’ Bobbie had corrected him. ‘In the bathtub. The room upstairs right at the top of the stairs.’
Greg didn’t know what exactly had happened when Parker and Bobbie had gone inside. However, when they emerged he heard Bobbie protesting, insisting that both he and Greg had seen dissected body parts and innards.
‘Bathtub was sparkling clean,’ Parker had said.
‘Someone cleaned once they’d heard Greg scream his head off then,’ Bobbie said, going scarlet.
‘It’s not a crime to clean your bathtub,’ Parker had pointed out.
Bobbie turned towards Greg. ‘Tell him! He thinks we’re lying.’