RAIN/Damned to Cold Fire (Two Supernatural Horror Novels): A RED LINE Horror Double: Supernatural

by Craig Saunders

  George slumped down, legs caving, then his bottom hitting the slick floor. His feet slid out and kicked over a breakfast stool.

  Marion watched him, then turned back to the knife drawer. She took out another knife. This one was bigger. Her hand was bloody, and the handle of the knife was slick. She slipped down on the tile floor. The floor, too, was slick with blood. Her free arm bent underneath her, then broke under her own weight, but she didn’t need two arms. She scooted around onto her knees and used her good arm, the one holding the knife, to push herself to her feet. The broken arm flopped uselessly at her side.

  She looked around, confused, because there had been a woman in the room, and now there wasn’t.

  Someone screamed out in the hall. The woman. Marion stepped out into the hall and went in the direction the screaming woman had run.

  *

  Chapter Forty

  It was a beautiful dream. The sun was shining. She liked the sunshine. There was something about the sunshine. It wasn’t raining. She didn’t like the rain. She didn’t know why she didn’t like the rain, but in the dream, it wasn’t raining, and it was a beautiful day, and everything was just fine.

  The man with the beard was there. He was a nice guy. Big and warm. He sat on a blanket with his wife. She was a lovely-looking woman. Jane remembered her name. Mrs. March. Her husband was John. There was a picnic, and Jane was sitting on a blanket under the shade of a tree. It was summer. The sun was shining through the leaves of the trees. It left swaying shadows on the ground.

  She didn’t like the shadows, but the sun was just fine.

  “Would you like a drink?” asked the man.

  The man’s name was John. His wife’s name was … What was his wife’s name?

  “Karen,” said a voice. John’s face didn’t move. Karen’s face went slack, and her skull fell in. Like the ground above an old mine.

  Jane turned. There was a man standing just outside the shadow of the tree in the sunlight.

  “Well, come on. Come out of the shadow.”

  She could hear something in the distance. It was over the horizon. She didn’t have to worry about it. It was a long way away. It sounded like someone was frightened.

  She didn’t understand why anybody could be frightened in the beautiful sunshine.

  “Who are you?”

  “My name is David Hill,” the man said. She noticed for the first time that he was an old man. His back was crooked. He looked kind, though, so she stood up and walked away from the picnic. Out into the sunlight. The sunlight hurt her eyes.

  “Karen needs you, Miss Walker.”

  Jane shook her head. “She doesn’t need me. She’s right over there. Eating a picnic with her husband. Are you hungry?”

  “I’m not hungry. Neither are you. This is a dream, and you have to wake up.”

  “I’m happy here. The sun is shining.”

  “The sun will shine again.”

  “Who are you?”

  “My name is David Hill.”

  “Mrs. March’s name used to be Karen Hill before it was Karen Johns before it was Karen March. I remember that.”

  “Yes. Yes it did.”

  The old man looked sad.

  “She’s over there. Would you like to say hello? You have the same name.”

  The old man shook his head.

  “Mrs. March needs you.”

  “She’s fine. Her husband’s here.”

  “You need to wake up.”

  The sound from the horizon was closer.

  “I’m happy here in the sunshine.”

  “Wake up,” he said. She shook her head.

  “Wake up,” he said.

  She opened her eyes and blinked. The sunshine was gone. It was almost pitch black but for the strange light of the rain on the windows. It glowed like a silver moon to her eyes.

  She remembered. She remembered the thing in Mrs. March’s room. She was groggy, but it all came flooding back. She remembered why she liked the sunshine and didn’t like the rain. There was something in the rain. Something that had killed Wendy.

  “Oh, God,” she said. She could see Wendy. She could see the blood and bone.

  She put her head in her hands and cried.

  Then she heard the scream. She looked up, her eyes wide, her heart pounding.

  A man stood at the foot of her bed. The scream on her lips died as he raised his hand and put a finger to his lips.

  Shh.

  The scream came again from down the hall. Jane bit her lip until she could taste blood. The man at the foot of the bed nodded, sadness in his eyes, but glad she understood.

  An old man. She remembered him from her dream too. Mr. Hill.

  Thank you, he mouthed. No words came out.

  She needs you.

  Go softly.

  He pointed upward. He didn’t seem frightened to Jane, even by the screaming from outside the door. If he could fake courage, then so could she. It gave her strength.

  She tried to ask him a question, but he disappeared. He was there. Then he wasn’t.

  There was so much to ask. Like why the rain wanted Mrs. March. What the thing in the rain was. What it truly was. She was sure it wasn’t a policeman. She knew it wasn’t Wendy. It wore them in the same way she wore tights on a cold winter’s night. The rain was snug in their bodies, but they were just dressing. The thing under the skin wasn’t a man or a woman. It was something primal. Something with terrible power.

  She pushed herself out of the bed and stood. She swayed, then steadied. Her head was heavy, and she felt like she’d been eating lint. Someone—Marion—had left her a glass of water. The water tasted old, but it didn’t taste of rot (no, don’t think of that) and come (Want me to make you wet?) and bile and …

  Stop. He wants Mrs. March. Mrs. March who used to be Miss Johns who used to be Miss Hill.

  “Are you going to let him have her?”

  Jane asked herself the question. She asked herself hard. She imagined what he could do to her. He’d tried to drown her. He’d stripped the flesh from Wendy’s bones in an instant.

  But she knew the answer as soon as the question reached her lips.

  *

  Chapter Forty-One

  “Let me guess. Mabel?”

  “David’s dead?”

  John nodded. “You knew him?”

  “For nearly twenty years. Good God. What happened to him?”

  John shrugged.

  Smiley answered her. “The rain killed him. There’s something in the rain.”

  John expected her to laugh at Smiley or tell him to stop talking nonsense. He imagined her saying it. “Stop talking nonsense.” That would be right, coming from her. He almost wished she would. She had a serious face. Perhaps if she’d say it, it would all go away. Maybe she could make it happen. Just by the force of her will. Like she was magic. Like Mr. Hill had sent her to fix things.

  “What in blue hell is going on?” she said.

  John shrugged. “We were hoping you’d be able to tell us.”

  “Me?”

  “Yes.”John pushed himself to his feet and cried out as he took the weight on his left foot.

  “You’re hurt.”

  “I’ll live,” he said. He crossed the room, his shadow playing on the wall in the candlelight. He passed her the letter. She squinted to read it. She must have pretty good eyes, he thought. No glasses, at her age.

  “Trust Mabel? Who’s this from?”

  “Mr. Hill.”

  She looked in his face, looking for a lie. Expecting some trick. He nodded at her and kept his face blank.

  She sighed. Took out a letter of her own and handed it to John.

  “I don’t know what’s going on,” she said. “I don’t know. I really don’t. David gave me this yesterday morning. He said to give it to you. He said I’d see you at five this morning. Not exactly, but that’s what he meant.”

  She pressed the letter into his hand.

  It felt heavy to John. Heavier than
just paper.

  It was addressed to him, written in the same hand as the letter he’d carried around all day. He slid a finger along the flap, tearing the envelope. He pulled out a letter. And a photograph.

  He walked slowly and carefully back to his chair. Sat down with relief at the side where Smiley wasn’t sitting, next to a candle on the largest table of a set of three, the medium one tucked underneath, the small one tucked under that.

  He held the photograph next to the candle.

  “Oh,” he said. He sat for a long time, looking at the picture. He ran a finger over the surface.

  He looked sad to Mabel. Heartbroken. She understood immediately why David had liked him. He was a big man, almost larger than life, but there were no hard edges to him. His heart was right there for everyone to see, his emotions plain as the nose on his face.

  “Well? Does it help?”

  John shrugged, a simple but expressive gesture. He passed the photograph to Smiley. Smiley raised his eyebrows. Looked at John.

  “Pass it round.”

  Smiley passed it to Mandy. She looked at it. “She’s pretty,” she said, then gave it to the old lady.

  She looked at it.

  “That’s David.”

  “Certainly. Younger, but unmistakable,” said John.

  “Who’s the woman?” said Mandy. “His wife?”

  “That’s my guess,” John said.

  “The girl? Do you recognise her?”

  John rubbed a hand over his face. “She’s just a child there,” he said sadly, “but I’d recognise her anywhere. That’s my wife.”

  *

  Chapter Forty-Two

  John held the letter in both hands on his lap. Nobody wanted to push him. They could see he was deep in thought. His eyes were distant. He’d been through hell already. His world was teetering on the brink of destruction. The letter in his hand could right what was wrong, or push him over the edge.

  John felt it beneath him. A yawing chasm. He was poised above it, ready to plunge.

  The chasm was insanity. John knew it well.

  He leaned closer to the candle and held the letter in his shaking hands.

  “Mr. March,” said Mabel. “That letter there … That’s for you. You read it first. We don’t need to know what it says.”

  John nearly cried. A simple kindness, but it touched him nonetheless. After all he’d seen tonight, Mabel reminded him in one sentence why he couldn’t give up.

  “Thank you, Mabel. Call me John. Please. And this letter … I don’t know what you’ve been through tonight, but this young man here,” he inclined his head toward Smiley, “his dad was killed by the rain. The thing in the rain.”

  “Oh my God, how awful. I’m sorry, young man.”

  Smiley seemed shy in a way he hadn’t before. “I …”

  He was going to say he hated his father, but that didn’t seem like the right thing to say to the old lady.

  “Thank you,” he said. John saw his Adam’s apple bob, once. Smiley clenched his jaw and looked away.

  “The young woman, Mandy, was …” He caught himself. He nearly said raped. “Has had a terrible night, too. In short, we’ve all seen some god-awful things tonight. We’re in this together.”

  Mandy took Smiley’s hand. He squeezed her hand back and nodded at John.

  John returned the nod and turned to look at Mabel.

  “We all deserve to know what’s in the letter. I don’t know what Mr. Hill had to do with this, but this is all happening because of what he left me in his will. I’ll tell you about that little slice of weird pie if we ever get the chance, but he left me a box. The thing in the rain wants the box. People have died because of this.”

  John remembered the scene by the Indian restaurant. All those bodies. The bones shining in the light of the fire.

  “Too many people.”

  Mabel walked across the room, surefooted even in the dim light. She kissed John on the top of his head.

  He felt strangely touched, again.

  “Well, I’d better get comfortable then,” she said, and sat down with a sigh beside him.

  “Go on, John,” said Smiley.

  He looked at the young man who’d nearly killed him earlier in the night. It was difficult to see him in any other light than the stark white glow of lightning, coming at him with a baseball bat.

  But it wasn’t Smiley who had tried to kill him.

  It was the rain.

  They were all looking at him. Looking to him. They hoped he had the answers. Even Mabel, who had a good few years on him. They were looking at him because he was the strong one. He was bigger, sure, but he wasn’t stronger. He knew he was weak.

  Don’t be daft, John. You’re the strongest man I know.

  His wife’s voice. A memory, years old. Like a voice from the grave, but she wasn’t dead, and every day, he was strong for her.

  He coughed and cleared his throat.

  “Dear John,’” he began. “I knew you wouldn’t take care of that damn letter, so I wrote this one, too. Before we get any further, I know you’ve got a hundred questions. I don’t have all the answers. I never did. But set your mind at ease. I left you all my money because you’re my son-in-law …”

  “What? Shit.”

  “What? Shit? It says that?” said Mandy.

  “No, honey, that was all me. Sorry, Mabel.”

  “Mr. March, I’ve heard worse, believe me, and some of it in this very room. Go on,” said Mabel with a kind smile.

  “John,” he said, and put his head down to read the rest of the letter.

  *

  Chapter Forty-Three

  “Now I’m going to really going to throw a spanner in the works. I wrote this the night my wife died, twenty-two years ago.”

  “What the fuck?”

  “Let him read it, young man,” said Mabel. John smiled to himself, despite the feeling that the chasm below was spreading out. Soon it would swallow the ground under his feet, and he would fall.

  “Freaked out? Welcome to the club. You’re thinking I’m some kind of magician, pulling rabbits out of a hat. I’m not. It’s not what you think. I’m a normal man. I was a normal man. It’s strange for you, but you have to understand that as I write this, I know you’ll be reading it because I’m dead. That’s a hard thing for a man to know.

  “But this isn’t about my problems. This is about yours.

  “When I was young, I met a woman. She became my wife. It shouldn’t have happened, but I wouldn’t change it. Even knowing what I do now, I wouldn’t change it, because I love her even in death. It was she who told me this. She knew this because she wasn’t like me. She didn’t belong to me. She never did. She belongs to him.

  “She was his wife. Then she was mine. As you’re reading this, he wants her back. She saw it all, but for him. I don’t know if you can understand that, John. She saw you, sitting in my house, before I’d even bought the house. She saw you with two children, one called Mandy, one called Simon, although he doesn’t like to be called that. She even saw Mabel Oldham. I tell you this so you’ll understand. Really understand. You think you’ve seen power?

  “You haven’t seen a damn thing. My wife knew you’d get the letter wet that I wrote to you. She knew you’d forget it. She knew Mabel would come and find you.

  “Do you understand? You think you do. But you don’t. These are immortal lives. She terrified me, John, and I loved her, and her husband is worse.

  “Her husband is the rain.”

  “Oh, come on!”

  “Smiley,” John shook his head. He didn’t really believe it, but what was the alternative? There was no way around it. There was something in the rain. Why not the rain itself?

  Would that be so strange after all they’d seen?

  He ignored Smiley and carried on.

  “She wouldn’t tell me what he is, and what she would tell me didn’t make sense. She called him Rain. It’s what he is and what he does.

  “And he wants her
back.”

  “What does he mean, he wants her back?” said Smiley.

  “If you let me read it, maybe we’ll find out.”

  “Well, fuck me. I’m sorry. You’re a pretty slow reader for a guy who owns a bookshop.”

  John bit his tongue.

  “What do you think he means, John?” Mabel was looking at him carefully.

  “I think …”

  He thought back to the day before. Sitting in Mr. Fincher’s office. He remembered the words. Blood and bone and tooth and hair.

  “I think he left me his wife.”

  “What?”

  “Let me read it.”

  Smiley pushed himself off the arm of the chair. “I can hear you just as well from the kitchen. I’m starving. The old guy must have had something to eat.”

  John saw Mabel wince, but all she said was, “There’s a Tupperware pot with biscuits in it on the top shelf.” She pursed her lips and nodded to herself. “There’s also a bottle of scotch under the sink. I think we could use it.”

  John certainly could. He could go for a whole bottle. But just a nip to take the edge off the throbbing pain from his injuries. The pain came in waves, but he was so tired he forgot about it most of the time. The pain had become background noise. It was almost welcome when he shifted and the pain bit. It woke him up.

  “I’ll get it,” said Mandy.

  Smiley shrugged. “I’m easy.”

  “Don’t knock yourself out being grateful.”

  Smiley nearly told her to fuck off, like he would have before the night turned to shit. But he remembered what she’d done for him.

  He caught her eye. “Sorry,” he said.

  John watched them from the corner of his eye. There was strength there. In both of them. The fact that they were still able to joke, still able to sense the need in each other spoke volumes.

  Mabel saw him watching the teenagers. She raised a quizzical eyebrow at him. He shrugged.