Falling Into Heaven

by SIMS, MAYNARD

  The sense of danger was becoming oppressive and Helen quickened her pace more. The bracken seemed alive now. There were black shapes everywhere, dancing on the path in front of her, skimming across the water of the canal, making the undergrowth rustle and move. She took one more look behind her and a cry burst from her lips. Not more than three paces behind her was a man, at least it looked like a man, but most of his face and body were in shadow.

  The heels of her shoes were hampering her flight and as she ran she kicked them off,

  ignoring the pain of the sharp gravel as it drove into the soles of her feet. Her breath was coming in short stabbing gasps and her lungs were on fire. She glanced back. The figure was still behind her, at exactly the same distance – it had neither gained nor receded from her. She could see a gate in the fence ahead. Beyond the gate was the road and comparative safety. The road was busy and it was only early evening. There had to be somebody around.

  She was about to veer towards the gate when the flitting shadows came at her, rushing at her legs, entangling themselves around her ankles. With a choking cry she pitched forward into the freezing, filthy water of the canal.

  Water poured into her mouth and down her throat, but she felt surprisingly calm. She was an excellent swimmer, and as she kicked out with her legs her head broke the surface of the water. She coughed and spat out the filthy canal water and gulped in air and looked back at the towpath. It was deserted. Her confusion lasted only for a second before hands, infinitely colder than the water, grabbed her ankles and pulled her down to the canal bed.

  ‘What happened to this Leon Ellis? If he was the master criminal you portray him as, surely his whole aim would be to get out of prison and start killing again.’

  John Crowe laughed bitterly. ‘It was, believe me, it was. Remember I shared a cell with him for two years, and for one of those years it was just the two of us. He had plenty of time to tell me his plans. He believed that the only thing holding him back from true greatness – that’s how he saw his killing spree – was his physical form. He told me time and time again that he longed to be free of his prison, and he wasn’t talking about jail. He was talking about his body. He believed that his own death would liberate him, that he would become one with the dancers.

  ‘I was the one who found him in the cell when he’d hanged himself. His face was blue, tongue lolling out, but his eyes were open, and I can only describe the look in them as triumphant.’

  Phil Taylor leaned forward in his chair. He was absorbed in the story now despite his doubts about his friend’s sanity. ‘All right, so he killed himself; why does all this worry you now? You’re out – he’s dead. Start again, John, put all that behind you.’

  ‘I think the dancers got out with me. Whether it’s Ellis controlling them or not, I don’t know, but I think they’re following me.’

  Taylor looked at his watch. ‘I think I’d better get you home,’ he said.

  ‘Is that all you’re going to say?’ Crowe said, suddenly angry. ‘You don’t believe me, do you?’

  Taylor rested his elbows on the table and leaned forward. ‘John, if I had sat you down and told you a story like that, you’d be telephoning for the men in the white coats.’

  Crowe opened his mouth to protest.

  Taylor waved him down. ‘No, don’t deny it, because you know it’s true. Before you went inside you were one of the most down to earth guys I knew. I could always come to you for sensible advice, for a well-reasoned argument. What you’ve been telling me here is neither sensible nor well-reasoned, and frankly I don’t believe a word of it.’ He got to his feet. ‘Come on, I’m taking you home, and I want you to promise me you’ll go and see a doctor.’

  John Crowe stared up bleakly at his oldest friend and realised he had been wasting his time. He got to his feet and followed Taylor out of the pub.

  ‘You’re probably right,’ Crowe said. ‘I probably do need to see someone about it.’

  ‘No doubt about it. I’m glad you’re starting to see sense.’

  They were about a hundred yards away from Taylor’s car. Crowe stopped. ‘Look, Phil, I’m going to walk back to Diana’s. I need to clear my head.’

  ‘Are you sure? I mean, of course you can do what you like, but...’

  ‘What you were saying makes a lot of sense, but I need to get it straight in my mind. A walk will do me good.’

  Taylor nodded. ‘Fair enough.’ He started back to his car alone. Crowe breathed a sigh of relief. He needed to get as far away from Phil Taylor as possible. He had said nothing to his old friend, but as they came out of the pub, there, on the other side of the street, standing in the shadow of a shop doorway, was the pale form of Leon Ellis, a wide grin on his face, an evil glint in his eyes.

  Crowe looked from Taylor’s departing form to the shop doorway. Ellis had gone.

  When he reached the car Phil Taylor looked back and waved, then slipped inside and started the engine.

  They came from nowhere and everywhere. Flitting across the road, seeping out from the shadows, the dancers moved towards the car. They looked like nothing more than scraps of black rag, though less substantial than cloth, but John Crowe knew that these were the harbingers of his best friend’s death.

  They were swooping on the car, passing straight through the bodywork, filling the interior with their shadows. And as Crowe stared at the departing car, a face appeared in the rear window staring back at him. A slow smile spread across Leon Ellis’s face and he flicked his hair back from his eyes.

  John Crowe opened his mouth, to scream out a warning, but before the words could even reach his lips he knew it was too late. The petrol tanker was barrelling down the road a hundred yards away from the car, and if Phil Taylor had only kept a straight course he would have passed it safely, but just as the tanker reached him he spun the steering wheel and hit it head on. Crowe could see the look of horror etched on the tanker driver’s face as the small hatchback disappeared under his wheels in a scream of twisting metal.

  Crowe turned away from the carnage. Phil Taylor was dead. No one could have lived through that. The dancers had killed him. He knew he ought to stay, to offer help, but he couldn’t face it. He couldn’t bear to see his best friend’s twisted and mangled body, knowing that he, John Crowe, was responsible for it.

  He started to walk, back past the pub, dropping down from the road to the canal towpath. Already he could hear the sirens as the emergency services raced to the scene. He tried to block out the sounds, lowering his head and quickening his pace. Finally when he had walked half a mile or more the sirens faded into the distance and the only sound he heard was that of his feet crunching on the gravel path.

  There was something on the path ahead of him, something white – a pair of shoes. He stopped walking and stared down at them. The shoes were Italian, well made, and expensive, and for some reason he couldn’t quite understand they were significant. He stood staring at the shoes for minutes before a movement ahead of him drew his attention. Three black, formless shapes slithered into the canal.

  Seconds later something else broke the surface of the water. He took two paces and

  recoiled when he realised it was the body of Helen, floating there, face up, dead eyes staring into infinity. He rammed his fist into his mouth and bit his knuckles, drawing blood, to stop himself screaming. First Phil, now Helen. Was no one he knew safe?

  The answer came to him with shocking clarity. No, nobody he knew was safe, because somehow the dancers had been released with him. Diana, Hugo, young Sebastian… John Crowe’s entire family and all his friends were potential targets. As he stared down at Helen’s strangely peaceful body floating on the torpid water of the canal he realised what he had to do. Burying his hands deep in his pockets, and keeping his head down, out of the freshening wind he walked back to town.

  The multi-storey car park was high, and accessible. He slipped under the barrier, paused to let his eyes adjust to the gloom, and then walked past the cars to the lift a
t the back of the car park. Once inside he pressed the button for the roof.

  The wind had picked up and it cut through the thin cotton of his shirt as he crossed the tarmac and climbed up onto the highest wall of the car park. He stood there on the wall looking down at the road below. Now he was here and staring death in the face he wasn’t certain he could go through with it. It should have been so easy to step off the wall into space and to drop like a stone, but it was as if he was paralysed, frozen in this spot, never to move again.

  He felt a cool breath on his neck and a voice whispered into his ear. ‘Can you see them, John? Can you see the dancers?’ And as he looked down he could. They were pouring out onto the street, emerging from under parked cars, flying out from open windows, whirling and spinning through the air, black and shadowy, gathering below, calling him down.

  The formless shape materialised beside him. ‘Don’t you want to join them, John?’

  Crowe turned and thrust out his hand. It went deep inside the wavering figure, but eventually it felt something hard, and it gripped it tightly. The shadow shape shivered like a fish on a hook, trying to free itself. Crowe held on and tightened his grip. He had no death wish but he wanted to ensure his family were safe. He didn’t want to die but he wanted to guarantee the dancers returned to their prison home.

  He pulled as hard as he could and gradually he felt something inside the shape tear, and his hand began to pull out. As it did the shadows on the tarmac behind them rushed forward and moulded into the cloud-like shape, adding to its bulk. It towered over Crowe now, his whole body all but immersed into it as he struggled to pull the shifting centre out. Then, suddenly, it was free and the emaciated figure of Leon Ellis lay in front of Crowe. The shadow shape reared and opened up like a flower, a black pulsating mass of fleeting shadows and movement. Deep inside there seemed to be eyes, red, yellow, peering out wide and beckoning. Muted screams echoed from within the dark body.

  Crowe grabbed the cold, slippery figure of Ellis and hoisted it onto the wall. With one hard shove the body was in mid-air, shadows opening in greeting, and then the broken body on the road below was covered with a swarm of them.

  The black shape behind Crowe billowed into the air, then folded in on itself, sinking into the ground where it soaked away like a black pool.

  Crowe shook his head sadly. Then he opened his arms wide, stepped out onto the ledge, and called the dancers home as he launched himself into the air.

  FLOUR WHITE AND SPINDLE THIN

  Dawn the colour of honey rose slowly over the verdant expanse of Flatland Marsh. Tom Henderson breathed in the crisp morning air, pulled a packet of cigarettes from his pocket and lit one, sucking in the tobacco smoke and rolling it around his mouth before drawing it deeply into his lungs. His first morning in his new job of marsh-warden and already he was grateful for his redundancy from the electronics company. The redundancy had given him an opportunity to reassess his life. With his wife Louise making enough money from book illustrating to cover most of their needs, his role as breadwinner had become more and more superfluous. It was time for a complete break, and he’d grabbed this chance to escape the rat race with both hands. Now he was glad he had done so.

  He surveyed the landscape, taking in the rough tussocks of scrubby grass and the torpid pools of water that harboured all manner of wildlife. To the west were outcrops of granite, dark soldiers standing guard over the marsh; to the east the town of Risley. And beyond the marsh, the cold grey waters of the North Sea, separated from the land by mud flats.

  He ground the cigarette under the thick rubber sole of his boot and headed back. The house that came with the job was nothing grand, no more than a two bedroomed cottage sitting in half an acre of land. There was a garden, an orchard and a large ornamental pond, but the garden was unkempt and running to weed, the orchard just a handful of diseased apple trees, with a couple of pears to give variety, and the pond was choked with weed and harboured undernourished frogs and newts, the fish having long died off. His predecessor obviously had no time for maintenance, either that or couldn’t be bothered, and the decor in the house mirrored the sad state of the garden with peeling wallpaper, chipped and browning paintwork, and the dishevelled feel of an old man long since past his prime.

  Louise saw the place as a challenge and had set about stripping walls and repainting doorways with all the passion of a zealot. She’d always supported him, always been there to bolster his confidence, and to embrace his sometimes hare-brained schemes, and he loved her for it.

  As he approached the house through the orchard, he picked up a windfall apple from the ground beneath one of the stunted trees, rubbed it on his jacket until the skin shone, then bit into it, spitting the flesh out quickly as sour juice filled his mouth. He tossed the apple away with a grimace. Perhaps he could use them to make cider. As he passed the large weather-beaten shed that occupied space to the right of the pond he noticed the door was slightly ajar. He could see the padlock that once secured it lying on the grass, the hasp hanging loose from the door.

  Inside the shed everything seemed much as it had the day before when he’d been looking for some shears. Nothing appeared to have been stolen, but there was something different about the place. In the corner a muddy tarpaulin was wrapped around a sleeping form.

  He approached silently, just getting a glimpse of a head poking out from under the tarpaulin. The sleeping figure was a young boy, who looked no more than twelve years old, with pale skin and a shock of white-blond hair. The tarpaulin rose and fell gently with the boy’s breathing, but other than that there was no movement.

  A sudden gust of wind caught the door and slammed it into the frame, making Tom jump. He spun around at the noise, caught a small tower of terracotta pots on the shelf with his arm and sent them crashing to the floor. When he looked back the boy was awake and on his feet, staring at him wildly.

  He was tall for his age, almost as tall as Tom, and was dressed in clothes that were nothing more than rags. His feet were bare, scratched and muddy, the toenails filthy and unclipped. The pale hair flopped over a face as white as flour, and the boy’s limbs were spindle thin, looking as if they might snap at the slightest touch. Obviously malnourished and uncared for the boy presented a sorry sight. He regarded Tom with frightened eyes, looking past him at the door and his means of escape.

  ‘It’s all right,’ Tom said. ‘I won’t hurt you.’

  Still badly frightened, the boy cocked his head to one side at the sound of Tom’s voice, puzzlement jostling with fear in his eyes, almost as if he’d never heard a human voice before, and was trying to ascertain what the strange sound was.

  Tom tried again. ‘What’s your name?’ he said, and took a step towards him.

  The boy bared a row of brilliantly white teeth and growled deep in his throat, and then, with a movement so quick it took Tom completely by surprise, darted past him. Tom reached out and caught an arm, his fingers encircling thin flesh and bone. The boy ducked his head and bit Tom’s exposed wrist, the teeth cutting through the soft skin. Tom imagined them grinding against his bones. He cried out and swore, pulling his arm away and clutching it to his chest.

  The boy crashed through the door, sending it careening back against the shed wall. Tom screwed his eyes tight with the pain from his wrist and tried to follow, but his foot rolled over one of the fallen pots and he stumbled, falling down, one knee taking his full weight and sending fresh paroxysms of pain lancing through his body.

  By the time he got to his feet and stumbled outside, the boy was nothing but a pale shape disappearing through the trees towards the marsh. Tom rubbed at his bruised knee and limped back to the house.

  ‘You should go to Casualty,’ Louise said as she swabbed disinfectant into the bite. The teeth marks were red and angry, the skin around each puncture puckered and swollen. ‘Human bites are more poisonous and bacteria-filled than most other animals.’

  ‘Thanks. You’re making me feel better by the minute. Just disinfect it
and wrap a bandage round it. It’ll be fine.’

  ‘I wonder where he came from,’ she said, pressing a gauze pad over the wound. ‘I know there’s an orphanage over Hepton way. Perhaps he came from there.’

  Tom shook his head. ‘No, I don’t think so. I told you, he was dressed in rags. He’s been living rough for some time.’

  ‘Perhaps we should notify the police.’

  ‘And face all those questions? No, there’s probably a family of travellers in the area – gypsies. He was probably on a foraging mission and decided to bed down here for the night rather than try to find his way back in the dark.’ It was an unlikely scenario and Tom knew it, but he wanted a quick answer to the problem of the boy. He wanted nothing to interfere with the peace and quiet of his newly discovered idyllic lifestyle.

  Louise tore off two strips of sticking plaster and taped them over the bandage to secure it. ‘I still think you should get it looked at.’

  He grinned reassuringly. ‘I’ll live; besides, I’ve got loads to do. There’s the fence to repair.’

  ‘That’s not going to take you all day,’ she said.

  He reached up and stroked her neck fondly. ‘No it won’t, but I can think of better ways of spending the afternoon than sitting in Casualty, can’t you?’

  His finger tickled the base of her hairline and she felt warmth spread through her body. She shuddered slightly and kissed the top of his head. ‘I’ve got to work too, you know?’ she said, but the thought of spending the afternoon curled up in bed together was a strong temptation. ‘You’d better get on then,’ she said, returning his grin.