Sciron

by David Rashleigh

  But what had it all been for? The Cold War was won, Communism defeated and with it the common enemy that had given purpose to the military and the security services. On top of that, the Communists hadn’t been beaten at all: they had simply gone deep underground, infiltrating the national institutions and biding their time until the breakdown of British society ushered in their precious revolution. Had his life’s work been in vain? Had the sacrifice of those men not been justified after all?

  Morgan knew that today he would have to admit everything. Janice, his only child, must know the truth, but the person that would understand would be Rimmer. Cedric had noticed the looks exchanged between the two of them, had known that they had dined together the previous evening. She could do worse, he supposed, and Rimmer seemed like a decent sort. He would tell them together, get the shame over in one go. Then he would have to admit to his daughter what he had told Rimmer in their last conversation: the fact that his doctors gave him just a few weeks to live.

  His mind made up, he looked at the clock on the television, surprised that it was, for him, so late. Making his way unsteadily into the bathroom, he unpacked his shaving equipment and worked up a rich lather on his face. His razor, a heavyweight safety razor that had served him for more than fifty years, shook gently in his trembling hand. His eyes focussed on themselves in the mirror rather than on his face. By the time he had finished shaving his face sported a collection of tiny rivulets of blood, stemmed by small pieces of tissue. Morgan then washed his face in water as hot as he could bear to remove the blood and close up the cuts, went back into the bedroom and dressed. Despite his efforts, one of the cuts continued to bleed, leaving a dark stain on his shirt collar.

  Morgan, despite being habitually fastidious, hadn’t noticed. He pulled on his old woollen overcoat, placed a flat cap on his head, and left the room to find his daughter.

  ***

  Janice was, at that moment, standing in the hotel’s reception area. She had met a windswept and decidedly damp Jack Rimmer on his return from breakfast. On spotting her heading towards him, Jack’s face had broken into the wide grin that was rapidly becoming a permanent feature.

  “Morning, Jack,” said Janice, her voice just a little more sultry than usual. “Did you sleep well?”

  “Like a baby, thank you,” Jack replied, immediately conscious that having never had children, he was hardly in a position to use that particular phrase. “You?”

  “Yes, despite the rather hard bed. That reminds me; Father never actually said how long we would be here. Do you know?”

  As she spoke, Jack was having difficulty concentrating on her words. As a defence against the strong winds, Janice had tied her hair up, exposing the full length of her graceful neck. He was admiring the shape, following its line down, his eye drawn by the open blouse that exposed just a hint of rounded breast. At that instant, Jack could think of nothing he would rather do than to kiss that particular soft, white flesh.

  “Jack?” There was a knowing lilt to her voice as she brought him back to the present. His face flushed red, his embarrassment exacerbated by the slight smile on Janice’s lips.

  “Sorry,” he grinned, sheepishly. “I spoke to your father last night, but he gave no hint as to what you are doing here. He just kept talking about, well, things. Kept on about how the Communists had won after all, or something. He wasn’t making much sense, to be honest.”

  Jack didn’t mention that following the mention of the Oxford Union debate, he hadn’t really been listening until Morgan’s announcement of his impending demise. He wondered for a second whether Janice knew about the state of her father’s health, but decided immediately that it wasn’t his place to tell her. Not yet, anyway.

  “I have some people to see this morning regarding the story that I am working on, but I can’t see me needing to be here much longer.”

  “Is that the story that you interviewed Father about last Sunday? Is it interesting?”

  “Well, quite possibly, yes. At least, from a personal point of view it is. I have been looking into the disappearance of my father and some...er...fresh evidence has come to light.”

  He didn’t dare mention the ghostly element to all of this: he barely believed it himself and he had no doubt that his nascent relationship with Janice would be put at risk if her dared admit to her what he had been told, and what he increasingly had no option but to believe.

  “I have two more visits to make, and...” his voice trailed off as another thought occurred to him. How did Steve Melling know about the ship? His father’s ghost couldn’t have told him: he had died before the ship had departed Preston Docks. Another piece to the puzzle that Jack would have to make fit.

  “And what?” Once again, Janice’s voice brought his attention back to where it should be.

  “Er...and then perhaps we can spend some more time together?” Nice one, thought Jack.

  “I’d be delighted,” replied Janice. “Maybe we’ll make it to breakfast together tomorrow morning.”

  Winking suggestively, she kissed Jack lightly on the cheek, pulled her coat around herself and headed out to the restaurant.

  ***

  Mike Simpson felt a hand shaking his shoulder which stirred him from his slumber. Groggily opening his eyes, he looked out of the train window to see that they were crossing a metal girder bridge over a river that looked like it was at least fifty feet below the railway. The train manager was announcing their arrival at Preston and Mike turned to the person that had woken him at such an opportune moment. The seat next to him was empty, and it occurred to him that he hadn’t told anybody where he was getting off. His ticket hadn’t been checked; the train had been packed for most of the journey making it impossible for anybody to make a meaningful attempt to check travel documents between the frequent stops.

  Unravelling himself from the position in which he had slept for the past two hours, Mike retrieved his bag and joined the throng that was queuing to get to the door as the train pulled into the platform. As he alighted, the wind, funnelled through the station building, howled and moaned and plucked at Mike’s thin top. Rooting in his bag, he extracted a lightweight anorak and pulled it over his head without unzipping it. He then followed the crowd, assuming that they were all heading for the exit. The multitude directed him up some steps, over a bridge spanning the tracks, down another staircase and into the central aisle of the station. At this point, he once again realised that he still didn’t know where to go next. Pulling his map from a pocket in his bag, he studied the area that he thought his search for answers should start.

  “Lost, are you?” The voice came from a diminutive Asian man dressed in the long grey overcoat issued by Virgin trains to its station staff. “Can I help?”

  “Yeah, thanks,” replied Mike. “I’m trying to get to this place here.”

  He pointed to his destination on the map to the man who took it from him and thought for a moment.

  “Right. Do you know Preston at all?” When Mike shook his head, the man continued. “You need to go up those steps there,” he pointed to another staircase opposite the one Mike had just descended. “Go out of the door, then straight across the road into the shopping centre. Follow your nose, up an escalator then to the front door of the centre. Turn right out of the front, and you will see three bus stops in a row. Go to the furthest one, then catch the one-eleven bus. Ask the driver to drop you off at the Bridge Inn.”

  Thanking the man, Mike followed his directions out of the station. As he exited the building, the wind and rain almost slammed into him. Pulling the hood of his coat up, Mike ran over the zebra crossing between the station and the shopping centre, only to wait for what seemed like ages as the automatic door opened in front of him. Inside the centre, he walked towards the escalator that he could see at right angles ahead of him. Taking it up one floor, he was momentarily confused as all he could see ahead was the entrance to Debenham’s coffee shop. Realising that people were approaching from his left, Mike turned th
at way and, after a few yards, spotted the exit to the shopping centre. Passing through another automatic door, the entrance extended beyond the door giving some shelter as Mike looked for the bus stop. Spying the row of steel and glass shelters, he made a dash for the first one, waited for a moment, then sprinted once more past the second to the last one.

  He didn’t have long to wait before a green single-deck bus, sporting the appropriate number, approached down the bus lane that took up half the street. Five minutes later, having made the appropriate request of the driver, Mike found himself once more out in the full force of the terrible weather. The bus stop was placed next to a large stone wall, with a matching edifice on the opposite side of the road. It only took Mike a moment to realise that he was looking at a pair of bridge abutments. The one opposite had tall, mature trees on top which were waving wildly as they were buffeted by the gale. An embankment curved away to the left, behind the houses on the other side. Mike crossed the road quickly, seeking shelter as well as being drawn towards what he recognised from the map as the remains of Ribble Junction. Following the path at the foot of the embankment, the same place where, although Mike couldn’t know it, George Williams had been spooked two days earlier. The embankment was lined by a wooden fence which was broken down in places and Mike used one of the gaps to clamber up onto the muddy slope and climb to the level area at the top.

  Inside the canopy of the trees, the wind was less violent and the rain fell a little more vertically. Mikes jeans were already wet through and clung to his legs as he made his way away from the road. Ahead of him, the former track bed went either straight away from the road or, as he had observed before, headed off to the left. Choosing the straight route, Mike walked for no more than a hundred yards before being brought to a halt by a thin wire fence stretched across in front of him. Wiping the rain from his eyes, Mike could see that there was a gap in the embankment ahead where a path had once been bridged by the railway. Turning back, he took the alternative path. The trees seemed closer together this way, forming a dense wood that prevented him walking in a straight line for more than a couple of paces. Rounding one particularly large tree, Mike suddenly came face to face with a man who, like himself, was dripping wet.

  Overcoming his initial shock, Mike realised that the man was standing still, just staring at him. Furthermore, he wasn’t wearing a coat, just some brown overalls. At that moment, the stench of rotting seaweed struck Mike’s nostrils, like the smell that had heralded the appearance of the spectres at home but much, much stronger. He suddenly felt the presence of more people, crowding round him, but couldn’t see anybody else. Panicking, he turned to run, but his legs had turned to jelly. The smell, the feelings of hatred that he had experienced before, combined and grew stronger, blotting out all normal sensations. Mike felt himself falling, losing consciousness. Just before everything went black, he heard a voice hiss in his ear.

  Now you will avenge us.

  Thursday 1000

  The wind found every gap in the wooden sash windows on the front of George Williams’ house, generating a cacophony of moaning and rattling. Rain was seeping in too, making George even angrier than his normally cantankerous disposition. To make matters worse, the paper boy had left his newspaper stuck halfway out of the letterbox and when George had finally made his way downstairs to retrieve it the paper had simply fallen apart; the half in his hand having detached from the grey lump of papier maché that constituted the portion that was exposed to the elements.

  The nearest newsagent was just over the bridge on the other side of the river. It was a ten minute walk in normal conditions, but there was no way that George would walk very far in the storm. Instead, he rummaged through the scraps of paper next to the telephone that constituted his address book, finally finding Kevin Anderson’s mobile number. Furiously stabbing at the buttons on the telephone, his mood was not improved when, in his haste, he dialled a wrong number. Slamming the handset back on to the body of the device, he closed his eyes and took a deep breath to calm himself before making another attempt. This time the number was correct, although it rang for a considerable time before a sleepy voice answered it.

  “Kevin, George here. Can you come round?” George told Kevin about his newspaper, exaggerating the importance of his need to have a copy by claiming that there was a big railway story in that day’s edition.

  “Er...yeah...hang on a minute.” George could hear Kevin talking to his mother, with whom he now lived again, asking if he could borrow her car. Clearly, he hadn’t told her about his driving ban, as she agreed without hesitation.

  “Be there in ten minutes,” said Kevin. “Bye.” George didn’t bother replying.

  Twenty minutes later, a car horn sounded outside. George peered through the bay window but could see nothing. Deciding that it must be Kevin, he pulled on the old woollen railway coat that had served him for nearly forty years and dashed outside, pausing only to slam the front door behind him. By the time that he reached the car, George’s legs below the calf-length coat were soaked and rain had forced its way past his collar and was running down his neck. Inside the car the environment was little better; it may have been dry but Kevin was in need of a bath and some clean clothes. The smell of body odour was so strong George almost gagged. Without a word, he imperiously waved his hand to indicate that Kevin should drive on.

  Ten minutes later, the route in a car being somewhat longer than on foot, they were parked outside the newsagent. George scuttled inside, reappearing a few minutes later with his hand inside his coat. Kevin turned the car around and set off back towards George’s house. The route to the shop had taken them past the stone abutments adjacent to the Bridge Inn, and as the car approached them once more a long-haired young man, dressed in jeans and an anorak, stepped into the road, turning to stare at the occupants.

  Kevin, swearing loudly, reacted quickly enough to stop the car ten feet from the youth, who didn’t flinch. Opening the door, Kevin began to remonstrate with the lad, every other word beginning with ‘f’. The youth simply ignored him, continuing to stare at the car. George watched between sweeps of the windscreen wipers as Kevin approached the young man, noting with some discomfort that he was the target of the strangely lifeless eyes. Kevin had got within a yard of the dripping figure when the acne-scarred face head suddenly turned to stare at him instead. At the same time, Kevin suddenly felt the malice in the eyes that fixed upon him. There was something about this man, something that made the normally fearless (when it came to fists) Kevin Anderson stop in his tracks. For probably the first time, Kevin was truly afraid, but he didn’t know why. Avoiding eye contact, he slowly backed away. The youth’s head turned back to the car, and George felt as though the eyes were burning into him.

  The young man lifted his right arm and extended his index finger, pointing at George.

  Come with us.

  It was those voices again, the same ones that had terrified George on the pathway only a few yards from where he now sat. Frozen in his seat, George could do nothing as the youth approached his side of the car and opened the door. Again, he heard the voices:

  Come with us.

  George realised at that moment that the lad’s lips weren’t moving, although it seemed as though the sounds emanated from him. Fixated by the staring eyes, George felt utterly compelled to obey the command. The youth turned and began to walk away. Kevin could only stand and watch, helpless, as his mentor followed the silent figure past the abutments and down the path next to the Methodist Church. As they rounded the corner, Kevin felt as if a weight had been taken from his shoulders. Pausing for long enough to close the car door, he ran towards where they had disappeared. Turning the corner, his eyes frantically searched for any sign of either man. The wind tugged at his sodden track suit and the rain streamed down his face as he realised that both had simply vanished.

  ***

  “Shall we return to the scene of the crime?” Even more subdued than the previous evening, Cedric Morgan’s voice
had an air of resignation. “Presumably you were wondering why I wanted to meet you here.” This was clearly a statement, not a question.