But he would never want those he cared about to see what he had to. To witness just how dark the real world is.
For that, for the sake of keeping them safe, he refused to answer. Angela, through sharp intakes of breath which told him she had broken, spoke to him.
'Your daughter sits at home, asking me why Daddy doesn't visit anymore. 'Where has Daddy gone?' 'Why does Daddy always seem sad?' What am I supposed to tell her?'
Bermuda shook his head, leaning forward and taking in more toxic smoke.
'Look. I tried to be the doting dad, but I can't be. Okay, I can't be. Not because I don't want to. There is nobody in this or any other world that I love more than you and Chloe, but I can't be that dad. The world won't let me.'
Angela reached out nervously, a manicured hand slowly lowering itself onto his rounded shoulder. He shook slightly, feeling her touch for the first time in over three years.
'This world isn't trying to hurt you, Franklyn.'
'No, you're right. This world isn't.'
She slowly removed her hand, weeping softly as she retracted her love from a man she had wanted since the moment they had met. He had been hers, but she knew that somewhere along the way he had lost himself.
The likelihood of him returning had left town a long time ago.
'Franklyn.' Her words stammered out, each one doing their best to disappear before reaching him. 'Look at me.'
As he shook his head, she cast her eyes to his arms.
The avalanche of tattoos.
The hideous, random scrawlings of ink.
He was gone and she knew it. A new wave of tears crashed through her skull, pouring from her eyes like two waterfalls. Her voice, broken and shaking, rose in volume.
'LOOK AT ME!'
A few commuters turned with interest, seeing what looked like either a domestic in public or a callous breakup. Either way, all the sympathy would sit with Angela and Bermuda knew that. Taking a deep breath, he swung his leg over the seat, turning so he faced her across the table. His heart stopped for that moment.
He hadn't laid eyes on her in over a year. His Angela, who he had loved unconditionally from the very moment he knew she existed. She looked so beautiful, despite her face painted with the pain he had caused with long black streaks that careered down her cheeks like stalactites.
He knew she would never be his again.
The edges of his vision, the frame around the striking woman before him began to blur, his own tears creeping into his periphery.
He tried to speak, but words escaped him. Trapped in his own sadness, he watched as she slowly dabbed at her eyes, shaking her head in disappointment. Finally she spoke, zipping up her handbag and standing up. The sun bathed around her, casting her shadow across his handsome face.
'You were the one who chose to stay away.' She stepped to the side, a blast of brightness hitting Bermuda, sparkling off of the tear that ran down his cheek. 'This is all your doing.'
She turned and stormed through the adjacent crowd, barging past surprised tourists before disappearing into the station to head home. Bermuda watched her leave, wiping away the evidence of his broken heart. He sat in the sun for a while, an ever-increasing pile of cigarette butts scattered around his feet.
'None of this is my doing,' he angrily said to himself, cursing the world for the 'gift' it had bestowed upon him and hating himself for losing all that he cared about.
Heading towards the nearest entrance to the station, he wanted to jump on the first train that would take him to anywhere that his life didn't exist.
HE STARED AT THEM ALL in disgust.
There was something ugly about the human race that infuriated him greatly. An air of entitlement, a true arrogance.
Man thinks man is dominant.
He smiled, crooked, sharp teeth that hung from his grey lips. They were so wrong, and it would only be a matter of time before he could show them. Show them all, one by one, what real power and dominance is. He had already demonstrated it to his own kind.
He looked around the ship—the thick wooden slabs symmetrically tacked together, only a few thin cuts of light breaking through in random gaps. The humans passed him by, unaware of who or what he was.
He was their reckoning.
The wooden vessel was somewhat of a museum, a bewildering tribute to a bygone era that he had never witnessed but had outlived by centuries. These people of different colours and languages wandered round taking empty photos of things they didn't care about. Nothing but a herd, a race that needs to follow.
His arm, covered by the sleeve of his tatty blazer, rested on a nearby stand; his top hat sat proudly on his shaggy white hair. In his other hand he held the twelve-sided artifact, his fingers coiled around it like an attacking python.
It was almost time.
There was no selection process.
No criteria one of these useless creatures had to meet.
He would just know.
With his jet-black eyes scanning the inside of the Cutty Sark, they finally rested on a portly gentleman wobbling through a small group of people with a camera in his hand and beads of sweat dripping down a flustered face. He spoke with a thick twang, unlike the usual accent he had heard from the regulars.
This man was a long way from home and was about to travel even further.
A high-pitched scratch echoed through his skull as he dragged his nails across the wooden stand before pushing himself upright. Like a lion stalking its prey, he slowly circled, walking between a few tourists who shuddered, a bewilderment spreading across their faces due to the scorching heat outside. The portly man leant in close to a glass cabinet, squinting his eyes to read the small plaque.
The man with the top hat leant in, his nose a mere few centimetres from the oblivious tourist. He took a deep sniff, inhaling the foul stench of a perspiring human. His cavernous eyes emanated hate and he bared his razor teeth.
'You are my one,' he whispered, knowing he couldn't be heard.
With his hands clasped around the strange device, he followed the gentleman as he walked towards the corner of the ship, his interest piqued by another display unit.
It would only take ten minutes for the rest of his tour group to report him missing.
CHAPTER SEVEN
THE Cutty Sark sits in the heart of Greenwich, London. Once belonging to the Jock Willis Shipping Line, the magnificent wooden structure lies along the concrete in the busy town, now nothing more than nearly a thousand tonnes of British history. With tourists scattered around the large space that accommodates the impressive vessel, the sun drenched it in an immaculate glow. Its vast, white sails slowly danced on the breeze; the mast they swung from reaching up towards the sky.
Originally built in the eighteen hundreds, the ship had undergone two renovations, both due to fires. Although repaired and components replaced, the ship drew many an interested traveller, all of them walking the narrow interiors or experiencing the warmth upon the deck of the magnificent ship. Middle-aged tourists snapping photos, young couples posing for selfies.
The beautiful ship brought a touch of elegance and class to an already smart area of London. The surrounding streets, busy with foot traffic in and out of the designer shops, were dissected by alleyways, all leading towards hidden market stalls.
On a day as hot as this day, there were so many people out. So many potential witnesses.
Yet Bermuda, as he sat in the forecourt of The Gypsy Moth, a large pub that overlooked the tremendous ship and the neighbouring Thames, knew that no one had seen anything.
Not one person had a clue as to how Josh Cooper went missing.
Argyle had found Bermuda as he sat on a train; the heartbreak of meeting his ex-wife earlier that morning had lead him to embark on a journey to anywhere. He was fairly sure he was halfway to Cambridge when his partner sat down next to him. Off at the next stop, Bermuda boarded a train back towards London with a keen interest.
This was similar.
Cooper had been
with a tour group, eight in total, and all of them were inside the narrow hall of the Cutty Sark. Portly and standing over six foot, the large American was hard to misplace, especially inside the historic ship.
'What is our plan of action?'
Argyle stood beside Bermuda, his muscular arms folded across his armour, his sword glistening in the sun as it lay strapped to his meaty back. Bermuda, with the white smoke of his cigarette ghosting upwards, reached for the half drunk pint of Doombar before him.
'It's the same. I can feel it.'
'We don't even know what the first one was.'
'I told you. That symbol was not of this world. I could feel it when I touched it. It latched onto me.'
'Latched on?'
'Never mind.' Bermuda lifted his glass quickly, swigging his drink and trying to end the conversation. He didn't want anyone to know about the ever increasing pull the Otherside had. Especially not Argyle.
'We need to inspect the ship.'
'Absolutely.' Bermuda pulled out his notepad, his heavily tattooed arms looking brighter in the glare of the summer sunshine. 'And I guarantee we will find this.'
Slapping the pad in front of Argyle, he tapped the page. Argyle scanned his grey eyes over the scrawled symbol, the rough lines that Bermuda sketched forming a twelve-sided shape unlike any her had seen before.
Before he could speak, a young waitress who had previously flirted with Bermuda walked up to the table to collect his now empty glass. With a coy smile, she dropped a card in front of him, her phone number scrawled across it. He smiled at her, imagining what the inevitable sex would be like between them.
Without her knowledge, she walked directly at Argyle, who quickly moved out of the way. Humans pass through Others continuously, the outcome being a cold chill running down their spine. Always passed off as a sudden chill or 'someone walking over their grave', Bermuda knew the truth. But with Argyle's latch stone, she would have collided with what she would see as nothing.
Argyle saved her the confusion, his noble compassion drawing a smile from Bermuda as he stood up.
'Let's go check it out, Big Guy.'
He slid the chair back and stood, squinting his eyes through the glare of the sun. Hundreds of tourists were huddled near the entrance to the boat, all of them nattering in annoyance at the police presence denying their entrance. Having been called to the scene by the hysterical wife of the recently missing, they had evacuated the building and were awaiting a forensics team to search the vessel—standard procedure that Bermuda knew would be a pain in the arse.
He stepped from the beer garden of the pub onto the street, throwing back a glance at a disappointed waitress, scorning himself for leaving her card on the table. Argyle, having witnessed his behaviour with women before, raised an eyebrow which Bermuda shrugged off.
'We don't have time for me to be Prince Charming.'
His excuse seemed to work, Argyle refusing to ask any more questions. The last thing Bermuda wanted to admit was that he, for a ridiculous reason, felt like he would be being disloyal to Sophie.
He had only met her once.
As they walked across the large concrete square which homed the Cutty Sark, Bermuda noticed another small group of people gathering round a small outburst of ringing bells and the clacking of colliding wood. He stooped to get a better look, the large thwacks of wood alerting Argyle, who protectively drew an arm across his partner.
'Easy, Argyle.' He chuckled, gently pushing away the arm. 'It's just Morris Dancing.'
Argyle, scanning the scene, slowly retreated before stepping towards the group. Bermuda, walking towards the boat, noticed his partner’s detour and quickly jogged towards the watching crowd. Having carefully manoeuvred between the humans, Argyle stood at the front of the onlookers, his grey eyes wide with enchantment at the synchronised British tradition before him. After excusing his way to the front of the group, Bermuda stood next to his otherworldly friend.
'What are you doing? We have to go and inspect the ship.'
'The movements are intoxicating. Such precision.'
Bermuda, aware that a few people were sceptically looking at him, smiled.
'You like it?'
'The uniforms, whilst obviously strange, are rich with nobility. Their chanting is a proud voice.'
'Why don't you go and join in?' Bermuda joked, rattling a few Tic Tacs from his box whilst a concerned tourist stepped away from him.
'I have not been invited,' Argyle responded sternly.
'So what? Go and bust some shapes with them.'
Argyle turned, his frown almost pulling his short, dark hair over his face.
'That would be an intrusion of their display.'
'Okay, Big Guy. Tell you what, I'm going to go and investigate a missing person. You know, the reason we are here. You can stand and watch the funny dancers and I'll come and find you.'
'You speak like I am neglecting my duties,' Argyle said, his voice revealing a hint of disappointment.
'Not at all. If I need you, I'll give you a shout, okay?' Bermuda looked back to the dancers, their chanting trying its best to drown out the shrill of the bell. He looked back to his friend, smiling at the surprising delight the performance held for him. 'I'll be back in five.'
Argyle nodded, his face almost relenting and producing a smile. Bermuda waited, but when it never surfaced he meandered through the random people before him, breaking out into the space before he approached the other crowd. A female police officer stood by entrance; behind her, two strips of police tape stretched across the glass entrance to the ship.
Officer Karen Riley looked at the angry tourist with her brown eyes, her face displaying the necessary sympathy as the man berated her for ruining his visit. Her blond hair, tied in a ponytail, bobbed under her hat, the warmth of the sun adding extra strain to her petite frame, which was holding her stab-proof vest. She stopped suddenly as Bermuda tried to walk towards the door, bypassing the crowd who looked on with intrigue.
'Excuse me, sir,' she said with a thick Northern Irish accent. 'The ship is closed until further notice.'
'I know. I am here to inspect the disappearance of Josh Cooper.'
'Sir, that is a police matter.'
He smiled his warmest smile, slightly upset that his usual charm had no apparent effect on the woman. With a heavily inked arm, he whipped his badge from his pocket, flipping it in front of her scanning eyes.
'I'm sorry, sir. But my orders are that nobody goes in. Please step aside.'
'I literally need five minutes,' Bermuda begged, his patience at the police rejecting him beginning to reach a boiling point.
'Sir, please step aside.' She hardened her tone, her hand reaching up to her radio. With the potential of being arrested looming, Bermuda held his hands up in surrender. Over her shoulder, he noticed a hulking officer staring in their direction, a keenness etched on his face like a shark coming across a school of fish.
'Sorry to bother you, Officer,' Bermuda said, stepping away and pushing a cigarette between his lips. He blew a cloud out into the warm air, watching it dance against the pale blue background. Circling the mighty wooden structure, he clenched his fists in a small suppression of anger. Someone had gone missing. Another person snatched from a world that had no idea how.
It annoyed him more that he didn't know either.
Without the chance to inspect the inside of the ship, Bermuda couldn't prove his theory. That crude, twelve-sided symbol is part of it.
He knew it.
The engraved marking reached for him, the touch of the Otherside ebbing at his fingertips. If that symbol was inside the boat, then he knew he had something to run with.
As his eyes searched the wooden panels, a piercing scream of terror roared through the air.
AS BERMUDA HAD EXITED the crowd, Argyle turned his attention back to the dancing group before him. Fascinated with the elegance of their moves and the regimented formations of their stick striking, he found himself immersed in the show. It remi
nded him of his life before the BTCO. Before Bermuda.
An existence that was so far away, and one which could never be revisited.
Shaking his wretched memories of his life on the Otherside, he watched as the more seasoned humans before him skipped in unison, their bells ringing like a flock of birds chirping overhead.
Suddenly he felt something gently collide with his leg.
Shaken from his trance, he looked down, noticing an infant human sitting on the ground, confusion spread across its face at having collided with an invisible wall. He had seen many of the smaller humans, all of them lacking the intelligence of their elder parents. Whilst they struggled to speak and walk, he did appreciate their innocence, and he stared down at this young child.
Its face crumpled with pain, the anguish of hitting the floor etching slowly through its features. Suddenly, it began to cry.
With a growing concern, Argyle reached down with a mighty hand, grabbing the back of her T-shirt and scrunching it. As he hoisted her into the air, the surrounding people gasped, moving quickly away at the phenomenon before them.
As Argyle held the child to his eye line, inspecting her injuries and trying to offer a motion of calm, the rest of the world witnessed the infant rising slowly into the air and levitating on the spot.
A piercing scream of terror cut through the air as a young woman raced over, her eyes streaming tears and her panicked words of calm spluttering from her short breaths. As the woman approached, she extended her arms towards what he assumed was her infant. Argyle gladly offered the child to the bemused mother, who snatched the child from what looked like thin air, her red eyes bulging with fear as she hurriedly calmed down the wailing child.
Bermuda raced through the crowd and began hastily ushering Argyle in any direction but there. The gentle warrior looked back in dismay.
'What the hell are you doing?' Bermuda sternly said, trying his best to keep his voice down.
'That young human was injured and I was the cause.' He again looked back in the direction, the mother soothingly tapping the young child's back as it clung to her. 'I was ensuring there was no damage.'
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