The Dark Horde

by Brewin

  Brian’s lips pinched together as he booted the pistol at her. It flew across the room and into her thick shins with a fleshy thud.

  “I ought to shoot you for that,” Annette said without flinching.

  Brian shrugged as he looked over at Robert rising slowly to his feet and backing away.

  Then Annette bent down to pick up Brian’s pistol...

  You stupid bitch.

  In the time it took for Annette to reach past her torso, Brian had crossed the room to take a running kick at her lowered head. His foot smashed into her face, throwing her backwards in a spray of spittle, teeth and purple blood. She landed on the other side of the corridor, whilst the pistol landed near his feet.

  Purple, eh?

  A bloody smile cracked Annette’s lips as her eyes opened onto the barrel of Brian’s pistol staring down at her.

  “I cannot–”

  She ate the first bullet before the next two struck her forehead, silencing her.

  Brian regarded the mangled remains of Annette before him and Douglas’ corpse in the corner of the room. Satisfied they moved no more, Brian turned to Robert whimpering against the wall...

  “What do I do with you?”

  WEDNESDAY 8:41 AM

  Consciousness assembled slowly...

  A horrid stench of unclean beasts. A pervasive red glow, the borders of which flickered with moving figures. Minds in whispered conversation: “We cannot take him... He slips from our grasp.”

  The cold, hard reality of the room materialised into being around Jason. Leather straps bound him to a bed, digging into the flesh on his wrists and ankles. High on the wall facing him, sunlight entered through a small, brick-lined window blocked by iron bars. Dull grey brick walls surrounded him, tangled cobwebs hanging from their corners. Not far behind the dusty pillow his head rested on, he could make out the stout iron bars of his police cell.

  What the fuck just happened?

  The sound of keys jiggled in the lock behind his head.

  Jason stretched his head back to see an officer, slightly built and boyish-looking, slide aside the bars to his cell. Smiling, the officer limped through the entrance and looked down at him.

  “What the fuck is going on?” Jason demanded.

  Giggling, the officer drew out his pistol and pointed it at Jason’s head.

  “Aaahhh! For fuck’s sake, what are you doing?”

  The officer giggled again but said nothing.

  I’m going to die!

  Then there was a voice from the corridor behind them, “I knew I should have killed you Robert, you slimy fuck.”

  The officer called Robert turned to the voice without taking the gun off Jason. “If you shoot me Brian, I’ll shoot him.”

  Brian’s answer was nonchalant. “Fine.”

  Jason interjected, “Hey! I haven’t done anything! I don’t even know how I got here!”

  Neither of them answered Jason.

  “Tell me how you got out of those handcuffs before I kill you like the worm you are,” Brian said.

  “I believe I can answer that,” came a third voice further away and deeper than the rest.

  Two shots from different pistols fired in quick succession and Jason heard bodies crashing to the ground. The officer nearest him was one of them.

  Then everything was still.

  Jason angled his head around, but could see only walls and ceiling. His heart hammered in his brain.

  Tell me I’m fucking dreaming!

  Wait... Someone’s moving. And it’s not the officer who’d fallen next to me...

  I can’t believe this is happening! I’m fucked! I can’t do anything!

  Down the corridor, someone burst into laughter and declared, “Douglas, you fuck! You shot your own man, haha!”

  A dull thud sounded from the proximity of the speaker, followed by a low groan.

  “I dunno how you got back up, you determined bastard, but I’m gunna make sure that this time, you don’t get up again.”

  A rasping reply, pained and furious, “I’m already dead, Brian! And I’ll–”

  The gun sounded twice more. Silence followed.

  Excruciating silence. Seconds passed in agonising, surreal slow-motion... Unrelenting.

  Then came the sound of approaching footsteps...

  The middle-aged face of an officer emerged into view. Solid, a little unshaven like himself, with intense blue-grey eyes.

  The officer smiled. “It’s your lucky day!”

  “Worst fucking day of my life! Um... What is going on?”

  The officer bent down to retrieve a pistol from the body at his feet, pausing to check the body wasn’t moving.

  He rose and looked back at Jason. “I wish I knew. Have you used a gun before?” He held out a pistol to Jason, even though he was still bound to the bed.

  Jason frowned. “Yeah... I do have a shooting licence. But–”

  “Good, ‘cos you may have to use it if you wanna get out of here alive.”

  Jason forced a laugh. “Well yeah, I would like to get out of here alive. But tell me what’s going on first. I need to know!”

  “Look, I don’t know either. All I can say is that some major supernatural shit is going on and we’re getting out of here.”

  Jason nodded with a look of confusion. “Riiight.”

  Brian began to loosen the straps immobilising Jason. “Once we get to safety, we’ll be able to talk. But right now we’re not safe. It’s only a matter of time before someone or something comes here looking for us.”

  Jason didn’t ask any more questions after that.

  WEDNESDAY 10:57 AM

  Seeking.

  Bernard drove down the highway to Melbourne, passing sodden paddocks dotted with glum cattle and trees. Rain hissed like static on the windscreen, dulling his senses but channelling his thoughts.

  The therapy session with Danny Malone was almost precisely this time yesterday. And yet Bernard still struggled to make sense of it...

  Either he himself was suffering psychosis, or these demons Danny perceived were real.

  He clearly heard that unearthly malicious voice at the end of yesterday’s session, simultaneously issuing from Danny and the phone Bernard held. Yet the recording he made bore no trace of any such voice, an unexplained anomaly considering it detected the background wind.

  And as horrifying as it all was, it was also familiar...

  Henry Wilcox, a former schizophrenic patient, spoke in that same horrid voice whilst under hypnosis and was of a similar age then to Danny now. He was also the same patient that Danny referred to in yesterday’s session...

  Henry’s hallucinations and delusions were compelling in a way that even now, almost ten years later, Bernard loathed to contemplate. At times, notably the last time he saw Henry, he actually shared the hallucinations: an untenable situation. He terminated future appointments with Henry and sought psychiatric help for himself. He lost contact with the Wilcox family and two years passed before Bernard practiced again. In the years since, memories of events faded and were easily dismissed as fictional.

  But now, by some cruel machination of fate, the Dark Horde as Henry called them, had returned to haunt Bernard: driving him to seek answers.

  Bernard made contact with Henry’s mother Mary this morning... And learnt that Henry was reported missing only two days ago and had left what appeared to be a suicide note on tape.

  He immediately left for Melbourne to see her.

  Shortly before midday, Bernard reached Mary’s house: a modest home on a quiet street in Ivanhoe, ten kilometres north east of Melbourne’s centre.

  It was still raining.

  Bernard parked his car on the kerb and looked up at the neatly presented brick-veneer house with a patent dread...

  What horrors hide within these walls, waiting to be revealed?

  Bernard grabbed his briefcase and stepped out into the rain with his umbrella open. Strong winds lashed him, drenching his suit and seeping chill into hi
s bones.

  He followed a paved driveway lined with rose bushes to the front door, noting that curtains were drawn across all the windows.

  Curious.

  He pressed the doorbell and stepped back. He stood awkwardly in the rain a few moments before ringing again with greater insistence.

  But only the wind howled in reply.

  Bernard chomped his mouth as he considered his options. Nonchalant, he shrugged and tried the doorhandle...

  It was unlocked. Bernard stepped back, frowning in thought.

  What should I do now? Surely I should enter? That’s why I tested the handle, isn’t it?

  His heart racing, Bernard opened the front door, adrenalin honing his senses...

  An orderly lounge greeted him, featuring an olive velvet sofa and chairs around a dormant fireplace. A bitter stench stained the air and past the kitchen on the other side of the room, chanting could be heard, interspersed with animalistic grunts.

  “We are as one, as many are we...”

  Bernard called out,“Hello? Is anybody home?”

  “Become one, once more be...”

  Too horrified for rational thought, Bernard strode forward towards the sound, leaving his briefcase and umbrella by the door...

  I have to know.

  “We are as one, as many are we...”

  As Bernard crept past the kitchen and into the dining room beyond, an empty mug crashed from the dining table onto the carpet. He jolted in fright but there was no perpetrator to be seen.

  Chants and grunts issued from a tape in a stereo against the wall facing him. Half-eaten butter and bread lay on the table next to a box of tissues. A glass side door overlooked a still garden and the door to the rest of the house was closed.

  Maybe it was just sheer random chance that I happened to enter at the moment the mug overbalanced... I hope so.

  “Hellooo? Hellooo?” he called again.

  Only the tape answered, “Become one, once more be...”

  The recording stirred unwelcome memories, releasing hidden terrors of his inner psyche...

  Time to turn that blasted tape off.

  Bernard moved to the stereo and was shocked to see that the tape had already stopped and yet the sound continued unabated, driven by some unseen force.

  In blind panic, he turned off every stereo switch he could find. Silence ensued and relief washed over him...

  Then the phone rang.

  Bernard spun around to stare suspiciously at the phone ringing on the cluttered kitchen bench behind him.

  Surely I should get it? I am here lawfully after all.

  With a sigh, he relented.

  “Hello, Wilcox residence.”

  “Good morning sir, this is Senior Sergeant Brian Derwent of Howqua Hills Police Station.”

  “Oh, thank goodness!” Bernard wiped sweat from his brow.

  “Whom would I be speaking to?”

  “Dr Bernard Russell. I’m just visiting here and–”

  “Ahhh, you’re Henry Wilcox’s former psychiatrist, right?”

  “Yes, that’s correct. How did you come to know that so readily?”

  “You were on my list of people to contact regarding Henry Wilcox. Are you there with his parents now?”

  “Well, I had arranged to meet Mary Wilcox here, however I have just arrived to find the house abandoned–”

  “Shit.”

  “With some strange recording, I believe Henry’s, playing on the stereo.”

  “What do you mean by strange?”

  “Um...”

  At that moment, the stereo leapt back into unearthly life, this time in that horrible demonic voice he knew only too well...

  “Weee are as oneee, as manyyy are weee.”

  Bernard shuddered so violently he almost dropped the phone. “Like that! Can you hear it? It’s playing of its own accord!”

  “Becomeee oneee, once moreee beee.”

  “Actually, I can only hear you.”

  The voice intensified, “WEEE ARE AS ONEEE!”

  “It’s getting so loud I can hardly hear you!”

  “AS MANYYY ARE WEEE!”

  “Look, whatever’s going on, I think you’d better get out of there.”

  “Agreed!”

  “BECOMEEE ONEEE!”

  “Can you meet me at Ivanhoe station tonight at 9pm?”

  Bernard replied, “Did you say Ivanhoe station 9pm?”

  “ONCE MOREEE BEEE!”

  “Yes, it’s vitally important that we speak as soon as possible.”

  Then the front door slammed. Heavy breathing followed.

  “Something’s coming in the front door!”

  “Then run!”

  And run he did, dropping the phone and bolting out of the glass side door...

  As laughter chased his heels.

  WEDNESDAY 12:01 PM

  The final battle.

  He rolled over the bunker and surged in, machine gun blazing, a merciless destroyer, obliterating all in his way.

  One of the enemies leapt from a bush nearby. It was Jake with a thick wooden stick – a fearsome bazooka – on his shoulder and preparing to fire.

  “Ah-ah-ah-ah!” Tom went, sweeping across Jake in an arc of imaginary bullets.

  Jake stood unmoving and fired his deadly weapon back. “Bqwa!”

  “I shot you first!” Tom protested, lowering his stick.

  “Did not!”

  “You’re a cheat, Jake! I shot you first and you know it!”

  Running footsteps approached. Tom turned to face them...

  “Ah-ah-ah-ah-ah! Got ya!” Paul boomed as he shot Tom. “Start counting!”

  Jake turned to Tom. “Okay you got me, Tom. But we’re both counting now, hahaha.”

  “YOU’RE STILL A CHEAT!” Tom shouted as he ran off counting, trying to put as much distance between him and the other two as possible.

  Jake and Paul looked at each other.

  “You counted to twenty yet?” Paul said.

  “Haha yeah, near enough.” Jake grinned.

  “Let’s get him.”

  Suddenly, two others joined them from across the oval: Howard and Arthur, carrying half-eaten sandwiches and fruit.

  “Can we play?” Howard said.

  Paul screwed his face with sudden hate. “Arthur can play, but we aren’t gunna let you play! Your dad’s a murderer!”

  “HE IS NOT!” shouted Howard.

  “What did you say that for, Paul?” Jake said. “His dad’s going after the murderer with your dad!”

  Paul spat and leered at the shorter Howard. “My dad, not your dad, is the boss of the police now. And he told me last night that your dad is the killer!”

  “I’ll kill you!” Howard said as he hurled his sandwiches at Paul.

  By the time Paul said “Missed!” Howard had followed up his attack.

  Paul pulled away from a punch glancing his cheek. Another one Howard threw caught only air as Paul stepped clear. For a moment they faced off against each other with clenched fists.

  Arthur stood petrified.

  Jake grinned and began chanting, “Fight! Fight! Fight! Fight!”

  “C’mon, killer!” Paul taunted.

  Howard ran at Paul blindly, doing windmills with his arms. Jake laughed as Paul easily stepped clear of Howard’s wild swings and crash-tackled him side-on to the ground. Paul landed on Howard and immediately began throwing punches of his own at Howard’s head.

  Arthur finally acted to defend his best friend, rushing in to pull Paul off Howard by the shoulders. Paul landed one more thump into Howard’s face before relenting and allowing Howard up. Howard was covered in dirt but seemingly unhurt save a fat lip.

  “Are you okay?” Arthur said, putting a hand on Howard’s shoulder.

  Howard didn’t take his eyes off Paul, who returned the stare. “Yeah.”

  Tom had wandered back with Jeremy, the only other ones playing. “What’s going on?” he said.

  Jake looked over at the new arr
ivals. “Paul and Howard are having a fight and Howard’s losing haha.”

  Paul taunted Howard again, “C’mon wimp, have another go!”

  Arthur stepped in front of Howard to block his view. “Howard! Give it a rest, will ya?”

  “C’mon, fight!” Jake hollered.

  Arthur turned to Jake. “No more fighting!”

  Tom spoke up, “Yeah c’mon guys, we’ll get in trouble.”

  Jake laughed. “If Howard isn’t already! Just look at him!”

  “And Paul,” Arthur reminded him.

  “Maybe we should play something else,” Tom suggested.

  “Let’s play chasey!” Jeremy said.

  “I’m not playing with him!” Howard pointed at Paul.

  “No one was asking you!” Paul retorted.

  “C’mon guys, shake and make up.” Arthur dragged Howard and Paul’s hands together.

  Jake looked disappointed, but Tom and Jeremy encouraged the idea. Eventually the combatants shook hands limply.

  “Say sorry to Howard for what you said, Paul,” Arthur said.

  Paul smirked. “Sorry.”

  “And say that you didn’t mean it.”

  “I didn’t mean it.”

  I don’t believe you one bit, Paul, and I hate you more than ever. But I guess I’ll let it drop for now and get on with the game. We’ll settle this later...

  “Yeah, okay,” Howard muttered.

  “Alright everyone, put your foot in,” Jeremy said.

  Arthur, Tom, Jake and Paul put a foot forward into a circle around Jeremy’s foot.

  Paul looked at Howard. “You playin’, wimp?”

  Jake laughed and Howard shot back, “You’re the wimp!”

  “STOP IT GUYS!” Arthur shouted.

  Howard sighed and put his foot into the circle opposite Paul. Jeremy crouched down to tap their shoes in a clockwise fashion as he said a rhyme:

  “There’s- a- party- on- the- hill- would- you- like- to- come?”

  Jake’s finger stopped on Paul’s boot.

  “Yes,” Paul said.

  “Then- bring- some- friends- and- a- bottle- of- rum.”

  Jake stopped on Arthur’s foot now, who recited, “Can’t afford it.”

  “Then- get- lost.”