Shadow Over Sea And Sky

by K H Middlemass

  “I used to do a bit of rock climbing,” Nick said. “Just keep your back to the cliff and you’ll be fine.”

  “Oh yeah, just keep your back to the cliff,” Simone retorted, voice thick with sarcasm. “I swear, if I die I’m coming back to haunt you both.”

  They went down, slowly and in single file, with Emily taking the lead. She pressed her back against the damp rock, feeling sharp points poking into her spine, and took hesitant steps downward until they had moved along the cliff side and close to the cavern. The wind whipped her hair into her eyes and mouth, making it hard to see, but she pressed on, never looking behind her, or down. She was glad for her boots, which were sturdy and offered a good grip on the rock beneath her, and tried her best to repress the panic that threatened to bubble up at any moment. Still, she would be glad when she reached the cavern. Heights had always made her a little nervous and the possibility of falling was too large to ignore. Even with the wind howling in her ears, she could hear Simone muttering obscenities under her breath while Nick offered words of encouragement to push her on.

  When they finally reached the cave, all three fell into it gratefully. Emily’s heart was thudding heavily in her chest, body weak with relief that they had made it. Simone, for her part, continued to curse as creatively as she could as she lay on the damp, slimy ground, her forehead pressed to the stone like a sailor kissing land after months at sea.

  “Jesus Christ, I am never doing that again. Not for all the money in the bloody world. How did I even let you talk me into this nonsense? Jesus Christ.”

  Emily ignored her but Nick, amazingly, laughed. He sounded a little out of breath but somewhat exhilarated by what they had just done.

  “Stop overreacting, Si. It wasn’t that bad.”

  “Wasn’t that… I’m not even going to dignify that with a response.” Simone pushed herself up and brushed herself down, looking around her with narrowed eyes. “I can’t see a bloody thing in here.”

  The cavern was dark and deep; close to the entrance, the three could see each other but not much else. The sounds of the waves crashing against the cliffs seemed louder inside, bouncing off the walls in a continuous stream of noise. They waited patiently for their eyes to adjust, and Emily ventured further in as soon as she felt able, keeping one hand flat against the stone wall. After a few moments, things became clearer as her eyes finally became accustomed to the darkness around her. Slowly, she became aware of the smell that grew stronger the further she went in. She wrinkled her nose and choked back the wretch rising in her throat, and as her eyes took in the sight before her she felt her stomach fall away. She looked back, wide-eyed, at the shapes of Nick and Simone, darkly silhouetted against the cavern entrance. They didn’t move.

  “Emily,” Simone said in a weirdly wavering voice. “What is that?”

  They both looked, and they both saw.

  He was suspended in the air, hanging upside down from a swinging chain that had been bolted into the ceiling. His legs were held together in vicious-looking clamps that had cut through the material of his trousers and bitten into the flesh. His clothes were a mess, his trousers shredded and his shirt torn and stained and creased, covered with dark red blotches and smears. His arms were thrown above his head, and in the small confines of the cave his hands trailed on the ground below him.

  He had been slowly bled out. The trickle of liquid that they saw now was the last that his body had left to give, like the last dregs of drink from a bottle. It dripped down slowly and sluggishly, intermittently splattering into the puddle that had collected on the floor. It looked almost solid, already coagulated into a cold, thick substance. The smell had begun to rise; all of them felt the metallic tang that hit the back of their throats. Simone gagged involuntarily.

  “What the fuck is this?” she moaned, staring at the hanging body with wide eyes.

  Nick’s face was ashen. He didn’t speak, just rubbed his hands over his cheeks and eyes roughly, shaking his head in disbelief. Simone’s skin had a greenish tinge to it; she stumbled backwards, hand hovering over her mouth. She then turned and leaned as far over the cliff as safety would allow, and moments later a spray of vomit caught on the wind and was scattered out to sea. Simone coughed and spat, still cursing under her breath.

  He was hanging with his back to them, and they all wondered in dread about who it might be. His hair was short and dark, cut into a nondescript short style that could have belonged to any number of men in Caldmar. His back was broad and his arms were thick, a big man who rolled his sleeves up at the elbows. He could have been anyone, but Emily knew who it was.

  “Howard Wilson,” she whispered.

  3

  “What are we going to do?” Simone cried. Her face had regained some of its colour but her eyes were glassy and vague from the shock of what she’d just seen. “What in the hell even is this?”

  Howard Wilson’s body was still in front of them, slowly turning. As the chain creaked, Emily was feeling alarmingly calm in the face of the horrific sight she was bearing witness to; part of her considered approaching the body to see if they could at least figure out a way to let him down, but she sensed that this would not only be incredibly difficult, but inadvisable. Her eyes darted back and forth, returning to the body before finding another location on which to settle. Behind Howard’s body was a large box made from black, half-rotten wood. Looking closer, she could see holes in the corners where it had been completely eaten away; from one of the holes slipped a long, fat rat that jumped and skittered away into the blackness around them. Emily felt her hand twinge, connecting the sight with the rat that had bitten her. She doubted that they could be the same animal.

  Nick was silent, only reacting when Simone clumsily bumped into his side and looped her arms around his waist, seeking his comfort. It seemed to bring him out of himself and he carefully returned her embrace, looking over the top of her head with an unclear expression.

  “I was not expecting this,” he whispered, tightening his grip on her. “I’m trying really hard not to lose it right now.”

  “I think I already have,” Simone said into Nick’s shirt, and he laughed weakly before shaking his head and resting a cheek against her hair. It was amazing, Emily thought, that the strength of people granted them the power to laugh even in the darkest of times and at the most incomprehensible events.

  Supporting each other, Nick and Simone looked at Emily, who hadn’t spoken or moved for a long time. Simone’s brow creased in worry.

  “Emily, what are we going to do?” She asked.

  Emily didn’t say anything, just kept staring at the body with a dull yet focused look. Simone repeated herself, louder this time, and when she didn’t respond again she tore herself away from Nick and went to her friend, grabbing her by the shoulders and yelling into her face.

  “Emily!”

  “We’re going to leave,” Emily said measuredly, as if Simone hadn’t just been screaming at her. “I’m sorry. I’ve already dragged you both too far into this.”

  “What the fuck are you even talking about?” Simone’s voice was shrill and desperate. “The bastard must have killed him. We need to go to the police. We have to do something.”

  “She’s right, Emily,” Nick said. He glanced at the body and shuddered. “This is no accident.”

  Emily ran her hands through her hair, trying to think.

  “I didn’t expect this either,” she said, trying to keep her voice from shaking. “Trust me, I really didn’t. I just know it was a mistake to ask for your help. I’ve put you both in danger.”

  After that, Simone quickly began to berate Emily in an increasingly shrill voice, her words not really meaning anything but said with enough anger to seem convincing. Nick’s attention had turned to the body of Howard Wilson, and while Simone continued her onslaught he tentatively approached it, looking sicker with every step. When he was close enough to touch it, he visibly repressed a gag, swallowing hard. He looked at the mark on Howard’s neck before
stepping back again and putting a hand on Simone’s shoulder, silencing her.

  “It doesn’t look like a cut,” he said. “At least not the kind of cut you’d make with a knife.”

  “Probably not a suicide then.” Simone agreed. “Too messy. What is it then?”

  “It’s more like a bite, right?” Emily looked to Nick for confirmation. “Like his throat’s been torn out.”

  Nick nodded. “The flesh is all ripped up. It’s a complete mess.”

  Emily crouched down and inspected the puddle that had collected beneath the body. “And there’s not enough blood here for a fully-grown man. There’d be much more, wouldn’t there?”

  Nick rubbed his face with both hands. “I suppose there would be. Oh Christ, Emily, what happened here? The guy was grieving for his wife, right? It was her body that turned up on the rocks. Maybe he did do this to himself…”

  No. No, not with Derek. Howard would never do something so cruel. Emily tried to set aside the sudden and unwelcome of Sarah Wilson, of this whole family now torn apart.

  Emily took a deep breath. “Okay. The first thing that we need to do is get out of here, and quickly.”

  “Too fucking right that’s what we need to do,” Simone muttered.

  “We’re going to leave here,” Emily continued, ignoring her. “And then we’re going to go somewhere quiet and we’ll talk about what’s happened.”

  “No, we’re going to go to the police because that’s what you’re supposed to do,” Simone argued. “Right, Nick?”

  Nick was silent, brow furrowed. Simone stared at him incredulously, waiting for him to back her up.

  Eventually, he said, “Let’s go somewhere quiet.”

  Simone let out a strangled shriek of frustration. “All right, fine. Fine. This is fucking psychopathic but fine, let’s get the hell out of here.”

  Getting back up the steps was slow and precarious work, but they just about managed. Like scaling a hill, it was much harder to go up than it was to go down but after what they had seen, the task of getting back up the cliff side seemed a lot less frightening than it had been on the way down. Once they had scrabbled back up onto the ground, they breathlessly hurried through the graveyard and passed by the house, none of them daring to look at it.

  ***

  Later that afternoon, Emily, Simone and Nick tramped across the old school field, feet sinking slightly into the damp ground and muddying their shoes. Emily was leading the way, knowing exactly where she was taking them. The old oak tree, branches devoid of leaves, waited for her like an old friend. She was tempted to wrap her arms around the trunk and embrace it, just for a moment, but instead the three of them stood together in a huddle. Emily leant against the bark and closed her eyes, feeling exhausted.

  “I never thought I’d be back here in my lifetime,” Simone said, looking over at the little red brick building, the extensions that had been added to it over the years. She looked a little better, leaning against Nick’s shoulder, but she was still pale and her voice unsteady. “There’s something weird about schools out of hours, isn’t there? It’s sort of spooky.”

  “My school got torn down a few years ago,” Nick said. “They should have salted the earth.”

  In other circumstances, there would have been laughter, but instead they were all silent for a few moments, all thinking their own thoughts. Emily observed the other two as they leaned against each other, each seeking the comfort of the other. She felt a moment of longing, not for Nick of course, but for the security that a close couple could offer to one another. All her life she hadn’t really minded being alone. Her own company was sufficient, or maybe she had only convinced herself that it was because she had never been much good at making friends. When she was young Simone had been there for her when she needed her and so she got by. She thought of everything that had happened and wished, just for a second, that there was someone that she could go to, someone who would take her in their arms and whisper into her ear that it would be all right. But there was no such person, and the loneliness that suddenly washed over her was deep and terrifying.

  “I want you guys to come and meet the reverend with me,” Emily said, and the two jumped a little, startled at the sudden sound of her voice. They looked at her without speaking.

  “Before I came to meet you, he and I talked about what we were going to do. We have a plan, sort of.”

  “What do you mean by ‘sort of’?” Simone asked incredulously, pulling away from Nick and putting her hands on her hips. “Did you know that we were going to find the grocer strung up and bled out like a pig in an abattoir?”

  “No, I didn’t. I promise you, I didn’t know about that,” Emily gabbled in a rushed voice. “But it makes sense. It’s terrible, but the same thing happened to Howard’s wife. She fell from the cliff but her throat was all torn up. Now her husband’s dead too.”

  “You think that Ol’ Dicky Volkov is behind this?” Simone asked, raising an eyebrow. “That he’s, what, some kind of psycho killer vampire freak?”

  “Simone, I know your response to most things is to be sarcastic but I need you to be serious for a minute, okay?”

  “You should consider yourself lucky that I’m only responding with sarcasm,” Simone said sharply. “In fact, you’re lucky that we haven’t run for the fucking hills, and I think we’re well within our rights to do so, don’t you?”

  “Look, the Wilsons have a son and he’s not much younger than we are,” Emily shouted back, the stress of it all suddenly far too much. “Do you want him to turn up dead too? Because the way things are going it won’t be long before he does!”

  Simone blinked a few times in surprise and opened her mouth before closing it again, unable to speak. Emily could probably count on one hand the amount of times that she had raised her voice against her friend over the course of their relationship. Simone was the one who shouted and got angry and it was rare that the roles were reversed. Nick put his arm around Simone’s shoulders, but this time it was an act of restraint rather than comfort.

  “Emily, you said there wasn’t enough blood for a grown man,” Nick said, speaking softly, trying to be the voice of reason. “And I think you’re right, but do you seriously think that this guy… this Volkov... killed him to drink it?”

  God, it sounds so ridiculous said out loud, Emily thought. “I… I don’t know.”

  And then she realised that she needed to stop dancing around the answers, no matter how absurd those answers were. Squaring her shoulders, she said, “No, I do know. Yes. That’s exactly what he did.”

  She made herself stand as tall as possible and looked at the two of them head on. “Simone, I know you think I’m crazy. And for all I know I am. But we all saw a dead man today, a murdered man. We didn’t all dream that.”

  Simone grimaced, still not speaking, but she nodded.

  “No, I think we can all agree that there is some seriously awful shit going on in this place,” Nick said. “And I think we all need some time to get our heads around this, but Simone is right; we can’t just not tell anyone. We have to go to the police.”

  A thin, spitting rain began to fall. Emily sighed, the terrible sensation of defeat washing over her.

  “Then go to the police, I won’t stop you,” she said, turning to look over the expanse of the field. “But I won’t. I can’t.”

  “Jesus, Emily,” Simone whispered. It wasn’t cruel or angry, and somehow that pained Emily more. She took a deep breath and forced herself to speak again.

  “It’s all right, Si. Like I said, I shouldn’t have dragged you both into this and I’m sorry.” Tears were starting to prick at her eyes, and she was thankful for the cold rain that spattered across her cheeks, concealing them. “But there are things that I’ve seen, things I will never be able to forget, and I see now that this is my fight, one I can’t keep running away from.”

  She looked back at them and, somehow, found a smile. “I’m so glad that you two have each other. Nick, I know that y
ou’ll take care of Simone and that Simone will take care of you. If I have to do this alone, then I’ll do it. I’m not going to let anyone else die, not the Wilson boy, and not my mother. I won’t be a victim. Not anymore.”

  “You’re not a victim,” Simone said hurriedly, the emotion making her voice crack. Nick instinctively drew her closer, and she turned in to him, looking to him for support. “And I don’t think you’re crazy, but you have to understand that this, whatever it is, it’s beyond us. What are we supposed to do, storm the house armed with fucking crucifixes and holy water? This is real life, Emily, we’re not living in some horror movie where everything turns out all right at the end because of some rag tag group of unlikely heroes. We’re just going to end up dead or worse!”

  Emily nodded and took another shaky breath. “I’m not arguing with you. I’m just telling you what I’m going to do, and what I’m not going to do. I’m going to deal with the monster living in that house, and I’m not going to go to the police. He’s killing my mother, and he’ll just keep on killing until none of us are left. And people like him, things like him, they get away with it. But I won’t let him.”

  The tears were coming faster now, but she brushed them away with the back of her hand as she desperately fought the urge to retreat back into herself. She looked down at her left palm and spread her fingers like a fan, taking in the long, angry red scab that was taking so long to heal, then curled her fingers into a fist and let it drop to her side.

  “I’m meeting the reverend tomorrow at the church at nine am. You can still come, but only if you don’t go to the police. If you do go to the police I’ll understand, but something tells me that they’ll find nothing untoward and Mister Volkov will charm them until they leave without suspecting a thing. The body won’t be there by the time the police get there to check, and maybe they’ll prosecute you for time-wasting. Maybe he even knows we’ve found it already; perhaps he even wanted me to find him. But it’s up to you.” Emily said. “I have to go now; my mother needs me. Don’t forget, tomorrow at the church.”