"Now what do we do?" Tom said. "There are no emergency services available. Christ, even the army's been infected," he said looking at the dead soldiers.
"Where's David Weaver?" Mary asked. "I saw him when the shad- when I woke up he was there, I'm sure of it."
"The thing- Davies, I guess- had him when we came in," John-o said and frowned. "It held a knife to his throat and-"
"The voices started after that," Tom put in.
"Yeh," John-o agreed, "and that was the last thing I remember before you killed them."
He looked at Tom. "That's right," Tom agreed. Mary saw that both men remembered more about what they had experienced under the influence of the voices than they wanted to let on and John O'Connell looked particularly uncomfortable.
"It must have taken him," Mary said matter-of-factly. "I'm going after him," she said and picked up the rifle. "One of you should stay here with Collins."
"No," Tom said firmly. "We all stay here."
Mary shook her head. "I'm going after David either with one of you or on my own," she said.
"But there are more of them out there," John-o reasoned. "What are you going to do if you come up against more of them?"
Mary pointed the rifle at the television and squeezed the trigger. The gun roared, ear-splittingly loud in such a confined space. The television imploded. Both men leapt away from shards of glass.
"What the fuck are you doing?" Tom screamed.
"Practicing," Mary said shakily. "Who's coming?"
"I will," John-o said grudgingly. He picked up the other rifle and looked at the shattered television screen. "Shit. I've always wanted to do that," he said.
Mary knelt by the dead soldiers.
"What are you doing?" Tom asked.
Mary held up a fresh magazine. "More bullets," she said.
"Rounds," John-o corrected.
"Whatever," Mary sighed.
Collins' cell phone began to ring again. Mary rifled through Collins' jacket and found it.
Heaney calling.
She pressed the green telephone icon.
"Hello?" Mary answered tentatively.
"Who is this?" Heaney demanded.
"Mary Moran. I'm with Detective Collins. He's been shot-"
"Shot?" Heaney exploded on the other end of the line. "Who the hell-"
"I don't know," Mary continued, "but I've bandaged his wound and I think he'll be alright. It clipped the top of his shoulder. He's lost a bit of blood but-"
"Put him on," he demanded.
"He's unconscious," Mary said quietly.
"Where are you?" Heaney cut through. She was about to say that didn't know when John-o mouthed the address to her.
"Twenty-four, Polly Road," she told him.
The detective sergeant repeated what she had said before making the connection.
"But that's Andrew Davies' house," he said. "What was he doing there? In fact, what are you doing there?"
"I don't know," Mary admitted. "It's a strange story but-"
:"Aren't they all?" Heaney snapped. "Stay there. I'm on my way."
"But I'm-" Mary stopped. Heaney had hung up. "That was Heaney," she told them, "he's coming over."
Mary placed the cell on the coffee table and headed for the door, rifle over her shoulder and one of the soldiers utility belts hanging low on her hips. She looked at John-o. "Shall we go then?"
"Don't you think you better wait for this Heaney bloke?" Tom asked lighting himself a cigarette with shaking fingers.
"No," Mary said and stepped out into the darkness. Tom heard John-o ask where she thought it would have taken Weaver.
"Under the town," she replied. "To the tunnels."
"Wait," Tom said. "Let's consider what we know about this madness." When neither of them said anything, he continued. "I don’t think it is madness. Not in the conventional sense any way." Tom put his hands over his eyes and shook his head. "I've experienced those voices twice now and there's more to it than some kind of mental infection or hysteria or whatever else you want to call it."
"He's right," Mary agreed.
"Then what do you think it is?" John-o asked Mary. "You've been infected too. You should know better than anyone else."
Mary considered. "I don't know," she said. John-o shook his head and looked away. "Look," she continued. "I'll tell you what I think- okay? - but it doesn't make a whole lot of sense." She sighed. "There is something below this town. In the tunnels. But what it is, I don't know. I had vague feelings that it was aware of me, could see me or sense me is perhaps a better way of putting it but-"
"It seeks out the bad in you," Tom said quietly. He nodded at John-o. "I won't ask you what it was showing you when it had us earlier but what I felt came from inside. Terrible thoughts that I'd locked away deep down for so long I forgot they were there."
John-o nodded.
Mary said: "How do you fight that? Everyone has a weakness. No-one's perfect."
"Not with that," Tom said looking at the rifle over her shoulder.
"So what we have then," John-o said, "is a force of some kind living in the sewers-"
"Tunnels beneath the old Abbey," Mary corrected.
"Alright, something in the tunnels then, that is capable of reaching out and going inside people's minds to find evil thoughts."
He paused.
"And then they take that evil or dark energy, if you like, and expands it until it completely bends the will."
Mary regarded John-o. Tom said: "If that's the case, where does it come from?"
John O' Connell thought of the generations of prejudice that existed in any town and the insecurities that were particular to the whole human race- not just a shitty little town like this one- insecurities that caused so much that was wrong in the world. Small towns were a breeding ground for xenophobia and fear- with fear there was hatred.
As the world grew so did the hatred.
A whole generation of so-called conspiracy theorists like him believed with absolute conviction that the unknown men out there in the shadows had deliberately striven to maintain those territorial borders- visible and otherwise- and that was achieved by more than merely put men on a line with guns in their hands; it was brought about by generations of propaganda that convinced us that someone else always wanted what was ours by right and worse- someone else had what we should have. So lock your doors and bolt your windows. Don't talk to your neighbours- they're as bad as the rest. They- the men in the shadows, puppet masters- call them what you will- had nurtured the negativity that brought about the public's tolerance to war. Christ, they didn't even bother to hide it any more. The rhetoric no longer had to be that good either. Bush’s “war for peace?” It was close enough to Orwell’s “War is Peace” to be frightening. But no-one gave a shit about anything any more. Apathy and lethargy, the bastard children of modern western democracy. It became easier and easier.
"All evil comes from Man," John-o said. In her mind, Mary saw Peter Pan boxing his own shadow.
"It's a negative energy that we’ve created," he said. “It’s taken on a life of its own."
"Come on John," Tom raised his eyes to the ceiling. "Too much fantasy bullshit."
"How can you say that after what just happened here tonight?"
Tom didn't answer.
"Don't fucking do that, Tommy," John-o said. "That's how things get out of hand. We don't think that this could possibly happen or they'd never do that but they do!"
"But an energy with a mind of its own?" Tom snorted.
"Why not?" John-o countered. "Who's to say what can or cannot be possible? How about a bunch of slime crawling out of a swamp and eventually flying to the moon?"
"That's evolution-"
"And this isn't?" John-o said with arched eyebrows. "Who's to say that the next stage of evolution shouldn't be spiritual?"
Mary studied the two men and said: "We need to go."
Tom looked from the sleeping policeman to the dead soldiers and waited for Heaney.
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*
Chapter 15
1
Claire opened the door carefully and looked through the inch of space onto the normality of the hallway. Their family portrait hung on the wall slightly askew, the only sign of disturbance. She stepped out and edged toward the top of the stairs. The front door was still closed; he had not returned. She had imagined that he had tried to trick her out of the room by pretending to leave but he really was gone. She turned back to her parents' room and saw that the door was closed. She gripped the handle and placed her forehead against the painted smoothness of the wood and took a deep breath. Coz my dads one of em now. He kill my mum. Steeling herself against what she was about to see she pushed the door inwards and open.
The room was in profound disarray. Clothes and photographs covered the floor while there were vivid smears and splashes of blood on the Laura Ashley wallpaper that her mother had so cherished. The dressing table mirror was cracked and she saw a multiple reflection of herself there, a dream apparition from a macabre fairground mirror room. She looked down at the broken body before her and shook her head. The continual banging had been the skull being repetitively smashed into the wall. Plaster mingled with blood and bone three feet from the floor next to the wardrobe. She shook her head again, seeing but not understanding. Sightless eyes stared back at her from Ian's smashed face. It was her step father.
Downstairs the front door closed and she heard someone start up the stairs.
*
2
The naked creature that held him by the neck in a painful one handed grip was hardly breathing whereas Weaver felt as though his lungs would explode at any moment. On
Willow Road a young man stepped out of his front door and took a step toward them but the creature whipped its head towards him and hissed. The young man stepped back into the house with hardly a pause and closed the front door. Weaver heard a woman asking what he had seen. The man's fading voice told her to just shut up, for Christ's sake and then he heard the sound of a deadbolt being slotted into place. His back was on fire as a result of the unnatural posture that the creature's grip forced him to take. At first he had tried to struggle but the creature had paused its skipping gait long enough to jab the point of the knife into his ribs hard enough, Weaver was sure, to draw blood. As they headed into the alley that joined Willow to Busted Lane, he knew beyond doubt that they were heading for the river. Collins was right. This was all about the river. Why? Weaver had no idea. Equally he had no idea why the creature had taken him. Why not just kill him or scream at him as it had done to others? In his mind's eye, he saw the ring revolving in the murky waters. D and B. Always.
He saw the figure, lying across the alleyway too late and tripped headlong into the muddy gravel, grazing his forehead painfully. The creature hardly paused but renewed his grip on the man before hoisting him through the air and onto its sinuous shoulder. The creature began to run, joggling Weaver painfully as it did so.
There was no point struggling. The thing that carried him had strength beyond reason or compromise. How could it have survived that blow to the head? At such close quarters, Weaver knew that this was no longer simply an insane man. Whatever had possessed the mind had also taken the body and evolved it somehow into something else, something stronger. Was this the next stage of evolution for Man? This stinking, rough skinned apparition from a nightmare.
Busted Lane was lit by street lamps. They were not the only living creatures on the street tonight. Dozens of people walked along the road, all with the same vacant expressions, unmindful of each other and Weaver. They were all heading in the same direction. The creature knocked several of them onto the tarmac as it ran along the white line at the centre of the road. None of the injured made a sound but got to their knees and feet before resuming their somnambulistic journey towards the river. He saw faces that he recognized but could not name and returned to the moment of arrival at the town only days before when he had seen the strange/familiar faces of those heading to work across the Old Bridge. Some of the faces were here now and he was even more of a stranger to them now than he was then.
The creature turned onto Cornhill Road. More of the wandering possessed on their way to the river.
He saw children among them dressed only in pyjamas and asked wondered how it could possibly affect them. Was it naïve to think that children were innocent though? Kids could be cruel. A quotation came to him from King Lear. As flies to wanton boys are we to the Gods. Remembering Shakespeare while being carried through the backstreets of Measton by a monster after midnight. Weaver felt mad laughter in his throat and let it come. Why not? His mind would surely break soon. No-one could take this insanity for long.
None of the ambling figures among the possessed turned towards the sound of the laughter. In a darkened window high to his right, a young girl poked her head above the ledge at the sound and then ducked out of sight. Weaver did not see her but the creature seemed to sense something. It came to a standstill and hissed at a number of the night people. They immediately changed direction and headed to the gate with the number 23 emblazoned upon it.
The creature ran on towards the river carrying its human cargo as though it weighed no more than a rag doll.
*
3
St. John looked into the street and across to the darkened shape that was Measton Station and closed the door on the night and the ever pouring rain. It had been a strange night, even for this, the quietest time of year. Jerry Haines had left to check on his wife and step-daughter shortly before closing time as a result of the power cut. That was it for customers. None of his regulars had shown their faces that night. Even the intolerable Frank Osbourne had stayed away, due in large part to the bollocking St. John had given him the previous evening he supposed. No great loss there. Osbourne was a whining bastard at the best of times- harping on about his past like he was the only one with regrets in his life. He drew the bolts across the top and bottom of the door and sighed. Even so, he should have held his tongue. St. John had always maintained an objective presence in his pub.
Nearly always.
When Osbourne had started to harp on about the suicide of his former employee, the details of the river death had been too much for St. John to bear. Lately, with the other deaths and the rising tide of darkness that some called the river madness, it was all St. John could do to close his eyes at night for fear of opening them and seeing a small Japanese figure standing at the end of his bed.
St. John turned off the main bar lights and went into the snug. He looked at the corner table where they had once, back in the heady days of 1964, decided to kill an innocent man and, in his mind's eye, saw five figures in a cloud of smoke around the table, four of them listening to the words of a gnarled and grieving old man. He shook his head and lifted the hatch to enter the bar. He put Haines' pint pot into the washer and reached onto the highest shelf for a whisky glass. He pressed against the Famous Grouse optic twice and then, after a brief decision, a third time. He needed all the help he could get to sleep these days. He took a hot swallow of the whisky and saw the random shadows of the people wandering by on the other side of the heavily curtained windows. They were still out there then, he thought.
Here, Singe, Haines had said, have you ever seen so many nutters out on one night? He hadn't. A succession of silent figures had passed by the rain-specked windows all evening, despite the constant warnings from the circling helicopters that ALL MEMBERS OF THE PUBLIC ARE TO STAY IN THEIR HOMES UNTIL DAWN BY MILITARY ORDER. By rights, he should have closed up when he heard the first loud-hailed warning but what else could he do? The pubs never closed. Not even during the Blitz.
River madness indeed. What a lot of bollocks. It was the day and age that they lived in. People were using the trend of crime as an excuse to do what they wanted to do. People had madness in them- that was right enough. It was escalating all of the time. You only had to read the papers. What was happening in Measton was just the same as anywhere else but it
was more concentrated here at the moment. Maybe it would pass, maybe it wouldn't. Maybe this was the end of things. Maybe this was the beginning of the end. He didn't really care if it was. At 74, he’d seen more than most. A few weeks before, he’d seen Old Al Pinchin in the street. The two men had nodded briefly and in that moment- the briefest of moments- their crime was alive and as vitally fresh as it had been on the morning following that balmy night in 1964. Their dark act was as close to the surface of their minds as it always had been. He’d been an outsider forty years before and was an outsider now. The town bred outsiders. Xenophobia was such here that not only were outsiders frowned upon but so were people that lived in a different street. The majority of people failed to connect with one another. Neighbours that had shared the same streets all of their lives hardly knew one another. He passed the same man in the street every morning as he strolled to the paper shop, as he had done for a most of his adult life and never once had the man even nodded a hello- let alone deigned to speak.
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