The River Dark

by Nicholas Bennett

  "I know what you mean but I don't think that you can pick and chose the parts to believe and disbelieve."

  'Why not? Surely it is the individual's relationship with God that counts. The church sucks, everyone knows that. The good teaching will live on but the church will fade. It's outdated."

  Hendricks sighed. "Have you ever read The Book of Revelations, Tom?"

  "Oh, here we go," Tom laughed. "Are you a Jehovah's Witness or something?"

  Hendricks remained composed in the face of the other man's ridicule. He pulled a pocket New Testament out of his jacket pocket.

  "Oh shit," Tom muttered and looked into the well; at that moment it looked inviting. Hendricks flicked through the well thumbed pages. He read aloud:

  "'There was given to him a mouth speaking arrogant words and blasphemies, and authority to act for forty-two months was given to him. And he opened his mouth in blasphemies against God, to blaspheme His name and His tabernacle, that is, those who dwell in heaven.' Revelation thirteen, verses five and six."

  Tom raised his hands palms upward and exaggerated confusion. "Sorry, Hendricks. I never went to Sunday school."

  "This is John's vision of the beast that rose from the sea," Hendricks explained. He tucked his Bible back into his pocket. "'Arrogant words and blasphemies'," he repeated. "It seems apt enough to describe what's happening here, doesn't it?"

  Tom remembered the cold thoughts that had stolen into his mind; from pacifist to torturer in two easy steps. "And this beast that rises from the sea- the water, if you like- signifies the end of the world?"

  "Armageddon." Both men were silent. Then Hendricks said: "The point is this: if the people of this town can be so easily turned by these demons, suggestions or whatever they are, what would happen if it spread beyond the town."

  Tom looked at Hendricks, his earlier flippant attitude gone. "Into the cities-"

  "The halls of power-"

  They looked at each other in horror. "Yes," Hendricks said, nodding. "If that happens, these words will be entirely apt, don't you think?" He patted his pocket. Tom nodded dumbly; he had continued the thought process and asked himself the question: what if it was already out there? And beyond that: what if it was happening everywhere? The lack of any movement against what was happening in Measton begged further questions. Surely the army should have stormed through the place by now. A few dead soldiers seemed to be a token gesture given the extent of the madness. He had seen hundreds of them wandering in the rain as he’d raced back to the coppers with the rope. He had skirted lines of them on the streets, even his revved up motorbike failing to move them out of the road. They had opened their mouths in that dreadful silent scream as he had passed. Where was the riot squad? Where was the Army? Surely they knew what had happened to their own men- mown down by one another- so where the hell were they?

  Perhaps it was like Collins had told them of the rest of the police in Measton earlier that night: "A lot of them have been infected. Those that haven't don't want to reveal themselves. It's every man for himself."

  Hendricks looked back into the hole.

  "I hope they're alright," he said. Tom had another thought.

  "Listen: all that Revelation garbage-"

  Hendricks winced.

  "Sorry," Tom conceded. "The content of the book is linked to the day that we are all to be judged. Is that right?"

  Hendricks nodded.

  "Well that's what's happening now," Tom said shakily. "These voices- whatever they are- they get into your head. It’s like they find your sins, your darkness. That's what motivates them. That's how they get hold of you."

  "Is that what happened to you?" Hendricks asked.

  Tom nodded. "There's no getting away from it is there? No matter who you are, you've bound to have developed some shameful dark places, places that you don't discuss when there are ladies and people of a weak disposition present."

  "Things that you would never admit to in a million years," Hendricks agreed, thinking of his own dark places.

  "Dark secrets of the soul."

  Hendricks said: "Give me one of those cigarettes." Tom obliged with shaking fingers that shook as a result of more than the cold.

  'You know- you can't win. Even the pure in heart are open to this.” He paused. “If people like that really exist. A lot of the Bible bashers that I've met have been right tossers."

  Hendricks nodded. It was true. "It's the physical part of things," he said. "That's our downfall."

  "Original Sin," Tom said. "The fall of Man."

  "So you did go to Sunday school then?" Hendricks said. Tom ignored him.

  "That's the catch isn't it, Hendricks," Tom said. "No matter how hard you try you've got this body- with fucked up hormones and inappropriate desires like wanting to shag anything that moves - messing everything up like an unruly puppy pissing on your well-looked-after carpet."

  Hendricks actually laughed in spite of everything: the cold, the fear and the fact that the world was ending. His laughter rang through the trees and onto the cobbled streets known as The Shambles. Tom smiled and leaned over the edge of the well. He had the ridiculous urge to spit like a boy would so he could hear the faint splash in the water below.

  "So, here we are," Tom's voice reverberated down the well. "It's the day of judgement. Your sins are their way in to your mind. Well, well. That makes these voices the angels of the apocalypse, servants of the almighty on the final day. What a load of bullshit," he finished.

  "So what are these voices, Tom?" Hendricks asked him. Tom spat into the well and waited to hear the faint splash. There wasn't one; he stood back mildly irritated.

  "I've been thinking about that," he said. He turned and leaned his back against the well. "Have you ever heard of the time that The Grateful Dead used the power of positive thought to wake up a coma victim or something like that?"

  "No, I haven't."

  "Apparently, they encouraged their audience to send out all of their positive energy to- I can't remember the details- I think it was someone in a coma- to this person lying mostly dead in a hospital room in the city where they were playing. Story has it the sick person woke up at that exact moment."

  "Okay," Hendricks said. "Could be coincidence or the power of positive thought: there's a lot in that. How does that link with what's happening here?"

  "Have you ever been to Auschwitz?"

  "No," Hendricks said.

  "You must have heard what they say about the place: the birds don't sing at Auschwitz?"

  "I have heard that actually. Yes."

  "They don't sing because of what happened there; all that suffering, death and grief. All of those evil acts," Tom said looking Hendricks in the eye. The policeman looked over Tom's shoulder at the darkness of The Shambles. Things had quietened down he thought; there was less movement in the streets; the screams had stopped; there had been no distant pops of gunfire for a long time.

  "What are you getting at?" Hendricks asked.

  "Energy," Tom said. "Haunted houses have bad vibes: bad energy cold spots that exist for years in places where bad things happened. Bad energy- the silent birds at Auschwitz-"

  "Bad energy," Hendricks said. "But how can bad energy have a voice? Or many voices, in this case?"

  Tom smiled sardonically at Hendricks: ""Arrogant words and blasphemies" of the anti-Christ is far more likely then?"

  "I don't know," Hendricks responded. He was cold and beginning to shiver.

  Tom turned back to the well and looked down into the dark pool below. "Perhaps, we're both right," he said. They were silent for a moment. Hendricks finished his cigarette and squashed it underfoot, feeling mild disappointment that he had relented to the addiction yet again. Tina would be disappointed; they had given up together while trying for a baby. Another thought occurred to him.

  "If there is some kind of evil energy that is causing this in Measton, why hasn't it happened in Auschwitz or any other place of mass murder?"

  "It has," Tom said shortly
.

  Hendricks shook his head. "That isn't what I meant. What I mean is why here? Why now? Why would Measton have such a store of dark energy? Why not London or Manchester? Why here?"

  Tom spat into the well again. "How do we know that it isn't happening in those places too?"

  "What if it isn't?"

  "Then there is a lot more to this little town than meets the eye," Tom said.

  At that moment the curator chose to step out of the shadows. He moved as a shadow himself until he was close to Hendricks. He raised the archaic scythe above his head. He brought it down with all of his might in a whistling arc, burying the half-moon blade in the side of Hendricks' neck.

  Jugular vein severed, high pressure blood sprayed into the air joining the rain before obeying gravity. Oblivious, Tom felt heavy drops landing on his scalp and turned to complain about the everlasting fucking rain to Hendricks.

  Hendricks wasn’t there.

  He looked around the shrouded museum grounds, his head moving from left to right and back again rapidly. Nothing. Only the dark lumps of old farm machinery, mangles and the stocks. "Hendricks! Stop fucking about," he said and stepped away from the side of the well.

  As his foot caught Hendricks' side and he went over the top of the policeman's twitching body, he saw the figure step out of the darkness with its arm raised high.

  *

  12

  Lieutenant Walker listened to Granger's report and looked up at the dark suit before him, eyebrows raised.

  "Get him to repeat everything he's told us," the stranger ordered. Walker nodded. He’d been told to do whatever the dark suit told him to do. No questions. No going around this man. Obey everything. He wasn't even given a name. He'll be there in the next five minutes. That's all you need to know. He’d asked how he could verify the identity of the man. His superior had paused and then said: "You'll know him when you see him. He is not to be questioned. Understood?" Walker had understood well enough.

  "Repeat all Corporal. Over."

  He heard the end of a muttered curse as the Yorkshire man began to respond.

  "Anderson is dead," Granger said. "I’m on foot and in pursuit of Private Griffin. He managed to get a head start on me while I was dealing with Anderson. He went due north towards the Halton road. He should be easy to track down, sir. Over."

  "Repeat the order. Emphasise the need for extreme prejudice," dark suit said.

  Walker eyed the man in the dark suit but the other man only met his gaze impassively, the eyes remote and devoid of emotion.

  "Granger, you know what you have to do when you find him, don't you? Over."

  "You want me to kill him." The flatness in Granger's voice made Walker wince. "No judge, no jury, just the death penalty. I don't suppose there's any way you could fill me in on what's going on, Lieutenant, as you've got me killing my own men?" The sarcasm was tangible. "Over."

  "I'll try to get some answers," Walker said, looking up at the suit again. "Over."

  "That would be nice." Again, the bitterness in the normally loyal Yorkshireman cut deep into Walker. "Over and out."

  Walker looked at the man in the suit and raised his eyebrows. His chief had told him to ask no questions but fuck that for a game of soldiers. This was a joke. "Well?"

  The nameless man smiled with thin lips. "Okay, Lieutenant, this much I will tell you. There is a very real fear that this-" He paused searching for the right word. "This virus needs to be contained." He shook his head. "But if I tell you that there are others- like me- telling men like you what to do in…several other places, then perhaps you will understand the severity of the situation."

  "What do you mean? Other places? This is happening in other towns, is that what you're telling me?'

  The other man shrugged- an arrogant gesture in its ambivalence given the implication of what he had told Walker.

  "But if it's in other towns too, it's beyond containment. It's out." Walker stood up and faced his mysterious advisor. "What is it, any way?"

  "I have absolutely no idea," the dark man said. "Nobody knows except perhaps for those infected." Walker looked at the other man blankly; what more was there to say?

  "It's up to men like Granger now," the suit said.

  They both looked at the radio and waited for it to speak to them.

  *

  13

  Collins and Heaney moved with hunched shoulders and in places had to bend their backs due to the lowness of the tunnel. Intermittently, Collins would shine the torch onto another inscription or garish image.

  "Look at this one," Collins said. The carving etched into the bricks depicted a group of men with the faces of snarling dogs awaiting the figure of a woman or young boy that dangled above them. The men wore the robes of priests, crosses deliberately carved on to their chests to leave no room for doubt.

  "Nice," Heaney said. "I'll order a print. Can we get going, sir? I'm worried about my boy."

  "Of course," Collins agreed. Heaney was becoming increasingly anxious. It was, of course, understandable, Collins thought as they continued into the underground world of Measton but it was not in his nature to rush headlong into things. Under any other circumstances he would have ordered Heaney to wait until they had considered a strategy and for adequate manpower to embark upon such a search. How could he have stopped his colleague though? Collins knew what it was to have children. He was all too keenly aware of the cloying suffocation that overcame the parent when the child was in peril of the most harmless variety; God alone knew what the Heaney boys were going through. Heaney was in purgatory.

  Heaney stumbled over what felt like a pile of rags. Collins shone the torch on the heap of dusty cloth and the flashlight revealed the rags to be ancient human remains. Whoever had fallen in this Godforsaken place, Collins thought, had lived several centuries before and in a world that was very different to theirs. The mystery of the crumbling corpse intrigued Collins. Perhaps he was one of the authors of the Latin inscription or even the artist responsible for the macabre wall carvings. Heaney seemed uninterested, driven only by his desire to push on into the catacombs.

  The two men descended further and what had initially been the distant sound of water now sloshed beneath their feet as they followed the narrow flash beam through the passage way. Heaney scraped the skin of his forehead on jagged rock as the way became lower, the diameter of the tunnels retracting. Collins feared that they would soon be crawling. He knew for sure that, even then, there would be no going back for Heaney. He would slide on his belly through untold corruption, Collins was sure of it. Nevertheless, the voice of reason bubbled through Collins' lips.

  "We have to think about what we're doing, John," he said, his breath coming in short sharp gasps. "God knows where we are heading. For all we know, your son is down one of the other tunnels that dissected this one-"

  "He's down here! I know he is!" Heaney did not slow his pace.

  "We need to regroup, John!" Collins panted. In the last few minutes his shoulder had flared in to white hot agony; he saw white fireworks behind his closed eyes. He had to stop. "I'm stopping for a minute," he finished weakly. "I'm sorry but I have to."

  Heaney stopped and looked at his superior and- in that instant- Collins knew without question what Heaney was considering. They only had one torch and Heaney needed it in order to continue his search for Andy. The choice was simple: either wait until Collins was ready to go on, or take the torch from Collins and leave him there in the dark to find his way back to the well.

  Heaney squatted next to Collins and said: "Okay. We rest. But only for a few minutes. We're close, I can feel it." Relieved that Heaney had chosen to compromise- this time at least but maybe not next time- Collins nodded and sat against the tunnel wall.

  When he had recovered his breath, Collins asked Heaney how he knew that they were so close. The sergeant's answer caused Collins to shudder.

  "I can hear them," Heaney said. "Can't you?" He looked at Collins in surprise. Collins shook his head. "You me
an you can't hear them? But that's ridiculous. Listen to them!" Heaney jerked his head in the direction that they had been traveling. Collins looked into the tunnel ahead that spiraled away into nothingness. He listened. All he could hear was the sharp sibilants and harsh clicks of their laboured breathing as it resonated off the claustrophobic walls.

  "Nothing," he said and then: "What can you hear?"

  Heaney shook his head in wonder. "All of those voices," he said, "crying and howling; some screaming and laughing like the insane. But do you know what I can hear above it all? Above all of that depravity and evil?"