A Cry From Beyond

by WR Armstrong

  Then I made a phone call to Irish, getting straight to the point.

  “Irish, it’s me, John: I need a gun and some ammo: can you help me?”

  There was a long drawn out pause, and then: “Should I be askin’ what you want such a ting for?”

  “What doesn’t speak doesn’t lie,” I said. “Again, I’ll ask the question: can you help me?”

  Another lengthy pause before, finally: “Yeah, sure. How quickly do you need it?”

  “Tonight, I need it tonight.”

  “Jeez...”

  “I’m a man in a hurry, Irish.”

  “It’ll cost yer...”

  “How much?”

  Irish named his price.

  I didn’t have to think about it. Being armed was essential if I was to accomplish all that I intended. “Payment isn’t a problem,” I told the big man.

  He grunted. “Give me an hour or so. I’ll bring it over to you.”

  I cancelled the call and quickly thought through my plan of action. If my theory was correct, I was about to take my life in my hands, but it was the only option l had if I was to rid High Bank of the evil infesting it.

  Before leaving town bound for the cottage I found a cash machine and made a withdrawal in the assumption that Irish would expect cash payment on delivery.

  It was early evening by the time I arrived back at High Bank, where I proceeded to wait patiently for Irish to turn up. He proved to be as good as his word, arriving within the hour, just as he said he would.

  “Thanks for helping me out,” I said, as we entered the kitchen.

  “Don’t thank me,” he said, glowering, “just pay me.” With that he pushed a brown paper bag into my hand. Inside it was a Smith and Wesson .38. The gun was a small compact affair. I studied it, as if it was poisonous.

  “Don’t worry, it don’t bite,” Irish sneered, sensing my discomfort.

  “Is it easy to use?”

  “An ejeet could operate the ting.” He took the gun from me and quickly explained how to load and fire it.

  “Thanks,” I said when he had finished. I then handed him a wad of cash as payment, which he took and counted before depositing in his coat pocket.

  “I’ll leave you to it,” he said. He left the kitchen and entered the hall. At the front door he turned to me and nodded to the gun, which I held in my right hand, the barrel safely aimed at the floor.

  “Good hunting,” he said as he left.

  Once he was gone, I grabbed my DIY purchases and made my way down into the cellar, where I mentally prepared myself for the task ahead. The cops had been heading in the right direction when they considered excavating down here. Guess I was going to beat them to it. You see, following my trip into the tunnel, I’d deduced that the immovable door, immovable to mortals, that is, led directly to High Bank. If my theory proved correct, the tunnel in question would have originally merged with this cellar. At some stage in the past, access to that tunnel had been walled off, maybe as a safeguard. Who knows? All I knew was, whatever it was that cursed High Bank, was now in residence on the other side of that wall. The thought scared the hell out of me. So why on earth would I put myself in peril’s way? Well, I guess I felt I had a duty to help those Madam Lee referred to as “the lost ones”, and I had to know once and for all how exactly Johnny O’Shea fitted into all of this. Only then would I be able to move on with my life.

  Once again I recalled that as a young child, following the fateful holiday at High Bank, I suffered terrible nightmares, which had dogged me into adulthood. Night terrors, my mother called them. Now that I came to think of it perhaps that was where the booze and the drugs came into the picture; maybe they’d provided a way for me to exorcise those “horror visions”, as I preferred to think of them, from my mind. The idea that I chose to endure the hell of chemically induced hallucinations to those produced naturally, demonstrated just how bad those experiences were. As for Melinda and Kayla reconnecting with me after such a long interlude; it seemed reasonable to suggest that my near death experience had played a big part in reawakening my childhood psychic abilities, thereby allowing Melinda and Kayla to revisit my consciousness.

  But enough conjecture...

  I was in the cellar, the bowels of the cottage, as I’d begun to think of it, intent on demolishing a solid brick wall that I was convinced would reveal the reason for all the craziness that’d happened since my arrival at High Bank.

  I donned the protective goggles, raised the sledgehammer and took careful aim. Then, as hard as I could, I attacked the brickwork. Sparks flew and splinters of brick exploded from the impact. The sound of metal against brick echoed like gunshots in the confined space, causing my ears to ring. The result of my labours however, was disappointing. It was going to take more than a few hopeful hits to crack the wall and reveal what lay beyond.

  I pressed on regardless, until my muscles cramped and my back started to ache. The reverberations of metal striking brick made my head throb. Dust dried my throat. After a while I rested, momentarily defeated, and sat glaring at the sledgehammer as if it’d somehow failed me. Sturdy and effective though it was, it had more than met its match. By now I was stripped down to my shirt and perspired freely, despite the room’s low temperature. I had also built up a tremendous thirst, which I quenched with water from the kitchen. Refreshed, I set about the task with renewed vigour, reigning repeated blows against the stubborn wall until finally and with unexpected suddenness, the first few bricks were dislodged, hitting the floor with muffled thuds. Retrieving the torch from my coat pocket, I shone it expectantly through the hole created by my endeavours, only to have my hopes of success dashed further.

  A second, older wall lay beyond, which I surmised to be the original. At a certain point in time it’d been partially demolished and then rebuilt. The purpose of the outer skin was to conceal the fact. With dogged determination, I continued with the task at hand, until once again I was forced to rest. Taking up the sledgehammer for a third time, I drove it repeatedly into the brickwork.

  Just when I ‘d almost given up all hope of ever breaking through, my efforts were rewarded as a section comprising of maybe twenty bricks suddenly crashed inwards. The sound was deafening in the confined space. Dust rose in a thick billowing cloud. What at first appeared to be a narrow annex was revealed. I strained to see in. The space beyond was dark, vacuous and dust filled. It appeared to be empty. My initial disappointment was tempered however, by a strong belief that here lay the truth, that finally after so long, the nightmare was about to end. Despite the increasing danger High Bank presented, I refused to allow myself to be intimidated.

  Yet the torch wavered noticeably in my hand as I directed its beam into the concealing dark. The light was good for perhaps fifteen feet before it lost its effectiveness. Here goes, I thought, here is the moment I discover High Bank’s terrible secret. I pushed against the fractured brickwork, managing to dislodge a few more bricks. They fell to the ground on the other side with resounding thuds. The air in the tunnel was stale, which was to be expected.

  Accompanying the stale air however, was the strangely familiar scent I’d detected earlier, just after David was taken. In a flash I realised why it had the effect on me it did: aftershave: it was an aftershave of a type favoured by my father.

  Which meant...what exactly?

  That he was here, with me right now, in this tunnel?

  It was of course pure insanity to even think such a thought. How on earth could he be here? No one in their right mind would willingly descend into a hell hole such as this. And how could he have survived? Surely he would be dead by now anyway. He’d been sick, really sick; with cancer, the doctors had given up all hope for him by the time he vanished.

  But that scent, it promised so much...

  Dead, he was dead, I told myself over and over. Whatever resided here had nothing to do with him. I retrieved the gun from the bottom of the cellar steps, turned to face the tunnel entrance and suddenly froze, unable to belie
ve what I was hearing. A voice, as familiar as the scent lingering in the fetid air, beckoned to me from within the tunnel. I found it impossible to speak, impossible to move. All I could do was to stand there, holding the gun, wondering...

  My father, the voice belonged to my father; but how could it? Then again, stranger things have happened, I mused as I tried to rationalise the situation. What if his mind had snapped and he’d sought refuge here at High Bank and used the tunnel as a safe haven? But if it was him, did that also mean he was the one responsible for the disappearances, past and present?

  I cleared my throat and called out the words: “Who’s there? What do you want?!”

  I waited expectantly, but failed to receive a response.

  Had I imagined it all? Only one way to find out: enter the tunnel...

  And it if proved to be a trap: what then? I already knew and accepted that this would prove to be a dangerous exercise. And it wasn’t as if I was defenceless: protection came in the form of the gun. And let’s not forget the flashlight. Whatever it was that had taken “the lost ones”, appeared to operate under cover of darkness.

  My mind made up, I set about easing myself through the hole, whilst employing the torch to gain a better understanding of my surroundings. A relatively large tunnel stretched far ahead, into dark oblivion it seemed. I trained the torch directly in front of me.

  And suddenly glimpsed movement; the outline of a figure...of human proportions, though not of human kind. I narrowed my eyes, straining to see more. The thing, whatever it was, moved again...crablike. It skulked around in a manner suggesting it shunned light. I felt momentarily reassured.

  Here there be vampires...

  Well, not quite, although the scene presented certainly had all the right ingredients. A secret vault filled with unwelcoming darkness, (your imagination can start to work against you in the dark: H’s words), stale air and an unknown entity lurking in the shadows. I felt a little like Van Helsing in search of Dracula.

  Battling to control my fear and trepidation, I moved forward, compelled in a very perverse sense to discover more.

  Whatever I’d seen, whatever life form occupied this subterranean hellhole retreated still further into the shadows, unwilling to be exposed, or was it really as I thought, a case of fear of the light itself? I called out to it, using the time honoured phrase: “Who’s there?!” but was met with stony silence.

  Who or what? That was the real question. Again, I called to my father, or whatever it was that purported to be my father, but suffered further disappointment.

  Leave, while you can, the coward in me cried. You don’t have to be here!

  Instead of heeding the words of warning, I inched forward, aiming the torch and the gun straight ahead, determined beyond reason to discover the truth, until finally I managed to expose the mysterious skulking form to the full force of the torchlight.

  And oh how I wished that hadn’t happened, how I wished I’d lost my nerve at some earlier point in the proceedings, thereby sparing myself the awful shock of that moment. But when it did happen, when at last I laid eyes on that which was surely responsible for the atrocities that’d befallen High Bank down the years, I didn’t flee, I held my ground, while I tried to come to terms with the full horror of my discovery.

  I didn’t really have any choice in the matter. You see, impossible though it seemed, it was my father who peered back at me from the darkness. My father who, years before, was terminally ill and given only months to live, yet here he was, very much alive...or so it appeared at first glance.

  In reality he was no longer my father, I soon realised. Rather, as a result of his crimes and misdemeanours he had evolved into an abomination, forced to physically co-exist with another, whose crimes equalled, if not surpassed his own, an individual whose engraved portrait I’d seen hanging in the old manor house: Grimshaw, Lord Ebenezer Grimshaw.

  I reeled from the shock, staggered back, lost my balance and crashed painfully against the tunnel wall. Simultaneously, the flashlight’s beam fell onto the creature’s body. I saw something twisted, avian-like, possessing spiked membranous wings and huge twisted talons. Not my father, but an inhuman caricature of what he’d once been.

  The creature retreated into the shadows at a point where the tunnel wall recessed, seemingly repelled by the glare of the torchlight. I stood watching, and wondering. Was a meagre spill of light really all it took to cause such a merciless killer to flee? I somehow doubted it.

  I peered harder into the darkness ahead, moving forward slowly, the gun poised in readiness, telling myself over and over to exercise caution. No doubt the thing coped badly with light, but to what extent would that change if it found it was no longer the hunter, but the hunted? It would attack in the name of self preservation, surely.

  I ventured still deeper into the tunnel, looping the torch this way and that, whilst holding the gun at the ready, determined to use it. All of a sudden, I spied movement just beyond the full glare of the light beam. I fired a shot, the explosive sound deafening within my cramped confines.

  Something screeched banshee-like. I stiffened, wondering if the bullet had found its target. Taking another tentative step forward, I aimed blindly and fired again, the gunshot echoing loudly. This time however, no maniacal screeching accompanied the sound.

  Instead, a disembodied voice drifted from the shadows. I listened disbelievingly for it belonged to David. “Kill the light,” it pleaded. “Your father doesn’t like it. Kill the light and we can talk. Your father can explain. Just kill the light.”

  It was a trick, I was sure. David was dead. He’d been taken by the very thing I’d come in search of. But was he really dead? How could I be certain? It wasn’t as if I’d witnessed his death personally. Maybe it really was him speaking? It sounded so much like him.

  Another voice suddenly piped up, sending goose bumps down my spine.

  “It’s not that bad, John. Being down here, I mean. It’s okay. We get along.” It was Des. At least it sounded like Des. “We’re all here together buddy. Join us, why don’t you. Come join the band, so to speak.” A dry throaty chuckle momentarily filled the dank stale air. “It can be like old times, man. What do you say?”

  “Yeah, what do you say?” Now it was Terry speaking, although his words were laboured, as if he suffered a breathing problem...as if he struggled to breathe air he didn’t need. I recalled the dream in which Kayla, lifeless yet refusing to die, had pursued me through a dark underground tunnel, and I shuddered fearfully.

  “What do you say?” A girl’s voice now: unfamiliar, perhaps belonging to the missing Mary-Louise or to one of the original “lost ones”? “What do you say?” it repeated parrot fashion. “What do you say...what do you say?” The voice echoed dully and died away, to be replaced by a heavy lingering silence.

  I stood there for a long agonising moment, immobilised by shock. Then, quite suddenly, I was taking backward steps with the gun raised in front of me, having spied a shape within the darkness, creeping ever closer. It was the creature stalking me, moving in for the kill, I was convinced of it; the very same creature responsible for the disembodied voices, I decided. But it didn’t make any sense. Why on earth would it use such subtle tactics to seduce me into giving up my life, when its true nature demanded immediate destruction of its victims?

  Turmoil, some sixth sense told me in answer to the question, the thing was wracked with a profound sense of inner turmoil, but why would that be? I found it impossible to think. Without warning, another voice beckoned from the darkness, this time belonging to Melinda.

  “Come to me John. If only you’ll come to me, we can be together, forever...”

  I imagined her standing there, alive and well, having somehow cheated the finality of death and the destructive passage of time, waiting patiently to embrace me. It would be so easy to give in to temptation and surrender to the voices.

  Suddenly, overwhelmed by unfolding events, I slumped against the dank tunnel wall where upon I sq
ueezed my eyes shut, as if doing so would shut out the terrible reality of the situation I found myself in. Can’t be, my confused mind cried over and over, this surely can’t be. They’re dead, all of them. Dead!

  As if sensing my scepticism, the disembodied voices came at me again, this time in unison, crowding my head with their misleading rhetoric: “Give yourself to us John: we need you.”

  “Go away!” I ranted, peering blindly into the darkness, “Leave me alone!”

  They refused, continuing to invade my consciousness in an attempt to weaken my floundering resolve. “You owe us John: can’t you see that?”

  “I owe you nothing!” I screamed back at them.

  Laughter, now I could hear crazy sounding laughter. It drifted from the dark like an ugly threat. Insane, they were all insane! And then: “Have it your way Johnny O’Shea,” said a gruff ill tempered voice. “One way or the other, you will be ours!” The voice had to be that of the tyrant, Ebenezer Grimshaw.

  Something moved furtively within the shadows off to my left, on the periphery of my vision. I turned to look, directing the torch as I did so, and recoiled in horror, confronted as I was by a living nightmare, whose sole intention was murder. And yet, at the crucial moment, it hesitated. Once again, I sensed inner turmoil...

  I took my chance, aimed the gun and pulled the trigger. The gunshot echoed: there was a blinding flash. The resulting effect however, was minimal. The creature bucked, but stood firm. Without warning it sprang, landing a concussive blow just below my temple. I fell, losing both the gun and the torch in the process and watched helplessly as the torches yellowy beam flickered uncertainly. Stricken, all I could do was lay there, hands covering my head, as I prepared myself for the inevitable.

  The moment never came, intercepted as it was by more voices, my father’s imploring me to leave while I could, and Grimshaw’s demanding my life; firm evidence if ever there was any, of the clash of conscience responsible for the creature’s muted aggression.