Don't Read Alone

by Finch, Paul

  Hysterically, I knocked their withered claws away and scrabbled for the Luger. My hand closed on it and with a triumphant yell, I swept it up – only to feel it wrenched from my grasp. They seized me again – by the throat, by the hair, by the chin, craning my neck back so that I could see my death as it descended.

  I choked, spat, swore, screamed hoarsely, stared bug-eyed at the storm of downward-pointed blades, the firelight glinting on their corroded tips.

  The firelight … which suddenly was magnified a hundred-fold.

  Despite everything else, I ripped free of their grasp and looked around, astonished. Shafts of glaring light flooded through the mesh-work of branches. A wave of heat came with it, and immediately I knew what had happened. A bonfire of immense proportions had roared into the night. As I strained my eyes to penetrate the thickets, I could see it: flames and sparks shooting into the air from a colossal surge of flame.

  And in that moment, I was transfixed – not just with surprise, but with despair.

  Because I knew what it signified.

  Then I was flung aside. My head struck the ground again, and unknowable seconds passed before I could look up again.

  I’d been abandoned, alive but unimportant, beside the wreckage of the quad bike.

  My ambushers were still visible. In a daze, I watched their hideous shadows cavorting off through the trees like a flock of silent bats. If there’d been tongues in their empty throats, I’d have heard them cheering, roaring, baying with adulation. And if I hadn’t been on the verge of complete mental collapse, I’d have seen them more clearly – capering joyously back to the exact location of the roaring fire.

  The Lamuratum.

  14

  The plan – the very loose and makeshift plan – was to call at hospital in Southampton, to ensure first that Rob’s dizzy spells were nothing more than concussion, and then to get Joe’s dressing changed and check that he wasn’t suffering blood-poisoning, though he felt that if he was he’d probably know about it by now. And that was true. Because over twelve hours had elapsed since he’d received the wound, and though he was stiff and ashen-faced with pain, he sat on the coach in otherwise stoic silence.

  We all did. We all sat that way on the coach, gazing out at the rolling lawns and the magnificent white-stone manor house, which again basked in the mellow sunlight of another May afternoon. But dusk was fast approaching, and we were anxious to be off.

  At length, Troy came aboard. He too was pale around the gills. One side of his jaw was visibly swollen and discoloured, but he’d produced a new set of glasses from somewhere and had spent the best part of the day straightening out his crumpled suit.

  He made his way down the aisle towards us warily, but still managing to force a smile. First off, he stopped beside Joe. “How’s the shoulder?”

  Joe shrugged sullenly. “Don’t worry … it’s only the left one. I’ll still be able to play.”

  There was an awkward silence. Troy turned, sensing the rest of us watching him. He made a vague gesture. “I promise, you’ll all thank me for this in a few months’ time.”

  “Apart from Luke,” I said.

  Troy shook his head with regret. “I already told you, Luke was finished. There was no role for him in this new project.”

  Just at that moment, with uncannily perfect timing, Lionel went marching past outside. He too bore the scars of last night’s battle, but he also had recovered. He lumbered along, shoving the wheelbarrow. He’d come from the direction of the Plantation and was no doubt bound for some hidden compost heap in a forgotten corner of the grounds. Striding behind him came his mother, the ice-cold Mrs. Hacket, who, among other things, I now realised with disgust, had prepared Luke’s breakfast on the fatal morning, dosing it with whatever it was that had left him in such a state all day. Normally, I imagined she left all the outdoors work to her ox-like son, though on this occasion – and probably only on this occasion – she felt it necessary to keep her beady eye on him throughout.

  I didn’t need to look down through the window to know what his wheelbarrow’s contents would be: great dismembered hunks of butchered, sticky char.

  My gorge threatened to rise, and inwardly, for about the twentieth time that day, I cursed myself – for being so ineffective, for not seeing it coming, for needing the entire thing thrust down my throat before I took action, for needing to read about it in that final book, for needing to actually see on the printed page that the only certain way to appease the lemures was to offer them a captured chieftain … or something very similar: a defeated leader, a broken hero, a fallen prince.

  I didn’t say anything else to Troy after that. Not even when he made his way down the bus and asked me if I was okay. Like Rob, who he’d tried to speak to before me, I kept my trap shut. It was surely apparent to anyone with eyes that I wasn’t okay. I was gruesomely bruised from my crash on the quad bike, and despite the long shower I’d taken that morning after being found sprawled and raving on the Plantation path, livid claw-marks were visible all over my face, neck and arms. It was on the inside, though, where I’d really been wounded. To be made party to such an atrocity, even without my knowledge, was more than I could bear to contemplate.

  When Troy tried to allay our guilt, he only made things worse.

  “He’ll not be found, or even missed,” he said. “Look … the guy had alienated himself from just about everyone. He was living in a squat in Wandsworth when I found him. I doubt anyone even knew he was there.”

  We sat in stony silence.

  A short while later, Miss Ryder-Howe came on board. She was dressed brightly, as though for a holiday, and wearing mirrored, wraparound shades. The driver, who’d returned to the mansion mid-morning, helped her carry on a couple of bulging suitcases. Troy hastened to assist. It seemed that she’d already forgiven his betrayal of the night before. She was clearly determined to do as well out of this project as possible, and I think that stuck in my craw more than anything else. You’ll notice that I’ve steadfastly refused to refer to Lucille Ryder-Howe by her first name alone. That’s because I can’t. It’s because calling someone by their first name implies at least a modicum of warmth or companionship. Lucille Ryder-Howe was none of these things to us. Granted, she hadn’t been the instigator of the plot, but she’d gone along with it, and her prime intent had been to get rich on the back of it. Or should I say richer . Because she was already very rich. I mean, she might have pleaded poverty to us because she couldn’t afford the full upkeep of her stately pile, but she could just as easily have sold Rillington Chase, bought a luxury five-bedroom detached in the suburbs and lived out the remainder of her life in the sort of comfort and security that ninety per cent of the British population are denied. To kill in order to get rich is bad enough, but I don’t think there’s a lower creature on Earth than he or she who kills to get richer .

  I’m being hypocritical, of course.

  Despite my disapproval now, and my apparent rejection of Troy Tooley and all that he stands for, I strongly suspect that I’ll play bass on the new soundtrack, and that I’ll take my cut as willingly as all the rest. In fact, if I’m truthful, I’ve already started formulating excuses that will absolve me of these sins: it’s because of the ordeal we went through – who wouldn’t endure such horror and not want compensation for it? And, if nothing else, it’ll be a memorial for Luke; he paid the ultimate price, so the least the rest of us can do is get the whole thing moving – he’ll still be credited because he was instrumental in writing the original Eagle Road album.

  Yeah, right.

  So here we are, all set to drive away from Rillington Chase, after several days that never happened, towards an unknown but undeniably promising future. The blockbuster movie will be made, and we will get our shot at writing the score. And for all my disgust and fury, it goes against every instinct I have to turn my back on the potential rewards of such an endeavour. I can only hope and pray – if I dare pray – that in due course, when I, Caesar is in the can, an
d the music for it has won a succession of Oscars, and we’re all millionaires again, that the events played out here at Rillington Chase will become nothing more than a blip in time, a footnote of history that will quickly dwindle to insignificance, just like the slaughter of the Second Legion on this very same spot nearly two millennia ago.

  Of course, it’s never that simple.

  I’m not a literary man, but I can’t help remembering a quote from Shakespeare’s Titus Andronicus , at the point in the play where the victorious Roman general addresses the beaten barbarian queen, and draws her attention to his dead soldiers:

  ‘Religiously they ask a sacrifice:

  To this your son is marked, and die he must,

  To appease their groaning shadows that are gone.’

  Eloquently put, as always.

  And deeply distressing.

  Because, for all the wealth and glory that awaits us, in my mind at least, there is one lonely shadow who now will groan for evermore.

  SOURCES

  The Old North Road was first published in Alone On The Darkside (2006)

  The Poppet was first published in Enemies At The Door (2012)

  Grendel’s Lair was first published in Beneath The Ground (2003)

  Hell In The Cathedral was first published in The Shadows Beneath (2000)

  The Baleful Dead was first published in Groaning Shadows (2009)

  Cover design by Steve Upham