Harvest

by Steve Merrifield

  There was a large hole in one wall and before it there was a large pickaxe half-buried in rubble but untouched by dust or the shroud of soot from the fire, suggesting that this was a new addition to the room, and that the hole was recent. Scott approached the hole warily, knowing there was no other place in the room Harry could have gone.

  The hole was over a metre round and where the concrete had been chipped and cracked with the axe, its fresh grey and chiselled white exposure resembled teeth around the large black mouth. There was movement within, accompanied by the rustling of a bag, a brown object barely discernable from the darkness, moving up and down like a thick brown tongue hungrily writhing in the black maw.

  Scott leaned closer and shone the torch into the void. The torch ignited the tongue-shape and lit Harry up like a flare, his face snapped round and he snarled viciously through a mask of grease and grime, the crust flaking as his face erupted in an angrily startled sneer. Scott started and the beam bounced around the hole and strobed aspects of the room into view. Scott glimpsed something behind Harry in a crater, a gelatinous mass that he couldn’t identify, but seemed to radiate a faint green glow, before he could dwell on the strange shape he was sure was writhing or pulsating, his attention was drawn to the refuse sack that Harry was shaking vigorously despite being disturbed.

  The beam of light darted to chunks and slithers of putrefying flesh and carcasses that fell and flopped to the ground from the bag, landing on a larger pile of scavenged flesh. The maggots squirmed and the flies roared as the rain of dead meat fell through the air onto black fabric. Scott picked out the details of the material with the torch and found it was a pair of trousers topped with a large black tail coat. At the hem of the trouser legs he saw shoes. He tracked the thin frame that held the items of clothing together and was met by the consuming empty sockets of a blanched white skull, crowned with a black top hat draped with matching black crepe.

  Unable to formulate words to address the scene he instinctively grabbed Harry and yanked him roughly out of the hole. Harry stumbled back into the main room with him and Scott sent the beam of light back to the mound of rank meat which rested on the skeleton dressed as an undertaker, trying to understand what he had walked into and what responsibility Harry might have for the body. The grim skull grinned mockingly and inanely through a misaligned jaw. Completely stripped of flesh the light reflected off the polished yellowy bone, burning the overexposed image of the ghostly face into his mind.

  Harry turned and bolted while Scott coughed on bile as the stench of the rancid meat hit the back of his throat and choked him. Scott broke into a run, half in chase and half in retreat from what he had seen.

  Kelly walked by Craig’s side from the lift towards his flat. She took one of his two shopping laden bags while he rooted in his pocket to get his key.

  Both turned sharply in unison as Harry crashed out of the fire door at the end of the corridor, panting and jogging shabbily to his own door beside Craig’s. Having only ever seen him in a slow meditative dawdle they both looked at each other in a mixture of surprise and bafflement at Harry’s haste. Craig asked if he was okay but received no reply. “There was a Scott something looking for you, a social worker…” Harry dived into his flat and slammed the door.

  “‘Really? Oh, thanks for telling me, Craig.’ – No problem Harry, any time…” Craig shot Kelly a wry smile. She shook her head frowning and laughing in return and they both dismissed the encounter. Craig gestured for Kelly to go ahead of him into the flat and he closed the door behind them. “I would give you the tour, Miss Mason,” Craig started in a clipped posh voice, before finishing in an exaggerated common swagger. “But being that my flat has the same layout to yours it aint worth it.” Craig kicked off his trainers in the hall. “Hi kids,” he called to David and Rachel in his lounge. “We’re home… Sorry about the wait for munchies, there was a big queue down the shops – must be lots of people planning a long night ghost hunting and nibbles tonight.”

  Kelly watched as Craig breezed into the lounge and broke Rachel from a serious stare at nothing. Since Rachel had come back from the Chambers Kelly had watched her drift in and out of what appeared to be very distracting thoughts. She was worried, but only ever said she was okay if Kelly asked.

  “I hope you have chocolate!” Rachel chirped enthusiastically. The introspection gone.

  “Chocolate? I believe that is the major food group I purchased: I have caramel and chocolate, mint-chocolate, and the best: Chocolate and hazelnut.” Craig shook the bags in the air. “Oh, and chocolate and chocolate for the purists among us.”

  “Right then, I’m with the boy with the chocolate…” Rachel marched him through to the kitchen opposite the lounge and helped him unpack and make the first of many mugs of tea for the night.

  Kelly found herself abandoned in Craig’s lounge. She had been there earlier after Craig had called in to walk her round, but she had been busy helping move equipment to take in the new environment properly. There were two sofas draped with tie-dyed and Celtic patterned throw-overs and scattered with mismatched cushions; the room had a student feel to it but seemed homely. It was hard to get an idea of what the room would normally look like with the a bank of uniform monitors on the coffee table and thick wires trailing to what seemed to be a small transmitter aerial, beside that there were five other smaller boxes of varying shades of grey and different sizes with flashing LED’s and displays with quivering metronome needles. “Looks like mission control on a bad day in here…”

  David looked up at her. They had been introduced earlier over a tangled mess of cables. “It’s all pretty technical, but basically I have set cameras up in every room of the flat except the toilet and the master bedroom… This isn’t Big Brother, we want to leave them some place to go and have ‘rumpy and dumpy’ in privacy.” Kelly would have like him to smirk or wink to dispel his crudeness but he didn’t. She couldn’t work out whether he was humourless or he had a Jack Dee deadpan face. “The images all get transmitted to this receiver – hopefully without broadcasting it to every TV in the building. All the cameras have switchable or alternative spectrums like thermal and infra red as we are doing dark filming. Then we got all these little boxes of tricks… They measure temperature of the air – signal any cold spots, hot spots. This one detects air movement or displacement to check for small movements or breezes. This little baby triggers when there is large movement and we have more sensitive ones for the lounge and kitchen which will be unused in the night. We have other sensors for EM (sorry; electro magnetic fields), and a few other tricks.”

  Kelly took it all in, not quite remembering the purposes of the individual boxes, but impressed at the technical side. It really wasn’t all just sitting in the dark eagle-eyed in the hope of catching something elusive. That was if they would actually catch something. Now it wasn’t just the Chamber’s that were affected she could see even less point to this whole exercise, but then she couldn’t tell Rachel and David about the other disappearances. Despite that Kelly still couldn’t quite work out if she could bring herself to believe in ‘ghosts’.

  Scott lumbered up the last few steps, his heart pounding in his throat, the rush of blood coursing through his veins making a hollow sound in his head. He staggered through the fire door and panted to Harry’s flat. He rattled the doorknocker, but decided not to wait for Harry to ignore him. Scott’s thoughts tumbled like a rock slide in his head as his mind tried to figure out what Harry had been doing with all the rotten flesh, and what the corpse was doing hidden in the basement. Harry could be in a lot more trouble than Scott could deal with. Scott produced the key for Harry’s flat and rammed it home.

  Harry stood in his kitchen pacing. His mind focused on his actions with a clarity he hadn’t experienced for weeks; the meat, the body, the scavenging of bin bags, the skeleton, the strange husk that had gradually become moist and alive with his visits and deliveries of rancid meat. It all lurched at him from the foggy dream world that had somehow
separated him from what he had been doing. ‘Why? Why did he do it?’ He knuckled his forehead, his fingers sliding in the grease that coated his face. Tears welled in his eyes as he desperately tried to regain control of his thoughts and think what had been happening to him…

  It stared at the man-creature that answered to the name of Harry, circling around him, knowing that this agitated him further. It had lost control of Harry in the basement. Harry’s shock of being discovered had fractured his thoughts and It had lost its control; lost its ability to strike back at the intruder through Harry. Too weak to attack directly, It needed Harry: Needed to get back inside him, inside his mind.

  The focus of Harry’s mind shattered with the sound of the doorknocker rattling… Harry looked down, startled to find his arm had moved without his volition and had grasped a large carving knife. He dropped it onto the worktop in fright. He could feel the soft voice teasing at his mind again; Deirdra’s voice, his loving wife’s voice. It didn’t seem to matter that she had died ten long years ago. Just that she was there with him, speaking to him again. The voice carried him off to a time before the forgetfulness and the apathy for his own life and his surroundings, before he started thinking like a child lost without love, before he forgot how to live like a human and started living like an animal, scavenging and foraging for food.

  “Pick up the knife, Harry” she asked. “To carve the roast,” the voice whispered – Deirdra’s voice. For a moment he slipped into the past. It would be a Sunday if she was asking him to do that ritual. They would have been to church and he would have just woken from a light afternoon sleep in his armchair in the lounge of his home. She would wake him, and in his Sunday suit he would head to the kitchen following the aroma of chicken or beef, to the large carving knife.

  The key noisily chewed into the door and it flew open.

  Scott fell into the room panting, the smell of bodily waste and decay crammed his nose and squirmed in his belly as he gulped down sickening mouthfuls of vile air in his exertion, he gagged on his own bile as his gut rejected the atmosphere dragged into his stomach by his heavy breaths. Suddenly Harry filled his vision and he was startled by a flash of silver between them. Scott gagged again as his throat closed in reaction to something hard striking his neck. Instinctively his hands leapt to his mouth to stifle an expected surge of vomit. Hot liquid gushed onto his hands before he could reach his mouth. Darkness closed in around his vision as the nerves in his mouth and lips told him nothing had passed that way. In that moment within his panic he knew something was wrong. He wasn’t being sick; it wasn’t vomit. His crimson covered hands suspended him within a sickeningly enlightened moment. He tried to scream but his voice didn’t come from his lips, instead it gargled from his exposed larynx in a prolonged stridor from his slashed windpipe filling with blood like a submerged snorkel.

  Scott fell against the door drowning in himself. His bloodied fingers grasped the doorframe behind him for support but failed to gain purchase. Another glint of silver flashed as Harry punched into Scott’s stomach. A spike of pain burned intensely in his guts, reaching a blinding white hot zenith until something gave up in his head so the only sensation was Harry’s fist kneading his belly roughly as he rummaged the wide flat knife inside him. Rasping for breath, bubbling blood sprayed from his lips and throat as his lungs pumped for air. Gently the colour in his vision began to fade into blackness and the grim room was no more.

  Harry looked to the table and the freshly sliced hulk of Beef, which looked strangely the size of half a cow, far too large for them to get through alone. Deirdra stood behind him; she would probably be wearing her housecoat that she usually donned for cooking. He knew she was there for she had talked him through the slices he had just made. The beef smelt good. Mouth-watering. “Now,” she breathed. “Section the meat. That’s it. We can portion it for later. Cut right to the bone… Waste not, want not Harry.” Harry felt her smile although he couldn’t see her. He was glad to be home again, with his wife, having the perfect Sunday afternoon.

  Chapter Eleven

  Rachel took hold of the steaming mugs of hot chocolate and headed from the kitchen, walking carefully with her load in the gloomy hallway, guided by the light of the lounge ahead, her eyes fixed on the steaming liquid that lapped close to spilling over the rim of the mugs. She approached Craig’s lounge and stopped abruptly as the light was obstructed by someone in the doorway, she prepared a smile for whoever stood in her way but her expression migrated into a puzzled frown as she saw the figure was holding out a palm as if expecting payment to pass.

  She expected it to be David or Craig and prepared to dismiss the playful gesture. The figure was in a cowl of dark roughly woven robes, staring back at her with crystal blue eyes set in deeply age-engraved sockets. His face was chiselled from the darkness of the hood like a pale withered cadaver, bearing a crown-like coronet of weaved mistletoe and a wispy pointed tongue of white beard that flicked out from the hood.

  Shocked, Rachel’s eyes leapt back to the hand that now bore a rune, the rune of protection she had seen within the mosaic in the lobby. The twig-like fingers wrapped closed around the tablet then reopened again in one smooth motion, revealing the engraving of the rune changed to that of the interlocking chevrons of the ‘Jera’ rune: The rune of the harvest.

  She looked back to the face of the old man for answers to the symbolism, but saw only the lounge and Kelly waiting expectantly for her drink with a puzzled look at Rachel’s hesitation. He had gone. Rachel gathered her concentration that had been scattered by the old man, and summoned a dismissive smile against Kelly’s questioning looks.

  Rachel settled on the floor next to Kelly and joined her in leaning up against the sofa before the coffee table and its monitors opposite Craig and David. Seeking distraction from the startling apparition Rachel motioned with her head to Craig and David who sat on the second sofa. David’s head was resting at an unnatural angle on the back of the sofa his mouth agape with shallow breaths that occasionally snorted, beside him Craig slept lightly with his head slowly sliding towards David’s shoulder. “Lovely couple aren’t they…”

  Kelly smiled. It had been four hours since they had found themselves together. There had been a smattering of conversation within the group, then awkward moments of quiet. Rachel cupped the hot mug in her hands and saw Kelly wince at a sip from her own mug.

  “What is in this?”

  “Oh, that would be mine,” Rachel said rolling her eyes in playful innocence as a cover for her embarrassment.

  “Oh, no;” Kelly stopped her in mock indignation. “I think I’ll keep this one unless you want to share the joy?”

  Rachel grinned back at her and dragged her large bag to her side. She reached in several times and lined up three miniature bottles of alcohol, one after the other on the table in front of them. “Pick your poison.”

  Kelly returned Rachel’s drink then picked a bottle of dark rum and laced her own drink. “I feel like a teenager, trying to hide what were drinking,” Kelly giggled conspiratorially. She shivered. “Is this cold snap the first of tonight’s spooky goings on or do you think Craig is having trouble paying his heating?” she whispered.

  Rachel laughed and she draped her own thick woolly cardigan over Kelly’s shoulder, watching her shift under the gesture with obvious awkwardness. “I will be okay. I have more fat to insulate me than you have.” Rachel settled again. She accepted Kelly’s thanks as she pulled the cardigan round her more comfortably.

  Kelly suddenly leaned closer to the screen that displayed the Chambers lounge and stabbed a finger at a luminous dot drifting through the air. “So is that an orb then?”

  “No, dear. It’s a spec of dust.” Kelly looked disappointed with the answer. “Maybe if it was seen on Most Haunted they might be considering it as an orb, but not by me or anyone that has genuine experiences with spirits. Of all the spirits I have seen in my time, none of them have resembled specs of dust. As far as I know orbs have only been found since
digital cameras have been around, before then ghost pictures on 35mm film used to be of figures, people – something to get excited about. I think it’s the sensitivity of these modern cameras to light that causes the problem as it catches the light reflected by dust.”

  “You truly believe there is something ghostly in their flat though?” Kelly reinforced bluntly.

  “Well that was very leading…” Rachel cast her hand across all the equipment. “All this would be a lot of effort if I didn’t believe in the possibility of some paranormal activity. It’s quite obvious you don’t believe.” She broke her look and paused thoughtfully over her mug. “I don’t need all this to believe what I see every day, all this technology and nights like this are for people like you: The sceptics.”

  “I’ve never had to believe in them. I have never encountered anything paranormal and nor has anyone I know. I used to be scared of monsters – I just guess I grew up and they went away.” She shrugged.

  Rachel rested her mug on her knee and held it there and considered whether she had already seen a crude representation of a monster in Amy’s precious drawing. Up until that defining moment Rachel thought the investigation was an exercise in futility, as it wouldn’t lead to evidence to support Claire’s belief of what had happened to little Emily. Yes there was a presence; a powerful one, but Rachel couldn’t make that leap between what she understood of the paranormal and what she understood as fiction, or more kindly; the troubled conclusion of a grieving mother desperate for answers. And possibly a way of escaping suspicion? No that was too calculated.