Enter The Dark

by Chris Thomas

  He left the house, in his own mind, untouchable.

  6

  Louise sat in the brown paisley armchair in a corner of the living room, whilst a black and white cat curled up on her lap. As her favourite soap opera played on the television, she tapped the overhanging ash from the end of the cigarette into the Coke can ashtray perched on the arm of the chair. A second, ginger cat circled in and out between her ankles, meowing and rubbing its head on her as it went.

  ‘I suppose you all want feeding then?’ she said, to no-one in particular, stubbing the cigarette out and heaving her not-insignificant frame out of the armchair. She walked slowly towards the kitchen; the weight that she had acquired in recent years had begun to play havoc with her knees and ankles. As she walked past the sideboard, she peered at the row of photo frames and the pictures of small children inside them. Every time she walked past them, they reminded her just how lonely and quiet the house felt, but it was something that she had been forced to get used to.

  As she reached the larder cupboard containing the cat food, three more cats ran in through the flap in the back door, eager for their evening dinner. She spoke to them as if they were people. Some considered cats to be cold and selfish creatures, but to her they were the only ones she could truly call friends.

  After filling the bowls, she went and sat back down in the lounge and lit another cigarette. She checked her mobile phone. It was a very basic handset, with none of the bells and whistles of modern ‘smart’ phones, but it was enough for her. Plus, it was all she could afford with her meagre benefits. No messages. No missed calls. The story of her life in the last few months. She had hated this small town in what felt like the middle of nowhere ever since she moved here.

  It had led her to wallow in self-pity; the soap operas on the television offered her a small opportunity of escapism, to pretend she wasn’t her for just a short while. She hated some of the characters as if they were real people. She despised how some characters always seemed to come out smelling of roses, regardless of how they treated other people. And that was how she felt, as though she had been treated unfairly. If people only knew how difficult her life was, perhaps they might feel just a little bit sorry for her.

  She extinguished the last of the cigarette, shuffled in the seat to get more comfortable, and shut her eyes. Doing nothing but smoking and eating pie all day was tiring work and very soon she dozed off to sleep.

  IN THE CARPENTERS ARMS, Barry was king, an alpha male among mortals. He had only moved to North Yorkshire about six months ago but had spent so much time in the pub that he had become part of the fixtures. All of the regulars knew that he had previous form. His total lack of discretion mixed with his low intelligence led, after a few strong lagers, to many nights of boasting to anyone within earshot about his tough man credentials.

  He liked to speak to people barely a few inches from their faces, his six foot five frame intimidating even the hardiest of drinkers, even when he was trying to be nice to them. Which wasn’t very often. He usually had something to moan about, something that had happened to him that just made him angry, like not enough salt on his fish and chips, or too many people in front of him in the queue at the off-licence.

  He sat by himself on a bar stool near the pool table. Two men, barely in their twenties, approached the table and placed a pound in the slot.

  ‘Oi, mate. Can’t you fucking read?’ he snapped at the men, pointing to a small blackboard nearby. On it, in very childish handwriting, was scrawled ‘Player 1 – Barry, Player 2 –’.

  ‘So what?’ replied one of the men.

  ‘I won the table last match. If you want to play, you got to beat me.’

  The two men laughed. ‘Says who?’

  Barry took a sip of beer and slowly got up from the stool. Shoulders back, chest out, he walked up to the taller of the two men, put his face about two inches away from the man’s, and whispered,

  ‘I do.’

  The other man thrust his arm in between them and said, ‘Fine. Look, we don’t want any trouble, just a game of pool. I’ll play you.’

  Barry turned to face him, his hard features all of a sudden changed to a beaming, slightly psychotic smile.

  ‘Rack them up then.’

  He then stood watching in silence as the man proceeded to pot every ball apart from two on his first go. He bent down to take his first shot and fired the white ball straight off the table.

  ‘Fucking hell.’

  The men could barely contain their laughter, ‘Who the fuck did you beat to win the table, Stephen Hawking?’

  Barry snapped. Grabbing his pool cue with both arms, he pushed the man up against the wall, the wooden stick pressed firmly under his chin. The friend tried to grab Barry’s arm and pull him away but he was too strong. The noise had prompted the landlord to rush out from behind the bar and try to maintain some order.

  ‘Barry. Just let him go,’ the landlord pleaded. ‘Look, I’ve poured you another beer, on the house. Just let the chap go.’

  Barry released his grip as the man clutched at his throat.

  ‘Jesus, you’ve got serious issues,’ the man said.

  But Barry ignored him and walked off to a quiet table at the other end of the pub, snatching his pint from the bar as he passed.

  He sat at the table and drank almost three quarters of the pint in one go. He had missed the taste of lager during his time inside. It had to be lager, none of this real ale nonsense – that was for old people. Reclining in the slightly sticky upholstery of the bench, he stared vacantly at the rest of the pub. This was his domain, his new world, and he would rule it in the only way he knew how.

  LOUISE STIRRED as she felt a cat paw stroking the side of her face. As she came to, something felt wrong. She couldn’t move her arms; they were pinned to the arms of her chair. And that wasn’t a cat stroking her face, it was a gloved finger.

  As panic set in, she shook her head and blinked her eyes to try and clear the haziness from her vision. She saw two men with balaclavas holding her tightly by the arms.

  Across the room sat another man, gently stroking the cat on his lap. He wore a smart suit, a tie, and shiny black patent leather brogues.

  ‘Hello, Karen,’ said the man, gently, his voice sounding almost distinguished, though slightly muffled by the fabric of the balaclava.

  Louise’s heart pounded and she began to hyper-ventilate, struggling to get the words out. ‘My name’s not Karen, it’s Louise. Louise Simpson. You’ve got the wrong house. Please, I don’t have no money. Take what you want, just don’t hurt me.’

  The man gently lifted the cat off his lap and placed it on the floor, shooing it away with his hand. He stood up and walked over to the chair.

  ‘We don’t want to hurt you, my dear. In fact, we’re under strict orders to take extra special care of you.’

  ‘But I’m not this Karen, whoever she is.’ She spoke quickly, desperately trying to make herself understood. ‘I told you, my name is Louise Simpson. I’m thirty-six years old and I—’

  ‘No, but you’re not, are you, Karen?’ the man interrupted, with a firm, icy cool calm.

  He grabbed her right wrist and turned it over. There on the underside was the faded pink scar of a poorly removed tattoo. ‘Charlie 20.05.08’.

  ‘You are Karen Parker, aren’t you? And as much as you can try and hide from your past, the evidence of it is all around you,’ said the man. ‘Come, my dear. We have a very special reunion to take you to.’

  The man stood up and turned to leave as the two men either side placed a hessian bag over her head. Her pointless struggling made no difference. The men just about managed to pick her up and quickly bundled her into the back of the black transit van waiting outside.

  AS TIME WAS CALLED at the Carpenters Arms, Barry downed the last of his pint, collected his coat and phone, and stumbled towards the exit.

  ‘Sorry,’ he said to the landlord in a slightly childish voice, smacking the palm of his hand down onto the ba
r. ‘Sorry about earlier. It won’t happen again, I promise. Scout’s honour.’

  He tried to make a three-figured Scout salute, but just stared at his hand wondering precisely which three fingers it was supposed to be. Eventually he gave up and just gave an exaggerated full salute accompanied by,

  ‘See ya tomorrow.’

  ‘It had better not happen again, Barry. I can’t have you scaring away my punters,’ replied the landlord.

  But Barry had already staggered to the exit, waving a hand over his shoulder as he pushed the door open. As the cold night air hit him, the mixture of strong lager and whisky chasers zapped his ability to focus on anything.

  He wandered down the street, weaving from side to side on the pavement. Bumping into lampposts and litter bins, he flung his fists around in thin air, determined to fend off his imaginary assailants.

  A little farther down the road he walked past a side road leading to a disused warehouse. Parked down the street he could see a black transit van and was just able to make out the blurred form of an old man kneeling down by the front wheel. The man was struggling and making sighing sounds as he tried to release the wheel nuts.

  ‘You alright, geez?’ Barry slurred loudly down the alleyway.

  ‘Oh yes. I’ve got a flat tyre and I can’t get these blasted nuts loosened,’ replied the man.

  Barry approached. As he came into focus, the man appeared to be in his late fifties, with a swept back silvery grey bouffant hair style. He reminded Barry a little of his father. The beatings, the drunkenness, the shouting, the swearing all came back to him from the depths of his drink-addled memory. But it wasn’t his father, and for some reason he felt compelled to help.

  ‘Here you go, Gramps. Let me have a go of that,’ said Barry, taking the wrench.

  As he knelt down, his drunken hands struggled to aim right, the wrench clattering against the hubcap. He managed to catch one, but as he did the tyre came into focus.

  Slowly he stood up. ‘Not sure what your problem is, geezer, but that tyre looks fine to—’

  Before he could finish his sentence, he felt a large cloth cover his face. He tried to fight, but his arms were pinned around his back and he was pushed towards the back of the van by a forceful knee pressing into the base of his spine. The three assailants increased the pressure on his limbs as he started to thrash around, but slowly the chemical on the cloth began to make him even more drunk and drowsy. His scream was muffled, and eventually, he could no longer fight it. The men laid him down in the back of the van, got in, and slammed the door behind them.

  As the van began to drive away, the last thing he saw was the old man leaning over him. ‘Mark Rankin. Have we got a surprise for you.’

  The words just had time to register before, finally, he lost consciousness.

  7

  Alistair Goodfellow leant against the oak panelling of the bar and poured a large slug of 1990 Macallan single malt into each of the cut crystal tumblers that sat on the felt-lined top. He dropped a large ice cube into each.

  ‘No ice for me,’ said Jarvis, from across the room. ‘You’d have to be some sort of utter philistine to even consider diluting a classic vintage like that with ice.’

  It was this kind of unrelenting pedantry that Alistair admired in Jarvis, and also what made him the single best computer expert he had ever met.

  ‘Well I prefer it,’ replied Alistair, fishing the ice cube out of Jarvis’ tumbler. ‘And I paid good money for this bottle, so I intend to enjoy it however I see fit.’

  ‘It’s your shot,’ Jarvis offered.

  Alistair took a small sip from his glass and collected his cue. It had always been his dream to own a house large enough to have its own classically styled billiard room and now he did. He had survived the early boom–and-bust years during the explosion of internet technology companies in the early 2000s and sold his online mobile phone company for a huge sum. It was never publically disclosed how much he received for his company, but when asked, his stock response was ‘Nine figures, and the first digit isn’t a one or a two’.

  He wandered around the table, his hands sliding along the smooth dark mahogany rails of his championship snooker table as he eyed the position in which Jarvis had left him. His colleague was a far stronger tactician than he was ball potter, and Alistair was left with very little option other than to attempt a long red into the far corner.

  ‘Ha, terrible shot,’ said Jarvis, enthusiastically, as the red ball missed the corner pocket by a good six inches.

  Alistair didn’t really care though. While he wasn’t in the middle of taking a shot he could sit back and admire this work of art of a room, which he had lovingly designed practically from scratch. The high vaulted ceiling, the enormous chandelier that lit the playing surface, the huge bay windows that were large enough to sit in and admire the view down the long winding driveway which snaked away from the main entrance to the house. Of the dozens of rooms in this house, this was his favourite and where he felt most at ease with the world.

  Jarvis was down taking his next shot when Alistair noticed the bright lights through the front window. They were just small specks at the moment and had stopped briefly. He picked up a small black remote control from the mantelpiece and pointed it at the wall behind the bar. A large oak panel separated to reveal a huge plasma screen divided into a display of twelve CCTV monitors, each covering different areas of his huge estate. He clicked the cursor over the monitor displaying the entrance gate by the road and the twelve screens became one. The enormous gold A.G. monogram that graced the centre of the two wrought iron gates split in half as the entrance opened, and in drove two black transit vans.

  At that precise moment, the double mahogany doors into the billiard room swung open and Gilbert, Alistair’s part-butler and part-personal assistant, ran in, breathless.

  ‘They’re back,’ he said to the two men. ‘But there might be a problem.’

  THE THREE MEN talked as they walked down the seemingly endless corridor from the billiard room to the entrance hall. Usually, Alistair liked to take in the expensive works of art that adorned the walls in between the vast ornate mirrors, or to admire one of the priceless sculptures that lined the wall like some sort of guard of honour. But not this time.

  ‘How can there be a problem?’ asked Alistair. ‘We planned this meticulously. Even to the point where, despite travelling two hundred miles from opposite ends of the country, the two vans pull into my driveway at precisely the same time.’

  ‘Everything was textbook,’ replied Gilbert. ‘We tracked them down, we captured them, we were in and out in no time at all. The local CCTVs were taken care of and the handover went like clockwork.’

  ‘So what’s the problem?’

  ‘She has an ankle tag.’

  The three men stopped.

  ‘Is that it?’ asked Jarvis, adjusting his glasses.

  ‘Well you can’t just rip them off, can you?’ replied Gilbert, somewhat offended. ‘That’s if the police haven’t already worked out that she’s missing and tracked her location to here. I’ve read about that trilat… trilater …’

  ‘Trilateration,’ interjected Alistair.

  ‘Yes, that thing. I thought we were going to wait until she had it removed?’

  ‘No need,’ said Alistair, placing a comforting, brotherly arm around his shoulder. ‘See we have the greatest technology-slash-gizmo-type-fellow right here. Jarvis devised a way of cloning electronic tags eons ago. We leave our tag at the house and sync it with the one on her ankle. Then before we leave, we fry her one with a large dose of electromagnetic awesomeness. So, all that the police will have seen on their monitoring screens was a very short blip, a fraction of a second, and then the usual transmission will have resumed. That’s if they even noticed. Which I doubt they will.’

  ‘Right, fine. Well, it would have been nice to have been informed about this.’

  ‘Sorry, but we needed to work on it in secret,’ replied Jarvis. ‘The fewer people wh
o knew about it the better. You know how it works. Anyway, we were keeping an eye on the transmissions from the control room just to make sure that everything went smoothly.’

  Gilbert nodded. He had become very protective of Alistair and the organisation over the last couple of years and had come to see himself as some sort of ‘consigliere’, a voice of reason amongst the fervent activity that went on in this place. The last thing that he wanted was for this project to be put to an end because of some stupid little careless oversight.

  But then he should have known better than to doubt for even a second that Alistair Goodfellow would risk destroying everything he had striven to build. For the last few years, this had become his raison d’être, and his success and vast wealth afforded him the luxury of being able to attract the best people. The Brotherhood was growing in strength and reach and would very soon be a force to be reckoned with.

  The three men carried on walking until they reached the top of the grand staircase. Outside, the gravel crunched under the wheels of the two vans. A swathe of light flew across the walls, illuminating the vast entrance lobby as the vehicles swung around the yard out front.

  ‘Well, gentlemen,’ said Alistair, putting an arm around each. ‘Let’s go and meet our guests.’

  ‘SHOULDN’T we keep them separate?’ asked Jarvis, as they walked out of the house. ‘It would make for a much better show if it was all one massive surprise.’

  Alistair stood on the gravel driveway, stroking his goatee in deep contemplation, shuffling in his velvet and gold Hermès loafers as the light wind swept up his silk dressing gown.

  ‘Yes, good idea,’ he said, finally. ‘Get her out first and put her in the holding room in the east wing.’