The Revenants

by Alec Dunn

  The Revenants

  By Alec Dunn

  Text Copyright © 2012 A Dunn

  All Rights Reserved

  Table of Contents

  Prologue: The Long Embrace

  One: Dream a Little Dream

  Two: A Fresh Start

  Three: To Sleep Perchance

  Four: Getting to Know You

  Five: Reading

  Six: A Fresh Fresh Start

  Seven: Running

  Eight: Strange Questions

  Nine: The Search for Answers

  Ten: Tristan Joins the Group

  Eleven: No Time Like the Present

  Twelve: The Woods

  Thirteen: On the Road to Nowhere

  Fourteen: The Kindness of Strangers

  Fifteen: Hamsters and Pentagrams

  Sixteen: Collision

  Seventeen: Signs and Portents

  Eighteen: A Certain Shaft of Light

  Nineteen: What Remains

  Twenty: No Time for Goodbyes

  Twenty One: So Close

  Twenty Two: So Far

  Book Two: Falling into Shadows

  Bonus Chapter

  About the Author

  Prologue: The Long Embrace

  Natasha Grey walked happily, if slightly unsteadily, across the fields. Her feet trod the beaten path of the familiar short-cut without her thinking about it, which was just as well.

  Her thoughts were elsewhere, on the time, on her friends, on the party she had just left in the woods, on the drinks and the cigarettes they had shared.

  And on Mark Goode.

  She wondered if she would be home very late, if the chewing gum would hide the smell of the cider and cigarettes, if she would be able to make it to her bedroom without having to talk to her mum or dad, without giving away the fact that she had been drinking.

  She thought she might be a little drunk.

  She giggled.

  She was definitely drunk.

  And she thought of the cigarettes she had shared with Mark, the way his lips pursed to the cigarette like a kiss, the way he lifted his head to casually blow a smoke ring, the way his arm fell around her shoulder and his firm body felt next to hers.

  She thought she might be in love.

  She giggled again.

  Her dad would give her hell if he found out where she had been. Still, it was worth it. The thought of the telling off that might be waiting from her tired father annoyed her. It would be better if he shouted, but if he caught her he would just drone on and on, forever, with that disappointed ‘you have let me down’ expression carved into his face.

  She threw her arms around herself in an embrace and thought of Mark instead.

  The evening sun had already set, leaving an orange haze burning in the west. It gave the woods she had just stumbled out of a romantic glow. A single, solitary bird sang its shrill song. Still smiling, she reached up to her hair and pulled out a leaf. She cradled it in her hand like a rose given by a lover.

  The last hint of daylight had faded and the curiously luminous velvety blue, black of approaching night replaced it. Natasha smiled to herself in the gathering dark of spring. She was now completely hidden from view behind the hedges and the shadowed sky. She was alone. She had gone out drinking and smoking and was out too late and was probably going to be told off and she was in love. She was in love with Mark Goode. She threw her head back and laughed out loud. Alcohol and emotions fizzed in her brain to create a dizzy, happy state of euphoria.

  Completely alone and out of sight, Natasha threw her arms out and span around like a little girl pretending to be a ballerina, her arms described a beautiful circle while her eyes seemed to still see the traces left by her finger tips. She was a child, simply enjoying being alive, being in love.

  She didn’t feel the coldness of the air, winter’s grasp refusing to let go to spring. She was warmed by her own inner glow.

  Life was good.

  She didn’t notice the thin crescent moon staring down at her happiness.

  The path through the fields was coming to an end, stopped by the scarred stone wall that marked the cemetery and, beyond, the narrow streets in which she had grown up, where she had spent all of her life.

  The darkness was pressing now. She was enveloped in its velvet folds. But the wall was familiar, she knew where the large stone slabs that formed the stile jutted out, she knew the rough handholds. They were as familiar to her as the handshake of old friends. Her approach was swift and sure.

  It was the pressing darkness that made her place her dizzy foot on the large stone slab before she noticed. A hat. An old fashioned hat.

  She paused in pulling herself over the wall and looked closer.

  Was that a top hat?

  She smiled in wonder. Somebody had dropped a top hat! A funeral director perhaps?

  She was reaching out to pick it up when she noticed the bulk of body beneath it. The whole world seemed to lurch sideways. Thoughts of Mark Goode were knocked from her head. Her heart slammed against her chest and she flinched in sudden shock. Her happy state of intoxication vanished leaving only a confusing, drunken buzz. She felt sick.

  The April evening suddenly felt very dark. There was no sunlight left in the sky. It was late and she was alone.

  The body was slumped against the wall, half buried in nettles and weeds. A faintly paler section of darkness marked where a face must be.

  Natasha stared into the darkness, struggling to make out any detail other than a hat, a dark body and a pale section of face.

  She stupidly thought what to do. The man – she assumed it was a man – might be hurt, might be dead even. She needed to do something, she had to do something. She shook her head and thought. Natasha was a clever girl and her father was the local doctor. Check for a pulse. That was it, that was first, check if he’s alive then take it from there.

  Her trembling hand reached out.

  She didn’t want to. What if he was dead?

  “Come on, Natasha,” she said to herself, and forced her trembling hand down.

  The skin was cold.

  Her fingers pressed into the man’s neck, searching for a pulse. She knew enough from hearing her father talk. The easiest pulse to find was in the neck.

  Her fingers pressed into the cold motionless clay of flesh. She was gentle at first.

  Nothing.

  She pressed harder.

  Still nothing. No pulse, no warmth.

  He was dead. She gave a heavy sob.

  So, what now? Police. No, ambulance. Shit, best get both. She reached towards her pocket for her mobile.

  The hiss of air from the body froze her hand, a whisper like wind through dry grass, “Who are you?”

  Natasha was flooded with relief. She wanted the ambulance to be here now. She wanted her father, dull and serious, but safe. She wanted to cry. But he was alive. She had to act, take control, do something. She was going to save someone’s life. A vision of telling Mark and celebrity status in school flashed in her mind. She was going to be a hero. “My name’s Natasha,” she said, trying to sound calm and reassuring. What was it her father called it? His bedside manner. “And it’s alright. You’ll be alright. I’m going to call an ambulance. It’ll be here soon. They’ll take you to hospital. Everything will be alright. I’ll take care of you till they get here. You’ll be fine.”

  The dry whisper came from the darkness, “Natasha?” There was a strained breath, a wheezing hiss. “I’m cold, Natasha.”

  “You’re freezing. I thought you were…” she stopped herself. “I thought you needed help.”

  “Help?” the man sounded hoarse, hollow. “I’m so cold.” Breath wheezed in and out, like he was gargling sand. “My wife, Angela. I was looking for my wife, Angela.”
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br />   “Is she here?” Natasha looked around, blindly searching the shadows that merged together, creating the night.

  “No.” There was a pained silence. “She is long gone.”

  “Oh, I’m sorry… I need to call the ambulance.” She reached into her pocket and took her mobile out.

  “Natasha?” The strained voice seemed to force out her name.

  Her hands stopped moving, “Yes?”

  “Will you stay with me?”

  She was gentle, reassuring, “Of course I will.” She looked at the bright phone screen and started to dial.

  “Natasha?” Her name was almost covered by the rattling breath that sounded it out.

  “What?” She tried to stay gentle and calm, but knew she needed to phone for the ambulance now.

  “Do you mind if I call you Angela?”

  “What?” Surprise raised the volume and pitch of her voice. She thought of one her father’s dull stories, about her uncle and when they were climbing in Scotland and her uncle had started acting strangely and everyone had thought it was funny, except – of course – for her father, who knew that one of the first signs of hypothermia was acting in a drunken manner – oxygen not getting to the brain – and that’s what alcohol does, Natasha. She forced herself to sound calm, “That’s fine, everything’s alright. Help is on its way.” Her fingers were pressing the buttons now. Nine, nine, nine. She could hear the rasping whisper in the background as the phone rang.

  “Angela, it’s been so long, my love. So long. I’m so sorry. I never meant to leave you. But now we’re together again. Now you’ll stay with me, you’ll look after me, my love, and I’ll keep you with me. Always,” the dry voice slithered into her ear like a snake across the desert, “my angel.”

  It was only then that she knew something was wrong. Her stomach clenched like a fist.

  The lesser darkness of the pale blob face opened its eyes, like two fuzzy black lumps of coal set in a fuzzy grey snowman, they were blacker than the blackness of the night, two absolute pits of yawning emptiness.

  The figure rose, rose from the ground, rose from the nettles and the weeds. It rose as from death itself, till it towered above her.

  The top hat remained ridiculously on top of the pale face with gaping pits of eyes and a dark suit that seemed to stretch beneath it forever.

  Natasha cried out when the cold pale hand snatched her wrist. It was strong, hard and brutal like the grip of a dog’s jaws. She felt her skin buckle and her bone compress under the grip.

  When the man leapt towards the wall he dragged her with him. Pain exploded in her wrist and shot down her arm. She was smashed into the stone wall, her whole body slammed and shocked, then her soft stomach ripped and scraped painfully across the stones, the brutal impact bruising and slicing her gentle skin. Her jeans caught for a moment and the button snapped off as she was dragged violently onward.

  She could hear screaming, and realised it was coming from herself.

  The sky was above her, the moon, grass, gravestones. She twisted in agony in the tight grip of that pale fist.

  She was being dragged across the cemetery now, her body jarring and bumping in pain and fear against mud and stone.

  She caught a glimpse of a large, squat mausoleum approaching, closer, closer.

  She had a moment of stillness, when the pain in her wrist stopped and the world stopped turning and she could hear a grating noise. She threw her head upwards and could see the cemetery, the world, twisted, all thrown away at an unnatural, ugly angle and the squat mausoleum above her blocking out everything else, with the lid being pushed to one side.

  The horrible, terrifying grating noise finished and a sudden rending pain shot down her arm as she was lifted from the floor and then she was inside the mausoleum, inside the grave, inside the house of the dead, and the man was in there with her, pulling her down into the darkness, pulling her down next to him.

  Natasha screamed uncontrollably as he scraped the lid back across the mausoleum, closing it, closing her in, trapping her, trapping them in together. She felt the thin iron hard bones of its body next to hers. She screamed in the darkness. She screamed in the stifling blackness, where it made no difference if her eyes were open or closed. She screamed, until she had to breath in, then she screamed again and again and again, until she broke down into petrified sobbing, until she noticed the pain return to her stomach and her arm and her wrist.

  And then, after an unknowable amount of time filled only with her terror and screams, in the complete absence of light, in the cold, stifling filth of the grave a dry whisper hissed like a murderer’s last breath, “Angela, my love, together at last.”

  One: Dream a Little Dream

  The darkness is utterly black.

  Fear fills him.

  He knew it was a dream. They came every night, sometimes in the day, increasingly in the day. There was no rest.

  The cold is numbing his back, rising from the rough stone and into him. It leaches through all his body. His arm is shaking from the pain. It hurts inside his elbow and shoulder. It has been twisted and yanked. His stomach is scratched and bruised. The small top offers no warmth. The pain and the cold are paralysing. Neither are as raw and painful as the fear. Tears run down his face and plop softly onto the stone beneath him. The blackness is complete, suffocating. He knows that he is not alone and can feel the weight of the thing next to him. He can hear its calm hushed breathing. It was this thing that had dragged him into the darkness, where he cannot move. It had dragged him into a tomb.

  The memory terrifies him. He is dying. The cold of death creeps up and fills him; the pain of his scratched and broken body fills him; fear fills him. And then the thing shifts in the blackness and he starts to scream. Scream after scream, but he feels its weight pressing onto his frozen body. He feels its breath on his neck. He feels the lips, leathery and dry. He feels the teeth pressing into him and the terror is absolute.

  He knows the emotions and the pain and feels it all. As always, he feels everything, until the very end. He knows this is more than eight months away. He knows what the thing is. He knows he cannot help her.

  The hospital room’s clinical and clean smell welcomed him back to a state of consciousness. The antiseptic and alcohol hand wash masked the other, more basic, smells of life and death. The crude animal scents of sweat and bodily functions were disguised, covered over and wrapped in crisp white sheets.

  Voices hummed from the corridor and ward, quietly disturbing the rhythm of the hospital, but the sounds were locked in the background, kept out by the solid, closed door to the room. Visiting time was always noisier. There was laughter, chatter, banter, the coming and going of relatives, the passing lives of those passing through the hospital.

  The young man lay on the bed. The metal rails were up at the sides, a puny prison raised as though in mockery. As if he was capable of trying to get out. His face was gaunt and his body frail and weak. His young face was etched with lines. Whether they were markers of experience, or from pain, or his terrible physical condition was not clear, but they aged him. Bones jutted from his joints, where hinges linked and tendons gathered to support the stretched, emaciated muscles that pulled and held his frame in place – for the moment. Each muscle was sharply defined, drawn like the string of a bow between the joints and marked by the hollow skin that sank in beneath them. His high cheek bones pulled the skin thinly across his face and the shape of his skull was clear in his strained cheeks and cavernous eye sockets.

  Those visitors passing the room when the door was open mistook him for a young man suffering from an eating disorder. They stared in curiously. They shook their heads or looked away and thought of magazine articles of bulimia or anorexia and how, increasingly, it affected young men as well as women. It was a real shame what people could do to themselves.

  They were wrong. He wasn’t suffering from an eating disorder. He hadn’t done it to himself.

  The young man lay on the bed, unable to move. He
heard the footsteps clipping away. He didn’t know if it was in his memory or in the future or happening now. He did know he was dying. His systems were shutting down. They had run hard, too hard, on overdrive and now they had no more to give.

  The doctors couldn’t explain it. They poked him and probed and scanned and ran tests and took blood and referred and consulted and still couldn’t explain it. They still couldn’t say why.

  He could have told them. He knew, but they wouldn’t have believed him. A doctor had sat down next to him and asked about his carers – his latest pair of carers. They should have been with him, legally. They had refused to come. Not after what he had done. They couldn’t bring themselves to look at him – even now, when he was dying. The doctor had looked embarrassed and used lots of big words that he couldn’t understand. The doctor was a young man, he still wasn’t used to telling people they were dying so it took him a long time. He explained everything they had done and what they did know, what was happening to him. But not the why. He couldn’t explain the why.

  At the end of the day the doctor could have saved his breath. He already knew what was happening to him.

  They had offered him counselling, and a priest. He would have laughed, if he had the strength. After what he had seen, after what he had done, they offered him a priest. It was funny, sick, but funny to be reduced to this. His mind was lost, floating in infinity, the anchor of the present, the here and now, was gone. The chain was broken and he was drifting. His body was worn out, just as his mind was accelerating out of his control. He knew his parents were dead, a long time dead. That was one of the reasons that he had been chosen.

  Nobody would miss him. Nobody was left to miss him. He had driven away the few people who had tried to care for him. His friend had told him that. His friend and mentor had made sure of that.

  He listened to the footsteps clipping confidently away down the corridor; it was such a contrast, such a difference.

  The conversation was over now. The conversation was waiting for him tomorrow. He couldn’t tell which, but he knew what would be said. His friend was leaving. His friend would leave. After delivering his final words, after whispering his final poisonous farewell, he would walk away from him, leaving him to die. After using him, after gaining his trust, asking for his help, turning him into this, reducing him to this, his friend would sneer at him, explain that he had known this would happen, but that he shouldn’t worry. He was replaceable. It was his time to die now.