DarkFuse Anthology 2

by Shane Staley

  Table of Contents

  DARKFUSE: Volume 2

  Connect With Us

  Other Books In Series

  Nether Goole

  Imago

  The Betting Man

  Splotch of Red

  Pink Denim

  The Eldritch Eye

  About the Authors

  About the Publisher

  DARKFUSE: Volume 2

  Edited by Shane Staley

  First Edition

  DarkFuse, Volume 2 © 2014 by Shane Staley

  All stories © 2014 by individual authors.

  All Rights Reserved.

  A DarkFuse Release

  www.darkfuse.com

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either a product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

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  Other Books In Series

  DarkFuse #1

  Nether Goole

  Richard Farren Barber

  Gary had the map open across his lap. But then Gary always had the map. He looked up from the page.

  “So we’re lost?” I asked.

  He looked at me and I had to bite the inside of my mouth to stop the laugh that was threatening to escape. “No,” he said, and looked back down at the map once more, using his finger to trace the route he thought we’d followed.

  “You know where we are?”

  “Do you?” Gary snapped back.

  “No,” I admitted. “But then, I’m not the one holding the map. Maybe we call this one lost and head to the nearest pub instead?” I suggested. I wasn’t ready to return home to Phillipa and the kids yet, but I couldn’t spend much longer driving around looking for Gary’s mysterious village.

  Ahead of us a signpost was pockmarked with rust. In Gary’s defense, if the sign had been legible, it might have helped; it might have said “Nether Goole—5 miles” and then Gary could have put away his beloved map.

  “I’ll turn on the sat nav, we can find this place in ten minutes.”

  “Fuck off,” Gary said. “The day I need a machine to tell me how to read a map is the day I hand back my Geography O level.”

  “You actually have one?” I smiled. I couldn’t hold it in any longer. Gary was too easy to wind up.

  In front of us, grass bloomed in every direction. Golden swathes of grass that drifted back and forth on the breeze.

  “Do you have any idea where we are?”

  Gary looked up from the map and smiled. “Haven’t a clue. Not a fucking idea. I mean, look at that.” He pointed to the fields stretching to the horizon. “What am I supposed to orientate myself against?”

  “The sun?” I suggested.

  “Drive round,” Gary said. “There has to be something of note in this place.”

  I shrugged and allowed the car to drift forward. After a minute we came to a crossroads I thought looked familiar. “Left?” I suggested. “I think we went right last time.”

  “Whatever,” Gary said.

  “Seriously, if it bothers you that much, I’ll put the sat nav on.”

  “We don’t cheat,” Gary said. “I’d rather go back home than resort to that.”

  More fields. Country roads empty except for the occasional smudge of roadkill and discarded Coke cans lying on the verge.

  “Stop,” Gary said. He slammed down the heel of his palm on the dashboard like a driving instructor. I pulled into a lay-by at the side of the road.

  “This is it.”

  I looked out the side window. Fields.

  “This?” I didn’t even try and hide the disbelief in my voice. It was a patch of scruffy grass at the side of the road. “I really don’t mind if we don’t get there,” I said.

  Gary knew better than to doubt me on that—we’d been doing these trips every month for the last few years, since we’d caught up again through Facebook. Gary thought the destination was everything, but for me it had always been about the journey; about getting out of the house for a couple of hours. There were times in the weeks between our jaunts that I thought looking forward to these few hours was the only thing that kept me sane.

  “This is it,” Gary said. He threw the map on the dashboard and opened the passenger door. I was overwhelmed by the smell of freshly cut grass and summer sun and beneath that, something older, almost primeval. It made me think about the roadkill I’d seen back there. And then, as soon as I smelled it, the scent was gone and I was left with the lingering taste of a Lincolnshire summer’s day.

  “I told you,” Gary said. He was standing in front of the car, looking down at the ground.

  “What is it?”

  On the ground was a steel pole. It was overgrown with grass and weeds that suggested it had been lying there for years.

  “What does that prove?”

  “Look,” Gary said, pulling away a knot of tangleweed. He brushed away clots of dirt and rust. There were three prongs jutting from the tip of the sign. The first was so badly worn it was impossible to read. The second wasn’t much better. I crouched beside Gary and I thought I could make out a G and maybe also an H, but beyond that it would just be guesswork. The third prong of the post was almost buried in the ground, but maybe this had protected it because once Gary had pulled it free and brushed away the dirt, it was possible to read the lettering.

  Nether Goole.

  “The sign could have been facing in any direction,” I said.

  There was a stile just beyond the fallen post and Gary walked over to it. “Here.”

  “How do you know?”

  “It’s obvious.”

  I shrugged, it wasn’t obvious to me. Nothing about this trip was obvious.

  “Nether Goole isn’t accessible by road,” Gary said. “That was the whole point of coming here.”

  “So?”

  “So? Every other direction is covered by a road. Stand here and the only way that the sign can show Nether Goole is if it pointed in this direction.”

  As if to drive home his argument he started climbing over the stile. He was tramping along an overgrown path through a field of wheat before I had even reached the hedge.

  “Wait for me,” I called.

  Gary raised a hand in a gesture that could have meant almost anything. Except to acquiesce. That was never going to happen. When we were both at the university, there were times when I’d had to remind myself why we were friends, and there were times in the years since we’d got back together that I found myself re-running those arguments in my head.

  I blundered through the long grass, no doubt pissing off the farmer when he next came to inspect his crops.

  “Hold on,” I shouted, and this time Gary did seem at least to slow down. I tried to close the distance between us. I didn’t like the idea of being left behind.

  “So where is it?” I asked. “Where’s Nether Goole?” Up ahead I could only see more empty fields. On the map the village hadn’t been that far awa
y from the road. By now I should be able to see the first few houses. The only feature in front of us was a crooked tree. For a second I thought I saw something hanging from its branches, but when I stared directly at it, I realized I was wrong: Just a trick of the light.

  “I didn’t bring the ice,” Gary said when I reached him.

  “What?”

  I stared at him, hoping to see a twitch at the side of his mouth that would betray the joke. But nothing.

  “Stop looking at me,” Gary said. “The babies don’t like it.”

  I wanted to laugh because now I knew Gary was messing, except I’d never seen him like this before and something about that scared me.

  “Let’s go back to the car,” I said.

  “Why?” Gary asked. He looked appalled, as if I’d asked him to sacrifice his firstborn son. “We’ve only just got here. We haven’t even reached Nether Goole.”

  “Are you okay?”

  “It’s just over there.”

  Gary pointed and I followed his finger. There was nothing to see, just the golden wheat, crushed beneath a cobalt sky. There was no sign of any habitation—no town or village or hamlet.

  “We’ll be there in a couple of minutes,” Gary said. He started striding along the path as if he were cutting a swathe through an Amazonian jungle. I nearly left him and ran back to the car. I would have done just that, but it occurred to me that if I left now, I could probably say good-bye to any future Sunday trips. The idea of each Sunday spent in the house trapped with Phillipa and the boys, where the greatest excitement was the decision on whether to have Vanilla ice cream or Raspberry Ripple, filled my stomach with a sick feeling.

  By the time I’d made the decision to press on to Nether Goole, Gary was almost out of sight. There was a dogged determination to his stride. He was going to Nether Goole; what I wanted no longer mattered.

  “Wait up,” I shouted. “You don’t have to walk so fast.”

  Gary made a sound like a pig grunting. I don’t think there were really any words in there.

  “Gary?”

  He didn’t turn round to look at me. He didn’t even slow down. I’m not sure he heard me.

  I picked up my pace and pushed past him. Once I was in front of him, I turned and held out my hand. “Stop.”

  Gary stared at the hand planted in the center of his chest.

  “We’re here,” Gary said.

  I looked behind me and all I could see were fields bursting with golden wheat that bobbed and weaved in the unseen breeze. More than once I thought I heard voices. Fevered, childish whispers. I saw nothing but wheat and I opened my mouth to tell him this when I saw it. Nether Goole.

  “That’s impossible,” I said.

  “I know,” Gary agreed.

  “They weren’t there,” I told him. Four houses standing on the lip of the horizon. They towered above the whispering grass. Three stories high. Pale yellow brick that looked like they had been brushed with gold. There was no way I would not have seen them before now.

  “Hurry up,” Gary said. He started to run toward them, beating his way down the path, crashing through the field and crushing wheat stalks beneath his boots.

  I made a grab for his arm to haul him back, because the uneasiness I had felt before was nothing compared to the ache of looking upon the village of Nether Goole. But of course I was too weak, too slow, too late. When he got closer to the buildings, I heard him whoop with joy.

  I have known Gary since we were both eighteen, for close to twenty-five years now. Gary Frazer did not whoop. Not the Gary Frazer I knew.

  I stopped running. It was no longer just Nether Goole that frightened me. Gary scared me. I wondered what his face had looked like when he made that noise. I wondered whether I would have even recognized him.

  I stopped running and stood in the heart of that golden field. It was a couple of miles back to the car, and Gary had the keys, but that wasn’t what stopped me. If that had been my only concern, I would have run away from there without a second thought. No, what stopped me was the idea of leaving Gary there. The recognition that I would be abandoning him. I tried to rationalize this; if I went now, I could get help; I could come back with others and together we would rescue Gary. Except I knew that if I left, I would never come back.

  “Hold on,” I shouted. I didn’t think Gary had heard me, but up ahead he stopped, leaning forward like a dog straining against its leash.

  “What’s the rush, it isn’t going anywhere,” I said as I caught up with him.

  “Children.”

  “What?” Maybe the gap between us was greater than I realized because I was sure I had misheard him.

  “Children in the trees. Watching us. Need to get there before they tell on us.”

  I looked around. Only the wheat fields existed. There was only ever the wheat fields.

  I looked at Gary, but the man in front of me was not someone I had ever met before, certainly not the man who had dragged me around Galway for my stag night, or had once told Phillipa that if she didn’t marry me, he would.

  If it had been anyone other than Gary, I would have run away then and damn the consequences. I didn’t try and kid myself that he would do the same for me—he was too mercenary for that. But hell, this was Gary.

  I didn’t speak as we walked up to the group of houses. I didn’t dare: I was too afraid of how Gary would respond. I walked three paces behind him, watching closely, trying to work out what was happening here.

  Nether Goole was not large enough to be called a village, not even a hamlet. As I walked up the ragged path to the houses, I wondered how the hell it had made it onto a map at all. And why.

  There were four houses each three stories tall and peering out to each point of the compass, as if they were standing watch. The bricks were almost yellow, stained the color of the wheat fields that surrounded them. Dark windows, uncluttered by curtains or any other adornment, gazed blankly out like dead eyes. As we walked up the trampled path, I felt like the houses were measuring our approach.

  “This is it?” I asked when we stood in the garden of the nearest house. “You brought me all the way for this?”

  “Isn’t it fantastic?” Gary whispered. He didn’t turn his head as he spoke and I got the idea he couldn’t, that nothing would persuade him to look away from Nether Goole.

  But I tried. I had to, didn’t I?

  “So we’re done here now?” I said, my voice brighter than I felt. “I mean, that was the idea, wasn’t it. Now we tick it off the list and head back. If we’re quick, we might even have time to grab a pint and a curry at the Bengal Spice before Marion and Phillipa realize we’re late.”

  I don’t think he heard a word I spoke.

  Gary stepped forward, onto a patch of ground where the wheat gave way to lush grass. The demarcation was perfect, it looked like the result of hours of work although I was sure no gardener had laid a hand on this land in years.

  He walked across the grass. After a moment I realized: there was already a track of footprints across the ground. When he reached the door to the first house, he stretched out his hand.

  “What are you doing?” I asked.

  “Going inside.”

  “That’s someone’s house. You can’t go in there.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because you’ll die.” I heard the words before I spoke them, as if the idea came from somewhere else.

  I grabbed Gary’s arm. The time for politeness was over.

  It was like trying to move a rock. It didn’t matter how hard I pushed or pulled at Gary, I couldn’t shift him. And then, as if I had done nothing, as if I wasn’t even there, he shrugged away my hand and pushed open the door.

  Even before I joined him I could smell the house. The stench flooded out through the open door; a combination of rotten vegetables and fish guts and stale urine. It stank like the village drunks from miles around had walked over the fields just to use the four houses of Nether Goole as their latrines.

  �
��Jesus,” I said.

  “I know,” Gary replied. “It’s awesome, isn’t it?” But what I heard in his voice wasn’t disgust, it was pride.

  “Don’t you smell that?”

  I tried not to breathe in, but already I knew that was impossible. I felt the bile burn the back of my throat and I fought against the urge to be sick.

  I followed Gary into the house, expecting something terrible. There was nothing. Pale yellow walls, bare floorboards—the windows were a little grimy and a small graveyard of bluebottles lay in the dust around the sill, but there was nothing to explain the stench.

  Gary turned to face me and beamed like he had come down on Christmas day to discover all his childhood desires tucked under the tree waiting for him.

  Before I could ask him about it, he ran through the door and into the next room.

  The sane part of me, the part that kept track of the amount of petrol in the car and the date of the mortgage payments and Jimmy’s next injection, told me to get the fuck out of there. It told me that Gary might be as happy as a pig in shit, but whatever that happiness was based on was false. But that part of me hadn’t trekked across field and dale with Gary one weekend a month for the last two years.

  A pool of sunlight painted a pale yellow square across the floorboards. A dark shadow disturbed the image, but when I turned to look through the window, there was nothing to see. I walked up to the glass, almost pressing my nose against the windowpane, but all I could see were the fields of wheat swaying back and forth. Something about the scene made me feel uneasy and I imagined that the view from this window could be unchanged down the decades and centuries. It caused me to wonder who had lived in Nether Goole, and why…so isolated from the rest of the world. What were they hiding from?

  I heard the heavy clomp of Gary’s footsteps echo through the house. I wondered about him too—what did he see when he stared into those empty rooms? The dread I felt as I walked through the empty house of Nether Goole was a million miles away from the joy I heard in Gary’s voice. Still, I hurried to catch up with my friend on the basis, however flawed, that it was better to be with someone, anyone, than alone.