Dark Choir

by Paul Melhuish

  As he turned back to try to reason with the man, a piercing sound echoed across the town. A gust of wind blew across the hills and made what sounded like a screech—no, many screeches—followed by the atonal singing of many distressed voices punctuated the night. The sound ceased as suddenly as it had started.

  “What the fuck was that?” he said out loud. The sound had chilled his bones to a far greater degree than the man standing before him. “Did you hear that?”

  He turned back to face the man, but he’d gone. In the seconds that he’d turned away, the stranger had disappeared. He couldn’t have gone back along the footbridge. The boards of this bridge made a hell of a racket when you walked on them, and he’d still be seen retreating. It must have been another twenty feet to get to the other side of the river across the bridge.

  A nasty thought occurred to him. Dan looked down. No, he would have heard a splash and a curse of shock when the guy hit either the freezing water or the sharp rocks.

  The man had simply disappeared. That was the only explanation. Swallowing hard, he faced the dark trees ahead and began the long and now uneasy journey home, jumping at the sound of every branch cracking in the wind and every tree groaning until he was out of the woods and in the open air.

  Sweating and paranoid, he saw the lights of One Farm Road in the distance and began to run, run in fear like a child, looking behind him to see if a robed apparition were following him until he hit the front door and burst into the house.

  Seven

  Gillits woke on hearing what sounded like children singing, the wordless atonal vocalisations carried across the hills to the estate. He opened his eyes. Only a sliver of light from the streetlamp outside offered scant illumination. He assumed it was still full night as beyond the window it was dark.

  Gillits sat up in bed and felt for his glasses, his right hand quickly locating them. He put them on and looked around the room. The bedside clock read 12:30 a.m. He concentrated on the sound of singing he’d heard outside. The sound was fading. Then he heard only silence. That was until he heard movement in the living room next door.

  He held his breath, listened. Footsteps, things being moved. Someone was in his house. He heard more footsteps then heard the front door open then shut.

  Silence.

  Whoever had been in his house had just left.

  He turned and looked out to the window, pulling the curtain aside to see anyone leaving or if there was a strange car parked out there. He lived in a cul-de- sac, so any unknown cars could be spotted easily. One of the reasons he’d chosen this new build was the privacy it offered. Located at the very edge of New Scarsdale, as obscure a location as the area offered.

  He pulled the net curtains aside, getting a clear view outside. The house opposite sat in darkness, the fields stretching away to the motorway beyond. No car apart from his neighbour’s Corsa parked by the fence bordering the new housing estate. Nothing unusual.

  Sweating, he fumbled for the light, but it wasn’t working. He flicked the switch. Had the power been cut? No, the clock was still working. Beyond the bedroom door, he could see the front door to the bungalow. He had not imagined the sound of it shutting or the movement in the living room. Someone had been in here and let it slam on the way out. What had they taken? His TV? The stereo? He’d never heard of any break-ins but then again, he never really talked to his neighbours. He lived alone in his bungalow, peacefully enjoying his retirement. Gillits knew he’d have to go in the living room. Not only to see what they’d taken but to make sure the front door was locked.

  Gillits slid from his bed to his wheelchair, careful not to snag the tube of his catheter on the mechanism of the bed or the sides of the wheelchair. He slid easily into it and pulled the arm down then pressed the forwards joystick with this thumb and the electrically powered wheelchair moved forwards with a soft whine.

  The wheelchair was new. He’d fought those bastards at the NHS Wheelchair Services for the funding for this machine. After caring for others for so long, didn’t he deserve something back for all his hard work? Forty years he’d worked up at St. Vincent’s then St. Brendan’s, wiping arses and feeding the enfeebled. Now, he was one of them.

  The spinal cancer hadn’t just robbed him of his ability to walk but had eaten into his bowels and bladder. Now he was catheterized and shat into a colostomy bag from a stoma in the side of his guts. To add insult to injury, the cancer had metastasised in his throat. He could speak but had to breathe through a tube sticking out of his throat. A tracheotomy tube.

  Ironic really that he now lived on the new build estate just half a mile from where he’d worked all his life, rotting away, waiting to die. Now this had begun. The singing.

  This was the third time he’d heard it. He knew what it was. Gillits couldn’t put a name to it, but he knew what it was.

  Them.

  He stopped when he reached the door. He listened so see if he could hear anything. Whoever had been here had definitely left, the living room was quiet.

  He wheeled out into the living room only to find it unchanged. The stereo and the TV were still there. His fingers pushed the light switch, but the bulb didn’t respond. He looked up and saw just the wire, left hanging from the ceiling. The light had been pulled off. He shivered. Had they been into his bedroom and done something to his bedside light while he was asleep?

  Moving further into the living room, Gillits became acutely aware of the sound of the wind whistling above the roof. The curtains were open, the orange glow from the streetlamp the only illumination in the living room. He’d closed those curtains just before he’d gone to bed. The intruder had been in here and opened them. He moved forwards and jumped when he registered movement to his left.

  He stared at his own reflection in the oblong mirror that hung over the fireplace. He briefly regarded his reflection. A thin, naked grey-haired man in a wheelchair. He didn’t look unlike those poor sods he used to care for up in the wards.

  He moved forwards to examine the window. Maybe that’s how the bastards had got in, that’s why the curtains were open. If they had, then they’d closed the window again. They must have got in, looked around, decided there was nothing worth stealing, and left. But why rip out the light bulb? It didn’t make sense.

  He examined the window again. The only thing that had changed was a small brown smudge on the left-hand side. He neared. The smudge had been made in either dark brown mud or excrement.

  He shot back when he recognised the shape of a hand. The distinct shape of a small human hand. The print appeared as if it had been made by a clenched fist, but Gillits knew this was not the case.

  The smell hit his nostrils. Since the throat operation, his olfactory senses were not really at their best. He followed the smell and looked to the left of the window.

  “Oh no,” he said. “Oh no, this is not happening. This is not happening!”

  The words were written in two-foot-high letters, crudely smeared across the wall in dark brown shit. This was no break in. Someone knew.

  CHOIR

  Gillits grabbed the phone from the table dropping it twice. He had the number on speed dial. The phone rang several times before a bleary voice answered.

  “Gillits. What the hell are you ringing me up for at this hour?”

  “Get over here now, Widdowson. You have to see this.”

  Eight

  The morning was overcast. Dark heavy clouds hung over the fields promising rain.

  Dan’s head felt fuzzy from the drink last night. His legs ached from the running. He’d asked Alison if she’d ever seen a bald man in a robe hanging about, but she’d just shook her head. Over breakfast, he’d explained to her about the man on the bridge.

  “Well, this area is reputed to be haunted,” she’d said. This triggered a flashback of fear from his childhood. One of Diane’s obsessions was the Devil. That was the reason they’d never had a television, because she thought the Devil would enter the house. A
s if this house wasn’t scary enough. Then she’d tell him Satan was always watching him but was invisible. He’d buried those memories, but being here was unearthing them. That still didn’t explain the man on the bridge. Dan just looked forwards to getting the funeral and the will sorted out so he could be out of this place.

  After breakfast, he asked if he could go with Alison and Lindsey to Willow House as she was due for two days respite there. It would be better than hanging around the house all day.

  The rear doors of the small mobility car were open, and Alison pulled down the telescopic ramps from the back of the vehicle to the floor. Taking the strain, Dan pushed Lindsey in her wheelchair up into the back of the vehicle and clicked the brakes of her wheelchair into place. As he slid the ramps back into the car, storing them on either side of the wheelchair, Alison clipped the complicated set of straps and seatbelts to her wheelchair. The higher roof and taller windows gave her a full view of the passing scenery.

  With Lindsey safely strapped in, they left the house. Alison drove. Lindsey made approving noises during the journey. Dan knew when she liked something. Her vocalisations were low and content. When she really liked something, she laughed. She screamed an ear-piercing scream if she didn’t like something, and he’d not heard her scream since he’d been back.

  They took the rural route to the respite home in New Scarsdale. Lindsey was due to stay for two nights as she did every week, skirting above Scarsdale and heading west across the hills.

  A flood had blocked one of the roads, so Alison took a detour. Pine trees encroached by thick yellow grass rose and dipped on either side of them. More flood warning signs had been hastily erected, and the vehicle passed through gushing streams that poured across narrow hillside roads.

  “So, is there a date for the funeral?” asked Alison.

  “One week from now. Sole’s taking care of everything.”

  “Were you thinking of taking Lindsey yourself, or do you want me to help?”

  “I wasn’t thinking of going at all.”

  He expected her to give him the same sort of look Beverly gave him, eyes wide and a look of disgust on her face. Alison didn’t react.

  “I can take Lindsey then,” she said. “People will be asking where you are, I imagine.”

  “Well people can ask then,” he snapped. “Apart from Uncle Silas, I’ve got no other relatives. Only her church freaks will be going. I owe them no explanations.”

  “So, what should I tell these, er, church freaks, as you call them?”

  “Tell them I don’t want to celebrate the life of a woman who, at the age of five, made me wear a jumper stuffed with holly leaves so I could share with the sufferings of Christ. Who put broken glass into my shoes and sent me to school in them, so I would focus on the Lord instead of “earthly pleasures.” There, that might give you some idea as to why I don’t mourn the woman.”

  Alison inhaled deeply. Dan reddened slightly. They drove in silence until they reached the tower of St. Vincent’s rising through the trees.

  The relatively new houses of New Scarsdale had been built under the shadow of the old asylum. They drove past pebble-dashed bungalows built in the sixties and past a pub and a row of shops. New Scarsdale had grown since its inception several decades ago. The bungalows ended and they passed a wood of trees on the left; part of the St. Vincent’s estate.

  At the end of the wood, Alison turned left off the road and onto the grounds of what had been St. Brendan’s.

  Like New Scarsdale, St. Brendan’s Hospital had been built in the sixties. People with learning disabilities had been cared for here, away from the psychiatric patients incarcerated in the hulking asylum across the way. Dan remembered Lindsey being here for a while when he was a kid, and the place was still open. Among acres of brambles and weeds, Dan could see squat hospital buildings with fading white walls and flat roofs, all abandoned now.

  “So St. Brendan’s is totally closed down,” said Dan.

  “Been closed for over ten years. Willow and Rowan houses are all that remain of the old St. Brendan’s hospital now. I think they’ve got plans to build on the land and turn St. Vincent’s into flats.”

  Ahead, nestled underneath tall oak trees, stood two modern, large bungalows. Willow House and Rowan House. They sat at right angles from each other. Alison drew up onto the neat tarmac of the parking space and stopped.

  “I’m sorry,” he said. “I didn’t mean to get arsey earlier. I’m not arsey with you.”

  She held him with her blue eyes and gave a sympathetic frown. “I understand. I just hope you find some kind of peace in all this.”

  “I will when I get away from this shithole and back down to London,” he said climbing out. “Besides, Widdowson’s taking the service. If I clap eyes on him again, it won’t be a funeral up at the chapel. It will be a murder.”

  The first thing Dan noticed about the inside of Willow House was that it was warm. The floors were made from pale wood tiles, and the doorways were wide enough to accommodate wheelchairs. In the hallway, one of the wide doorways led to the living room where a widescreen TV played a film, a Disney musical. To the right was the office where a good-humored black woman emerged to greet them. She was the senior caregiver today and didn’t wear a uniform. Dan looked down at her name badge. Her name was Melody. Further down, he saw a wide, bright dining room and kitchen. Straight ahead, he faced a hallway, the bedrooms leading off from each side.

  “How many people stay here?” he asked Melody.

  “There are eight bedrooms. The place across the way is the same, but the residents there are more mobile. So, shall we get Lindsey settled in?”

  “We’ll need to change her,” said Alison. “If we go to her room then she can come back out here and watch television with Stephen.” Alison turned to Dan. “Go and say hello to him.”

  Dan was used to his sister but didn’t really know how to react with others who had his sister’s condition. He felt a small twist in his confidence at the prospect of meeting this Stephen guy. Alison and Melody went to change Lindsey’s incontinence pad. Feeling slightly awkward, Dan went into the living room.

  On the sofa, dwarfed by cushions, a small man lay gurgling to himself. He sensed Dan’s arrival and stopped all noise. Dan stared.

  The man must have been three feet in height. His head was much bigger than his body, and his eyes almost seemed as if they were edging towards the side of his face. His forehead bulged over his eyes. Dan knew the poor guy must have been born this way.

  Stephen had unusually short arms and legs, and his chest seemed to bulge out unnaturally. Dan thought he could see a hump on his back. What shocked Dan the most were the condition of his fingers.

  Some fingers were fused with just one nail growing across several digits, as if they’d melted together. Other fingers were nothing but stunted growths.

  Dan didn’t really know what to say to him. He knew Lindsey had the mind of a child, sort of. This guy could be completely normal mentally, just physically deformed. Dan decided not to talk down to him but talk man to man.

  “Hi. It’s Stephen, isn’t it.” His expressionless eyes looked in Dan’s direction. “I’m Dan. Lindsey’s brother.” Stephen didn’t reply. “Don’t suppose you follow Derby County, do you?” Stephen blew a raspberry. “Yeah, though not.”

  As he glanced at Stephen, Dan noticed that, apart from the anomalies of his features, he was also scarred. Healed, white scars crisscrossed Stephen’s face. They were old but Dan wondered what had caused them. An operation perhaps? Stephen must have been around fifty. Back in the day they tried all sorts of things, he supposed. Operations, bone re-setting.

  “Ready?” asked Alison.

  “Yes.” Dan shot to his feet. “He’s not a Derby County fan.”

  She shrugged, “Who is?”

  “Cheeky sod.” That was the first time he’d heard her crack a joke. He said goodbye to Lindsey as she was wheeled into the living room and kis
sed her on the forehead.

  “Goodbye, Stephen,” he said as they left. Stephen didn’t reply.

  In the car, Dan pulled on his seatbelt as Alison started the engine. “What happened to Stephen’s face?”

  “It a condition called Apert syndrome.”

  “No, I mean the scarring.”

  “Oh, that. Well, Stephen is sensitive to some things. He hates seeing his own reflection. In his room, he has no mirrors. If he sees himself in the mirror, he gets very upset. A minute or two seeing himself and he gets upset for hours. A few years ago, someone once left him in front of a mirror and he got very upset. This was years ago. Back in the eighties when St. Brendan’s was still open.”

  “Doesn’t explain how he got the scars.”

  “It does. Someone at St. Brendan’s, we don’t know who, put him in front of mirrors and left him there all night. You saw his finger nails. They’re quite sharp if they’re allowed to grow. Well, he got so upset he cut his face with his finger nails, over and over again. He did such damage to himself, he’s blind in one eye now.”

  “But he must have been at it for ages to get scarred like that?”

  “Like I said, he was left there all night. They found him in the morning surrounded by all these mirrors. Long ones, like you get in a tailor’s or a shoe shop”

  “You mean…someone did that on purpose?”

  “Abuse happens.”

  “Sick bastards. Did they catch who did it?”

  “No one cared about it then.”

  “That’s bloody awful.”

  Without Lindsey here, he wondered what Alison would do. Maybe she’d go to her father’s and leave him in the house alone. He didn’t relish the idea of that. However, him alone in the house with her might be a bit awkward. Maybe they could go out. He didn’t really think she’d fancy a night down at The Lamb with Billy or Mooey. Perhaps a meal out? No, that would feel like a date. He didn’t want to start anything like that.