“Hello,” he called out. “Anyone there?”
He looked down at himself. His trouser knees were torn and there were grazes on his hands where he’d crashed into rough stone work or branches in his haste to get out and away. If it was a plumber or maintenance man in there, he’d look in a right state when he introduced himself. However, there was something Dan didn’t want to admit to himself. Something his instinct told him.
He knew this wasn’t over. He knew he’d be expected to witness more. When he rounded the corner of the shower room, he faced the naked, dripping wet form of Jackie O’Shea. Her huge breasts hung down as water cascaded continually from the shower. Her hands were bound in chain to the shower pipe, a solid, sturdy metal length designed to withstand being pulled upon by distressed patients. Nigel stood behind the threshold of the bathroom. Dan dare not enter.
“Please…Nigel…stop. I’ve had enough.” She was looking at Dan. The strip light above cast the scene in harsh, white light. Although she was looking at Dan, she didn’t appear to see him. Nigel, however, did. He moved from behind Dan, and Dan got a good look at him.
He was no longer blind. Two brown eyes regarded Dan without expression. His body was slender and his movements deft. This was the man Nigel should have been. He wore a leather apron too but in his hand, he held a broken length of cable.
He looked away from Dan and touched the cable to the water. O’Shea jerked and screamed under the water, the current shocking her. Nigel repeated this action. Dan began to back out of the doorway.
“I’ve seen enough, Nigel,” Dan said in a careful, measured tone. “I get it, okay. I get it.”
Nigel was still looking at him without emotion when the door slammed shut in his face seemingly on its own.
There was still one more to see, Dan figured. He’d seen all but one of the perpetrators named on Prendergast’s list. Dennis Gillits who’d tormented little Stephen. He’d not witnessed Gillits’s end yet. As if on cue a noise through the door before him signaled where he should go next. A small cry came from somewhere beyond the door.
Dan pushed open the heavy door and went into the communal area. There were two sofas piled against the far wall and a bookshelf. He could also see plastic chairs and tables stacked to his left.
To the right were the bedrooms. Rows of metal-framed beds could be seen, but it was through a door to the right that the noises came from. Dan crept forwards and found himself in a hallway which led back to the main corridor and the shower room. O’Shea had stopped screaming in the bathroom behind, but he could hear inaudible pleading.
The noise of a man in pain sounded from behind a door with the word GYM on a brown standard hospital sign above the entrance. Breathing hard, he swung open the door.
“Oh…fuck. Oh, fucking hell.”
Stephen looked up from his work. His large frame was well toned, his blue eyes regarded Dan with a determined frown. All his features were proportioned normally, and Dan saw he had a round face which could have, in other circumstances, expressed friendly humour. Not tonight.
His fingers were no longer fused together, but were thin and dexterous.
The man in the wheelchair must be Gillits. Dan entered and walked around. He couldn’t see Gillits’s face. His face was a mass of smashed mirror shards, each one spaced millimeters apart, inserted into his cheeks, jowls, forehead, eyes, nostrils, and lips. His face was totally obscured by a forest of these shards. A large part of his chest had been given over to shards which stuck out like acupuncture needles.
The wheelchair that bound Gillits was encircled by a wreath of smashed mirrors. Stephen had also inserted glass into his left knee and calf but had given up on this. He watched as Stephen inserted a three inch shard into Gillits’s soft belly flesh and put his hands to his mouth.
Gillits jerked and cried out again. Piss from the severed catheter tube leaked out and splashed onto the carpet. Blood was seeping from between the shards and had already pooled around the floor.
Stephen was ignoring Dan and carrying on with his work. Dan knew this was his cue to leave. He wasn’t going to watch Stephen insert anything into Gillits’s sensitive areas. Dan knew he was saving this for last. Gillits had probably guessed this too.
Dan dimly considered trying to help Gillits. To pull Stephen away, but he knew if he interfered then there would be consequences.
He backed out into the corridor and saw a fire door to his left. He burst out of it and ran again. He was now on the road to Willow House. The Dark Choir were still singing, the noise wavering through the foggy air.
Sudden concern for Lindsey focused his mind. She was in the chapel. He briefly contemplated going back to Willow but knew he had to get to the chapel. He could see the car mere metres away. He ran up to it, pulled open the door, and fumbled at the ignition for the keys. They hung there, just as Alison had said they would. He gunned the engine and took off, nausea, terror, and emotions that went beyond description at the things he’d seen threatened to overwhelmed him, but he fought to stay focused and drove.
Forty-Five
Just beyond the border of Scarsdale the engine of the old Morris began to judder.
“Come on!” he screamed, thumping the steering wheel. The engine was going to give out, he just knew it. He pulled over, turning into the first junction he saw which just happened to be the supermarket. The engine died just as he managed to bring the car across two parking bays.
The chapel was only three hundred yards up the road. He got out and started to run. Dan had no idea exactly what he would find at the chapel. Before witnessing the horror in the asylum and then in the abandoned unit, he assumed Lindsey was in some kind of danger, left there, unable to walk, cold and alone. Now he wasn’t so sure that was the case.
The town slept, frozen in its nocturnal hours. In his experience, most people would be asleep. This wasn’t like London where there was always someone awake. By midnight, Scarsdale was a graveyard.
There were no lights on in the chapel. He bounded up to the front door and tried the handle. Naturally, this door was locked. From the times he’d been there as a child, he knew there was a side door. Dan dove into the dark alley between the chapel wall and the abandoned factory next door. The small green door stood ajar. He pushed it open and found his way in.
A sudden enraged cry froze his muscles. That was his sister’s voice. It was followed by another enraged sound which this time came out as a cross between a cry and a grunt. What the fuck was going on in here?
Dan crept forwards along the short corridor and into the chapel proper. He could see activity, movement, just before the altar area, the raised platform from where Widdowson usually berated his congregation. He ducked down behind the rows of chairs and crept along the side of the chapel. In glimpses he saw more movement. A human shape. Long black hair over pale shoulders. Arms raised, bringing something down in hammer blows. Then he heard a second ring of cries coming from another throat, a man’s voice. Widdowson’s.
Dan breathed hard. He stopped and crawled between rows of chairs until he was in a position to see what was going on at the altar area. Kneeling, he dared to look over the chairs.
A naked girl stood over what appeared to be two older people laying down on the stage. A man and a woman.
The woman lay underneath the man. Both of them were naked. Her flesh was very pale and appeared blackened and bruised in places, but he couldn’t see because the large bulk of the man lay on top of her.
For a moment, Dan wondered if these two were dead, but then the man turned his head.
Widdowson!
Even in the dim light of the chapel, he could identify the pastor’s features. Widdowson appeared to be incapacitated somehow, unable to shift himself from the woman.
Above them the naked girl emitted a screech of outrage. He studied her.
Thick matted hair hung over her front and obscured her face. She dropped to her knees just behind the couple. The banshee creature
reached out towards her victims.
The light in this place came from streetlights outside, from the upper windows behind him. He would need to get closer if he wanted to identify the woman underneath Widdowson.
He came out from his hiding place and crawled down the aisle. From here he got a full view.
From his new position, Dan could see that Widdowson’s torso and feet were bound to the woman beneath him by what looked like tightly wound barbed wire. He was bound around the middle in the same fashion.
His eyes widened in horror and he nearly let out a cry of shock when he saw what else the banshee girl had done to the pair.
The banshee girl had driven several long, sharp spikes through their hands and feet, effectively pinning them together. She’d even driven spikes through Widdowson’s body fat which hung like loose, flaccid bags and into the maggot-white flesh of the woman underneath.
They lay joined as if locked in some bloody coitus.
Hypnotised by the scene, Dan boldly moved closer to look at the face of the woman.
He had to know who this woman was. She had some significance to Widdowson. His overwhelming curiosity overcame any fear of the banshee girl spotting him. He crawled under another couple of chairs then dared to gingerly raise his head over the back of the nearest chair to peer over to the scene on the stage.
Her head was turned sideways so he could see who it was clearly.
It was the face of his mother.
She had been buried out back in the small graveyard. The body had been exhumed and dragged into here to be joined to Widdowson, the living physically and painfully joined to the dead.
Lindsey looked up from her work and spotted her brother.
He took a step backwards as she fully stood. She was naked, long, dark hair framing her face, reaching her breasts.
Lindsey was standing, walking. Dan was just about able to process this information on seeing the others, but he almost refused to believe his sister was walking too.
She stepped down from the stage, the flood that had flecked her body now irrelevant.
She was beautiful. Her slim hips and full breast gave no hint of the person she had been. Her long, dark hair was the same and he recognised those dark eyes. Focused and unmoving, her limbs controlled and steady.
She sauntered towards him and he knew she held no malice, not for him at least. When Lindsey was a foot away, she stopped. Her left hand extended and cupped his face. His eyes met hers. She’d never shown him any affection before. She’d never been able to but tonight she could. She was telling him she loved him. Not with words but with one action.
Strangely, despite the terror he’d felt and the horrors he’d seen, his love for her welled up inside of him. He took her hand and kissed it. A tear fell from his left eye.
The moment was broken by Widdowson. He’d angled his head around and spotted Dan. He could see Dan, unlike the other victims Dan had witnessed being dispatched tonight.
“Dan. Daniel. Help me. She’s trying to kill me.” His voice was failing as he tried to talk through the pain. Lindsey turned back to him, her face a rictus mask of hate.
The fact was, he could have helped Widdowson. He could have tried to reason with Lindsey. He could have called the police, but Dan knew this just had to be. This was what Lindsey wanted, payback for all the times Widdowson had tortured her, payback for all the times her mother had allowed it.
“I won’t help you,” Dan said through the echoing chapel. “You get what you deserve.”
Lindsey faced Dan again. From behind him he heard a click. In her supernatural state, she had somehow unlocked the chapel doors and now they sprang open, as if pulled by invisible hands. She was telling him to leave. Dan turned on his heels. By the time he closed the chapel doors, Widdowson’s moans of fear were turning to screams of pain.
Dan staggered into the road and vomited. He went up the hill and turned into the alley that took him to the footbridge. The car wouldn’t start, he knew that. He’d have to leave it in the car park. That would displease the manager to no end, but he had bigger things to worry about.
As he crossed the footbridge and the water gushed below, he didn’t see the choirmaster waiting for him. No one waited for him. His brain was nearing shut down from the horror and the stress of it all. He found himself crying out or shouting “No, no, no” to himself as he made the long journey back to One Farm Road. Clouds blew at speed across the hills, undersides illuminated orange from light in the town below. There was ice in the air though. Once the clouds passed, the land would freeze. The hills and fields were dark, darker than they’d ever been. Across the valleys the last notes of the Dark Choir’s songs faded down to silence. He knew the song was over.
Once at the house, he collapsed at the threshold, got up and pushed open the door. It was unlocked. Alison must have returned to get her stuff and left it unlocked, but Dan knew she wasn’t here. She’d gone. In the kitchen, at the sink, Dan drank down draughts of water. Each time he closed his eyes he saw them. Contorted faces, bloody wounds. He slugged whiskey and went upstairs.
He went to Alison’s room and the wardrobes were empty. She’d truly left. He lay down on the bed and physical exhaustion got the better of him. He didn’t so much as fall asleep as black out.
He dreamed.
Dan was walking through the frozen night, mist icing the air. He approached a large, two storey house, like something out of a sci-fi film. Two balconies and glass frontage.
Inside clothes had been scattered across a wide, wooden floor. A vast TV was playing to itself. An empty whiskey bottle had rolled to a halt on the carpet.
Dan walked upstairs. There was more chaos, clothes and letters strewn across the floor. One letter had the Derbyshire Constabulary logo and Dan read the heading. NOTICE OF SUSPENSION. He suddenly knew whose house this was. Built from money laundered or blackmailed.
Dan followed the hallway to a darkened bedroom where a man perched precariously on a short stepladder. Around his neck a noose bit into his throat, the rope tied firmly to the steel beam above. A ladder against the beam where the man had tied it earlier.
He spotted Dan and looked down.
“Dan. Daniel Hepworth. How did you get in?” asked Phillip Gould. “This is all your fault. You and Widdowson. I had it under control back then before you…before… You brought it all back, Hepworth. You did. I’ve done bad things to people. Bad things. To boys. Help me, Dan.” He glanced up at the rope. “I’ve changed my mind. I changed my mind hours ago. Wrecked the place. It’s a bit of a mess. Funny thing is, I can’t get down. Not on my own. If you could get up the ladder, untie this… I’d be very grateful.
Dan didn’t answer. Didn’t even look at him.
“Dan, please. I want to live. I can’t get down. Help me.”
He stared up at Gould. “Fuck you.”
Dan kicked the step ladder away. Gould dropped, his legs kicking, hands trying to grasp the noose. Dan stared and watched. Through an open window he could hear the Dark Choir singing.
His own yell woke him.
He was still on the bed, but the sun through the window was blinding him. Dan raised his hand and shielded his eyes from the bright sunshine of a new morning. However, he was not alone. A man stood at the end of the bed. He had had been waiting for Dan to wake.
Forty-Six
“You look like shit,” said Billy Cockayne. “Not surprising the amount you had to drink last night.”
Dan sat up, the scrapes on his knuckles smarted. He was still dressed. Billy picked up the nearly empty whiskey bottle. “Carry on when you got home, did you?”
“What are you doing here?” Dan shook his head groggily and images from the previous night’s horrors assaulted his memory, all juxtaposed by Billy being here.
“I came to check up on you. Make sure you didn’t choke to death in your sleep or anything? You were plastered last night.”
“Was I?” An irritating confusion blind
ed his reasoning momentarily. Last night he’d witnessed six murders in three different locations. What the hell was Billy talking about him being plastered for?
“Yeah. You were pissed when you arrived. We think you drove the Morris into town. It’s still there, parked across two parking spaces. You must have left it there to piss the manager of Morrison’s off before you came to the pub.”
“I was in the pub?”
“Fucking hell, can’t you remember staggering in at about half past ten?”
No, this was wrong. He was still with Alison then. They got the call from Melody at about midnight to tell them Lindsey had disappeared. Billy seemed to think he’d gone to the pub.
“Are you sure it was me? Wait, what day is it?”
“Saturday.”
“Yesterday was Friday?”
“It usually follows that way, mate.”
“I can’t remember any of this. Are you sure?”
“Of course I’m sure. You came in, had a couple of pints, a few chasers, and lost at pool twice, then spent the rest of the time moaning that Alison had left you. Brian had a lock-in and we left at two.”
None of this had happened. He’d been nowhere near the pub. If Billy wasn’t mistaken then perhaps he’d imagined last night. He looked down at his knuckles and knew he’d not imagined it. His mind could never have conjured up such horrors.
“What happened to your hands mate?” asked Billy.
“Didn’t I come in with this,” he held up the injuries to his hands.
“No. You were wearing what you have on now, but it wasn’t so messed up. Your trouser knees weren’t ripped.”
He couldn’t tell Billy what he’d witnessed. Especially as Billy was so convinced Dan had spent a drunken night in The Lamb.
“Maybe I did this on the way home?”
Dark Choir Page 27