“Him,” Dan pointed to the man in the picture.
“Lord Scarsdale. Used to own Scarsdale Hall.”
“He’s the choirmaster. It’s him.”
Dan parked the car in the café car lot and walked across the fields to the big house. Dusk was approaching. Thin red shafts of light from the imminent sunset bloodied the trees and chimneys of the old house.
He vaulted the fence and kept close to a line of trees. He could see the large arched doorway; gargoyles looked down from the stone surround and the eves above. He could see no lights on in the house. No cars were parked in the entrance.
With everything that had happened, instinct told him to enter the house without knocking. He wanted to see this house for himself, not be shown around by some National Trust lackey or simply be told to go away by whoever lived there. He wanted to find out more about the choirmaster but knew he’d never find it if he tried to enter overtly.
Dan darted to the side and moved slowly along the east wing. Buildings which he thought may once have been stables stood crumbling between him and an empty field. He quickly found a side door; a single arched oak entrance with a heavy ring handle. Dan turned the ring and the door opened inwards. It wasn’t even locked!
He was inside.
Closing the door behind him, he found himself in a narrow hallway with worn red-tiled floors. This appeared to be old servant’s quarters. Dan crept through the house until he came to the end of the passage.
From here he could see the entrance, the wide arched door and a high-ceilinged hall. To his left wide wooden stairs curved to the upper floor. Dan had images of some long-neglected mansion covered in dust where further secrets to the identity of the choirmaster could be found. This place appeared to be still in use. When Dan heard footsteps clacking across the landing above, he knew he wasn’t alone.
He heard the occupant enter a room somewhere in the west wing, the door shut behind them. Dan hadn’t expected anyone to be here and was in two minds whether to just leave. He quickly came up with a plan. If he did bump into the occupant, he’d just bullshit his way through some story about being lost then hopefully get into a conversation about who had lived here. He had the picture of the choirmaster with him. Maybe they’d know.
Alternatively, he might bump right into the choirmaster. Dan swallowed hard. Despite the man’s power, his ability to direct dead children in a choir, Dan knew he’d have to master his fear and have it out with this man face to face. Dan couldn’t imagine how that would pan out.
He left the relative safety of the passage and walked into the passageway. He could still hear someone moving around in one of the rooms to the left then all went silent. The stairs creaked as he made his way up them. Any minute the person who’d entered the room would come out. He wanted to see what was in the other rooms before they did. Dan reached the top of the stairs and waited. The house was in total silence.
A vibration registered in his bones followed by the very brief snippet of sound. Dan almost ran screaming out of the house. He’d felt that vibration before, a subsonic shake that penetrated joints and muscle. The sound. That had been the sound the Dark Choir had made. One brief expression from a soloist. The sound had come from the east wing, the door at the end of a dark wood-paneled corridor. A heavy, square door firmly shut.
Dan should have run but instead he began to inch down the corridor.
No, fuck this. The night of the Dark Choir he’d crept down that corridor to where they’d sung and he faced them like a coward. This time it would be different.
He stood up straight, marched down the corridor towards the door. Enveloped in the darkness, he followed the small thin square of light around the closed door. He didn’t hesitate when he reached it but turned the handle and opened the door. He found himself in a room, a fire burning in a stone grate. The room had one occupant. Dan looked at the face of the choirmaster.
Forty-Nine
He wore the same purple cloak made from heavy-looking velvet. His bald head gleamed in the firelight. His dark eyes stared out into the middle distance, occasionally focusing on Dan. Beside him sat a small table. The choirmaster had a view of the dying day afforded by a wide sash window to his right.
“I don’t believe it?” said Dan out loud.
The choirmaster’s wheelchair was a large, ornate model. The curves of the seat molded to his body. His limbs were contorted and jerked in awkward movements and his joints, the wrists, the elbows, flexed inwards at unnatural angles. His head turned to and fro on the headrest behind him, and his toothless mouth opened and closed soundlessly.
He had cerebral palsy, Dan could see that. Much like his own sister but the choirmaster’s jerks and ticks appeared more pronounced, indicating his condition was worse than Lindsey’s. Dan knew he’d be getting no answers from this man. In a way the answer was already here. When the choir had sung, he’d been empowered to stand, walk, direct their voices, meet him on the bridge, visit Willow House, visit One Farm Road, whisper words of comfort to Lindsey, Stephen, and the others.
“You don’t believe what?”
The voice came from behind him. Dan spun around to see Alison standing in the doorway wearing her nurse’s uniform, carrying a tray with a soup bowl. Dan just stared. To say he’d not been expecting to see her today was an understatement.
“You are trespassing, you know,” she said. “And if you don’t mind, I need to assist Lord Scarsdale with his tea time meal.”
He let her past and she laid the tray down on the table. Alison pulled up a chair, took a spoon, and began to feed the aristocrat in the wheelchair.
“You know I genuinely didn’t expect you to find us,” she said. “I thought you’d be in London making money and playing football.”
“You thought, or hoped? You left me that night.”
She laughed darkly. “Of course I did. I explained that you had to witness the work of the Dark Choir.”
“People were murdered.”
She shrugged. “Go to the police and report what you saw if it bothers you that much. I hear the police came to arrest Lindsey. How did that go?”
“What they did to those people…”
She turned and faced him sharply. “A fitting punishment for what was done to them. Stephen, Lindsey, Shelly, and the others were all given a choice on how they wanted to exact revenge. They were abused, Daniel, for years. Did you think they’d just shake hands and forgive them? What would you have done?”
He swallowed hard. “Maybe.”
“Rubbish.”
“I was abused by my mother. I didn’t kill her. I didn’t…I don’t know…cut her head off or make her walk around with glass in her shoes.”
“But you didn’t forgive her either. Dan, by the time you realised you’d been abused as a child you had too much to lose to take revenge. As a young man you had a future planned out, you were on your way to university. If you’d gone back to the house and killed her, your future would be in jeopardy. The law would punish you. But you did punish her. You ignored her. You left her. That pained her and you know it. So don’t come all moralistic now. The Dark Choir needed you as a witness. They even gave you an alibi for that night. You should be grateful. They did consider letting you take the blame for the murders. What better way to advertise their work than for you to publicly declare what you saw?” She spilled some soup down Lord Scarsdale’s front. “Sorry. I’ll clean that up later.”
“Except no one would have believed me.”
“Hence the main reason they decided not to go down that route. People would just think you were mad or making it up. Besides, you’d done nothing wrong. We saw no reason to destroy your life.”
“‘We’ is it now? Okay. Well, Mrs. Dark Choir, I haven’t told anyone what I saw. So that’s buggered your plans, hasn’t it?”
She laid the spoon down and spoke to him directly. “We didn’t expect you go on Twitter, Dan. We need our witness to be authentic. And you have to
ld people. You’ve told Melody and Karl. Both believers in the Dark Choir. Melody will tell people. Right now, she’s in London asking for prayers from her pastors in her church to overcome the shock of that night. She’s discussed it with her prayer group. Karl is discussing it with his ghost hunters group. Word will spread. People will come to know we exist.”
Without asking, Dan pulled up a chair. Lord Scarsdale finished his soup, and Alison gave him a drink with a straw. He was able to hold it himself.
“He’s cognitively unimpaired,” she nodded to the choirmaster. “Trapped from birth in a malfunctioning body.”
“How,” Dan said flatly. “How did you do it? Make them walk, give them a night off? What was it? Satanism? Witchcraft?”
“Nothing so crude. It wasn’t magic, certainly no illusion. The power of the Dark Choir cannot be explained. You found out that Doctor Proctor lobotomized those children, disabling them for life. The first time they sang, people laughed. That angered them.” She stood up and went over to the fire. “Don’t ask me how they do it. No one knows. In this realm there is no how, only why. When they sing the structure of reality, of time, alters. What is solid and real becomes subjective and unreal. The rules of physical reality can be changed. A person can be in two places at once. Those who can’t walk get out of their beds and stroll through the night. People can be taken from their beds and transported to an old asylum. A man can drink himself stupid but have never have touched a drop, dozens of witnesses see him. Maybe their voices twist the universe a little or perhaps they cause the maker to press the pause button on reality. Don’t ask how this happened but, like I said, just ask why.”
“This only happens when they sing?”
“Yes.”
“And what have you got to do with all of this? You’ve known about it all along.”
“I am a consequence of the Dark Choir. Miracles happen.”
“You’ve seen this before.”
“I grew up with them. My father here was disabled from birth and sterile, but he sired me.”
Dan’s jaw dropped open.
“You never guessed in your wildest imaginings that was my father you encountered on the footbridge that night. He came to visit Lindsey, to hear her requests. He met you to see if you would be a suitable witness after Lindsey requested it. In the dead-space created when the Dark Choir sings my father walked the night and heard the prayers of those who can’t speak.”
“He directed the Dark Choir?”
“He directed the Dark Choir.”
“So you live here. He was the father you visited. Fucking hell.”
An expectant silence created a vacuum in the room.
“Now, if you don’t mind, my father will need to go to bed soon. We expected you to visit. You deserved an explanation and now you have one, but Dan, do not visit again.”
“What, or I’ll be killed?”
“No. You’ll find an empty house and no trace of anyone here. Officially, no one lives here. If anyone comes then we cease to exist until they leave. Sometimes longer.”
He stood up. “I need to speak to you. Alone.”
She strode towards the door. He followed her out, but once they were in the corridor she didn’t stop until he was down the stairs at the front door.
“We need to talk, Alison.”
“Really? What about?
“How can you say ‘what about?’ What happened between us. We need to talk about that.”
“Isn’t it obvious? I was using you, Dan. Before a miracle happens we need to put the pieces in place. It’s like the healings in the Bible. If the man who’d had palsy had never been brought before Jesus in the first place, the miracle wouldn’t have happened. I needed to protect Lindsey from your mother before her death, before you arrived. I needed to steer you in certain directions. To the old asylum. To Ann Prendergast. To Karl and his museum. I had to protect you from Widdowson, and finally I had to lead you to Willow House the night Lindsey disappeared, then to St. Vincent’s. I had sex with you to keep you here, which, to be honest, was a perk of the job.”
“You knew I was falling for you.”
“I made you fall for me. It wasn’t that hard. Most people make the mistake that love is some divine occurrence. Most of the time love is a bi-product of prolonged proximity. You spend enough time with someone, they do things to help you, you start liking them. A lot. You fell for me because I was good to you. I was good to you and I have incredible tits. Those two reasons.”
“I love you, Alison. I think about you every day.”
“Even after knowing that I used you? Dan, really?”
“Well, yes.” She opened the door for him to leave. “Now that I know about the Dark Choir…maybe we could…please, don’t leave me like this.”
She sighed, ran her fingers down his cheek. “You’re a good man. You shouldn’t let your heart rule your head. Your head, your mind, is a complex computer that directs everything. Nerves, memories, emotions. The heart just pumps blood around the body. Put the head back in charge and these stupid emotions will fade. I have other work to do. You can’t be allowed to get in the way of that.”
She ushered him out. He went to leave then stopped. “One more thing.”
“Make it quick.”
“If I was in their position, you know, unable to walk, do things for myself and I had a night off, the last place I would spend it would be in the place I was abused. Some cold, damp neglected shithole.”
“What would you do?”
“I dunno. Go and get a Big Mac. Drive a Porche around the block. Go for a pint, a meal, get laid, anything. If I was Lindsey, I’d go get a gin and tonic and find a man. You know, whatever. I’d have fun. What I saw wasn’t fun.”
“They needed to settle scores before they could do anything else.” She began to shut the door and he stepped out. “Besides. This isn’t the last time the Dark Choir will sing. Goodbye, Dan. I wish you well with the rest of your life.”
She shut the door.
That was it. He’d never see her again. She was gone from his life. Dan knew it would be futile to try. He stepped up to the door and opened it. Instead of a staircase and clean floor tiles, he saw years’ worth of dust across the floor and cobwebs gathering up in the rotting, broken stairs. Just as she’d said, it would look as if no one had been here for years. It did.
Dan closed the door and trudged across the fields back to the café car park. He looked back at the hall once more. The windows were dark, no smoke trickled into the sky from the chimney. They’d gone. They’d gone forever.
Epilogue
The bedroom windows were wide open. The heat stifling.
Dan was due to go to London to meet a client after dropping Lindsey off at Willow House. He wasn’t looking forwards to wearing a suit and getting on a train. He wasn’t going to get much sleep in this summer heat.
The sound of the choir drifted across the hills. Great, he thought, that’s the third time this month.
The baby monitor hissed with noise from Lindsey’s room. Downstairs, he heard the cot side of the bed clank as they were let down and the sound of the wardrobe opening and closing. Footsteps thumped across the bedroom floor then slapped across the tiles. He hoped she’d remembered to wear shoes this time.
The front door opened and closed and he told himself not to worry. She always came back.
The first time this happened was in the spring. Not long after he’d seen Alison for the last time. He’d heard the choir singing from St. Vincent’s and shot to her room only to find her gone, the side door open.
He’d been too scared to follow her. He’d got a phone call from Karl.
“Hi mate. I’m at the pub. Don’t want to worry you but there’s a strange girl here sitting at the bar wearing your denim jacket, drinking a gin and tonic. She looks like your sister.”
Apparently Mooey had tried to chat her up. She’d told him to fuck off. She’d drunk three more gin and tonics then
left. That had been the first time.
He got up and looked across the moonlit moors. A dark shape was making her way across the fields. He smiled. She’d come back when she was ready.
About the Author
Paul Melhuish is an occupational therapist by trade but writes by night and on weekends. He has had stories published in Murky Depths and Dark Horizons magazines and has several stories available from Greyhart press as E-stories. He had a story included in the Newcon Press Anthology Shoes, Ships and Cadavers: Tales from Northlondonshire, edited by Ian Whates with an introduction by Alan Moore.
His first novel, Terminus, came out in 2011 followed by a collection called Unauthorized Contact. Both of these were also published by Greyhart press. His first horror novel appeared in 2018. High Cross was published by Horrific Tales Publishing. Dark Choir is his latest novel, inspired by his time working in a residential unit for people with learning difficulties that sat next to a large, rambling deserted asylum.
Paul is also a member of the Northampton Science Fiction Writers Group.
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