by Rob Parker
‘Blackstoke.’ He smiled ruefully, as he rolled onto his hands and knees. ‘Come and have a look, you can see through this gap. I found it when I dug the door out.’
Peter joined him, and saw, in the excavated doorframe, that there was a small opening between the battered metal of the door and its housing. Maybe an inch in width at its widest point, against which he dipped to offer his eye.
It was a top-down view of the chamber below, etched in the flickering glow of the central firepit. The bald heads were easy to make out, white circles moving around the space like moths—except one, which wasn’t moving. Peter’s mouth suddenly drenched, and he felt faint. He had done that. He had made that happen. One of the remaining three, which he thought to be the little one, was hovering over the body on the floor. Peter was too high to work out what he was doing, what impact the death of one of their own was having. The other two were in the middle, not doing a lot. It was strange. The behaviour, they appeared, if anything, a bit confused. Directionless.
‘I…’ Peter started, sitting up, but found the words hard to come by. ‘I think I’ve killed one of them.’
Jeff reacted with wide eyes, unmistakably fringed with panic. Between the behaviour of the men in the chamber, and the security guard’s reaction, Peter was more confused than ever. ‘Which one?’
‘I don’t know—not the biggest one. The next in line. It was the one who killed Fletcher Adams.’
‘The MP? He’s dead?’
‘Yes. It was… really bad.’
‘How many did you see down there?’
Peter counted the ghastly faces that had tried to end his life so savagely. ‘Four.’
‘Did they all look the same? Same age, I mean.’
Age? ‘I mean, it’s hard to tell, but I think so. Do you know what they are? What are you not telling me?’
‘Was there an older one?’ Jeff was shouting over Peter now, his voice urgent and pushy.
‘An older one?’
‘Yes, there’s those four who are all about the same age, but did you see another one?’
This was becoming too outlandish for Peter to understand, but the fact of the matter was that this man had been hired to protect them, and the impression he was giving was that he was more interested in protecting the horrors that had come up to claim them.
‘I haven’t seen any others,’ said Peter, hurriedly. ‘I’ve got friends down there I need to help—and my daughter is still missing!’
‘Your daughter? I knew about the baby.’
Peter felt suddenly like a failure. All this effort and he still hadn’t got his daughter back, nor got any closer to establishing her whereabouts. ‘Yes. She’s fifteen. Alice.’
Jeff was suddenly quietened, but did let loose two small words. ‘A female.’
Peter didn’t know what he was suggesting, but it jogged something in his memory adrift, which bobbed to the surface. ‘We found a woman down there.’
Jeff suddenly sprang up as if he’d been sharply introduced to an electrical feed. ‘A woman?! Where?’ Peter saw something new in his eyes now. Hope.
‘She was dead. Had been for a while,’ he said, without offering any of the additional detail because he didn’t want to put words to what he saw in that dank room off the tunnel. He’d have to add those images to the zoetrope of horror that was going to blur his eyes every time he shut them for years to come.
Jeff was quiet, exhaling softly, his breath chimneying skywards. The news was affecting to him, for some reason. Peter ventured a thought, and put words to it.
‘Did you know her?’
‘What did she look like?’
It was Peter’s turn to look into the distance. ‘I think she was old. But like I said, she’d been dead for some time. It wasn’t pretty.’
‘Did you see what had happened to her?’
All Peter could think about was the withered rope, dangling from her midsection. ‘We thought she might have died during childbirth.’
Jeff sat down heavily, as if his knees had threatened to give way and he’d pre-empted their failure. He put a hand to the bridge of his nose. He pinched tight and, to Peter’s amazement, he started crying in a high-pitched mewl.
‘Did you know her?’ Peter asked, more forcefully this time.
‘Madeline,’ the old man stuttered. ‘Poor misguided Madeline.’
Peter was lost for words. It was not just hard to swallow, that this man was somehow far more connected to the events at Blackstoke than merely in his role as security guard, but also that that cruel shape tied to the bed down in the tunnels at once been a person. A person with a name as beautiful as Madeline.
Tied. The word that just ran through his head repeated on him. Revulsion cored through Peter once more. ‘She’d been restrained Jeff. Tied down while having a baby. What do you know about her?’
Jeff was crying openly now, phlegmy pulls of air echoing in the clearing. ‘When I saw all this, I thought that must have been what had happened, but still. You never expect something like that.’
The man is rambling, thought Peter. And he didn’t have time for this. ‘Jeff, if you can tell me anything that can help us, help the people that are still trapped down there with those… those things, you’ve got to tell me. Is there another way in? How can I get back down there without them seeing?’
‘There’s an older one. An older one who isn’t like the others. Don’t hurt him.’
‘Okay, but I haven’t seen any older one. Now, how can I get back down there?’
‘They’ve been using her. They used her up.’
Peter had had enough, and was tempted to throw open the hatch, grab the cricket bat and get back in there the hard way. He called Dewey over, who had been sniffing the nearest pile of rubble. It looked like there’d been a demolition.
‘What used to be here, Jeff?’ Thing were falling into place, his subconscious was filling in blanks it didn’t know it needed to. He remembered the lettering on the filthy jogging suits. It wasn’t BIG, it wasn’t a one size fits all clothing policy. ‘What was this place? BIG?’
‘Blackstoke Institute for Good.’
‘And what was that?’
Jeff stopped sobbing, and deflated, the sadness of all the secrets he so obviously carried flushing out of him in one purge of posture.
‘It was a hospital. For the people that worked there, like me, and the people who lived locally, we knew it as Blackstoke, the mental asylum.’
62
As the tunnel widened, the women slowed, and adopted a more cautious walk towards the room emerging at the end of the corridor. The shapes of the space were drawn in dim flickers. They clung tight to the left-hand wall, the middle offering nothing but exposure. Grace went first, adopting a position of leadership naturally and without thought. Now she’d found them, she was determined to get them out. She’d never baulked at a challenge in her life, and wasn’t going to start now, especially when the consequences were just so severe.
As they moved, Grace peppered the women with questions, and it was Alice, who’d been there the longest, who seemed to be the one with both the most information and happiest to talk.
‘There’s four of them, that I’ve seen. I’ve kind of given them names, to keep track of them. Maroon, who’s the one covered in blood tonight. He seems to be in charge, although it looks like Cue Ball wants that job for himself. He’s the one with the really shiny pale head. The Giant is, well, the big one. And the little weirdo is Runt.’
Grace could have smiled. In the midst of mayhem, the human urge was always to make order of things as best as possible. As if creating sense and meaning might steady the ship. As they reached the tunnel mouth, she held out a hand to slow them, and in a receding line, they peered into the space.
Three of the men were visible.
The big one, Giant, was sitting on the edge of one of the beds, looking at his feet chittering to himself. The one with the perfect bald head was adding some sticks to the fire from a pile in the co
rner. And the little one was over by the back wall, almost beneath the stair well, preoccupied with something on the floor.
Grace was terrified that the object of his interest would be Peter or Dewey—but she was astonished to see that it was one of their own. The one covered in blood. Maroon. She could make out his body lying unnaturally, something fundamentally wrong in its rest. One of the arms was up, pointing to the ceiling, but the hand wasn’t there - it was an elbow, and it was pointing the wrong way. The head was dented, a filthy misshapen egg.
Peter had killed one of them—and if Alice was right, it wasn’t just anyone. It was their leader. Grace felt a rush of elation, but found it tinged with nausea. They’d had to sink to their level.
The little one didn’t seem altogether bothered by what had happened, and what he was looking at. He just appeared a bit confused more than anything, his emotional machinery unable to make sense of things. Like he was trying to gene-sequence DNA on a Commodore 64.
Facts were facts, however. And the facts said there were only three left.
But Peter was gone. She scanned the room for him, but couldn’t see any sign of him. Same with Dewey. She felt buoyed again.
Grace tried to weigh up probabilities and potential outcomes in her head. The most likely, given that they weren’t here, and one of those disgusting brothers was dead, was that Peter and Dewey had fought and tried to escape, and had found some success in both.
Abruptly, Cue Ball got up from his place by the fire, barked at his brothers with a dismissive righteousness, and started walking—right towards the tunnel the women were hiding in. They huddled tighter in the shadows of the corner.
Giant jumped up, suddenly angry, and bellowed at Cue Ball with a shout far more animal than human. He caught up with his smaller brother in two strides, and whisked him around, shouting at him, thumping him on the chest, pointing at Runt, pointing at Maroon’s body, and pointing down the tunnel.
Grace caught on at the same time as Alice whispered out loud: ‘They’re fighting over which one of them gets which one of us.’
‘Oh Jesus,’ said Pam.
‘They were doing this before,’ said Alice. ‘They seem really interested in having women down here.’
Grace remembered the woman in the side room earlier. Dead. Died in childbirth. No use to them. No more babies if you don’t have women. God in heaven, she thought. In capturing the younger women of Blackstoke, they were building a harem.
Runt hadn’t really entered the disagreement, but had offered a few words before running to the tunnel entrance. The other two, not wanting him to get a head start, started after him.
‘Did anyone see anywhere to hide?’ Grace asked.
‘No! The tunnel’s a dead end behind us!’ said Pam.
‘Any doorways?’
‘It was dark but I didn’t see any.’
‘Well we don’t want to get trapped back down there with them,’ Grace concluded out loud. ‘Ladies, we have to take it to them. There’s more of us than them.’
Four versus three. Back to maths.
Grace pointed. ‘The tunnel to the right, over there, gets you out of here. You have to make a break for it, it’s our only chance.’
‘What about you?’ whispered Pam.
‘Call it the element of surprise. As soon as their backs are turned, go for it and don’t look back. Follow the tunnel all the way down until you see a ladder. And take this.’ She handed the torch to Alice, and didn’t wait for any word of argument before moving.
Her plan was simple. If she went left, and drew their attention, she was getting closer to Christian. He hadn’t come back out, so there had to be some degree of safety in there.
While she was occupying them, the rest of the women could go right.
Simple. Kind of.
‘Hello,’ she said, with as much confidence as she could muster as she walked into the space. As their eyes snapped to her in unison, and their glare of outraged surprise caught fire in each set of inky pupils, she realised just how likely it would be that this single word might get her killed.
But anything to stop brave young Alice West from becoming part of some underground clan’s breeding programme.
She walked around the left-hand wall of the chamber, as confidently and as nonchalantly as she could. ‘My name is Grace, it’s nice to meet you.’
They looked at her like she was a foreign species, which in a lot of ways, she supposed she was to them. Then the Giant gurgled. It sounded a bit like approval. It turned Grace’s stomach to stone.
But he was the real danger adversary, with his speed and size. ‘Hi,’ she said to him directly, maintaining eye contact, and by God, if his gaze didn’t soften. She swallowed, her mouth suddenly full of sand. He took a step forward, his size overwhelming with every inch he closed between them.
Cue Ball chittered, and started to turn away, towards the tunnel.
‘Hey! Hey!’ she shouted. ‘Here! Here look at me. I’m interesting aren’t I? You’ve never really seen me before, have you?’
She caught his attention just in time, pulling his gaze back—as behind him, by the back wall, Alice, Pam and Joyce inched carefully away, eyes wide.
‘Me, me here, I’m over here. That’s it.’
Runt was transfixed, his jaw hanging slightly with Christmas morning wonder. She could see the acne on his cheeks. The Giant was also somewhat spellbound, his posture relaxed. He held no fear for this intruder, why should he? He outweighed her perhaps four times over.
She had to keep going, keep their attention fixed in this direction, and took one more step in the direction of the door Christian went through. God, that felt like hours ago to Grace now, but it could surely have been measured in minutes.
Cue Ball’s interest changed. His eyes narrowed, that horrible reptilian coldness flickered through them, and Grace knew straight away that she’d been rumbled, that she should never have assumed, despite their base way of living and their lack of language skills, that they would be essentially dumb as cattle and easily led. Cue Ball, eyes slits, turned around fully, and saw Alice, Pam and Joyce. They froze in unison, caught out and scalded by Cue Ball’s gaze.
‘Run!’ shouted Grace. The women, halfway to the exit tunnel, turned and sprinted for their lives. Somewhere above, a door opened—no two!—and if this place was already carrying the characteristics of Hell, they all broke loose once again.
63
Peter’s world fell to bits when, through the gap in the hatch frame, he saw his daughter appear, followed immediately by his wife. It felt like a sparkling magnesium trail across his scalp, and his breath caught. Watching Grace, and her brave act of heroism, had already settled that he was going in to help regardless.
But then his beautiful girl emerged.
She had been here. They had taken her.
In a flash, he wanted to know what had happened to her, if those monsters had hurt her, if they’d dared touch her—and his breath caught again when he saw Pam. Down here, in this pit?
Abruptly, all was forgotten. All ills gone. Any petty marital squabble, that they themselves had fertilised with ill-timed words and blinkered naval-gazing, were irrelevant. He loved the very bones of her, his darling wife, Pam.
Then those monsters in the room turned and saw them.
‘Jeff, open the door,’ he commanded, getting up. ‘Dewey, come here fella.’
Jeff blinked back from his stupor and checked the gap for himself. Seeing the urgency, he unlocked the hatch, threw it open, and down the stairs Peter flew with a charge and a howl. All eyes in the space looked up at him, the mad bloke holding a cricket bat with the massive dog at his side—but as soon as their eyes hit him, another door opened. The one next to Grace.
Christian emerged, himself holding a metal pole that looked a bit like a bed rail. He jumped between Grace and those boys, and held out the pointed end of his makeshift weapon. ‘Back! Back, you fuckers!’ he shouted.
The boys were not remotely perturbed or i
ntimidated, but it did spark them into life. The big one started barrelling up the stairs, three at a time. The little one and the bald one ran after the women, Pam, Alice and Joyce, who started sprinting down the corridor. Christian remained in the doorway, blocking it from all comers, while Grace shouted for Dewey to ‘get him boy!’.
Peter threw himself at the giant, catching him across the head and shoulders, hoping momentum would send him back down the stairs—but the huge man merely caught him, and tossed him over the side railing, sending him tumbling onto one of the filthy beds. He bounced off, his trajectory uncontrollable, and landed in a pained heap on the grimy floor. Something bounced cruelly off the point of his shoulder—his own cricket bat, which tumbled to one side, bouncing end over end.
Dewey and the giant were battling on the stairs, but the man was apparently overwhelming the animal, and had one hand on the dog’s lower jaw, the other on its upper. He was trying to prise the dog’s jaws apart, while Dewey was fighting for all he was worth. Grace was running up the stairs to get to him.
The cricket bat. He crawled over and grabbed it, then was struck by an idea. He carried it to the fire, and stuck the willow straight into the twigs and accelerant, whatever it was. He withdrew it, the bat fully aflame around its top half and launched it at the stairs.
‘Grace!’ he shouted, as the bat landed a third of the way up, just below Grace—who turned and saw it. Doubling back, she grabbed the flaming bat and, like demon, flew up the steps.
Peter could only watch in awe as the woman battered the giant with burning strikes to the head, and the big man whimpered and recoiled, letting Dewey go. Dewey bit the giant’s calf, and yanked hard, and the man tripped, and crashed down the stairs in a tumble of smouldering limbs, landing at the bottom.
‘Are you alright?’ Peter shouted up to Grace, and she was about to say something, when the big man sat up. Peter felt his resolve waver, a reed in a hard breeze laced with brimstone. We can never beat him.
Grace obviously didn’t think that, and as soon as she saw he was still moving, she was down the steps, and on him, clubbing him in the head repeatedly with the bat, the flames dancing and fanning with every strike.