by steve higgs
‘Help me narrow it down, Roberta. Your Aunt owns a couple of businesses. I know their names but not their locations. I need to start looking in places where she might be, and I could do with your help before she gets herself into trouble.' I was pleading.
‘Okay, Tempest. If we work together, I am sure we can find your Mum.' Roberta outlined three places we should start looking. One was down on the beach near The Cleve or just along from it, an old fisherman's shack that Tilda was planning to turn into a harbour tours business. It was closer to her, so she would check that out and meet us in front of the pub shortly. One of the others was at the far western end of the village, high up on the cliff overlooking the sea. Roberta had said it was possible but unlikely that they had gone there as it was abandoned and falling down. Dad and I were close to it though, so I was going to eliminate it anyway.
We disconnected. ‘Ready?' I asked Dad. He had changed into dry gear but had on much the same rugged outdoor clothing as before. Wondering what we would be heading into, I wanted to put on my combat gear and armour. It was at home though where it belonged, so I settled for grey jeans and a pair of walking boots plus a dark sweater over the top. We were basically going to be sneaking around the village looking in windows for murdering conspirators. Bright clothing would not be appropriate for the task.
I left Mum a note on the bed, just in case, and the pair of us rushed out, down the stairs and into the street. In the ten minutes we had been inside, the cloud bank had crept in and blackened out the little natural light that might remain at this time of day. It was getting foggy too. This close to the shore, the weather conditions could change suddenly. I knew that, but this had been threatening most of the day and had finally arrived.
The conditions were irrelevant. Moisture from the fog might penetrate our clothes if we are out in it for long enough but that would not matter and could not be allowed to delay or deter us. The first place Roberta had advised we look was a warehouse just out of town. It was less than a mile away, but even at a fast pace, it would take us a good ten minutes to get there as the winding streets prevented anything like a direct route. It was an old canning factory, if Roberta's information was correct, from back when they used to land huge amounts of sardines here. It had long since been closed but looking through the windows it was clear that some of the machinery was still there. It was tucked into the cliffside and well hidden behind overgrown foliage and trees. It would have made a great place for secret conspiracy meetings – the co-conspirators could slip away in the dark and find their way there using the moonlight. No one from the village below would be able to see them.
We approached slowly and with caution in case this was where Mum had followed Tilda to. It might be they could even have a guard outside looking out for intruders. There was no one though and it became quickly clear that no one had been here for days or perhaps weeks.
We turned around and headed back towards the village.
I checked my watch: 1815hrs. My stomach gave a rumble that was audible enough for my Dad to hear. Neither one of us made any comment. It had been four hours since we left Mum this afternoon to check out spots along the coastline. We had found what we needed to. I had enough to hand the whole thing over to the Police now and I knew a few things that I was not doing anything about yet because doing so would not get my Mum back. I could not be sure at what time she had set off as my phone had recorded when I received the message not when it was sent but I had to assume that she had been missing for the best part of four hours. It was not a welcome calculation.
My thoughts were interrupted by a light coming from ahead of us. We had just reached the edge of the village again. Stepping off the dirt path that led to the sardine factory and back onto the road where the two met, there were now houses before us.
Blocking our path were two skeletal pirates brandishing cutlasses and somehow pulling off a bored expression with their grinning skulls.
Really Dead Pirates. Thursday, November 3rd 1822hrs
We both froze. My brain was having trouble deciphering the scene in front of me. I was looking at something that could not possibly exist, but here it was right in front of me. Two skeletons dressed in ragged clothing that appeared to have largely rotted away. There were scraps of flesh left here and there and they somehow still had eyeballs, even though I felt certain the fishes would have eaten those first. They were wet as if they had just emerged from the sea, their clothing slick with water that was dripping from the cuffs and collars.
‘What do we do?’ whispered Dad from right next to me. The one on our right took a step forward and swished his cutlass.
Then his mouth opened, and he began to speak. He was able to orate in a most effective manner despite the lack of lips or tongue. ‘Begone from this place. All who reside here are doomed to perish for their sins. Come back into the village and you will share their fate.' At his utterance, the other one brought his weapon to bear upon us.
I wanted my legs to move but my brain was still having trouble getting messages to them. I was scared. Genuinely, truly scared by the apparition in front of me and it was pissing me off. They could not be real, but they looked pretty damned real from where I was.
Then I noticed that the water that was visibly dripping from them was not appearing on the ground. I took a step forward, somehow finding the will to make my feet move. My Dad grabbed my arm lightly in a warning. I shook it off and stepped yet closer to them. We were only ten feet apart now. Having come closer I could see that their forms were not entirely solid – I could sort of see through them.
If they were not real, which I continued to tell myself they could not be, then what were they? Then a part of the puzzle clicked into place and I looked to the sky.
‘Dad?’
‘Yes, son?’
‘Help me find some rocks.' I bent down to the path next to me to pick up a loose chipping. I hurled it into the sky. I lost sight of it after a few feet as the dark and mist swallowed it up, so I tried again. This time with a handful of smaller stones. When I threw them, there was a faint pinging noise as a few of the stones hit something invisible in the air above me. One of the skeletons flickered.
Dad saw it too and started throwing chunks of flint into the night sky. The skeletons failed to advance on us, but they did swish their swords again and the one that had spoken repeated his message – verbatim.
It was Dad that scored the first proper hit. A distinctive clunk resounded as his most recent throw found a target. The pirate on the left suddenly vanished from sight. He just winked out like he had been turned off, which essentially, he had. A heartbeat later a drone crashed onto the path, skittering and sliding as friction with the tarmac slowed its motion.
The dead pirates were holographic projections from drones.
That we were still facing a skeleton meant that there was still a drone operational. They had been dispatched by the two pilots to scare us away. Were the pilots in their house? If the drones could be controlled from anywhere, I had to assume the only reason they were in Cawsand at all was because they had to recharge them periodically and maybe the transmission of the images had a short range.
Wherever they were being controlled from, I had to assume that they could see us and had some way of manipulating what the figures being projected were doing. Or had elaborate and complex motions stored as options that were then being queued and played by a computer. They must have realised they had lost one of the drones though as the remaining pirate also winked out of existence. The drones may have left or may have been tracking us, I could not tell, they were so silent. I wanted to find them and wring their necks and some more information out of them. I would only waste time going to their house though. Dad and I needed to meet up with Roberta. In my anger at the drone pilots, there was some jubilation. I now knew how it was that people had convincingly reported ghostly pirates wandering around the village.
‘Nice shot, Dad.’ I acknowledged as I bent to pick up the downed drone. It was evide
nce. Whether it could be traced back to the owner or not I did not know. The drone was twitching, the rotors turning on one side, but not the other. Looking closer I could see that Dad’s shot had broken one of the four propellers and the one adjacent was not moving.
‘Someone is trying to scare us off. I guess they don't want us to catch them doing whatever it is they are doing. I'm not interested in them at moment, or at least I am, but only so far as I need to be to get Mum back. After that, we shall see who is guilty of what.'
‘Let’s get to the other address, kid.’
‘Right you are, Dad.’
We started jogging down the road back into town. The fog was getting thick. It appeared to be eating the light coming from the lamps in the street. We could see dim glowing balls high above us but the illumination that would normally let us see our surroundings was lost in a murky blackness just a few feet ahead. I was navigating by memory, turning down paths only when we stumbled across them. We had crossed Earl’s Drive between two houses and made our way down an alleyway to emerge on St Andrews Place. The second address that Roberta had given us was up towards St Andrews Street which was not that easy to get to unless one knew all the little cut through lanes.
On the road ahead of us two figures emerged from the gloom. Dad saw them at the same time as me, pointing ahead rather than speaking as we were both getting out of breath. At first, they were hard to see but as we drew near it was clear they were just another drone projected version of the dead pirates. These ones had a little more flesh to them, their clothes were a little more full but it was the same rubbish trick and I wondered why they would bother trying to do the same thing again. They must have back up drones, or more drones than they had people to operate. How good were the cameras, if they did not realise we already knew it was drones being used to make the pirates appear?
I planned to just run through them. If their plan was to stop me finding my Mother, I had bigger challenges to worry about. Like where on earth she was for one.
As we came near them, they moved to intercept our path. Both raised their cutlasses threateningly as if they planned to cut us down when we passed them. Then a gap in the fog let a little more light through and moonlight glinted off the steel of the cutlass one was holding.
They were real!
We were right upon them. Their arms were swinging down. I roughly shoved Dad to one side as I reached up to grab the arm heading towards my head. The cutlass to my right swung harmlessly through thin air in the space where my Dad ought to have been. I caught the very real and quite thickset arm above me and folded myself underneath it.
Blind luck more than skill on my part landed me exactly where I needed to be to break the man’s grip on his weapon. I had kept hold of his arm as I came under it and slammed into him in a body check. My motion stopped by transferring my kinetic energy directly into his chest. The air rushed out of him as I turned my back and pulled the sword arm down over my shoulder. He was shorter than me, so the motion overstretched his shoulder joint and forced him to the release the cutlass.
With his right arm in mine, I span underneath it to come out behind him. His companion had recovered from his committed swing into nothing but was momentarily caught in indecision about whether to attack me or my Dad. He didn't get to make a choice as my Dad punched him in the side of his stupid face. As he toppled towards me, I kicked out the legs of the man I was holding by stamping my instep into the back of his knees. The pair were on the floor.
‘Stay down.' I growled at them both. I examined the man I was holding. His face was slathered in make-up which someone had done a very good job of. His skin looked like it was falling off the bone in places. It wasn't though and when I looked closely, I could tell who it was. It was Thirty-Three. His muscular frame should have given it away sooner.
The sound of running footsteps brought our attention up again. From the gloom, another figure was running towards us. Thirty-Three was trying to get up, despite me having his arm in a lock that forced his elbow joint against itself if he tried to move. I reinforced my grip as it was guaranteed to keep him in place. My father was standing above the other chap, almost daring him to make a move. I wanted to get a better at look at him as I suspected I would be able to identify him as well. It would have to wait though as there was a potential third player joining the fray. I would need to make sure the chaps already down stayed there, which might mean some rather unfair violence, but then perhaps they shouldn't have taken my Mother.
As I steeled myself to act, it was Roberta that emerged from the darkness. She seemed startled to find us with two pirates at our feet.
‘What the hell?’ she asked.
The man I was pinning started to talk.
‘Shut up, Thirty-three.’ She snapped at him.
‘Roberta…’ he started to speak again, but this time she kicked him in the face.
‘I said shut up. I need to deal with these two.' She said. ‘You should go and check out the place by the water.'
‘Didn’t you get to look at it?’ that was what she was supposed to have been doing.
‘I managed to check out the one by St Andrews Street, but then I spotted these two moving around and followed them. I lost them in the fog though and only just now when I heard them scuffling with you did I relocate them.’
‘Was there any sign of anything at the place you checked?'
‘No, nothing. There is a cut-through between the houses down there.' She said pointing off into the darkness. ‘It is to the right of a yellow house with white shutters on the windows. Get going. I called for backup already but told them to approach stealthily. I will guide them in when they get here and bring them to your location. I just hope your Mum is down there. Text or call me if you can.' She touched my arm tactilely as she moved in close to me and bent down.
Roberta was pulling cuffs from behind her back as she knelt to replace me in restraining Thirty-Three. I let her. Dad was pulling at my sleeve, wanting to get moving, but I needed no such encouragement.
I glanced back over my shoulder a second later, but the darkness and fog had already stolen her from view. We found the gap between the houses and slipped down it. The darkness we had been enduring was nothing compared to the cloak of nothing that now enveloped us in the narrow confines of the alleyway. I could touch both walls with my arms spread just a little to each side. I might as well have been blind, but we struggled forward. I could hear Dad stumbling and swearing behind me. It was only a few seconds, though it felt like much longer, then the alleyway ended, and we emerged from between the two houses to find ourselves on a road that led directly to the seafront. I could not remember the name of the road, but I recognised it even in the dark.
The final place that Roberta had suggested we look was a fisherman’s shack that sat close to the water’s edge. I didn’t know what it had originally been built for, probably storage of fishermen’s gear, but now it was owned by Tilda and doubtless she planned to profit enormously from whatever development she had planned for it.
We covered the distance to it swiftly enough, jogging in our impatience. As we neared, it became clear the building was occupied, there was light flickering from a couple of high windows suggesting candlelight or a fire inside. I motioned to Dad that we should fan out a bit, come at it from both sides of the path leading down to it. In the fog, we might easily miss a sentry posted outside. It seemed an unlikely precaution on their part. However, I was not going to get caught out by rushing in blindly.
We stopped a few yards short and listened. The fog damped out sound more effectively than any other weather condition with the exception of rain. It would be my friend tonight if I wanted to sneak up on anyone, but it was also making it impossible to find anyone I might wish to sneak up on. All things considered, I would rather it was dry and clear instead. As we crept forward a little more, the sound of voices coming from the inside of the wooden building became audible. Was it them? We had no way of knowing.
‘Do you see a
window on this level?’ asked Dad, his voice a quiet whisper. We were crouched by the edge of the wall that faced the village.
‘No, not on the three sides we have been able to see. There is a large door just around this corner. I could see light framing its edges. We won't be able to tell if Mum is in there or not until we go in and we have no way of knowing how many are inside or who they are.'
‘We also don’t know if they are doing anything wrong. It could be some fishermen in there cleaning their nets for all we can tell from here. My daft bloody wife could be back in the pub right now knocking back wine.’ We both knew she wasn’t of course. Dad was scared for his wife and his fear was manifesting in foolish words.
‘Time to kick down the door, Dad?’
‘Time to kick down the door.' He agreed. We would either make fools of ourselves because there were fishermen inside tending their nets or we would gain a brief upper hand over whoever was in there. I was starting to wish we had taken the cutlasses. They would make handy weapons right now.
I stood up, flexing my muscles to gee myself up for the task ahead. If there were hostiles inside we would have only a couple of seconds to deal with them before those we had not reached would get over the shock of our sudden appearance and be upon us. The danger of finding ourselves outnumbered was very real and we were ignoring it.
I offered Dad my hand, he grasped it and let me haul him up from his crouched position. He was keeping quiet about any discomfort, but I knew he had bad knees and we had run several miles now.
His jaw was set with a determined look. We turned to the door as one. It was a big thing, twice the size of a door one might find on a modern house and half as high again, but it also looked old and a little brittle. I held up my right hand with three fingers extended. ‘On three.’ I whispered.
I folded my fingers into my hand one at a time.
Three.
We heard movement inside the building.