A Cry From Beyond (36 page)

Here
there be vampires...

Well, not
quite, although the scene presented certainly had all the right
ingredients. A secret vault filled with unwelcoming darkness, (your
imagination can start to work against you in the dark: H’s words),
stale air and an unknown entity lurking in the shadows. I felt a
little like Van Helsing in search of Dracula.

Battling
to control my fear and trepidation, I moved forward, compelled in a
very perverse sense to discover more.

Whatever
I’d seen, whatever life form occupied this subterranean hellhole
retreated still further into the shadows, unwilling to be exposed,
or was it really as I thought, a case of fear of the light itself?
I called out to it, using the time honoured phrase: “Who’s there?!”
but was met with stony silence.

Who or
what? That was the real question. Again, I called to my father, or
whatever it was that purported to be my father, but suffered
further disappointment.

Leave,
while you can, the coward in me cried. You don’t have to be
here!

Instead
of heeding the words of warning, I inched forward, aiming the torch
and the gun straight ahead, determined beyond reason to discover
the truth, until finally I managed to expose the mysterious
skulking form to the full force of the torchlight.

And oh
how I wished that hadn’t happened, how I wished I’d lost my nerve
at some earlier point in the proceedings, thereby sparing myself
the awful shock of that moment. But when it did happen, when at
last I laid eyes on that which was surely responsible for the
atrocities that’d befallen High Bank down the years, I didn’t flee,
I held my ground, while I tried to come to terms with the full
horror of my discovery.

I didn’t
really have any choice in the matter. You see, impossible though it
seemed, it was my father who peered back at me from the darkness.
My father who, years before, was terminally ill and given only
months to live, yet here he was, very much alive...or so it
appeared at first glance.

In
reality he was no longer my father, I soon realised. Rather, as a
result of his crimes and misdemeanours he had evolved into an
abomination, forced to physically co-exist with another, whose
crimes equalled, if not surpassed his own, an individual whose
engraved portrait I’d seen hanging in the old manor house:
Grimshaw, Lord Ebenezer Grimshaw.

I reeled
from the shock, staggered back, lost my balance and crashed
painfully against the tunnel wall. Simultaneously, the flashlight’s
beam fell onto the creature’s body. I saw something twisted,
avian-like, possessing spiked membranous wings and huge twisted
talons. Not my father, but an inhuman caricature of what he’d once
been.

The
creature retreated into the shadows at a point where the tunnel
wall recessed, seemingly repelled by the glare of the torchlight. I
stood watching, and wondering. Was a meagre spill of light really
all it took to cause such a merciless killer to flee? I somehow
doubted it.

I peered
harder into the darkness ahead, moving forward slowly, the gun
poised in readiness, telling myself over and over to exercise
caution. No doubt the thing coped badly with light, but to what
extent would that change if it found it was no longer the hunter,
but the hunted? It would attack in the name of self preservation,
surely.

I
ventured still deeper into the tunnel, looping the torch this way
and that, whilst holding the gun at the ready, determined to use
it. All of a sudden, I spied movement just beyond the full glare of
the light beam. I fired a shot, the explosive sound deafening
within my cramped confines.

Something
screeched banshee-like. I stiffened, wondering if the bullet had
found its target. Taking another tentative step forward, I aimed
blindly and fired again, the gunshot echoing loudly. This time
however, no maniacal screeching accompanied the sound.

Instead,
a disembodied voice drifted from the shadows. I listened
disbelievingly for it belonged to David. “Kill the light,” it
pleaded. “Your father doesn’t like it. Kill the light and we can
talk. Your father can explain. Just kill the light.”

It was a
trick, I was sure. David was dead. He’d been taken by the very
thing I’d come in search of. But was he really dead? How could I be
certain? It wasn’t as if I’d witnessed his death personally. Maybe
it really was him speaking? It sounded so much like him.

Another
voice suddenly piped up, sending goose bumps down my
spine.

“It’s not
that bad, John. Being down here, I mean. It’s okay. We get along.”
It was Des. At least it sounded like Des. “We’re all here together
buddy. Join us, why don’t you. Come join the band, so to speak.” A
dry throaty chuckle momentarily filled the dank stale air. “It can
be like old times, man. What do you say?”

“Yeah,
what do you say?” Now it was Terry speaking, although his words
were laboured, as if he suffered a breathing problem...as if he
struggled to breathe air he didn’t need. I recalled the dream in
which Kayla, lifeless yet refusing to die, had pursued me through a
dark underground tunnel, and I shuddered fearfully.

“What do
you say?” A girl’s voice now: unfamiliar, perhaps belonging to the
missing Mary-Louise or to one of the original “lost ones”? “What do
you say?” it repeated parrot fashion. “What do you say...what do
you say?” The voice echoed dully and died away, to be replaced by a
heavy lingering silence.

I stood
there for a long agonising moment, immobilised by shock. Then,
quite suddenly, I was taking backward steps with the gun raised in
front of me, having spied a shape within the darkness, creeping
ever closer. It was the creature stalking me, moving in for the
kill, I was convinced of it; the very same creature responsible for
the disembodied voices, I decided. But it didn’t make any sense.
Why on earth would it use such subtle tactics to seduce me into
giving up my life, when its true nature demanded immediate
destruction of its victims?

Turmoil,
some sixth sense told me in answer to the question, the thing was
wracked with a profound sense of inner turmoil, but why would that
be? I found it impossible to think. Without warning, another voice
beckoned from the darkness, this time belonging to
Melinda.

“Come to
me John. If only you’ll come to me, we can be together,
forever...”

I
imagined her standing there, alive and well, having somehow cheated
the finality of death and the destructive passage of time, waiting
patiently to embrace me. It would be so easy to give in to
temptation and surrender to the voices.

Suddenly,
overwhelmed by unfolding events, I slumped against the dank tunnel
wall where upon I squeezed my eyes shut, as if doing so would shut
out the terrible reality of the situation I found myself in. Can’t
be, my confused mind cried over and over, this surely can’t be.
They’re dead, all of them. Dead!

As if
sensing my scepticism, the disembodied voices came at me again,
this time in unison, crowding my head with their misleading
rhetoric: “Give yourself to us John: we need you.”

“Go
away!” I ranted, peering blindly into the darkness, “Leave me
alone!”

They
refused, continuing to invade my consciousness in an attempt to
weaken my floundering resolve. “You owe us John: can’t you see
that?”

“I owe
you nothing!” I screamed back at them.

Laughter,
now I could hear crazy sounding laughter. It drifted from the dark
like an ugly threat. Insane, they were all insane! And then: “Have
it your way Johnny O’Shea,” said a gruff ill tempered voice. “One
way or the other, you will be ours!” The voice had to be that of
the tyrant, Ebenezer Grimshaw.

Something
moved furtively within the shadows off to my left, on the periphery
of my vision. I turned to look, directing the torch as I did so,
and recoiled in horror, confronted as I was by a living nightmare,
whose sole intention was murder. And yet, at the crucial moment, it
hesitated. Once again, I sensed inner turmoil...

I took my
chance, aimed the gun and pulled the trigger. The gunshot echoed:
there was a blinding flash. The resulting effect however, was
minimal. The creature bucked, but stood firm. Without warning it
sprang, landing a concussive blow just below my temple. I fell,
losing both the gun and the torch in the process and watched
helplessly as the torches yellowy beam flickered uncertainly.
Stricken, all I could do was lay there, hands covering my head, as
I prepared myself for the inevitable.

The
moment never came, intercepted as it was by more voices, my
father’s imploring me to leave while I could, and Grimshaw’s
demanding my life; firm evidence if ever there was any, of the
clash of conscience responsible for the creature’s muted
aggression.

I
listened, frozen with fear, as the voices rose in pitch and volume
to converge in their hostile opposition to one another. I dared
raise my head and watched disbelievingly as that which played host
to two embattled souls, began to smoulder and burn, overwhelmed as
it was by inner conflict and psychotic fury. And then, quite
suddenly and without any warning, thick tongues of flame erupted
from the creature’s body. The resulting conflagration was violent
in the extreme and all consuming. In no time, the creature
responsible for the deaths of so many innocent people was reduced
to a scorched and smoking ruin. Having collapsed in a burning heap,
it rolled slowly onto its back to expel its final, laboured
breaths, signalling the end of a seemingly endless
nightmare.

It was
over: almost.

The death
beetles had yet to play their part, emerging from nooks and
crannies to dispose of the creature’s charred and blackened remains
in the only way they knew how. Satiated, the legion of insects
withdrew en masse before merging anonymously with the shadows once
more.

And when
finally justice had been served, I turned my attention to a point
further along the tunnel, near to where the big old door stood: and
prepared myself for the worst. You see, I’d glimpsed figures in the
darkness up ahead, numbering a dozen, maybe more. They did not
move, for they were incapable of movement.

Not only
had I avenged “the lost ones”. I had, it seemed, uncovered their
final resting place. But that was going to change. I was more than
determined that the poor souls awaiting me at the end of the tunnel
would be removed from this unholy place and given what they
deserved: a decent God inspired burial.

And when
I arrived at the spot they occupied, I paused to reflect. Here lay
the victims of High Bank all right, in all their horrific glory. I
did not inspect the carnage too closely, (it was enough to know
they were here), suffice to say that most occupied one particular
corner. It was, I thought, almost as if they sought warmth and
companionship from each other, even in death. The majority of
bodies were propped against one wall, like discarded memorabilia,
arms hanging limply, faces ravaged, or completely destroyed by the
passage of time.

An object
lay upon the ground, I noticed, in close proximity to the bodies. I
played the torch beam in its general direction and began to
understand why the dream in which my mother brandished an axe had
so troubled me. Here was that very axe, small with a short stumpy
handle, but no less lethal for it. No sooner did my eyes fall upon
it, than the memory which had triggered the dream flashed into my
mind, and with it yet another piece of the jigsaw slotted neatly
into place.

I was
maybe five years old when my mother confronted my father with that
axe. It’d happened one summer’s day while I was out playing in the
back garden. Raised voices coming from inside the house alerted me
to something being wrong. Curious to know what was going on, I
crept up to the back door and was horrified to see my mother and
father arguing violently. When I saw my mother holding the axe, I
wrongly concluded she was the aggressor, when in fact she’d been
confronting my father regarding the axe’s purpose. Perhaps she
suspected him of being involved in the spate of disappearances in
and around Ashley and sought closure? Whatever the case, the
incident must’ve traumatised me in a similar way to that which had
occurred in the chapel. In both cases I’d simply blocked the
incidents from my mind.

I
returned the main focus of my attention to the corpses. The wasted
bodies of a woman and child lay isolated near to the door made
impregnable to David and myself. The child cradled in its arms an
infant ripped prematurely from its mother’s womb, the end result of
unholy worship, I mused, though I would never be sure. The infant
was draped in the soiled remains of a blanket. I looked over at the
others. A couple of them I recognised, (David being one), despite
the severity of their injuries. Inevitably, I left the so called
“lost ones”, albeit temporarily, to return to the living
world.

CHAPTER TWENTY ONE

The
dreams stopped after that. So too did my dependency on alcohol and
drugs. (It seemed that the two went hand in hand, one fuelled by
the other). Police investigations and forensic tests were carried
out on the bodies in the tunnel and identifications were made. I
have no idea what happened to Madam Lee, although I suspect she
remains part of the fairground troop and will continue to do so for
many years to come. Something tells me she has always been a part
of that particular troop in one guise or another, and always will
be.