Dark Harbour: The Tale of the Soul Searcher (29 page)

Although not very tall, Henry had quite a bullish frame. His broad shoulders and large hands were in contrast to his narrow feet. He could have been a boxer when he was younger, dancing around on his tiptoes one moment and then socking his opponents out cold the next. Not that he would be able to do that now though, for Henry’s movements were slow and steady, as if he had to summon the energy from deep within in everything he did.

His hands, however, seemed to belie his inertia, for they portrayed a restlessness as he used them continuously to emphasise his words, waving them gently in front of his face then clasping his fingers together, as he did now, like a priest leading the congregation to prayer.

‘Now then, Lawrence and Eduwart, let’s talk about why we are all here tonight,’ he began, leaning forward in his tall, black leather chair.

Vladimir hovered in the background, pacing up and down the room with his ever-pent up energies.

‘Let’s go over your reports,’ he went on. Henry put on his reading glasses before picking up a manila folder in front of him. He pulled out a printed sheet.

Eddie suddenly felt self-conscious. He hadn’t imagined that they’d look into him to this extent. Where had they got this information from? Perhaps the filing cabinet in Henry’s office had reports on everyone in this town, the eternal observations of angels as they recorded every thought and action.

‘Young Lawrence Stewart, six foot two. Played football and rugby at secondary school. Reasonable GCSEs, a couple of A Levels. Student of Sports Studies at Dark Harbour College. You have two older brothers. Your parents died when you were four months old. You and your brothers were looked after by an aunt for most of your childhood. When you were fourteen you were absent from school for several months. The official reason was that you were ill in hospital.’

Henry looked up from his prompt for a moment before then turning to Eddie who further stiffened his back.

‘And young Eduwart Jansz the Dutchman. Six foot three, one older brother, one older sister. Your father lives on the continent, your mother is an invalid. Your school report says you were a disruptive pupil who wouldn’t apply himself. Your academic achievements were therefore damp, but, like Lawrence, you have a flair for sports.’

‘Yeah.’

Henry placed the piece of paper down on his desk and then pressed his fingertips together in front of his chest.

‘So, by whatever mystery the universe has in play here, the point is you’ve made acquaintance with my boys and assisted them in their work.’

‘We have,’ Eddie said.

‘What do you make of us?’

‘Some of your other guys are like Rainier Wolfcastle, but I like your style,’ Eddie replied.

‘Why?’

‘Because there’s so many knobheads out there and they’re spreading. And everyone else just fits in with them. Nobody cares anymore.’

‘But you care?’

Eddie was quiet for a moment. ‘Look, I get it. The world is going to hell. Might as well help everyone on their way.’

Henry looked to Vladimir and an unspoken thought passed between them.

‘And you Lawrence?’ Henry asked.

‘I think there’s a lot of victims out there. Too many.’

Henry nodded, then looked down at the manila folder once more. Eddie sensed that it contained more than the details that Henry had read to them. He also sensed that Henry had garnered a lot more from the brief answers they’d just given.

‘Vladimir said you have another job for us. A test,’ Eddie said.

‘Yes. We have a task for you.’

‘What is it?’ Larry asked.

Henry picked up his mug of tea and took a sip. ‘Yuck. I didn’t brew it long enough.’

Their gaze remained fixed on Henry. In the pregnant pause that followed, the ageing man’s eyes seemed to be focussing on something behind them, or perhaps on something that was far beyond them all. He gently eased himself out of his chair and waddled over to the wall from which hung a great many pictures. Some were in frames, while others were tacked up there with pins or blu-tack, some with curling edges as they’d faded and frayed through the years of sunlight streaming onto them. Henry came to a stop as his eyes fixed on a Polaroid photograph right in front of him.

‘I would like you to find someone for me,’ he resumed. ‘An old acquaintance of mine has suddenly gone missing, blipped off our radar screens, and his disappearance is worrying me somewhat. Unfortunately I don’t quite have the resources to comb every inch of this town in order to find him.’

‘What would you like us to do to him?’ Larry asked.

Henry suddenly turned around as if Larry had cracked a good joke. He chuckled with laughter.

‘There’s no questioning your eagerness, is there Lawrence?’ The smile of laughter switched off in a half-moment. ‘I don’t want you to
do
anything to him, my boy. I want you to
give
him something.’

Henry walked back to his desk where he slid open the top drawer. He pulled out an envelope that had been sealed with a red wax blob.

‘Just give him this letter. That’s all you need to do.’

‘You want us to give him a letter?’ Larry asked, somewhat puzzled. ‘Why don’t you just put it in the post?’

Eddie noticed that Henry was already looking across at Vladimir, as if waiting for him to take to the stage.

‘This… person doesn’t have a fixed abode. I don’t think he’s ever had one,’ Vladimir delivered. ‘He’s very reclusive, and there’s a very good reason why he keeps himself hidden from the world. He’s not quite an ordinary person, you see. Those who do set eyes on him are usually scared numb because they think that he’s a demon.’

Eddie was no longer able to keep his hands restrained in his lap and now began twisting the piercing in his eyebrow. Larry tried to take another sip of his tea before he realised he’d already finished it.

‘But we hope he’s not, of course,’ Henry calmly added, like a parent trying to reassure a child who’d just been told a bedtime ghost story. Or perhaps he was trying to reassure himself. Suddenly he seemed a little antsy. Troubled, perhaps.

‘I don’t think he’ll harm you,’ Vladimir went on. ‘We’ve both met him plenty of times before and not once did he ever try to eat our souls or anything.’

‘Explain to them how he gets his name,’ Henry added.

‘Nobody knows his name. His real name, that is. He probably doesn’t even have one. But he does go by a name which has steadily formed over the years. The Devil One, frightened people used to call him. Years and years of lazy, slurred speech eventually simplified it to Devlan.’

‘Why are people so scared of him?’ Eddie asked.

‘You’re best seeing for yourself,’ Henry replied. ‘If you can find him.’

‘What exactly is he?’ Larry asked. ‘Is he some sort of freak?’

Neither Henry nor Vladimir appeared willing to answer this particular question.

‘I imagine that you have a lot of questions about all this, so there’s a lot to talk about,’ Henry said. ‘We have a list of areas for you to look, the more insalubrious corners of this town. That’s if you want this task. I could understand if you didn’t. But it’s up to you.’

Like a soldier about to be sent off to a foreign land to fight, Eddie sensed that a large journey was ahead of them. It felt sinister to him, yet exciting at the same time, like the hole they’d been digging for themselves turned out to be a grave and they were starting to unearth partially decomposed bodies.

He could just say no, just leave them and go back home to his impossible essay and get back on with his boring college course. He just wished he knew exactly what was in store for them if they were to pass this test. Or if they were to fail. That’s what worried him most of all.

He looked to his friend. Again, the look on Larry’s face suggested that the next line was not his.

Eddie nodded. ‘We’ll do it. We’re in.’

‘Good,’ Henry replied. ‘Now let me have another go at fixing myself a decent cuppa.’

He picked up his mug and carried it from the silence of the room.

‘So, now we’re devil hunters,’ Eddie said to Larry as they walked down the steps of
Clarence Hotel
.

‘Yeah. What’s with that?’ Larry replied.

‘Who knows?’

They made their way through the town, back towards the flat. It was gone midnight but the pubs were still bulging with rambunctious revellers. Soon they’d all be queuing to get into the nightclubs. Perhaps within the shadows of one of these hives this devil person was to be found, lost in the maelstrom of nocturnal indulgence.

Larry looked at the envelope sealed by the wax blob. In the dim light he could make out the imprint within the wax seal. It was the same symbol on their business card, two ever searching eyes peering through a flame.

‘Maybe we should open this. See what it says,’ Larry suggested.

Eddie pondered for a moment then shook his head. This was a
test
. Maybe that was the point of it, to see if they could trust them, not find some freak they they’d probably pulled out of their arses.

‘No. Just leave it.’

‘What do you think it says?’

‘This letter will self-destruct in five seconds. Bad luck, you have failed, guys. Kaboom!’

‘Yeah! Or maybe it’s blank. Maybe they just gave us this to get rid of us.’

‘And like two gullible students we took it.’

‘We should just throw this away and go back to them and say ‘Yeah, we found him. We gave him it.’’

Their banter soon ran dry. Neither of them was actually in the mood for being witty. They were still digesting the conversation they’d had back on the top floor of the hotel.

After Henry had made himself an acceptable cup of tea, he’d then talked to them about the organisation. The vigilante master explained the ranks that Halo of Fires was built on. The top guys were called the Seraphs. Next in rank was the Throne, a position held solely by Vladimir, whose job was to lead the rest of the recruits: the Powers, who, as their name suggested, were the powerhouses, the men with the muscle. Those were the two guys they’d met in Barrow Hill Thorns by the burning car. Beneath them were Dominions and Virtues and various others, but Henry didn’t talk too much about those.

As for Larry and Eddie, they were going to be seen as Guardians, for now. Larry figured it was the same as being a private in the army and that the name was equally as nonsensical. Guardians to what exactly? At least it sounded cool though.

‘You think we’re getting a foot on their ladder?’ Larry asked Eddie.

‘Hopefully.’

‘You really want a career in a professional vigilante organisation? What if you later decide on a less adventurous job working at McDonald’s and you have to explain to your new boss about this little section of your C.V.?’

Eddie shrugged. ‘Just tell them I worked for a hotelier.’

‘It doesn’t bother you?’

‘No. I don’t want to work at McDonald’s. Do you?’

‘No, I’d like to work for these guys,’ Larry replied.

‘Yeah, well you would say that, wouldn’t you?’

‘What do you mean?’

‘You believe in revenge.’

They both went quiet. A certain day when Larry was just fourteen years old had been on his mind quite a lot since they’d met Halo of Fires, and he wondered if it was a detail that Henry had in his report but had chosen not to mention.

It wasn’t like Larry had personally told anyone about it. In fact, after that incident on the double-decker bus, Larry had not said
any
word to anyone for a whole week, let alone tell anyone what had actually happened to him. Would the Halo of Fires boss have been able to find out? Was there a criminal report of it somewhere? Larry didn’t actually know. At the time, he was scared of even
thinking
about the incident.

‘Don’t know how I can’t not believe in it,’ Larry muttered.

‘What happened?’ Eddie asked. ‘Wanna compare scars, like?’

He did not get a reply, but neither did he push it.

Larry had been sent to a string of counsellors and psychiatrists for the rest of his teenage years and they’d all poked and probed him with questions which he’d stubbornly repelled. How would they be able to understand his trauma when they’d never experienced anything like it themselves?

Someone like Eddie though… who didn’t care about anything… who probably wouldn’t even care about
this
, perhaps, in some strange way, talking to him might be the psychological antidote he needed.

It always seemed safer to keep his mouth shut though.

‘You know what I think?’ Eddie began. ‘I think we’re on our way to facing our demons now.’

‘Yeah? What’s yours?’

Eddie’s mouth, like Larry’s, was empty of words.

Part 9: Floyd’s Chamber of Fun

Chapter 9.1

The old bitch hadn’t stopped prattling since it was wheeled outside. Of all the crips he could have picked and Floyd had gone and got motormouth of the millennium. It could hardly move its arms or legs but as far as verbal capabilities went, it would earn a place representing England if Talking Shite was an Olympic event.

Floyd had ignored the sign on the front door informing people that closed circuit television was in operation. He knew it was a lie. Who the heck would put security cameras in a retirement home? So they could catch people stealing the walking sticks?

With complete nonchalance, as though he’d been routinely visiting the place for years, Floyd walked in as though he knew where he was going, following the deafening boom of the heart-beating music and Chris Tarrant’s giggling voice reading the possible answers to a question about New York’s nickname: ‘
The Big Potato, the Big Apple, the Big Orange, or the Big Traffic Jam…’

One or two of the people in the sitting room may have known what television show they were watching; the rest probably didn’t even know what year it was, let alone what planet they were on. Here was a room of living dead, all hunched, mangled and decrepit like vehicles in a scrap yard, written off by the car crash called life. They were all waiting for bedtime or waiting to die, whichever came first.

Positively ignoring the demented fruitcake who seemed to think that the answer to the three hundred pound question was A, Floyd scanned the rest of the room for one that seemed reasonably docile. One of them sat in the corner of the room, a purple knitted blanket wrapped around its lap, a line of drool slopping from its mouth. Floyd thought it looked at least two hundred years old. He approached it, released the brakes on its wheelchair, and quietly pushed it out of the room.

No one said anything to him. Apart from the fairy-seeing residents, no one actually saw him do it, for the wardens were most probably occupied with the other worthless spackers. And so, as though he’d gone in there to dutifully take his elderly mother out for an evening walk (or rather an evening ‘roll’), Floyd walked out of there with a random resident.

‘Can you take me to bed now?’ the old cripple asked for the six hundredth time.

‘I’ll take you to bed later,’ Floyd replied as a repulsive thought entered his mind on saying those particular words. He continued to wheel the crip along the pavement as they neared the edge of town. The row of streetlights was soon about to end.

‘Why can’t you take me to bed now?’

‘There’s somewhere I want to take you first.’

He knew that no one would care that this useless bag of shit would suddenly have gone missing. If it had any children anywhere, then Floyd knew they’d feel relieved that it was gone. They’d no longer have the burden of paying its housing fees, or have to visit each Sunday to listen to it babbling medicine-induced nonsense. They would no longer have to keep up this lark of
pretending
that they cared about it.

‘Where are we going then? Are we going to see Betty?’ the cripple asked.

‘Who’s Betty?’

‘She’s my daughter. Do you know her? She’s a teacher at Ashtree Primary School and she makes lovely scones.’

‘I’m taking you on a little excursion,’ Floyd said in that apparently sincere tone of his. ‘You like the fair, don’t you?’

Annoyingly, the cripple was finding it too difficult to articulate the one word response that the question required and so Floyd carried on. ‘I run the seaside amusements, and I have a new ride that I thought you might like to try.’

‘I ‘spect she might make you a mug of hot chocolate if you ask nicely.’

‘What?’ Floyd asked. It could certainly talk but it sure as hell couldn’t make conversation.

‘You’d like a hot chocolate, yes? Warm you up? Still, it’s quite a nice night tonight, isn’t it?’ the cripple said.

Floyd shook his head. It was rather cool and murky this evening, a fine drizzle of sea mist slowly creeping over the town. He could feel a continuous cold spray against his craggy face, as though his skin was infested with tiny crawling insects. The cripple was so wrapped up in cardigans and blankets that it couldn’t feel anything.

‘Beautiful,’ Floyd said as he wiped his trench coat sleeve over his itchy face.

‘Are you going to take me to bed soon?’

‘Nearly there.’

They weren’t going to the normal amusements. Tonight Floyd was taking this cripple to his
other
amusement park.

Floyd’s Chamber of Fun was initially a storage area, a dumping ground for his old rides from the seafront. Here he brought the failing roller coasters, ghost trains, and gallopers that were no longer safe for children to ride. But like old people in a retirement home, Floyd could still see a use for them.

At first he’d brought in Devlan to fix them. Knowing him to be a mechanical genius, the Chamber had become Devlan’s home as he was employed permanently to recondition the rides or salvage them for parts.

Eventually though, Floyd put Devlan to work on other things and told him that he no longer needed him to work in the Chamber. He continued to tinker and adapt the rides on his own and kept other people out of there then. Most people.

Working for The Harbour Master had given Floyd such imaginative ideas, and he couldn’t help but manifest them in creating his own world of obliqueness. He couldn’t see the appeal otherwise. According to a magazine he’d read last month, there was only a one in one-and-a-half billion chance of someone being fatally injured on an amusement ride. Not surprising when all they did was jolt people around a little bit.

The Chamber was different. Everything within it was geared towards Floyd’s idea of fun, something that was a lot different to everyone else’s. He just had different tastes.

The first people to experience the enjoyment within Floyd’s Chamber of Fun occurred when one of his associates had discovered a family of Chinese stowaways on board a vessel at the harbour. Floyd had offered a place for the young mother with the long black hair and her three famished children to stay. One by one, Floyd had used each of them to test his specially modified rides within the Chamber and it had been a most enjoyable experience indeed. Floyd also gained a lot of satisfaction from knowing he’d saved the local taxpayers from having to house even more needy immigrants.

There were so many worthless people in this world who drained society of all its valuable resources and gave nothing in return, a fine example of which was the useless geriatric he was wheeling further into a cold murkiness of concrete and iron.

Chapter 9.2

Frawley Holt Industrial Park seemed a contradiction in terms, for the landscape within that area of town was bleak, almost like some futuristic waste ground where T101s would be battling against a resistance on the broken flints and the sparse shrubs that dared to grow where once a wood had been sacrificed in the name of industry.

Within Floyd’s warehouse, located at the far corner of the industrial park, was a more cheerful and friendly sight. At a glance, the Chamber seemed like a tenderly constructed monument rather than a graveyard for fairground rides. Most of the lights on the rides would still illuminate. The Orton and Spooner merry-go-round of horses and carts would still bellow its hauntingly nostalgic melodies evoking Victorian summers gone by.

After three years of desertion though, the dust had thickened and the paint had flaked, as Floyd discovered when he walked inside and turned on the straining floodlights.

‘Oh this is very nice,’ the cripple said.

Floyd darted in front of the wheelchair and proudly threw his arms open wide as though he was trying to embrace his secret world. ‘Which ride would you like to go on?’ he boomed. ‘There’s the Chair-O-Planes Planer, the Road to Hell Ghost Train, The Hard Impact Orbiter, the Bone Breaker Waltzer, or maybe you would like the Crazy Catterkiller!’

As he announced them, he darted from each of his twisted rides to the other, making grand gestures with his arms like a ringmaster performing to a sell-out audience of rowdy pucks and demons all baying for destruction. He imagined their cheers and was keen to satisfy their desires. In a hammy motion, he rested his elbow in a hand as he stroked his long chin in exaggerated contemplation.

The Road to Hell Ghost Train was very tempting. Atop the train was a giant skull with glowing orange eyes, beckoning hopeless souls to come inside. That was the first of Floyd’s rides to be tested. He remembered so vividly standing outside it with the Chinese woman as one of her kids got on. He was the eldest one, and bravely insisted that he tested the ride for Floyd on his own.

Getting into the cart, the ride had squealed into motion as the crash doors opened and the ride swallowed him into the gaping mouth of a zombie with big rotten teeth. Inside, the kid first encountered a pair of severed hands playing a deathly tune on a pipe organ before gliding on to the hall of ghouls, where a gallery of ghastly paintings was hung on the wall, their eyes eerily following the path of the cart as it continued towards even more horrors.

Outside they could hear the boy screaming in excited fear at all the spooky sights and sounds within the train. That was until he entered the final stretch where pitch-black darkness fell over him. They weren’t hearing screams of fear then.

‘I think, my dear, we shall go for the good old Head Over Wheels!’

‘I ought to be going to bed now. Can you take me?’ it asked for the final time.

The Head Over Wheels was a mini roller coaster in the shape of a snake. The ride had become quite old and rickety but Devlan had initially done a good job in restoring it back to reasonable use. It sure wasn’t going to pass any health and safety test though.

Floyd pushed the cripple over to the cart and lifted it into the back seat. It was surprisingly heavy and stank of piss. He pushed the bar down on it to keep it securely locked to the ride, before crouching down to play one of his favourite games before he sent it off on the ride of a lifetime. He didn’t lean in too closely though.

‘I spoke to Betty earlier,’ Floyd projected nice and clearly, saying each word slowly to make sure that it heard him. ‘She told me how much of a nasty piece of work you are. She said she’s hated you her whole life.’

There was confusion in the cripple’s glazed eyes. ‘My Betty said that?’

‘Oh yes. Your little Betty. She hasn’t been visiting you much recently, has she?’ Floyd hazarded.

‘No. She hasn’t.’

‘I’m sorry to have to tell you but it’s because she hates you. You know what she called you? A good for nothing whore. How about that? Your own daughter called you a whore.’

Floyd skipped merrily over to the control box and cranked the lever upwards to set the ride off. The snake entered the lift hill and was yanked up a steep slope. By then the cripple started to wail.

‘Oh, I don’t like this. Can you take me off? Please, I want to get off!’

The modification on this ride was the tunnel at the bottom of the slope. Floyd had lowered it so that the snake-cart would only just fit through.

The snake reached the summit and teetered teasingly over the edge. Suddenly it made its freefall, the roar of steel against steel echoing throughout the concrete chamber like the sound of the Earth’s crust being torn open. Swooping towards the tunnel with unrelenting, uncaring speed, the cart’s passenger started screaming. It could see the snake disappearing into the giant apple, and although the old woman tried to slink into the seat, its head still protruded.

A blade had been added to the edge of the tunnel and it sliced off everything above the mouth. The half head flopped between the tracks while the rest of the corpse appeared from the other end of the tunnel, its hands still clutching the bar, its lips still peeled back in silent terror as though it was willing to ride the tracks for the rest of eternity. Floyd smiled like a hound as he continued to watch it hurtling round like a torn rag doll on a child’s train track. Things didn’t get any more fun than this.

He again thought back to that Chinese kid when the ghost train had brought him back to the start. Not that there was much left of the little kid. The two chainsaws had swooped down on him in the darkness of the ride and mangled him beautifully. How his mother had cried!

But that was only the start of it for her. She’d then had to watch as her other two kids were used to test rides. The middle child went on the Chair-O-Planes Planer where the chairs had swung ever-higher towards a blade attached to the wall. Eventually his legs were ‘planed’ off and Floyd had left him dangling up there while his blood rained down on the ground. His pathetic calls for his mother soon became fainter and fainter until they stopped completely.

Then there was the youngest one, her quiet little daughter whom he’d had to wrestle from her mother’s frenzied clutches by then. She’d been put on the 1001 Frights Flying Carpet ride, which had been removed of its lap bars. Floyd had altered the ride to make the carpet arch up higher, flaunting too much with the force of gravity so that eventually the girl fell from the ride on to the spikes waiting for her below. She’d landed with an almighty squelch. Floyd had crouched down to have a look at the mess and miraculously, for about a whole minute, the little girl was still breathing.