Dark Harbour: The Tale of the Soul Searcher (9 page)

He turned away and then saw that there was another hungry soul next to him. Eddie replaced his baseball cap and the dog with the wide brown eyes continued to stare at him.

‘Fuck off,’ Eddie said to it.

The dog didn’t move, instead misinterpreting Eddie’s words as an invitation. He stepped closer to the stranger with the lovely smelling chips and licked his lips.

‘I said fuck off, you stupid mutt.’

Eddie couldn’t see a collar on the dog. Despite its gentle nature, it looked a little wild, like a wolf that had just trotted out of the woods. He had no idea what breed it was.

‘You just don’t get the message, do you? Stupid animal. Here,’ Eddie said as he stabbed a chip and then flicked it across the pavement. The dog mooched over to it and quickly licked it up. He then returned to Eddie and looked up at him with those big eyes.

‘Oh, for God’s sake. Here you go then. Have the fucking things.’ Eddie placed the tray on the ground and let the damned dog eat the rest of them.

At that point, the chip shop owner came outside. ‘Don’t know whose he is. Been lurking round here a couple of days now,’ he said to Eddie.

‘Looks like a stray. Smells like a stray.’

‘I’ll call the pound in the morning, I think,’ the shopkeeper said before turning to go back inside as a couple of drunken students came stumbling along.

‘Hear that, doggy? Tomorrow they’ll come take you away and put you to sleep. It’s going to be your lucky day.’

The dog, which had finished eating already, looked up at Eddie and cocked his head as though Eddie had just been telling him how lovely he was. Eddie shook his head then set off for home. He soon heard the pitter-patter of paws behind him.

‘Look, just go home you stupid fucking animal!’

The dog wouldn’t take his eyes off him though, staring at him like he was his best friend in the whole universe. He certainly was a quiet soul too, a bit like Eddie.

‘You’re not coming with me! I don’t want no flea-bitten dog.’

He turned away once more, but the dog just kept following.

Chapter 1.6

There was barely any light in the rat-infested factory when Devlan returned, not that he needed any. Devlan could see exceptionally well in the darkness, when he wasn’t wearing his shades. He had a pizza box stuffed under his arm - barbecue chicken and peppers - bought with the money Floyd had given him. He sat on his grubby mattress with a mouth full of saliva and opened the box.

In the gloom he heard scuffles, as though the bricks and rubble were suddenly coming to life. The rats were congregating, one of them even sitting next to him on the mattress. A quick flick of his arm and Devlan could have easily grabbed it, but tonight the rats were back to being dinner guests rather than being the dinner itself. He tossed them his crusts. Neither Devlan nor his rodent roommates had eaten so well in a long time.

When he finished eating, Devlan propped himself up against the wall at the end of his bed. He had some thinking to do, had to delve into his vast memory banks and retrieve whatever he could about this treasure that Floyd now wanted him to search for, this Akasa Stone.

After half an hour of meditation on the subject, every corridor that he went down in his mind had led to a locked door. He’d known a handful of people who’d searched for the stone, but also remembered how they’d only discovered disappointment. It was a game for fools, for rainbow chasers. Deluded by its mystical lustre, the searchers of the illusive Akasa Stone had never fully understood what it was they were looking for. Perhaps this treasure wasn’t going to allow itself to be found by just anyone.

Floyd wouldn’t be aware of the true esoteric nature of the stone. Hardly anyone was. Devlan didn’t actually know anyone who fully knew what
he
knew, no one who was still alive now.

Perhaps by some sort of beginner’s luck, Floyd had stumbled upon the true resting place of the stone. Devlan hadn’t known anyone else to scour the sea; everyone just assumed the treasure was to be found within the town somewhere. If it were to be found in the sea, how would that explain the people who’d claimed to have seen it? Then again, what value was their word? Who
were
these people?

With his mind going round in circles and the pizza laying heavy in his stomach, Devlan’s mind began to drift away. The room was ice cold as it always was at night but Devlan was now numb to the sensation. Being in the cold so much, the rugged vagrant eventually
became
the cold.

Memories still floated around and around in his head, like diseased fish in a stagnant pond. They’d suddenly dart this way and that as they escaped the larger predators that emerged from the murky blackness, the grotesque thoughts and visions that had been unsettled by his reminiscing.

Devlan was used to bad dreams, had come to accept them as part of himself. He now knew to embrace the harrowing nightmares that plagued his mind like flesh-hungry zombies, wanting to eat away whatever hope and humanity clung to his soul’s fabric. The low resonation of his existence was never meant to vibrate higher than the animalistic thought forms that he often meandered within. Devlan was clearly a freak of nature in his body, and the same had to be so for his mind.

Within the nightmarish sensations, he submitted himself to sleep, facing the deathly, decaying visions of people he once knew but now long gone, now rotting within the grim recesses of his aberrant mindscape.

Chapter 1.7

‘Where the heck is Eddie?’ Michael asked Larry as they sat down in the lounge back at the flat.

Danny had gone to get himself a glass of water before going straight to bed. Larry held a can of lager as he would often keep drinking until the moment he finally went to bed. Michael, on the other hand, wanted to wait up until everyone was home and safe.

‘He’ll be back soon. Stop worrying! You sound like an old woman,’ Larry replied, taking a sip of his beer.

Michael frowned and turned to the window. As he got up, his wallet fell from his trouser pocket.

‘Hey, lost your wallet,’ Larry said as he immediately reached over and grabbed it. Instead of handing it back to him, he looked at it thoughtfully. ‘You know, you can tell a lot about someone by looking at the contents of their wallet.’

Michael shrugged. ‘Go ahead.’

‘Hmm… a total of 43p.’

‘There you go. Obviously a student.’

‘What’s with the jewellery?’ Larry asked as he withdrew a silver necklace.

‘That’s the Virgin Mary. You know, that person who gave birth to Jesus?’

‘Think I heard of her. Cash cards, library card, someone’s phone number! Want to enlighten us?’

‘It was a lad in my video group.’

‘Oh, a
lad
then,’ Larry said like someone out of a
Carry On
film.

Michael rolled his eyes while Larry smirked. He was about to close the wallet when he saw one last item in there. It was a business card. It was black and rather plain, yet the name on it was somewhat intriguing. In the middle of the card was a red flame with two eyes peering out from behind it. Although only a simple outline, there was a perceptible menacing anger emanating from those eyes.

‘Halo of Fires? Who the hell are they?’

‘Oh, that. That’s something I’m researching.’

‘Who are they? I’ve not heard of them,’ Larry said as he tossed the wallet back to Michael. He kept hold of the card.

‘They’re just another one of Dark Harbour’s shady little secrets.’

‘Oh, I’m with you now! Do you meet up at a secluded layby and hump each other like…’

‘No! Not like that!’

‘So, what then?’

‘They’re an organisation of thugs. They… go and see to people’.

‘To…?’ Larry prompted him.

Michael pressed his fingertips together in front of his mouth. It was somewhat difficult explaining Halo of Fires to his friend, what with Larry being an outsider. This organisation was in fact the one thing about his hometown that he was not entirely proud of, the black cloud that ruined the tranquil blue sky.

He’d found the card a few months back, at church of all places. As he sat there waiting to receive Communion, the card was at his feet, the vivid black colour standing out against the dusty wooden floorboards. He was quite disgusted to think that a member of the congregation had most probably dropped it. Why would they have had such a thing?

As he’d picked it up, he’d immediately felt the synchronicity. The week before, they’d been set their main Journalism assignment for the semester and Michael was deliberating about whether to do his project on the Fires. Over the years he’d heard many lurid stories about them, but there was one story that had stood out in particular, a story passed on to him by his older brother.

Seeing the discovery of the business card as a message that he should pursue this particular subject, Michael felt that it was more than just a simple college project that he was about to undertake; God had called him for an important life assignment and Michael had to shine his torch into the darkness.

He didn’t like Halo of Fires. He didn’t agree with what they stood for. He’d seen first-hand what they were capable of and, for that reason, he saw them as a bunch of bloodthirsty, mindless desperadoes.

‘I guess you could call them professional vigilantes,’ Michael resumed. ‘If you want to get revenge on someone, if someone has done you wrong, then you can call these guys and they’ll… sort them out.’

Larry was quiet for a moment, not expecting to have received such an intriguing reply. Suddenly the town didn’t seem so tame after all. ‘I see. And have you ever called them?’

‘Hell no! That’s not why I had the card. I just found it somewhere and picked it up out of curiosity. But then I did have an idea for something.’

‘What?’

‘My Journalism assignment. I’m doing it on them.’

‘Cool. Will you need this anymore?’

‘I guess.’

But Larry didn’t give it back to him. ‘What sort of things will they do? They go and chop people up into little pieces with a chainsaw?’

‘I’m not quite sure. I knew a lad at school who once contacted them. There was a teacher he didn’t like. Picked on him all the time. Lad couldn’t take it anymore so he calls them… and the teacher gets a knock on the door one night. Heard a lot of stories about them at school to tell you the truth.’

‘Fascinating,’ Larry said, sincerely for a change.

‘Something like that,’ Michael said as he peered through the curtains.

‘Well, I’ll keep them in mind. In case anyone kicks my arse at pool, eh?’ Larry said as he slipped the card into his pocket.

Part 2: Halo of Fires

Chapter 2.1

Imagine that you have a teenage daughter and she’s recently all grown up, wearing lipstick and breast-hugging tops. She’s now at the stage where she’s learning how to get attention. One night she meets up with her friends because one of them is throwing a party, her parents away for the weekend. While she’s there she meets a player, and he gets a lot more friendly with her than she wants him to. It gets past midnight and you wonder why she hasn’t come home yet. Eventually the front door opens and there she is, looking like she put her hand into the cage of the cute little lion cub and got her hand bitten off. You notice her smudged lipstick, her ruffled hair, and maybe one or two bruises. What stands out most of all, and what sends the raging anger coursing through your blood is her crying. She’s sobbing because she never thought her first time would be like this.

So what do you do about it? Call the police? How long would you wait for them to get down from their office that’s in some other town twenty miles away? And how much trust would you have in them to actually do something about it? Or are they just going to tell you she was asking for it anyway?

Now imagine that there was another option open to you, another organisation that you could contact. Imagine you could go to these guys, tell them what happened, and ask them to go and visit the tosser in question and beat the living shit out of him. Wouldn’t that be a more satisfying response to your problem? It’s an option open to people in this town in the form of a skilled vigilante organisation.

Some people here hate Halo of Fires, others laud them. Some of the more philosophical people see them as a necessary darkness, a presence that encourages people to stay in line more so than any threat of a hellish afterlife. The organisation has been around for years, and in this dog-eat-dog world it doesn’t appear to be a service that is going to die out any time soon.

Henry Maristow, the man in charge of Halo of Fires, is known as the Seraph of the organisation. He’d initially been brought aboard well over twenty years ago by a local lawyer, Alan Hammond, who wanted another Seraph alongside himself. Alan had seen Henry as the ideal man for the role, mainly because Henry knew the underground of Dark Harbour rather intimately.

Alan Hammond had been the brains and the heart behind Halo of Fires, creating a morally conscious force that would aid victims by seeking out justice through vengeance. His alliance with Henry meant he could recruit the perfect soldiers of karma and ensure their endurance in this perilous town.

When Alan passed away, Henry became the sole Seraph. With age increasing and energy decreasing, Henry still held onto the original tenets that Alan had asked his friend to stay true to. There were many things that Alan had asked of him. Promises had been made.

Henry had needed something to believe in. He’d needed a way to escape the evil Network that he’d previously belonged to, and which had forged a burdensome tangle of chains that weighed heavy in his memories.

Through his transformation, Halo of Fires has continued to thrive, mainly due to the exceptional force of personnel that Alan and Henry had brought together. There was one member in particular who brought a special kind of energy to the organisation, taking things to another level. He just had something within him. Something extraordinary.

***

The tolling of the church bells signalled to the town that it was ten in the evening, and to Vladimir that it was time to get moving. He stood up in his darkened room and stretched out his arm as he slid on his long, black faux leather coat. Glancing at the mirror beside the window he took in his reflection, just to check all was in place.

Vladimir never wore anything but black: a shirt with long cuffs that covered the backs of his hands, his coat, trousers, and boots that were routinely polished. His hair was virtually black too, short and a little wavy, slicked back with a dab of hair wax. His eyes were also dark, like black buttons, the iris almost indistinguishable from the pupil. Vladimir always looked immaculate and his colourlessness was so vivid.

Before he would look too deeply at his reflection, which was bathed in the pale moonlight streaming into the room, he gazed out of the window. The moon was full tonight, hanging in the sky above the waves of the harbour like a searchlight looking for wayward souls.

The vigilante lived in an inconspicuous chalet on the edge of the town, up on the hills. He had an all-seeing view of the town and the sea from his living-room. It felt as though he could look over things here, and boy did it need looking over.

People never came round to his place, not even the other guys at the Fires. In fact, they didn’t even know where he lived. That’s the way that Vladimir wanted it for he liked to completely withdraw from the world here and cut himself off from the constant disappointments of humanity. At home he would mostly spend his time reading – books on philosophy or history. Whilst he had a television set, he would only use it to watch the news so he could observe the slow erosion of society and the growth of crime. When it came to frivolous entertainment, Vladimir never allotted any of his precious time to it. It was all a complete waste because it did nothing for him. He wouldn’t have a clue which song was at number one in the charts or which
X-Men
film they were up to.

The antique clock on the wall began to chime too. Hanging above the mantelpiece, almost as the centrepiece of his room, the clock was a constant reminder to Vladimir that time was always ticking, and that he had to make best use of it. Lifetimes were empowered within finite portions of the infinite. It was as if he could feel every second of his life go by, and on some level he could hear the demon that constantly taunted him by pointing out all the work he had not yet done, the endless wrongs that were still to right.

He still had plenty of time before he would meet up with his colleagues but he decided he would set off anyway. Vladimir was eager to get to work. He always was. He picked up his keys from the desk, patted his pocket to check he had his phone, then left.

In his rank of Throne, Vladimir was leader over the Powers, the guys who worked on the front line. He’d been the Throne for a couple of years now, and he hoped to move up to the rank of Seraph one day.

Vladimir lived for his work, the only job that he’d ever had. Vengeance was central to his beliefs, central to his very essence, and under the wings of Alan Hammond and Henry Maristow, Vladimir had shone in his role as an Angel of Karma, dealing out retribution to those that deserved it. It was, quite simply, a role he was born for.

The supreme energy that Vladimir brought to Halo of Fires had transformed the organisation into a resolute force. The flames of their inferno pervaded throughout the entire town, mercilessly burning down the wrongdoers without compromise and seeping into the conscience of those who
might
decide to commit misdeeds. The Fires was a fate that was simply best avoided.

He walked briskly down the footpath that ran along the cliffs, the burgeoning blades of grass rippling in the gentle sea breeze. At his normal pace it took him only fifteen minutes to get into the town centre. He would be at the meeting point at least ten minutes before his colleagues, and it was most likely that they’d be late anyway.

Although he was tall with his six-foot frame, Vladimir did not have the action man figure to go with it. Then again, Vladimir rarely had to get ‘hands-on’ with his work. Vladimir just seemed to have such a dense aura to him that when he looked at people with his menacing eyes, it was enough to intimidate anyone and overpower their self-assurance.

If he didn’t have such an intense look on his face all the time, he would probably look quite personable. He was actually rather attractive with a somewhat elfish face, delicate lips, and neat yet heavy eyebrows that sat above his eyes in a fixed frown. If he hadn’t chosen this line of work, he could very easily have swapped professions with a movie star, playing a swashbuckling pirate or an officer on an intergalactic starship. But nobody noticed his good looks because Vladimir had no interest in projecting them. They didn’t count for anything.

Another thing you would notice if you looked deep enough was something lying beyond the heavy stare of those large eyes. It was as though looking at a vault. You knew the outside to be uninviting and the inside to be impenetrable, but you would guess it must be because what was hidden inside must be of unbelievable value and significance. Or maybe the thing inside was tightly locked up in an iron box so that Vladimir could control it and it wouldn’t consume him, like a profound, soul-aching sadness would threaten to crumble one’s fibre and turn one’s self to worthless rot. Feelings had to be closely controlled in this game. They would only undermine the masterpiece that Vladimir was striving to create.

As he never saw much sunlight, his face had a pale complexion that only contributed towards his gothic appearance. One could almost imagine he had just risen from the churchyard grave, and was about to open his mouth wide to reveal a set of blood-seeking, vampiric teeth. The irony was that blood was the last thing that would pass between Vladimir’s lips for he was a devout vegetarian. Not being interested in gaining any pleasure from food, Vladimir instead ate only what was good for him. He didn’t like impurities, and except for caffeine, he hardly consumed any.

Walking along in the moonlight which cast his shadow before him, the young vigilante went over the main job that they had on tonight. The guy they were going to target was a former major in Her Majesty’s Forces. Not that Vladimir was apprehensive by that at all. He suspected that Jake and Clint were most probably looking forward to this one. Finding a challenge for them was an impossible task.

Years ago, the major had done something very wrong, and he’d kept on doing it for a long time. It didn’t matter how long ago it was though; crimes were never forgotten. Sometimes
people
would forget them, or bury the memories so deep in their subconscious that they would think they’d forgotten them, but every evil deed would send out ripples of karma, and the Fires was the force that brought that karma back to them.

In a little under thirty minutes, this ex-major would feel the full brunt of this force, and he’d find it the most unpleasant experience of his life.

Chapter 2.2

The Legionnaires Club in the town centre is a members only club, traditionally for British service veterans. To get into the club, members present their card to the person on the desk (although for the recognisable regulars this obviously becomes unnecessary). Non-members usually find that they are politely refused entry. This wasn’t the case with the representatives of the Halo of Fires organisation as they discovered on this particular night.

Witnessing the sight of the tall and intimidating Vladimir walk through the door with his Powers: the square-jawed, muscular Jake, and Clint, who looked like he could be Lennox Lewis’s brother, the chap on the front desk felt it was best not to say anything and just let them pass through.

Heads turned when the three vigilantes entered the main lounge. They brought with them such a heavy atmosphere, and most of the punters hugged their pint glasses tighter as they intuitively sensed trouble.

‘I don’t see our Kolley,’ Clint said to Vladimir who stood in the middle of the room scanning the faces with his gravity-eyed glare.

He eventually spotted him through a doorway where he was playing snooker. Gridley wore a black moustache mismatched with grey hair on his head, just like in the photographs that Vladimir had pored over. The guy looked tall, bigger than he did in the pictures. He wore a grey shirt with the top three buttons undone, chest hair sprouting out, a gold chain around his neck, the type that guvnors wore.

‘Through there,’ Vladimir said to the Powers.

The people in the club sipped their drinks for comfort, timidly watching the wolves wander amongst them, wondering which lamb was about to be slaughtered.

Entering the snooker room, Vladimir approached the table and picked up the white ball. ‘Major Gridley?’

‘And who do you think you are?’ asked Gridley as he straightened off the table, his cue in hand.

‘Eva sent us,’ Vladimir replied, slithering the cue ball along the tips of his fingers.

‘Eva?’

‘Yeah. Your daughter. Remember her?’

A prickly silence hung in the room, aggression and adrenaline charging the air like a raw stench. The major studied the three visitors closer, mentally calculating the muscular ratio. He shared a glance with his burly friend who stood across the table. They didn’t speak but Vladimir could tell what they were both thinking.

‘This has nothing to do with him. He should leave the room.’

The other man didn’t move. He was big but he didn’t have the same physique as Jake or Clint, just rolls of muffin fat spilling over his belly and sweat stains under his armpits. As for Gridley, he may have been military trained but it didn’t compare to the training that the two Powers had undergone.

‘I don’t think so,’ Gridley said, his voice rising to a bark. ‘You know, I thought Eva would have been smart enough to put the past behind her.’

‘How can she?’

‘The hell’s that got to do with you?’ Gridley bellowed as he stepped closer to the cavalier vigilante.