Dark Side Darker (19 page)

For a long time she was nowhere, suspended in the void. Sarah was aware she should have felt terrified but somehow all she felt was numb. Then as the darkness grew more complete she felt herself becoming desperate, absorbed by despair and alone.

Only she was very aware that she wasn’t.

Constantly she could feel unseen things sniffing about her, excited by her presence. Slowly coming closer.

She found herself wanting to cling to her mother, regretted all the suffering she had caused her, every unresolved argument over nothing, and for a second, somewhere, she could feel her mother’s current panic. For a moment she had stood above her.

Then again darkness, felt herself being structured, like waking up without ever going to sleep. Blinding light, hot wetness.

The street around her was warped. The sky was deep crimson and smeared with drapes of black smoke. A dark mist hung heavily, drifted up from crooked chimneys silhouetted against the bloody sky.

It all seemed vaguely familiar but altered. Two of the city’s spires rose like black daggers in the distance but the third one didn’t exist here. What would have been a kentucky Fried Chicken was little but a burnt-out hulk. Sarah found herself standing in the ghost of the city she knew, its shadow. Places she knew were twisted and broken, windows boarded up or with the faint glow of candles within. Hungry eyes watched her from a thousand blackened shelters.

Everything kept shifting, threatened to dissolve and in that respect it felt quite familiar.

Broken cars shuffled along shattered tarmac and smoky figures hung in shadows. They seemed unreal but as they approached, Sarah moved away, not wishing to find out. Most seemed oblivious but some fixed her with needle-sharp eyes, piercing her insides.

She tried to move but her feet barely carried her and no matter how much energy she used she barely travelled a foot. Sarah felt as if she was wading through a river at rising tide, constantly being drawn back to the shrieks behind her.

She stepped off the pavement and a forest of hands erupted out between the cast iron bars of a metal grill placed in the road. Fingers had been lopped off crookedly and the hands were horribly disfigured. Deep mournful screams of sorrow echoed out of the dark hole beneath her, as whatever was held inside clawed at the dying light of the outside world.

She screamed and stumbled backwards, falling over the curb, and as she fell she opened her eyes and again found the dull strip light flickering above her.

In that second Sarah knew Josh was thinking of her and again something else was beginning to crawl through her insides.

She hit the curb, jarring her spine.

‘Sarah?!??’

It was distant at first but even so she knew who had spoke and she looked around to find his face.

‘Josh?’

There was nothing but the same wraiths.

‘Sarah, where are you?’

‘I... the hospital.’

‘I don’t see you, where are you?’

‘
Here
?’

‘
Where
!? This is crazy, where the hell are we?’

He felt her smile. ‘Maybe we are,’ she replied.

There was no voice for a few seconds, just the same ghostly echoes. She felt Josh’s presence fading, felt he might disappear completely if she didn’t call out right away and did so in desperation.

‘Josh!?’

‘...? Why can’t I... I’m still here.
Sarah
? Where are we, why can’t I see you?’

‘I, I don’t know. Josh, I’m so scared! The place is so fucking wrong! I don’t want to be alone here anymore!’

She felt something vast pass within inches of her being and chakras exploded in revulsion, an ice-shiver spasmed through her body and she was screaming. ‘Stay the hell away from me! Get away from me, stay the fuck out!’ She felt as if her psyche had been raped.

She felt Josh’s panic rise, his absolute dread.

‘Sarah, what’s happening? I can’t reach you!’

Somewhere she was still screaming.

‘Oh gooood, keep away! Stay the hell away!
Joooosh
!’

No matter how hard he tried he had no way of reaching her and Sarah quickly spiralled away deeper into the void.

LIVING IN ECHOES

HER ICE COLD HAND slipped out of his and the naked girl fell away into the murk. Ian watched her drown within it, her beautiful mouth parted in a silent plea for help and those eyes,
those eyes
... Wisps of smoke snaked into her mouth, clouds formed over her face and she was gone. And he was again standing over that impossible hole stretching open inside a lifeless corpse in some house somewhere in another world. His hand was reaching down into the void trying to catch the dissolving girl’s hand, knowing he could almost grasp her fingers.
If only he could reach that little
...

Something moved
.

Something, black and wet slithering just below his reach in the inky blackness.

“Jesus.” He wrenched back his hand screaming as his mobile phone began to ring.

“Jesus fucking Christ! Shut the, urghhh...
where is the bastard
?”

The first few seconds of Ian McCalister’s awakening were utter confusion. The newspaper he’d fallen asleep under slipped off him in a landslide of papers. He shifted upright in the dark and kicked over a half empty beer can, spilling it over the carpet. All the time the sharp electronic beeping of his mobile was assaulting his ears. Screeching in the dark.

He sat on his sofa in the dark holding his head. “Ah god... okay, okay hold on you bastard!”

He raised himself to his feet and staggered towards the light switch. Another can skittered away from his blind foot steps and he tumbled into the wall. “Bollocks!”

He groped for the switch, swatted it and screwed his eyes shut against the light. “Ahhssshit. Hold on.”

His eyes began to readjust.

The room was a mess. On his coffee table, beer cans and empty shot glasses were gathered around a half-eaten portion of chips. Amongst the chaos—scattered and arranged in no discernible pattern—were newspaper clippings and files stained with coffee rings. Paper was spread everywhere. Clippings were taped to his walls, pages had been paper clipped to relevant folders, photos and highlighted photocopies were stacked in piles around the room. The amount of gathered paperwork was exceeded only by the number beer cans. All around Ian’s living room there were the signs of heavy alcohol abuse. Empty whiskey bottles sat on his tables, a pizza box lay on the shelf beneath his television and in one corner there was a large black bin bag filled to it’s top with empty cans.

Right now all he was concerned with was finding his mobile, mainly just so he could shut it up. As he made his way to the cluttered table he noticed the clock on his video read 2:35 and wondered who was phoning him so late at night.

He found it relatively easily and put it to his ear.

“
Yeah
?” He answered with all the warmth he felt at that moment, which was precisely none.

There was a hearty laugh on the other end of the phone. “Jesus Ian, you sound pleased as punch!”

He was mildly taken aback, rubbed his spare hand over his blood shot eyes. “
Who
...
Callum
?”

Another laugh. “Yeah, it’s Callum, how you been old man?”

Ian paused and looked around at the state of the room. He’d pretty much been living-in for the past month. “Yeah, grand Callum, grand. Listen no offence, but it’s pretty late...”

“I think this will wake you up, might have something for you.”

“Oh?” Ian sobered up slightly and his brain throbbed dully in his head. He sat down and grabbed the nearest whiskey bottle. He was about to pour himself a shot when he noticed the cigarette butt floating in what was left. He sighed.

“Yeah,” Callum continued in his usual cocky manner. He was a good cop but he had the slightly annoying habit of managing to sound like a grass when ever he was relaying information. Still, it was his gift of gab and wide ears which had caused McCalister to entrust him in the first place.

“Yeah,” said Callum. “You see there was this fire earlier today...”

“Oh, I didn’t hear anything about it.”

McCalister could almost feel the smirk. “Ahhh’ well this is where it gets interesting.It’s been kept from the press, someone from on-high is pulling some strings to make sure the local media didn’t get close enough to get any stories. The word is they found something in the fire.”

Ian sat fully up. “What did they find, Callum?”

“Look, Ian, it’s been pretty difficult finding out anything. The officers first on the scene have been kept away from the rest of us and the Chief’s made it pretty apparent we’re not to ask them about it. I’ll tell you, they looked shaken as hell mate. Not too different to how you looked on...
that
night. I reckon they might have seen something
similar
.
How about you start telling me just what
that
might have been, hey
?”

McCalister shivered and tried to block out his mind’s eye. Still it wouldn’t fade. It was some length of time before he could speak again. “Look Callum, first of all you wouldn’t believe me mate, secondly it was made pretty clear to me that I shouldn’t go mouthing off about what I saw and lastly,” he laughed and shook his head. “Lastly, just trust me when I say you’re happier never knowing.”

In his computer room at home, Callum frowned and rested his feet up on the desk. “What
did
you see Ian? What’s going on?”

“Seriously mate, I can’t say. They made it pretty clear that if I started talking about this I wouldn’t be coming back. I mean, I know officially this leave is for me to, I don’t know,
recuperate
, but in truth I just think they wanted me out of the way.”

Callum nodded, growing more interested by the minute. “Uhhuh’, yeah, I can believe it mate. you see those same suits have been nosing about again. you know, no one even seems to know what branch they’re with, real high and mighty. Even brass won’t tell us who they’re with. Anyhow, they’ve been grilling those coppers ever since they reported in, might still be doing it for all I know!”

Ian opened a new bottle of Gin and poured a large one into a glass. “Do you know what they found Callum?”

“Well, as I say mate there’s a lot of clamps being set down. It’s all Chinese whispers. One of my mates got to speak with one of the lads before the vampires got to em’ though. Said the lass was terrified, talking about monsters or demons or something.” He laughed.

The glass shook in Ian’s hand.

“Daft really, heh? Ian?”

“Look—Callum, let’s just say ‘there are more things in heaven and earth...’ ”

“Jesus,
you’re serious about this ain’t you mate
? There’s been a lot of talk since you’ve been gone. About that psychological evaluation they had you do. you know a lot of the lads been saying you had some kind of breakdown.”

Ian downed the lukewarm, fiery liquid and let it burn. “Yeah well, that’s not entirely untrue lad.”

“Sweet god, anyone else I’d think they were mad but you, you’re salt of the earth mate.
I mean
...”

Ian cut him off. “Callum!
I’ve got to know
, what exactly
do you
know?”

“Well, it’s all sketchy. The investigation is completely out of our hands, but what I have got is the name of the flat owner and that as far as anyone can tell he wasn’t there when the fire happened.”

Ian was scrabbling for a pen. “Brilliant lad, brilliant!” He found a clipping, something about an alien sighting in Devon and prepared to write on it.

“Okay, the name’s Robert South, no record or anything but his brothers been up for joy-riding a couple of times as a kid and we’ve got the address of his mother, one Edwina South.”

Ian was finding it hard to control himself. All this time of losing his mind, scrabbling for any kind of answers to what he had seen all that time back in that house and now finally something was being given to him. “Fucking brilliant lad!”

“Thanks, okay you got a pen?”

“Yeah, yeah, sure!”

“Okay, the address is 104 Marrow Ave’, up in kesley Grange. Listen McCalister, do what you need to do, but if I was you I’d do it quickly and quietly, you get me? Oh and McCalister if anyone finds you, none of this came from me right?”

“You have my word on that Callum. Thank you from the bottom of my soul, you’ve done grand, lad.”

“Cheers mate, I’ll keep my ears open for any other strange shit that might pop up, oh and be careful.”

“I will, thanks again Callum, I owe you big!”

“Good luck mate!”

Ian nodded and hung up.

He sat staring at the address he now held in his hands. He felt panic rising up in him.

He hadn’t slept well since he’d stood staring into that abyss. His sleep was either shallow or haunted by hellish visions of things he didn’t want to see. It was no exaggeration to say since that evening he’d felt haunted by the knowledge that everything he’d once believed as a lad may actually have been true and that was truly the most terrifying realisation of all.
Jesus, what if it was all real
? His mind had been locked into a feverish spider-web of things he couldn’t answer and now suddenly it looked like he had somewhere to start and that scared the shit out of him. Till now he’d thought the worst thing was the not-knowing, now in cold terror he realised that what might be worse would be the complete and unflinching truth.
Oh Jesus
...

He’d seen something not meant for man’s eyes and the thought of delving deeper into the mystery made him feel like a mouse before a cobra, a child in the eyes of God.

As Ian McCalister sat staring at the address the paper began to shake in his hand. There are worse things than not knowing, he told himself. He wasn’t sure he had the courage to take his investigation further but in truth he knew he had no choice. None whatsoever.

AMONGST THE SLEEP

“SWEET FUCKIN’ CHRIST!” Josh sat up, instantly awake. He was aware of a series of things instantly. He was in someone’s bed.