Dark Side Darker (5 page)

“
SARAH
!!!” came the muffled yell through the storm.

They both looked up, the full force of the elements pelted at their faces. There was a figure with long dreads hunched up and waving from the top of the stairs beneath the glow of a wall-mounted lamp.

A brilliant smile illuminated Sarah’s face, she waved back and began to run. Josh watched her black-clad form disappear up the stairs with acid swimming over his mind.

The guy was huge,
sort-of rugby player huge
, his rounded face curtained with bead-speckled black dreads and wearing an old Slipknot top, a worn-out army jacket and urban combat trousers. This, it seemed, was Rob.

Josh sprinted to catch up to where Sarah was being swung ’round in the giant’s arms. He was mildly surprised to find that he was actually slightly taller than Rob.

“Hello.” He ventured to a clearly suspicious Rob.

He nodded. “Yeah, hello,” he replied and gave Josh the once-over.

“This,” said Sarah, eyes all love and sparkly for Rob, “is Josh Holt.”

A huge smile appeared. “
Josh
? Josh like...” Rob threw out his arms and began shouting. “JOSH!! JOSH?!
JOOOSH
!!!!”

He finished looking maniacally around back to a largely unimpressed Josh.

“You know, ‘Blair Witch??’ ” the guy said indignantly.

Sarah was pissing herself laughing.

“You know what? It doesn’t matter how often that happens, it’s still funny,” Josh said dryly and thought
Yeah, about as funny as breast cancer
.

Rob shrugged. “Not the first, huh? Soz boz’”

A voice suddenly came out of nowhere, “What the fuck is this? What the...?” Josh span round,to find a drunk in a yellow jacket shambling along the pavement below them; he didn’t seem to be talking to them. In fact he didn’t even seem to be talking. There was something slightly odd about it. Josh shrugged.

“Weirdo,” he commented.

“Josh!” Sarah was scowling.

“No, that git behind us, not er... Rob.
You are Rob right
?”

“Yep.”

“Yeah well, that guy anyway,” he said and pointed behind.

Rob looked slightly confused “Er... yeah alright.”

“Don’t mind Josh, he is always weird.” Sarah said patronisingly.
Jesus, she sounded like his sister.

“Yes, I truly am.” Josh said with a purposely fake and overtly cheerful face. “Now let’s smoke this joint, get the fuck out of here and get to the Factory. It’s fucking freezing.”

“Yeah, damn straight, man.” Rob murmured and started heading to the darkened alcove.

Rob didn’t seem like the complete wanker Josh had first thought. Still, he was aware he’d been toking a copious amount of skunk so maybe that didn’t mean much. Further evidence was that he had suddenly realised when he looked over at the wall-mounted statue of an Angel defeating the Devil, that the Devil’s limp dick was the funniest thing ever. So maybe he wasn’t in the right mind to judge. Still the guy had heard of
Godflesh
, said he had some
Skinny Puppy
and
Ministry
on tape, so as far as Josh was concerned, he couldn’t be all bad. Just mostly.

They moved through the old building, went out the other side, passed by the Medieval pubs and out onto the Clubber-drenched main street. Rob and Sarah were giggling about stupid shit like dustbins and Josh walked calmly behind smiling mildly to himself, allowing the complete calm to take him over.

They moved into the old arcade, a wide open arena of wet paving slabs, and headed towards the thumping bass of the Factory. The flickering red neon sign had lost another letter, and as usual the written sign, all gold and gothic script, was speckled with pigeon shit. The huge owner, who Josh had always considered to be an escaped character from
Lock Stock and Two Smoking Barrels
was grinning up at them.

“Hello Ladies!”

“What’s up, Collin.” Josh grinned back. Secretly he hated the guy, but it was useful to remain friendly.

“The sky!” Sarah giggled from behind and her and Rob fell about laughing. Josh rolled his eyes and began to pace down the stairs into the Factory. Something incredibly heavy, with an insanely fast industrial beat was booming up from below. Josh passed over the money, continued, turned and moved down the next set of steps. He looked through the barred, glassless window that looked out into the raised seating area of the club. He looked about the faces, nodded to a few and grinned at Rufus who was ‘at work’ in the corner. He made a mental note to take the piss out of him for having found the underage partner he was busying himself with, and pushed open the door onto the dance floor. Strobes flared and the noise hit him like a physical wall. He grimaced and made his way towards the bar with his hands deep in his pockets.

Roach, with his flame haired spikes and clothes so fucking baggy they seemed to defy the laws of gravity, came leaping out of a group of skaters who all looked far too young to be in the place.

“Yo, what’s up Josh?”

He resisted the urge to say the obvious. “How’s it going?”

“Pretty good.”

“That’s better than ugly bad then.”

The kid laughed. Josh had always liked Roach since he was one of the few people he felt fully grasped his warped sense of humour, added to the fact that Roach himself was also pretty weird. They just gelled well. Most of the younger kids down the Factory on the other hand just pissed him off.

“You down with Sarah?”

“Yeah
she’s
...” he looked behind. “Not here!” He said to himself mainly and shrugged.

“Must be lost back on the stairs with lover boy.” He continued. “Yeah, I did that once, couldn’t find my way back for six weeks. Dude, I’ll tell ya’—I had to eat my own legs and recycle my urine just to stay alive.” Josh looked down at his legs.

“They grew back.”

“Listen kid. you’ve got to understand I want a vodka, I need a vodka and while I’m standing here making small talk I’m not in the queue to get my vodka.”

“Ah, sweet vodka, it eases the pain!” The kid said in a mock
Simpsons
voice and grinned with his spike pierced lip.

“Yeah, whatever, see you later Roach.”

Thinking about it, Josh realised that the kid was also one of the few people who didn’t think he was a complete prick. Which in truth, he supposed he was.

At about one, Josh was sitting in the corner, sweating, drunk and completely bored with watching Sarah get off with Rob. Roach was asleep on a pile of jackets, Sarah’s brother—a tiny and largely silent kid with black hair—was sitting silently next to him slowly drinking from a pint and Rufus was crouched on the bench staring out past the black brick pillar to the dance floor, looking out with a vague sense of disgust at a sea of thrashing bodies and hair.
Another great night
. Strange, that when you get to a certain age, going out starts to seem like a chore and not recreational.

“Jesus, what am I doing here?” Josh was thinking as he glanced round the dark interior.
What am I doing here
?? The club seemed quite alien to him now. When he’d first started coming he had been blagged in by some of his older friends back when he was sixteen—sixteen and due to his painfully young appearance, very obviously sixteen— it had seemed closer to some kind of haven. Now the place seemed quite different and it was the same every week, or at least slightly worse. The music was getting
poppier
, all new-wave punk and fucking rap music which for some reason seemed to be classed as rock these days. Plus the crowd got younger and more stupid, all dressing in expensive and trendy
anti-fashion
clothing, which didn’t quite make sense. All wearing leather, chains and spiked collars despite the fact the heaviest music they listened to was probably the freaking’
Manics
. It was a goddamn pantomime,
Halloween
, fancy dress now. Still he supposed in some ways it always had been. It was all bullshit and the fact he knew that, made him feel more out of place than ever.

Rufus suddenly interrupted his thoughts.

“Fucking little kids man! Shit it’s like a freaking’ nursery in here, man. The only good thing is they’re easy to screw.” He was slurring pretty badly.

Josh smiled slightly. He’d heard this rant so often.

“I know man, it bugs me too. Still there’s a lot of things that bug me. Can’t change them, so fuck em’.”

“If you get sullen on me tonight I’ll jam my thumb up your ass!”

“Oh do!” Josh grinned. “Besides you haven’t been a bundle of joy either!”

“Yeah, well it’s all these little clueless runts and the shit they keep asking for. I swear if I had a bullet for each weak little pop punk track they’ve played tonight...” He let the sentence hang and shook his head sadly.

Josh looked over still grinning. “Yeah?”

“Well I’d have a shit load of bullets wouldn’t I?”

They both laughed, the numbing effect of alcohol somehow making the quip funny.

Josh drained the last of his pint—the real shitty bit at the bottom. For a second his stomach threatened to explode then quietened. Then he shivered violently.

“What’s up?”

“Someone walked over my grave.”

“Weren’t me. I would’ve pissed on it.”

Josh didn’t answer. His eyes moved over the crowd and something seemed wrong. Then they locked on someone. They stood out instantly.

Wearing a plain white T-shirt and neat well pressed white trousers, a handsome face and dark, almost black, hair brushed back into a sort of ridge at the front. Dark eyes stabbed out from behind black-rimmed glasses. There was something deeply unpleasant about the figure, something that made him feel terrified and exposed. More to the point, he could feel those midnight black eyes drilling into him.
Left over paranoia from the weed
? No, the guy lifted up what could have been a double vodka with ice and, still looking at Josh, raised it in a toasting gesture before downing it in one. He placed the glass down and began moving through the oblivious crowd. For a few terrible seconds Josh thought he was heading towards him, but then realised he was moving towards the stairs, the exit. Again fingers raked up his spine and an image flashed into his skull, quickly,
something red,
and then was gone.

“Shit!” He hissed quietly to himself. Josh frowned, his face grimaced into confusion. He glanced at Rufus who seemed oblivious.

Josh’s heart was blasting and he felt cold terror deep inside. Something had just happened to him, an experience so vivid he was convinced it was real, not just seeing the man but...

“Rufus, man, did you just see some guy in white walk out of this place?”

He shrugged then after a few seconds. “Why?”

“Oh nothing.”

“Then why did you ask?” Rufus said, pushing for a answer, mildly annoyed.

“Er... thought I knew him?” Josh attempted.

Rufus lost interest, instead staring at a girl with enormous breasts. “No.” He said distantly.

Josh sat back silently, the guy hadn’t really seemed real. The way he’d looked had seemed like an impression more than... than...
than what
? He wasn’t sure. Everyone else had seemed somehow oblivious to him. It dawned on him suddenly how he’d almost
felt
he was there, like he would have known even if he hadn’t seen him. What was worse though, was how the guy had looked at him. He’d felt almost as if he was being assaulted.

Suddenly Josh knew he was going to be sick and made his way to the toilets as fast as he could, his head spinning with some unexplained dread. Images of the white guy, the living painting, blood,
something black that had once touched him
, voices. A close up picture of an emerald green eye with it’s eyelid being snipped away with garden shears. His stomach clenched like a fist, sweat was pouring down his brow, not just from the room temperature. He collapsed through one of the cubical doors, slipped on the piss-wet floor and vomited violently down the graffitied walls, most, but not all, of the deep brown liquid cascading into the mouth of the toilet. Then static ate away his vision, numbness filled his head and he felt himself being pulled down. A grey, unclear and constantly darkening image of the sick-coated toilet seat rushed up, a hard impact, no pain, and then everything went entirely black.

Black and warm.

OTHERS

THE FORK SCRAPED around the edges of the open tin, disturbing the bright yellow wedges of fruit that were drifting in the syrup. “Damn,” the owner of the fork muttered and tried again unsuccessfully to scoop one of the pieces up.

Behind him, crouched up small into the room’s corner, in front of a mustard yellow damp stain and peeling white wall paper, sat a second figure. He looked almost insect-like, long thin limbs, a needle sharp face with a bald scalp and dark piercing eyes. His ears were slightly too pointy on top and a single stud was placed in the side of his nose. His scrawny body was covered by a red-net basketball shirt and a pair of baggy white combat trousers. He was slowly playing with an eight-inch blade with only a vague sense of interest, casually spinning it. He looked up suddenly.

“I’m going to get a tattoo. They are... visually appealing.”

His lips were a thin smile and his voice poured out like honey. Unnaturally sweet and not belonging to the spindly form it was attached to.

The other, who sat on the bed, span round. His face looked incredibly young and was without any trace of weathering. His voice however, despite being smooth, held an element of age as if from a much older soul. His eyes were impossibly blue, seemed to glow and his dark eyebrows raised.

“Really? Good, good, good! I think we should all make the most of it while we’re here. Me? Well I’m just happy to enjoy life’s simple pleasures, such as these peaches.”

He tried to pierce one of the slices and dropped the fork. “Admittedly I’m still trying to get the hang of it but I’m enjoying the challenge. It’s good to challenge ourselves, don’t you think Nickoloi?”

“Yes.” The other said in a honey whisper.