Dead Angels (22 page)

The truck rattled and bobbed over the rain-swollen ditches and puddles, and after twenty minutes or more, he was surprised that he hadn’t caught up with Jon. He pushed the truck onwards. Then ahead, Shane saw a sign that read,
Welcome to Paisley End
. Stopping the truck, Shane rubbed the windscreen with the back of his hand again and peered out. Beneath the welcome sign, someone had written,
Children Beware
. 

Not knowing what to make of the sign, Shane paused. Did he really want to go on? But his jacket was there. So easing his truck into gear, he headed into town. Just like the other roads, they were little more than lanes, with overgrown hedges on either side. The road was uneven, and Shane bounced around in his seat as he drove on. But there was still no sign of Jon Cooke.

Up ahead, Shane could see lights twinkling in the distance in the falling rain. He suddenly felt glad that he was finally reaching some kind of civilisation. Houses, shops, and people, he hoped. Shane swung the truck onto the first tarmacked road that he had seen in hours. He raced towards the lights in the distance. As he drew nearer to them, he could see that it was a petrol station and roadside café that he was heading towards.

Shane slowed the truck and veered into the car park and got out. With his head low and shoulders hunched forward, he ran towards the café, as the rain lashed down all around him. The café was shabby-looking, the roof bowed inwards, and the brickwork was cracked and moss-ridden. The windows looked dirty, and the curtains had a yellow tinge to them. Shane pushed the door open and stepped out of the rain. The café was dimly-lit, and people sat huddled around small tables. Seeing him enter, they all looked up at once and fixed him with an unfriendly stare. It was as Shane looked around the room at them, he noticed that their faces were deathly white, which spoke of unhappiness and sorrow. They eyes were red-rimmed, bloodshot, and each of them looked as if they recently spent many hours crying.

Breaking their unfriendly stares, Shane shook the rain from his grey hair and made his way to the counter, which doubled as a bar. Behind it slouched a withered old man. His face was a mass of wrinkles. His eyes, just like the others, were almost puffed closed. As he watched Shane approach, the old man pulled a cloth from his pocket and began to wipe down the counter. He worked, but his heart wasn’t in it. Shane stopped in front of the coffee-stained bar.

“Can I help you?” the old man asked, and Shane couldn’t help but notice that his voice was riddled with suspicion.

“I hope so,” Shane said right back.

“Tea? Coffee? Or something stronger?” the old man asked.

“No, nothing, thanks. I’m fine,” Shane told him. “I would just like some information.” But with the feeling that all those eyes were boring into him, he just wanted to run from the café and get right back in his truck and out of town.

“What sort?” the old man snapped.

“Has a young man passed this way in the last hour or so?” Shane asked.

The old man made no reply and went back to cleaning the counter. Shane tried again. “He was in his early twenties, was wearing a khaki coat and carrying a duffle bag over his shoulder.”

The old man turned his back on Shane and started to busy himself by cleaning some cups.

“His name was Jon Cooke,” Shane started up again. “Do you know...”

Before he’d had a chance to finish his sentence, a woman sitting behind him made a screeching sound, as if she had a chicken bone stuck in the back of her throat. She then burst into a fit of hysterics and ran sobbing from the café. Others jumped up from their tables, sending cups, plates, knives, and forks clattering to the floor. They ran from the café, weeping and moaning.

The old man wheeled around at Shane, and with their faces just inches apart, he hissed, “If you’re not going to stop for refreshments,
get out!”

Shane’s face drained of all colour, and his heart began to thump in his chest, but still he persisted. “Have you seen him? That’s all I want to know and then I will be gone.”

The villagers continued to brush past Shane as they headed towards the door and fled into the storm, and he couldn’t understand why. The old man fixed his milky-looking eyes on Shane’s.

“Okay, mister,” he sneered. “I’ll tell you all about Jon Cooke. He came into town about three months ago, and just as you say, he carried a duffle bag over his shoulder. But he had something else. A flute. It was the strangest thing I had ever seen. Not like your everyday flute. This was black and looked as if it was made of some kinda ancient ivory. He took to standing on the street corners, playing his flute. Didn’t matter what the weather – he was always there, that flute between his lips. The music that came from it was like nothing I’d heard before – it sounded like a thousand children crying. The children would gather around him – as if they were in a trance. Us adults didn’t like it one little bit, so we told him to clear out of town. He did, but he returned, several nights later,” the old man explained, and as he did, his voice no longer sounded angry, but full of despair. 

“Jon Cooke,” he continued, with tears beginning to well in his eyes, “hidden by the night and the shadows of the trees, played his flute while the adults slept. But the music stirred the children from their sleep. Like zombies, they crept from their beds and followed Cooke across the fields and up into the hills. They haven’t been seen again, not one of them.”

The old man stopped, pulled a snot-ridden hanky from his pocket, and wiped his lips, then brow. “The following day, the men from the village, me included, set off in pursuit of Cooke. We found him, but none of the children he had led away into the night. We punished him for what he had done – we punished him real bad – so he could never steal another child again. We hurt him so bad that you couldn’t have seen him today – that would be impossible,” he whispered, then broke into a sinister cackle of laughter. Then, sounding as if had phlegm wrapped around his tonsils, he leaned over the counter and hissed, “Now get out.”

Feeling so confused by what he had just heard, Shane wanted to question the old man further. But before he’d had the chance to saying at all, the owner had gone to the door, opened it and turned the sign over to CLOSED. Knowing that his presence was no longer wanted, if it ever had been, Shane left the café and headed back to his truck. 

Once inside and away from the café and its odd owner and customers, gooseflesh crawled up Shane’s back and made the hairs at the nape of his neck prickle. No longer interested in ever seeing his coat again, he started up his truck and raced back up the road and out of town. As Paisley End disappeared behind him, Shane slowed the truck down. Then, as he neared the edge of town and the welcome sign, he slammed on the brakes. Shane lurched forward in his seat and stared out into the dark and rain; there was something caught in the glare of his headlights. With his mouth open and his heart struggling to find a beat, Shane slowly opened the truck door and stepped out. He climbed over a low stone wall and into a field and looked up at the tree which sat alone, away from the others. It was leafless and its black branches reached up into the sky like deformed limbs. Its trunk was thick and gnarled-looking, and tied to it with rope, was Jon Cooke.

Unable to draw breath, Shane stumbled over the uneven ground as he made his way towards the tree. Standing before it, he could see that the body of Jon Cooke had already started to decompose, as if he had been left there to rot for several weeks already. Crows squawked and beat their ragged wings as they fluttered away from the branches overhead. Shane looked at the body of Jon Cooke and gagged at the sight of the maggots which crawled from his empty eye sockets. One eye hung from its socket on a sinewy cord, looking like a yo-yo made of red flesh.  His tongue hung like a giant black worm from a jagged tear in his cheek. His mouth was open in an insane looking grin, and his teeth glistened in the light from the truck’s headlights.

But it wasn’t the sight of Jon Cooke’s decomposed body which made Shane’s blood feel like ice in his veins. It was the fact that Jon Cooke was wearing his coat. Daring to step closer to the body, Shane noticed something black and pointed sticking out from his coat pocket. Reaching out, Shane plucked the odd-looking flute from his coat. It felt weightless in his hands. Then, as if unable to resist the urge, he placed the flute to his lips and blew gently into it.

As Shane made his way back to his truck in that awful storm, playing the flute as he went, he knew that the old man from the café had been right, the music which came from it did sound like a thousand children crying.

A Story

Jim Chambers sat with his arse wedged into the narrow chair, striking the keys on the typewriter that squatted before him. The metal keys snapped back and forth, leaving their design behind on the crisp, white paper. His words and thoughts appeared in neat rows. The letter ‘A’ key was missing, snapped off years before so he would have to spend time hand writing in all the missing letter ‘A’s to his story once he had finished.

Beads of sweat lined Jim’s young face as his tongue flicked from the corner of his mouth while he concentrated on his writing. He had to complete his story, not only for himself, but for her. His creative writing teacher’s greed for his stories was unending. She would take each one in her gnarled hands and smile thankfully, like a drunk who is handed another drink. Jim was secretly pleased that someone relished his tales of horror and fantasy, where people lived shrouded in darkness, surviving the blood-foaming jaws of the creatures that he created. Sometimes they didn’t always survive. He liked the power that gave him.

But Jim thought it strange that someone like his teacher should love his stories so much. He guessed that Ms. Mitchell was in her late sixties and was a dead ringer for Miss Marple. How could someone who shuffled around with a shawl thrown over her shoulders, and who had glasses hanging from the tip of her nose give a second thought to such revolting tales? But did it really matter? He was glad he had one fan, even if wasn’t his girlfriend, Wendy. Wendy didn’t care for his stories at all. So with his creative writing teacher at the forefront of his mind, he continued to tap out his story...

...the cr
a
ckling noise which could be he
a
rd bene
a
th the wom
a
n’s blouse w
a
s sickening to he
a
r. The folds of her blouse moved restlessly. She brought her worn h
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nds to her blouse
a
nd ripped it in two, the buttons popping free
a
nd clinking onto the floor. Her s
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ggy bre
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sts writhed
a
nd twitched, becoming tr
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nsp
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rent, reve
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ling the membr
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nes th
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t l
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y just bene
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th her
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ged skin. Blue veins circled her chest, the skin thinning out
a
cross her shoulders, up her neck
a
nd f
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ce.

D
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rk lines l
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y etched
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bout the corners of her mouth. Her skin beg
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de
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nd her yellow-st
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ined teeth
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nd lolling tongue bec
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me visible through her cheek. Her forehe
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window, its view
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puls
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ting br
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in. She unf
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stened her skirt
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nd it whispered to the floor. She pulled
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t her bl
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ck tights with puls
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ting h
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nds until she w
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s free of them. Her stom
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ch
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nd bowels could be seen through her invisible skin. The smell of rotting
a
nd undigested food w
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s rich
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nd pungent on the dry
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The wom
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n fell to the floor, l
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nding on her h
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nds
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nd knees. The
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ir beg
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n to fill with
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s her shoulder bl
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des, spine,
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nd h
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nce of
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squ
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nd blister
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s stiff, bl
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ck h
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s
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twitching snout
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ppe
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red. Twisted, bl
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de-like teeth protruded through her swelling gums, sending blood forth in
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bl
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ck gush which swung from her whiskered chin.

Her gn
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nd bec
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ws
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s her knuckles sh
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ttered. The wom
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n’s body w
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s to undergo one fin
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l ch
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nge before her met
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morphosis w
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s complete. The bottom of her r
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ised spine exploded outw
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rds. Through the g
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ping hole in her b
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ck
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ppe
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red
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slender pink t
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il which glistened
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nd licked b
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ck
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nd forth in the
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t l
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y
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round it.