From Darkness Comes: The Horror Box Set (108 page)

I was sitting up at the top o
f the yard, just outside of the back door, whittling away at a piece of wood with a knife I had found in an old toolbox that summer. Some of the ground was still covered with snow, but much of it had melted over the last couple of days, and although it was cold, I still preferred to be outside than stuck in the house. I was amazed how quickly the snow had come and gone.

All over the yard was a mass of junk. There were old skeletons of machinery tools, and boxes of old metal parts of some kind. I had guessed
that he liked to tinker with machinery, because he made a lot of drilling noises in that workshop. At the time I just assumed that all the stuff in the yard was just old bits that he never got round to using on his machines, or whatever he made.

Mr Holcr
oft didn’t seem to mind us poking around in any of the stuff in the yard, so long as we never once tried to get into the workshop. One of the things I had found was my knife, stuck in the ground underneath a rusted old bucket around the back of what I think had once been a coal shed. I was surprised that neither of the other boys had found it, and kept it to myself, hidden in my boot, or at the bottom of the dresser next to my bed.

That knife had a wicked-looking blade with a bone handle. At least I think
it was bone. It certainly looked it. The blade was curved in a way that I had not seen before, almost like it was made the wrong way round. It had a thick, cracked leather holder that even had a hook to attach onto a belt, if you had one, and along one side of the wickedly sharp blade were small curved serrations cut out of the metal. I was as careful as anything with it, because of the way it cut through wood as though it was just a piece of fruit. I had it in my mind that it would cut through my skin just as easily.

I was trying to carve a toy knight, just like one of those medieval ones I had seen in one of Richard
’s comics.

Richard was the youngest son of the two, and was definitely the favourite. He was a clever kid and had taught himself to read pret
ty quickly, while his older brother was lazy, and could barely make out his letters. I don’t think Mr or Mrs Holcroft were the slightest bit interested in the fact that I could read and write better than either of them.

Anyway, I had just finished carving
what I thought looked a pretty good likeness of the helmet that the knight on the front cover of the comic wore, when the argument started down in the workshop.

Two men had arrived about an hour before, and they met Mr Holcroft at the bottom of the yard. O
n the way into the yard they were all smiles and handshakes, though they looked a little nervous.

One of them was a huge man with a barrel of a chest and a beard that could have been tucked into his trousers. His head was bald although I don
’t think he was really that old. I just remember the winter sun almost glaring off that polished head.

The other man could best be described as a weasel. He was a small, wiry man, much
older I thought, and his hair was long and greasy, slicked to his skull like wet grass. His clothes were baggy, and his trousers were far too big for him, making him look almost comical when he walked.

They weren
’t outside for long, and although there were words spoken, from where I was sitting I couldn’t hear them too well.

About an hour passed while they were in the workshop, talking. I could make out the drone of their voices, but not what they were saying. There was also that click, click of machinery
noises that seemed to go with Mr Holcroft showing anybody something.

Then there was a lot of shouting. Voices started getting raised. Now I could hear the conversation quite clearly, and the two visitors weren
’t just arguing about the price.

"Don
’t you try and pull one over on me Holcroft." It was the voice of one of the visitors, though until they stepped outside I wasn’t able to make out which of the pair was doing all the shouting.

"I
’m not trying to, Remy, if you’d just let me explain this, then we can clear it all up."

"Clear it all up? Like the hell we can clear it all up, that
’s a pile of crap and broken."

"It just jammed, they do that occasionally."

"What? They do that occasionally? I haven’t seen one jam before. You’re pulling one on me. Look my blood is all over the place now, cut my hand on the damn thing."

"You just need to get used to them."

"Just need to get used to them? I’ll show you about getting used to the damn thing."

My heart was beating at double the pace by now. There had never been tr
ouble in Mr Holcroft’s yard before, not like this. I heard a great deal of banging, and smashing of things inside the workshop, and then the doors burst open and Mr Holcroft, his clothes ripped and blood coming out of his mouth and a cut on his forehead, came running up the yard.

"Get inside boy, quickly," he shouted, to which I panicked, stuffed my knife into my boot, and then tried to scrabble into the back door, but we met in the doorway, and I was bowled over into the hallway of the house, landing flat
on my back.

I turned to try and get out of his way, because it didn
’t seem like he cared what it was that was stopping him from escaping, only that he got away, and I was just another obstacle.

I didn
’t have to worry about being shoved another time, because just as he got his first foot in the door there was one almighty bang and Mr Holcroft’s face exploded all over the room. I felt a warm splattering of fresh blood, and god knows what else, speckle all over my face. It covered a lot of my clothes too. I wiped my eyes and lay there on the floor barely yards from him, watching how his body seemed to still be trying to carry on, even though his head was now almost completely blown away. It hovered there for a few seconds, his legs stumbling, and I would swear both arms reached out to break their fall when the body finally pitched forward and hit the hallway floor, sending a cloud of dust up into the air along with more of his bits, all across the wooden floor boards of the hall.

Behind him, as the dust cleared,
stood the big fellow, with the first smoking gun I ever saw in my life held in his hands.

"Hey Remy. This thing works pretty good actually," he said, blowing the smoke from the two barrels and holding it up to examine it.

"Well I’ll be damned. I guess Holcroft wasn’t lying so much after all, too bad."

Remy, who turned out to be the gangly, little weasel fellow, peered into the hallway and grimaced at the mess that was the remains of Mr Holcroft.

"Damn, that’s nasty," he said, and put his hand to his mouth, coughing.

Then he noticed me, sitting in amongst the carnage, covered in dust. I was probably looking like a frightened rabbit, but he just smiled at me, showing just two teeth on his bottom jaw and nothing else but gums.

"Are you still alive boy?" He was laughing now. "Guess you were lucky you’re down there."

He was looking up at the wall behind me. I looked back, my ears still ringing, and saw that there was barely anything of the wall remaining. The shotgun blast had torn clean
through the wooden panelling, even after it had gone through Mr Holcroft’s head. I realised then that if I hadn’t stumbled and fallen on the ground, I would have been torn apart like his head was. I would probably have been part of the mess.

"Christ Eddie,
look at the damn mess you made now."

Eddie shrugged.

"What we going to do with the kid?" said the big guy. He was looking at me with his head cocked to one side.

"Go and fetch the wagon, and fast, someone might have heard."

He glared at me for a moment.

"We can
’t leave him here. He’ll just snitch on us."

"Right, I
’ll be right back."

Eddie ran off down the garden in the direction of the back gate.

It didn’t take them long to steal pretty much everything in Mr Holcroft’s workshop, maybe ten minutes or so. Remy tied me up, just like a turkey ready for Christmas dinner, and bundled me into the back of the wagon, which Eddie had parked out in the lane, and I was soon sitting amongst piles and piles of shotguns and rifles, all taken from Mr Holcroft’s workshop. I guess he did make machines after all, just not the kind that I thought he made.

It was the first time I ever remember being in a wagon, certainly in the back of one anyway. It started bumping along the dirt track, draw by two weary-looking horses that lo
oked like they were about fit to die. I wasn’t sure I liked being in a wagon very much. I could hear the two thugs in the front discussing it all. The guns weren’t the only thing they were discussing.

"So what do you reckon we should do with him? The Wareh
ouse?"

"Hmm, we could do, or we could take him down to the east side, and sell him there."

I could make out the difference in their voices easily now, and Remy didn’t just look like a weasel, he sounded like I imagined a weasel would sound too.

"Serious? T
o the Scrubber's place maybe?"

"Why not? They
’re always after new kids. They pay a good price for a healthy one like that too, at least that’s what I heard."

"I never liked those idiots though."

"What are you talking like that for? You just blew the brains out of a guy because one gun jammed."

"He was pulling one on us, and you know it."

"Of course he was."

"You listening in there boy?" called Remy through the grate behind the driver
’s seat. "You’re to be cleaning chimneys in London pretty soon."

But somew
here along the way they changed their mind, and we all ended up getting out of that wagon, just around the corner from the place that they had called The Warehouse. Except it wasn’t a warehouse at all, but what used to be a butchers market in London’s East End. Now it had run into disrepair and been abandoned, apart from its one use, some nights of the week. On those evenings the old market was lit up again, and busy, but everyone kept it quiet and low key, because although people knew very well that it still went on behind closed doors, no one wanted anyone to know that there was a slave market right under their noses.

I was still trussed up like a prisoner, and dragged along the alleyway at the back, past the throng of street whores, homeless, and one smal
l group of well dressed gentlemen who had no place being there at any time of the day.

Eddie had a hold of me by the back of my jacket, and his hand was a lot stronger than any resistance I might have put up. The gangly old fellow, Remy, rapped sharply on
a small rickety old door that looked like it was hanging down off its hinges, and we waited for a few moments. There was a slight creak as the door opened just a few inches, and I saw a young man’s face peering out from the darkness. A muffled conversation later, and then I was being dragged into the darkness of the building.

The darkness didn
’t last long. I think we went maybe ten yards down a corridor, past a few figures that I could barely make out, and then we emerged into what would have once been the main workhouse of the building. The dim light of the lanterns that adorned the walls of this old derelict hall were hard on my eyes.

I heard voices, many of them, and at that time I had no clue what an auction was, but later in my life I learned as much, a
nd that’s where I was barely a few hours after watching my foster father die at the brutal end of a shotgun that he had crafted with his own hands. I was at an auction that was different to most that took place in the city, this one dealt in lives, human lives, and, worst of all, it was mainly children of my age who were being sold off to the highest bidder.

As my eyes adjusted to the light I saw there were many folks standing around in that vast hall. They were all over the place, talking in quiet voices w
ith each other between the columned eaves, or sitting on the floor swapping bank notes, or arguing.

The centre of the hall was well lit, unlike the dark corners and arches that lined the place, where folks held their secret conversations. No, instead, the
middle was lit by bright lanterns, lots of them, all the better to cast a light upon the platform in the very centre, where the auctioneer stood, calling out his bids, and taking stakes from customers who preferred to sit back in the dark, unrecognised.

As
I stood between my two captors, a young boy maybe a few years older than me was being held still, in the middle of the platform, by a man whose size I've rarely seen the like of since then. He was a monster of a man, and disfigured in some way that I couldn’t recognise, and he didn’t seem to stand right, like his bones were having trouble holding up the mass of muscle and fat that constituted his upper body.

The bids were placed, and a few minutes later the boy was taken off into the darkness, I presume to
join his new master.

I thought then that my captors were pretty scary men, but they were nothing like some of the other folks that were loitering around in that place. There was one man who I am pretty sure was thinner than was possible, I could see his face and one of his ar
ms in the lantern light, as he sat on an empty crate smoking a pipe, and watching the proceedings.