Sker House (33 page)

But they couldn't leave yet. Their work wasn't finished.

For one horrifying moment, Dale's shoe caught fire, the flames lapping against his the bottom of his jeans, and he hurriedly beat them out. Later, he would realize how lucky they had been that there was nothing more flammable in the vicinity than a battered old pair of trainers. The fire safely extinguished, Dale leaned against the wall to catch his breath, taking the opportunity to light a candle for the next leg of the journey. He fumbled in his pockets, struck the wheel on the lighter, and lit the wick. The candle blazed into life, then immediately died. He lit it again, but with the same result. Strange, he couldn't detect a draft. He turned to face the other direction, shielded the candle with his hand and tried once more. Again, the flame failed to take hold.

Must be a damp candle, he thought as he threw it to the ground in frustration and fished another out of his back pocket. He checked his supply. One more after this. He hoped it would be enough. But that candle wouldn't stay lit, either. Dale then realized that everyone else was having the same problem. All around him there were little bursts of light like tiny explosions accompanied by sounds of frustration and anguish.

“Where's the draft coming from?” asked Lucy.

“I don't think there is one,” replied Rolly. “This must be where the resistance begins. If, as we suspect, that room in there has been acting like an open door to the spirit world, then all manner of things may have come through. And they don't want to go back.”

“Can't we wait until morning?” Lucy asked. “We can come back and do it then, when we can all see what the hell we are doing.”

“It has to be now. Tonight,” replied Rolly. “Don't you get the feeling that we are standing on the brink of something? It's a race against time. I know you sense it, my dear. You have the insight. I knew that the moment I saw you. Can you feel all the energy buzzing about the place right now? The activity is building. Something is coming. Something big. Unless we can stop it.”

The darkness was all around them now. It didn't have a uniform quality, instead it seemed more concentrated in some places than others like splotches of ink, or bloodsplatter at a crime scene. Giving up on the luxury of a candle, Dale resorted to repeatedly striking his cigarette lighter. Even then, it was useless. No sooner as his thumb struck the wheel and the flame burst into life, it withered and died. Unperturbed, he sank to his knees and peered into the yawning cavity carved out of the earth. The cold clamminess of the tunnel didn't phase him as much as the first time. The fear of the unknown was gone. He knew what lay ahead, and he knew what had to be done. He would just have to do it in the dark.

He stuffed a brush into his back pocket and grabbed the biggest tin of paint he could get his hands on. Then, he pushed his head through the opening and commanded his body to propel itself through the narrow stretch of tunnel toward the hidden room. As the blackness engulfed him he felt his stomach churn, as if he were crawling through a sewer overflowing with filth and excrement. He coughed, and a mouthful of hot bile rose up his throat into his mouth. Grimacing, he swallowed it back down. Immediately behind him, he heard voices, raised in panic rather than anger.

“Get away from me!” shouted Machen, his tone shrill. “Who's doing that?”

“There's nobody near you. Get a grip, man,” scolded Rolly. “Concentrate on getting some light.”

“But someone touched me!”

Now there were sounds of shuffling. Dale had company in the tunnel. He hoped it was Lucy, but didn't stop to make sure. Soon, he arrived at the entrance to the hidden room, what Old Rolly had called the epicentre, and stopped. Taking out his lighter, he struck the wheel again. Sparks flew from the flint and died on the floor, but still the flame wouldn't catch. The micro-seconds of illumination from the falling sparks made him wince, but it was enough to enable him to get his bearings.

More shuffling behind, closer now. And with it the sounds of breathing. He manoeuvred himself around and squeezed his shoulders through the opening, using his splayed fingers to claw his way through. Suddenly, a hand closed around his trailing leg, holding him in place. Dale jumped, and instinctively tried to kick the hand away. The hand seemed to caress his flesh through his layers of clothing. It was pulsing, applying pressure then relaxing. The sensation would not have been unpleasant in the right circumstances, but unfortunately these were anything but.

“Lucy? Is that you?” Dale said into the darkness behind him, making another doomed attempt to ignite the cigarette lighter. “Let go of me.”

Using all the strength he could muster, he shook his leg free and felt the grip fall away. Snatching his leg back he pulled it through the opening into the little secret room where he sat on the floor, panting. “Lucy?”

There were scuffles, sounds of movement, but much further away than before. From a distance somebody said, “Dale? Is everything okay in there? Hold on, we're on our way through.”

It was Lucy. Her voice was distinctive. Evidently the rest of the group was only just preparing to join him in the room.

So who had grabbed his foot?

Who or what had been in the tunnel with him?

He didn't want to think about that just now, but knew it was the kind of thing that would haunt his nightmares later. In the pitch black void the hidden room had become, Dale prised the lid of the tin of paint he had carried with him and dropped it to the floor. It landed with a metallic clang, and the confined space began to fill with the noxious aroma of chemical-laden paint. He felt in his back pocket for the brush.

It was gone.

Shit! It must have worked itself loose and fallen from his pocket somewhere in the tunnel. There was no way he was going back to look for it. He would have to improvise.

Think, think, think.

He could just throw the paint over the wall. But then most of it would go to waste, and he'd have to go and get more paint. Not likely. Laying the tin back on the floor, Dale tugged on the sleeve of his hoody as hard as he could. After a couple of good pulls the stitching broke and the sleeve came away. It wasn't a great look, but he doubted anyone would care. He quickly rolled the material into a ball and dunked it into the paint, using it to smear the thick, sticky substance over the walls.

The noises were at the door now; scrambling, grunting, puffing and panting. “Who's there?”

“It's me. Who did you think it was?”

Dale had never been so glad to hear Lucy's south coast burr in all his life. His task momentarily forgotten he held out his arms until they brushed against Lucy's in the dark, then they embraced like long lost lovers. He didn't want to let her go, he wanted to stay there locked together forever, swooning under the effects of her warmth. He felt a rush of heat in his loins, and could have sworn Lucy felt something similar, but then he pushed her away. “Come on,” he said. “Get painting.”

Chapter 37:

The Battle

Once inside the tiny confined space, Lucy didn't even bother trying to light a candle. She had grown tired of all the wasted effort. Instead, she quickly yanked the lid off the tin she was carrying, thrust her brush inside, and eagerly began defacing the nearest surface. She felt invigorated, yet it was a
dirty
kind of enthusiasm. Almost as if she were getting kicks from doing something she knew was wrong. She experienced a similar feeling at the age of fifteen when she had spray-painted her name on the back of West Gate Shopping Centre. On that occasion, however, the euphoria was cut short when the police showed up and arrested her at school. How embarrassing. She'd made the elementary mistake of spraying her own name instead of using a tag, and may as well have supplied her home address and phone number along with a note saying
available for arrest at the following location.

In a perverse way, on that occasion her own boundless stupidity had actually saved her. The police knew no experienced vandal would be so dim-witted.

There were more sounds of struggle at the entrance to the room as Old Rolly and Machen scrambled their way into the tiny dark chamber one after the other, each identifiable by the various expletives that accompanied them. “What's this?” Machen asked as he finally squeezed through the gap. “Are you kids in here? Dave? Erm, Betty?”

“It's Dale and Lucy, and yes we're here.”

“How did you find this place?”

“It's a long story,” Lucy said. “No time to explain. Later. Right now, grab a brush and start painting!”

“Painting what, like?”

“Anything!”

Muttering to himself, Machen made several unsuccessful attempts to spark his cigarette lighter before also giving up. Lucy continued with her task. In the darkness, there was a lot of guesswork involved. She employed her sense of touch as she worked her way around the immediate vicinity, and could hear the others using whatever means they could to open the tins and transfer the contents onto the walls. At one point, there was a solid thunk and Machen swore loudly. Lucy guessed he must have found the altar with some part of his anatomy.

Suddenly there was a loud
whoosh
like a massive displacement of air and a strong breeze rippled around the enclosed space, riddling Lucy's arms and neck with goose bumps. Rolly grunted loudly as if he'd been punched in the stomach. There was a clatter against the far wall, and Rolly shouted, “My brush just got ripped out of my hand! Somebody hit me and stole my bloody brush! Who did that? WHO DID THAT?”

“You don't need a brush,” came Dale's voice from the other side of the tiny room. “Use your hands, use anything!”

Something was trying to stop them. Using all the force it could muster, and utilizing every dirty trick in the book. Lucy continued frantically throwing paint at the walls and sensed others around her doing the same. “It must be working!” she shouted.

“Something's gotten them tetchy,” agreed Rolly, sounding as if he was still reeling from the physical attack he had just endured.

Just then, a meaty slap echoed around the tiny chamber and Machen let out a startled grunt. The slap was followed by what sounded like a bag of cement being dropped from a great height onto a concrete floor, the noise amplified in the cramped space. Something unseen brushed past Lucy's elbow in a downward motion. She flinched away before realizing it was just the landlord, who until that moment had been standing next to her. Apparently, he was now pole-axed on the floor. “Mach? What happened?”

Through strangled gasps of air Machen said, “Something... something pushed me over.” He sounded on the verge of a panic attack. Lucy reached down a hand to console the landlord, or help him up, whichever would benefit him the most, but in the darkness she couldn't see where he was. Her out-stretched hand made contact with something that felt like a silk sheet, then she suddenly felt tired and woozy. Her arms felt weightless, and the sounds around her decreased in volume as the surrounding darkness enveloped her. Whatever had seemed so important just minutes ago now sank into oblivion. She could hear a voice in some far off place, the thick syllables dancing through what felt like musical notes in a dream, but the words made no sense to her.

*

It was all going to shit. Was anyone else still painting? There were sounds of a commotion, everyone seemed to be fighting their own battles. Dale continued rubbing paint over the wall, but couldn't shake the feeling that he was just going over the same ground. That was the problem with painting in the dark. He decided to stop and try to use the lighter again. It was the only way they would be able to tell which parts of the room still needed attention. He struck the wheel. There was a flash, but it didn't last long enough for his eyes to drink in anything of value. He thumbed the wheel again and again, not allowing the smallest detectable break in the mini-shower of sparks cascading to the ground.

A stray spark leapt onto the back of his hand and stuck there for a second, searing the flesh, before he could brush it away. Then, suddenly, the flame caught and for a few stolen moments he could see. The first thing his eyes registered was Machen sitting on the floor, a look of dumb confusion on his face. Dale shouted at him to get up. They had all agreed that under no circumstances should anyone raise their voice, but he figured he was allowed one transgression. Rolly was still hard at it on the far wall, working with the vigour of a man half his age. To his delight, Dale's quick evaluation concluded that they were almost done.

Then his eyes settled on Lucy, standing motionless in the centre of the room with her head bowed. Bizarrely, she seemed a few inches taller than normal. The top of her head was usually level with his shoulder, but now she could rest her chin there if she wanted. He thought she must be standing on something, or perhaps the uneven floor in this place was higher on one side of the room than the other. But when he looked down, he saw that her feet were off the ground. She was hovering. Levitating. Then, she started talking.

“Hurry! They're here, waiting. I cannot keep them away much longer.”

“Who's here?”

“The evil ones.” It wasn't Lucy's voice. Her mouth was moving, but the voice coming out was softer than hers, more timid. Furthermore, this voice spoke in a flawless local accent, the words rising and falling in pitch.

“You're not Lucy,” Dale said, his voice quivering. “Who are you?”

“You already know who I am,” said the thing that wasn't Lucy. “My name is Elizabeth.”

“What are you doing to my friend?”

“Protecting her.”

“From what?”

“The others. They want to possess this shell. Yours, too.”

“Why do they want to possess her... us?”

“They... They wish that you can take them away from this place. They have been bound here so long.”

“Where do they want to go?”

“Anywhere but here.”

“They want to use us as vehicles?”

“Like ships...” The thing that wasn't Lucy appeared to be having great difficulty forming words, her voice now breathless and rasping. “Hurry, finish your work. Trap them.”