The Dark Horde (7 page)

“Oh Sasha! You’ve saved me!”

Sasha struggled under his weight. “Are you okay? It took me ages to wake you.”

Brian sank back into the driver’s seat, shaking. “Yeah, I’m fine now... Sorry I freaked out. It was just a nightmare.”

She stroked his hair. “Come on, let’s get inside. You’ve obviously had a
hell
of a day.”

Brian raised his eyebrows. “Your choice of words is impeccable.”

As he rose, his headache returned with a vengeance.

He closed the car and walked with Sasha to the front door.

She turned to him at the doorway. “Your nose is bleeding.”

Bleeding?

Brian wiped his nose... And looked down at a blood-covered hand bearing two deep gouges along its length.

He vomited.

SUNDAY 6:22
PM

The dark was dark. He was alone in the silent, empty dark. Darkness without boundary, without substance...

Enveloping consciousness.

SUNDAY 7:03
PM

“Oh, go away,” he said.

“Don’t tell me to go away, you slimy little shit-face!”

“Pleeease!” he moaned.

“Look here, you stinkin’ excuse for a child; you filthy, dickless wart. If you think you can tell me what to do, then you better think again. I give the orders, anal features! And if you ever tell me to go away again I’ll rip your tiny testicles off and pull your scrotum so far down over your ugly head, that it’ll come down to your fucking toes! Do you hear me, spew-face? Do you understand, little wimp boy?”

He began to cry. It was too much. He wanted out.
“Awww what’s the matter now, cry baby, want your mummy, do you? Heh, heh, well bad luck, I killed her. I mutilated and raped her dead body in her own bed, while your father watched. And then I grabbed your father’s head, I grabbed it in my claws, and shoved the fucking thing right up your mummy’s bloody cunt. And you know what, you disgusting ball of shit? While your dad was suffocating to death, his head inside of his dead wife, your younger brother, the stupid little turd, came in screaming. Screaming ‘You killed my mum and dad you bastard, you fucking bastard!’ So I picked the skinny dung-heap up and used him as a baseball bat to kill your fucking whining cat. Whined it did,” the horrid voice rasped, “alll the way to helll, Danny... Alll the wayyyyy to helllll!”

Danny broke free from the horrid dream. He was alive!

A blur of faces swirled above him like fish through distorted glass. But the filthy words said only moments before dominated his consciousness.

One of the faces spoke, “Oh Danny! Thank goodness you’ve awoken! We’ve been so worried about you! Do you remember what happened?”

Danny stared up at the smeary images blankly.

The faces talked amongst themselves, fragments of their speech audible:

“I don’t think he’s aware yet of what’s going on around him...”

“Yes, it could be brain damage, you know...”

“Of course I will, he’s in good hands now...”

“We need to get the opinion of a psychiatrist...”

“Oh yes, absolutely! You couldn’t be more right, the sooner the better...”

All but one of them, a fat one in dark blue clothes, left. His vision remained blurred.

Were his family really dead, like that voice said? Was that voice going to come back? Where was he, anyway? And who were those people? Was he brain-damaged like they said? What happened to me?

For all he knew, he was just a bubble in the abyss, removed from the world he had known, what he saw and heard a mere reflection of his own thoughts. Abandoned, of no value to existence, condemned to spend an eternity in sorrow, to spend his days in woe at what he might have done and might have been. The paradise of death lay beautiful before him, a forbidden release from the mortal coils of pain and misery, ensnaring coils that dragged him forever downward.

A hand touched his arm and his eyes regained focus. His loving mother stood before him, her eyes melting.

“Ohhh Danny, my poor boy.”

Streaming tears of relief, Danny leapt from his bed to embrace his mother he so missed, his lowly candle of hope suddenly aflame.

Then she began to change...

Her eyes became black and glaring, her mouth curved and cruel, her disposition malign and hateful. Danny cowered against the bedhead whimpering. That voice of evil was now hers.

“Danny, you good for nothing piece of shit! Do you really think I came back to collect you? I’d sooner bathe in fetid vomit eating rancid faeces. How they remind me of what you are! Your family despises you; we eagerly await your death so that we can piss on your miserable grave. No, you pathetic outcast of my womb, I came here to see that you were dead, so that I could spit with contempt on your broken body and laugh at your suffering. But you can’t do anything right, can you! For once in your wretched life you had the chance to do something right and die. But instead, you hopeless failure, you fuck it up completely! I pray that the almighty Venomed One consumes your body, mind and soul. And will celebrate when it does!”

His mother and the malevolent voice disappeared. Danny sank deeper into self-pity.

A hand touched him again and soothing words mocked, “It’s okay, Danny, we’re here to look after you. It’s okay.”

He cringed away in terror.

The voices multiplied, urgent, judgemental.

“We better sedate him now. He’s in shock.”

“Agreed.”

Figures surrounded him, stroking him gently. Teasing him with words like, “It’s okay, Danny... Just relax, no harm is going to come to you... We’re here to help you, Danny, we’re not going to hurt you.”

He saw this ploy for what it was. They were dragging him down to his own hell. A hell created specifically for him, as no other was miserable enough.

He wasn’t going to let them.

He struggled off the bed and tried to fight his way through the web of arms that moved to stop him... In vain. Too many to battle through, he collapsed to the floor sobbing.

The soothing voices returned to taunt him. They lifted him off the floor against his will and placed him back on the bed. Belted restraints were applied to his arms and legs.

There was to be no mercy for his, the most contemptible of souls.

He felt a sharp pain as fluid was injected into his arm. The voices became distant as the dark waters of sleep closed over him.

“Thank God that’s over.”

SUNDAY 8:38
PM

Lucas turned his shining bronze Ford Fairlane from the tree-lined dirt road leading to the school, onto Mueller Road. A clear starry night cast a strange chill over him. Trains of thought chugged through his mind, simultaneous, unrelated.

A lot had happened today. The tragic fire and murder at Barney Weston’s farmhouse, dealing with the police, managing the school through all of this and then Danny, one of his pupils, was almost killed by a truck. The truck stopped in time,
thank God
, but Danny, suffering from shock, was taken to Howqua Hills District Hospital rather than into Matron Susan Inglis’ care at the school’s sanatorium.

It was Lucas’ duty as head of the school to see how Danny was, and see that everything was done to assist Danny’s recovery...

And ensure that the school was not liable.

Lucas reached Banner Road and followed it into the quiet town centre. Businesses lined the street, lit by street lamps casting an eerie subdued light. At the junction of Main and Highett Streets lay a large roundabout dominated by the soaring Troopers’ Monument to three Constables killed by Ned Kelly’s gang in 1878. Only the two pubs on opposite sides of the roundabout seemed to have much activity: locals drowning fears of a killer on the loose. He turned into Highett Street where Howqua Hills District Hospital lay a couple of blocks away.

The carpark had only a handful of vehicles. Visiting hours were over, but Lucas noted the “After hours admissions” sign on a nearby electric glass door.

He walked past a matrix of steaming pipes protruding from the back of the brick-veneer building and up the concrete ramp leading inside. He entered a colonial-styled interior that reminded him of a museum. Glass cabinets containing antique surgery implements flanked him. A worn rug stretched to a nurse station situated at the terminus of four hospital corridors.

Approaching the desk, he was greeted by an attractive young nurse. “Can I help you?” She smiled.

“I’m here to see Sister May Kennedy for Danny Malone. I called a short time ago to say I was coming.”

“Sister Kennedy is with Danny at the moment. He’s in A-wing just on your left there, room 7. It’ll be one of the first rooms you come to.”

Lucas said “Thank you,” and dashed off towards Danny’s ward.

A sickly-sweet smell greeted Lucas as he entered a cosy room containing a single bed with railings and an open curtain partition. Danny lay sleeping in restraints, a drip in his arm, looking sweaty and pale. A rosy, round-faced nurse Lucas guessed to be in her forties, sat by Danny’s side.

“Sister Kennedy?”

She rose and turned to Lucas. “Yes, and you must be Lucas Prescott?”

“Indeed. How is he?”

“Yeah nah, alriiight,” she began.

Lucas started to wring his hands.

“He’s calmed down now, but a little over an hour ago he was having hallucinations and attempted to escape. He’s obviously in shock from the accident, though apparently not physically hurt.”

“Hallucinations?”

“Yeah nah, he claimed to be surrounded by demons that were taunting him. But it’s too early to say how severe or temporary this episode is, but he’s definitely suffered some mental trauma.”

Lucas nodded in thought, looking at the floor.

“Until we get some tests done tomorrow, there’s not much we can do except keep him relaxed. Poor thing – we had to put him in restraints and give him something to sleep.”

Lucas looked to Danny and stroked his hand.

Danny stirred awake, eyes squinting at the fluorescent light.

May nodded at Lucas and whispered, “It’s okay. You can speak to him.”

“It’s Mr Prescott here, Danny. Your principal.”

A muffled whine, “No. No more, please!”

“I’m not going to hurt you, Danny, I came here to see how you are.”

Danny’s head rolled slowly over the pillow. “That’s what they all say! That’s all they ever say!”

“Your parents will be here to see you tomorrow. You’ll be okay, you’re in good hands here.”

Danny stared blankly beyond the room into limbo.

Lucas looked back to May and shrugged. “What should I do?”

She gave him a consoling look. “Keep trying.”

“Danny,” Lucas began again, “can you remember what happened?”

Danny’s answer was clear and resonant, “
The door opened.
”

Lucas frowned.

Communication was hopeless. Should I persist or just leave?

“Has he been like this the whole time?” Lucas asked of the nurse.

“Yeah nah, while he’s been awake he’s been like that. We can’t get any sense out of him, even to the extent of what happened. Anything we do distresses him, because he thinks we’re demons, or sometimes his parents, or sometimes voices no one can hear. But tomorrow a psychiatrist is coming in to make an assessment, so things should be clearer then.”

“Hopefully he’ll be more coherent tomorrow after some rest.”

“Yeah, poor kid.”

There was nothing more he could do here...

Lucas left the hospital and sank into his car. Sighing, he started the engine and slowly began driving back to the school.

Yeah, poor kid.

SUNDAY 10:27
PM

What lurked in the darkness around him? In the darkness of sleep? In the darkness between the stars?

Real living nightmare.

But how could it be real? How could it be living? How could it be anything but dream?

Because it’s coming for you, Brian, however impossible it seems. It’s happening.

How do I end this? When will it stop?

It will never end. It is useless to try.