Darker Page 13

  ‘By this time I was completely bemused. At the bottom of the cliff, directly under the church in a cave, was what looked to be a stone coffin. Water ran in at one end from a spring and trickled out the other. They’d spread out rushes to make a big mat round the thing, and there were towels so I thought what the hell. I felt good … no, I felt better than that. I felt like someone who’d just found a pot of gold in their back garden. The water in the stone coffin looked pure enough to drink. So in I went. My God, it was cold. Not that I minded. After I’d bathed I dressed in the white shirt, trousers and shoes they’d bought me.’ Michael shrugged. ‘Then I moved in with them. And I knew … I knew as I know this table here is real that something had entered into me in that church. Something that gave me the power to enthuse people. To inspire them. But I also knew this: although I had that power I also realized I had a responsibility towards them. They’d do anything for me. So I knew I had to improve their lives.

  ‘They owned some poor arable land near a crossroads. I saw that it would make valuable building land. They told me that the government wouldn’t allow building there. But from that day on I felt this supreme self-confidence. So I walked into the government offices with a roll of building plans under my arm and told them I was going to sell part of the land to raise capital, on the rest I’d build a factory. They said yes so quickly I thought it was a joke before they threw me out.

  ‘But it wasn’t a joke. They gave me government grants to improve the access roads. We built the factory. Then, on land on the coast, we built one hotel after another. Within one year, whenever I went to the bank the manager himself would run out and open the door. Our income came in so fast we couldn’t even count it. I built new houses for my Good Samaritan family, with a pool, and rooms for domestic staff. I even had the church on the hill restored and the dome covered in gold leaf.’

  ‘Yeah,’ Joey grunted, ‘so you learned you could boss some piss-poor peasants about.’

  Christine said quickly, ‘And you expect us to believe that you’ve been possessed by some kind of spirit that allows you to have total control over people?’

  ‘Not control. That makes me sound like a tyrant. I like to think of it as the power to inspire. To be able to outline a proposal or plan to someone and make them enthusiastic about it.’

  ‘OK, let’s not split hairs, but you’re telling us that some kind of … entity moved into your head?’

  Michael nodded. ‘It’s not easy. But think for a moment about theories relating to animal development. More than two thousand years ago Plato and Aristotle developed ideas of how life on Earth was created. Then the Western civilized world believed they were true. Later came the Christians with their own beliefs on the creation of life. For centuries Christendom believed that was the truth and nothing but the truth. Then came the beginnings of modern science. In seventeenth-century France, Lamarck suggested animals gradually evolved into higher forms over thousands of years. Some believed his ideas were true. Then came Darwin with a far more powerful theory of evolution. Today Darwin’s theory is accepted as fact by most.’ The man smiled. ‘But don’t you bet your bottom dollar that in a few years along will come a new evolution theory and we’ll all say, my God, how can we have believed that primitive Darwinist stuff?’

  Joey snorted. ‘But what’s this got to do with —’

  ‘Got to do with what flattened the car in Pontefract this morning?’ Michael raised his eyebrows. ‘It’s got everything to do with it. With the example of various theories of evolution all I’m trying to illustrate is that what one generation will believe as fact the next generation might dismiss as clap trap. And what this generation might consider impossible, the next might find perfectly natural.’ The man scooped some crumbs from the table and threw them to the sparrows which fluttered around his feet. ‘What many people might find hard to believe in today is that whatever entered my head in that ruined church in Turkey is the same thing that destroyed the car. And is following us now.’

  Joey and Christine looked sharply at the man. Richard glanced uneasily in the direction of Amy, now sitting on a tyre swing.

  He remembered when Mark was six. The boy wasn’t well and for an agonizing three weeks doctors speculated he might have leukaemia. Richard, not normally credulous, had become painfully superstitious overnight. Desperately worried Mark might have the disease, Richard began to behave in a completely irrational way; he’d find himself standing watching a kettle boil, thinking, “If I stand and watch it from the moment I put it on the hob until it actually boils, everything will be all right and Mark’s tests will come back negative.” He even came across his dead father-in-law’s watch in the attic and carefully wound it up. As if, deep down, he hoped it possessed magic powers. That if he could keep the old man’s watch going it would supernaturally keep the leukaemia cells out of his son’s body.

  The tests did prove negative. The doctors assured Richard and Christine that Mark suffered from no more than anaemia. Richard later found himself chuckling over his idiotic superstitious practices. But, deep down, he had believed that, however absurd they might appear, they were somehow true. And now he couldn’t shake off that same feeling. That what Michael had said was the stone cold, incontrovertible truth.

  Christine frowned. ‘But how can this thing —’

  The birds pecking at their feet took off as one, their wings beating the air.

  Michael looked up. Above their heads the Stars and Stripes canopy moved sluggishly in the breeze. A truck droned by on the road.

  Richard’s eyes met Christine’s and he knew she was alarmed.

  ‘Did anyone feel that?’ Michael asked.

  ‘Feel what?’

  ‘That someone-just-walked-over-my-grave feeling.’ Michael looked at the horizon, eyes narrowing against the sun’s glare.

  Christine asked ‘What’s happening?’

  ‘It’s OK,’ Michael said soothingly. ‘I don’t want to worry anyone, but I think we should be making a move.’

  Joey was first out of his seat.

  ‘Leave him here,’ spat Joey. ‘He knows all about this thing. Leave him to it.’

  ‘We’ve plenty of time,’ Michael said. ‘Nothing will happen for twenty minutes or more yet.’

  Richard shot him a look. ‘Happen?’

  ‘Once we’re back in the car we can talk to our heart’s content.’

  ‘I’ll get Amy,’ said Christine.

  As they walked back to the car Richard saw Joey anxiously looking this way and that. Richard scanned the horizon. The heat-haze distorted everything, until he could imagine that even the trees were massive figures stalking hungrily towards them.

  And in the fast-food trailer the girl had begun to sing softly to herself the hymn ‘Jerusalem’ as she wiped down the counter:

  ‘And did those feet in ancient times, walk upon England’s pastures green …’

  Chapter 25

  Vision

  The swings and slide looked as if they were made for the children of giants. But Rosemary Snow saw everything clear as day in the brilliant sunlight. A fast-food trailer beside a country road. Cows in a field. A canopy in a Stars and Stripes design, supported by steel poles to provide shade for diners. Occasionally it would undulate slowly in the slight breeze. White tables and chairs. Then she saw a pair of little suntanned hands in front of her face. They gripped the rail that ran either side of the slide steps. As she climbed she heard a voice shouting:

  ‘Boys! Amy says come up here! Amy says, down the slide. Boys! This way. Don’t push or I’ll tell that cow to bite you!’

  Beneath the awning sat the family she’d seen before. They looked unhappy. Then she saw the stranger. That same phoney smile as he talked. She —

  She awoke with a start, lifting her head as she did so. The right-hand side of her face pulled painfully tight. She felt the crust of scabs and thread that stitched her cheek back to her face.

  ‘Here.’ The voice was kind. ‘You dropped this.’

 
She opened her eyes. She must have fallen asleep on the shopping precinct bench. Shielding her eyes, she saw a good-looking boy of about seventeen. He held out her holdall.

  ‘Oh, thank you. I must have …’ Her voice faded as she saw the expression on his face that said it all. ‘Hey,’ he’d been thinking as he roller-booted along the precinct, ‘Great-looking girl on the bench. She’s dropped her holdall. Chance to get acquainted there.’ Then she’d seen him recoil.

  From beneath all that sexy hair appeared a mask of scabs set with two bloodshot eyes. Gross!

  Forcing a smile, he muttered, ‘Don’t mention it,’ and roller-booted away.

  Rosemary shouldered the bag, slipped on the sunglasses and walked away, head down. Forget it, she told herself. Forget what you look like, you’ve got a job to do.

  She’d seen through the little girl’s eyes. Somehow the stranger had got his hooks into the family just as he’d hooked her. He had plans for them, she knew that. And she knew it wouldn’t be pleasant.

  As she walked in the hot sun, a shiver ran through her. And the title of a book she’d once read came vividly to her. Something Wicked This Way Comes.

  She stopped dead, shivering again from head to toe. The thing that had chased her across that field now followed the family. Her Destroyer.

  Ahead, a sign pointed in the direction of the railway station. She followed it, shivering again and again. And all she could think of was the title of that book:

  Something Wicked This Way Comes …

  Chapter 26

  Police

  As Christine buckled Amy into the back seat Richard happened to look into the rearview mirror.

  Then a wonderful thing happened.

  Quickly he glanced away from the mirror. He didn’t want Michael, sitting beside him, to notice he’d seen something that sent his mind racing. This whole shitty situation would end here and now.

  Because Richard had seen a police car pull off the road into the lay-by. It parked between the fast-food trailer and the Stars and Stripes canopy. And from this position the fast-food trailer now blocked Michael’s line of sight. He couldn’t see the police car.

  Richard said, ‘I forgot to get Amy a drink.’

  ‘Buy her one later,’ Michael said as he buckled the seat-belt. ‘We need to be moving on.’

  Damn, thought Richard. He saw his plan go up in smoke.

  ‘She’ll need a drink,’ Christine insisted. ‘She’ll flake out if she gets too warm.’

  Michael rubbed his jaw, thinking, then looked back at the horizon, as if expecting to see something come striding above the treetops. ‘All right,’ he said quickly. ‘Don’t dawdle. We need to be leaving here in the next couple of minutes.’

  As Richard opened the door Joey grabbed his shoulder from the backseat. ‘Hey, if that thing’s coming this way, forget it. She can have a drink later. I don’t —’

  ‘Joey,’ Richard spoke in a low voice. ‘I thought you didn’t believe in it. If it’s not real, it can’t hurt you.’

  ‘Hey, I didn’t say that, Richard.’ Fear jittered his voice. ‘I only said —’

  ‘Take it easy,’ Michael soothed. ‘We’ve plenty of time. I just don’t want to go breaking any speed limits.’

  ‘So, I’ve got time to buy Amy a drink?’

  ‘Sure … just don’t hang around, that’s all.’

  ‘I’m thirsty, Dad,’ Amy called.

  ‘It’s OK, honey. I’ll be right back. Fruit juice OK?’

  ‘Yes, please.’

  Richard walked back to the fast-food trailer. The girl had started to fry beefburgers on the hotplates in front of her. For a moment he thought the cops had walked off somewhere, then he saw them in the shade of the canopy. They were both eating ice creams while they waited for their burgers. One wiped his bald head with a handkerchief that looked big enough to swaddle a baby in.

  My God, he thought, you two are in for a surprise when I tell you what happened this morning. As he bought Amy a carton of blackcurrant juice he felt a trickle of something that felt almost like elation. He’d solved the problem of how to get out of this mess – and get rid of the stranger. Sooner or later questions would be asked. And already the implications were beginning to hit him. Why, the police would ask, just why did you run from the explosion in Pontefract this morning? No, he put that line of thought into the back of his mind. They were home and dry. In a couple of hours he could be slapping a couple of steaks onto the barbecue while drenching his throat with an ice-cold beer.

  Pocketing the change and holding the carton in one hand he walked by the police car. The two cops were laughing over some joke as they spooned the ice cream.

  At the edge of the canopy Richard cleared his throat to attract their attentions.

  They looked up.

  But they didn’t look up at Richard.

  They looked directly up at the canopy above their head.

  It rippled like a sheet on a washing line.

  Then the fabric snapped tight as if something had fallen on top of it.

  Richard looked back at the two policeman, sitting there with their tubs of ice cream in their hands. Both stared up in surprise, their mouths open.

  Then, with a crack, the Stars and Stripes snapped from its mountings. The poles crumpled like coat-hanger wire.

  Richard instinctively leaped back so far his backside slammed against the police car.

  He couldn’t take his eyes off what was happening in front of him.

  The still summer morning had become a maelstrom of rushing air, dust blasted up from the ground, stinging his face as the air was displaced by some massive object as it crashed down upon the canopy. Metal poles shrieked.

  The canopy had dropped squarely down. Richard could see the shapes of tables, chairs and the two policemen below the fabric. They struggled to pull it off them.

  Then, as Richard watched, the fabric became tight almost as if a huge steel sheet was pressing it flat. Tables and chairs shattered beneath the weight. The two men were pressed down hard. Richard saw the two squirming human shapes beneath.

  Weight increased …

  … pressing down …

  … down …

  Then the lumps beneath the canvas flattened.

  Richard slid along the car sideways, then backed along the path towards the fast-food trailer. Still he couldn’t take his eyes off the flag. Without a crease in it, it looked as if the damn’ thing had just been ironed. Red stripes. The blue oblong, containing the white stars. Then he noticed that, one by one, the stars were turning red.

  A wet red that spread, soaking the white stars. It kept on seeping outwards like a red dye across litmus paper filling in the white stripes with a deep, wet crimson.

  Richard would have stayed there. But a plastic waste bin gave a tremendous pop and flattened.

  He kept moving backwards.

  One second later, the police car rocked once, then it collapsed in on itself, suspension groaning, tyres rupturing with ear-battering explosions. The car mashed flat. Steam from the hot engine whistled out in a thin jet high into the blue sky.

  He froze. Because he realized he had perhaps half-a-dozen seconds before whatever crushed the car crushed him, too.

  The moment she saw the pictures on the TV sets in the shop window she knew what had happened.

  She limped in through the door, the holdall on her shoulder, and turned up the sound of one of the sets.

  ‘… mysterious explosion rocked a quiet Pontefract car park this morning. The incident has left police baffled. No terrorist group has claimed responsibility for the bombing at the moment; however, police suspect …’

  Rosemary studied the close-ups of the wrecked car cordoned off behind tape. Then came more shots of flattened car park signs and a crushed ticket machine.

  She didn’t need to see any more. Now she had a destination: Pontefract.

  Richard saw death.

  Just ten paces from him it was coming his way.

  The Stars and
Stripes canopy lay crushed on the ground. Then the police car – now no part of it even reached knee height.

  Crack!

  A Walls ice cream sign flattened eight paces from him.

  Something rolled the parched grass to dust. It came nearer.

  He turned. And he ran.

  First he reached the fast-food trailer. He had to get the girl out of there. Or she’d be ground to paste beneath whatever followed him.

  But she’d got a strong fix of self-preservation of her own. She’d seen what had happened and slithered butt-first towards the service counter. First she slid across the hot plates, bare palms sizzling alongside the burgers, kicking bread rolls, canned drink stacks in front of her.

  Then she slid out over the counter, dropped to the ground. And she ran like hell; faster than Richard. Instead of heading to the car she cut off behind the trailer, vaulted the fence and belted across the field, scattering cows in front of her, her Stars and Stripes apron flapping.

  Richard ran hard at the car, shouting … God knows what he was shouting, just a sheer bloody howl that was terror and warning and shock all mixed into one.

  He glanced back. Like the hammer of God something he could not see plunged out of a clear blue sky.

  To hit the fast-food trailer. It vanished in a blur of white shards. Gas bottles ruptured, ignited, and a ball of flame the size of a house mushroomed into the sky.

  Christ …

  Then he saw the grass flatten behind the wrecked fast-food trailer; the swings and slide screeeeee-ched flat to the ground.

  It’s not following me anymore. It doesn’t want me, he thought, panting. It’s chasing the girl.

  She’s dead.

  Although he could not see it, he could see the trail it left, crushing plants, smashing fences, pulping trees.

  Cows blundered wildly away.

  Too slow.

  He saw one cow, then another, pop like ripe tomatoes.

  Then he saw the path it crushed through the grass curve back towards the lay-by. It had sensed the human it pursued wasn’t Richard Young.