Darkness Demands Page 2

  He read the letter in full to Tom, pointing out the idiosyncratic spellings as he did so.

  Dear Messr. John Newt'n,

  I should wish yew put me a pound of chock latt on the grief stowne of Jess Bowen by the Sabbath night. Yew will be sorry if yew do not.

  He rounded off by telling Tom that it was unsigned and undated.

  "Very mysterious," Tom mused. "What do you make of the phrase 'grief stowne'?"

  "A quaint way of saying gravestone, I guess."

  "And there really is a gravestone of this Jeff Bowen somewhere nearby?"

  "Jess Bowen. I don't know. Perhaps. There's a massive cemetery not far away from here."

  "What does Val make of it?"

  "I haven't told her."

  "Why?"

  "There's a big audit going on where she works. I didn't want to bother her with this when all's said and done it's just some dumb practical joke."

  "John. Take this seriously. Someone's sent an anonymous note that clearly contains a threat."

  "For what? A bar of chocolate? The whole thing's absurd."

  "That might be, but they're saying you'll be sorry if you don't comply. Take it to the police, John."

  "OK. I'll phone them." The lie slipped out as easily as the one earlier about having a great, dazzling, winning idea for the next book. Nevertheless, John was genuinely touched by Tom's concern. But come on… could he really complain to the police about a quirkily written note demanding chocolate? He could just imagine it. The desk sergeant listening gravely before disappearing into a back room from where an embarrassed John Newton would hear a huge burst of laughter as the sergeant shared the story with his colleagues. No, thank you.

  The telephone conversation was winding down. Tom aired his thoughts about overseas rights. Meanwhile John looked out of the window. He didn't want Elizabeth out on the lane with her bike. Not alone anyway. True, there was nothing in the way of traffic, yet it still made him uneasy.

  At that moment the village of Skelbrooke looked dreamily peaceful. As summers in England go, this was turning out to be a good one. The church blazed white in the sun. Trees billowed a luscious green, half hiding the red roofs of the cottages dotted here and there. Jet vapor trails looked like white chalk lines scrawled across the sky. There was a hush and stillness about everything.

  But at that instant, beneath that blanket of tranquility, John realized something was wrong somewhere.

  As Tom outlined his killer strategy for a new book deal, John leaned forward, his head thrust forward to look through the grass. His muscles tensed. And he didn't know why. The voice of his agent still sounded in his ear, but he was listening hard for sounds beyond the window glass.

  His eyes searched along the lane for a glimpse of Elizabeth. He willed himself to see her comically pedaling legs and flying hair as she zoomed along.

  But there was no sign of her. He tilted his head the other way.

  Stuff's happening, John, came the voice in his head. Stuff is definitely happening.

  But what?

  He couldn't see anything.

  But why have all the birds stopped singing?

  Why does it feel-in your heart of hearts-that an evil dark cloud has murdered the sun and drowned the world in shadow…

  Come on, he told himself, cut the melodrama. I can't see anything wrong.

  You mean not a little kid lying crumpled on the road under the wheels of an auto.

  His imagination fired volleys of images into his head.

  It's just that old parental thing, he told himself. As soon as you clap eyes on Elizabeth peddling happily along, it will explode that sense of doom into a billion pieces.

  But that's exactly what he did feel. Doom.

  DOOM. In capital letters. DOOM written large and black in the sky. DOOM engraved in dark coffin wood. A word that would sound with all the ominous power of thunder at midnight.

  Christ, why do I feel like this? Is this the openers for a coronary?

  And still Tom spoke into his ear; this time about a city by city book promotion tour.

  John leaned forward until his forehead pressed against the glass. Looking down to the right he could see his neighbors on the driveway of the house. On the one hand they were doing something perfectly normal. On the other hand it made no sense at all.

  Turning his eyes back to the lane he saw an elderly man, dressed in pajamas, and wearing a straw hat, walking as fast as he could manage up the hill. His legs were shaky as if walking was a fearsome struggle. His dragging feet raised a dust cloud round his ankles. And all the time he frantically waved one arm, clearly telling someone (still unseen) to leave him alone.

  And where in God's name was Elizabeth?

  John couldn't hold back any longer. "I'm sorry, Tom. I'm going to have to go. I think the neighborhood has just gone insane."

  CHAPTER 2

  1

  After the hurried good-bye to Tom, John Newton replaced the hand set of the phone then shot another glance at his neighbors' antics from his study window.

  It could have been a scene from a silent comedy. The Haslems appeared to be preparing for a vacation. They carried suitcases out of the house. They were packing the car.

  That, on the face of it, would have been perfectly normal. But it was the way they were going about the process that was so damned weird. Everything was conducted in a mad rush. Keith Haslem, a tiny plump man with a roundly bald head, was running around throwing suitcases into the trunk. His face flared red. His mouth was opening and shutting in a frantic goldfish movement. It took John a moment to realize the little man was yelling at his kids, only the double-glazed window of the study sealed out the sound, hence the silent movie effect.

  John watched in bewilderment as the whole Haslem family-Keith, Audrey, three daughters and the dog-ran from the house to the car and back, packing in a wild frenzy of activity. When the suitcases were in the trunk, so higgledy piggeldy there was no way in hell they'd ever shut the lid, Audrey Haslem appeared carrying piles of clothes, which she tossed into the rear seat, as if she was determined to empty the whole house into the car.

  And all the while the now purple-faced Keith Haslem yelled at his family, urging them to move faster.

  But what the hell for?

  When John had spoken to Keith at the weekend, Keith had told them they weren't going on vacation until August. Now it looked like… well, it didn't look as if they were going on vacation at all, it looked as if World War III had been declared and Keith and family were hurling their possessions into the car before heading hell for leather for the hills.

  Shaking his head John headed downstairs and into the garden. Looking for Elizabeth was his priority now. Even so the maelstrom of activity next door tweaked his curiosity.

  Now he could hear Keith's high-pitched rant. My God, thought John, the man is in a panic. He sounds terrified. Maybe he wasn't so far wide of the mark about the World War III scenario. These people were running in fear.

  "Katy! Katy!" came Keith Haslem's high-pitched screech. "Get into the back of the car… no, move the damn box so Stella can get in. No! She has to sit in the middle for chrissakes!"

  "Keith? Keith? What about the bird?"

  "Forget the fucking bird!"

  There was a wail of cries from the girls in protest. "He'll die if we leave him!"

  "There's nothing for him to eat!"

  Keith yelled louder. "I'm getting out of here in five minutes flat."

  "But Dad-"

  "We'll get another fucking bird, OK?"

  "Keith…" Audrey's voice, calmer, but still trembling. "Keith, stop swearing at the girls… please."

  Keith's voice cut through the air sharp as a knife. "Audrey! Get in that fucking car!"

  "I still haven't locked the back door of the house. I thought-"

  "For pity's sake, woman…"

  John took the path to the lane, keen to see if Elizabeth was still there, but he walked with his head to the right, trying to look through the
hedge at the fabulous sequence of events unfolding next door. The hedge was too thick. All he could rely on were the sounds of the fear-shot voices. This time it was like listening to an old time radio play.

  Keith screeched, "Stella, where on earth are you going? Stella! Get back in that damn car. Now!"

  "I'm getting Archie."

  "I told you! Forget the bird…" Then under his breath, but loud enough to carry through hawthorn. "Oh, fucking Jesus H. Christ."

  If the Haslems operated a swear box (as once the Newtons tried to implement when Paul went through a 'shit this' and 'bastard that' stage when he was eight), then Keith Haslem was well on the way to personal bankruptcy.

  "Get back in the damn car!"

  "Keith, stop swearing," Audrey begged piteously. "The neighbors will-"

  "I don't care about the fucking neighbors. If the neighbors had any fucking sense they'd be clearing out, too… Stella… Stella! Oh, all right then, but the cage will have to go on your knee. Credit cards! Credit cards! Audrey did you pick up the credit cards?"

  If the neighbors had any fucking sense they'd be clearing out, too…

  John's curiosity was wriggling like a toad on a hook now. Why the hell should we be leaving the village? What on earth was happening?

  John quickened his pace. That tickle of disquiet had become a fullblown itch. He'd rest easier once he'd seen Elizabeth.

  Meanwhile, at a break in the hedge he glimpsed Keith's bald head, now a dangerous shade of blueberry and slick with perspiration. If the man didn't slow down, he'd drop dead in his tracks, with a ruptured aorta spurting like a garden hose.

  The man shouted, "Audry, get a move on! If we don't get away from here now we'll be too late!"

  The world, John decided without a shadow of a doubt, was turning very weird, very fast.

  2

  John opened the garden gate. Up the lane to the left, the old man in pajamas and straw hat still hobbled up the lane in tiny mincing steps as if his life depended on it. Now John saw Martin Marcello, who ran the village post office. He followed the old man, that much was clear, but he walked slowly enough not to gain on him.

  "Curious." John murmured to himself.

  There was no sign of Elizabeth up the lane. He decided to turn right downhill. Possibly Elizabeth had cycled toward the village on the off chance she could find one of her playmates. Even so, she'd been told dozens of times not to go into the village without John, Val or, at a pinch, Paul.

  Seconds after heading downhill along the track John nearly lost his life to the hood of the Haslems' car as it sped out of the driveway. John leapt back. Like a photograph the image stayed glued to his mind of the terrified looking family in the car: Keith clutching the steering wheel, his eyes wide, his mouth still hammering away in over-drive as he shouted at his family and maybe the world in general. Only the sound of his voice was now drowned beneath the howl of the car's motor.

  At least with a nod toward neighborliness John lifted a hand at the Haslems in greeting but they ignored him. They were locked inside some private drama; nothing else mattered now. Seemingly, they were on a mission from God (and running well behind schedule), or they were fleeing for their very lives. John noticed the canary in its cage on one of the laps of the little girls. In the end it hadn't been left to starve.

  John continued down the hill, the loose stones rolling and grating beneath his feet. The lane itself, according to a plaque at the junction, was two thousand years old. Roman road engineers had run this track as straight as a pool cue ninety miles across what would be England's waistline linking Leeds with Whitby on the coast. Along it had marched conquering legions. Most of the road was lost beneath fields and cities now, of course. But here for half a mile or so it still ran straight and white as bone. Faint grooves could be seen that marked the wear of ancient chariot wheels. Over the centuries it had been downgraded to little more than a track and the once mighty Via Constantine was even demoted by name to merely the Back Lane. Where travelers once might have seen a discarded legionnaire's javelin or come across a coin bearing the head of Caesar now there were the usual scattering of gum wrappers, cigarette butts and shards of broken beer bottle that caught the morning sun in bursts of dazzling light. Across an edging block that an Etruscan navvy would have levered into place with hands as hard as boot leather there was a condom. It had been stretched out of shape to near shocking dimensions. ("Oh, look, Dad," Elizabeth had exclaimed on seeing it yesterday. "Someone's lost a pink balloon!" "No, sweetheart, don't pick it up…" "Why not, Dad?" "You…" He'd paused. "You don't know where it's been, hon.")

  Flanking the lane were the houses of bank managers, lawyers, businessmen-and a writer of true-life crime stories, namely one John Douglas Newton, age thirty-five. A man with a little more than three days-that's seventy-two little hours-to find a follow-up to Blast His Eyes. His agent had been right when he'd telephoned John after reading the Blast His Eyes manuscript and announced 'the book's going to be big box office… damn big box office…' and he was right. Damn right. Was his agent right now? That already Tom was predicting Without Trace would be dismissed as a warmed over collection of missing persons stories? Hell. Tom had sowed the seeds of doubt. John was beginning to catch a scent surrounding his new book. And that scent was definitely hinting Crock O' Shit.

  This wasn't a nice experience.

  As if seeing himself from outside his body, say from that sparrow's eye view as it sat high on the telephone line, he saw himself walking down the road in a T-shirt, jeans (with a fist size hole in one knee), and wearing untied shoes that flopped on his feet.

  Witness one John Douglas Newton. In three days Mr. Newton must deliver a hotshot idea to his literary agent. Meanwhile he's in search of one absent daughter, age nine, with a passion for Killer Whales and strawberry ice cream. John Douglas Newton, a man innocently walking along a peaceful country lane in the old country. A lane that will take him into a territory populated with fear and misery… a place that lies between darkness and light…

  Yeah, he thought, all that's needed right now is the pitter-patter notes of the Twilight Zone theme to come tip-toeing out of those trees across there.

  Ignoring the mind chatter, John pressed on. Now the main road that cut across the Back Lane was in sight. Beyond that, the village proper with its stone cottages, pub and green bounded on one side by a pond. It would be the English Tourist Board's vision of the idyllic rural village if it wasn't for the vast Necropolis-AKA City of the Dead-on the hill. A hundred acre cemetery once served by its own miniature railway system that passed beneath an archway on which was inscribed: BOUND FOR GLORY.

  Now there was sense that the old lane was getting ready to run underground, the level of the lane dropped, the banks rose so he was fully enclosed on three sides with only a strip of open blue sky above him. In the distance came the tolling of the cemetery bell.

  It was then that he found Elizabeth.

  As simply as that.

  Her bicycle had been dropped on its side. Elizabeth lay on her back on a sunlit swathe of dandelions and clover.

  John Newton took one look at her, and in a curiously dislocated way, and more in surprise than shock, said to himself: "My God. Her throat's been cut."

  CHAPTER 3

  1

  Her throat's been cut…

  At that moment the world vanished. Or at least to John Newton it did. The lane, the trees, the stone cottages, the swan on the village pond, even the blue sky. Everything blurred and was sucked to some other place.

  Everything, that is, but Elizabeth.

  He stared down at his daughter. She lay with her eyes wide open. Blood covered her throat in a broad wet slick. From there it drenched her yellow T-shirt.

  There was so much soil mixed with the blood. It looked as if a handful of brown dirt had been poured onto it, so it still stood proud and dry of the blood flooding down his daughter's body.

  Her throat's been cut…

  The words churned through his mind. Now th
ey made no sense to him.

  All he could do was stand, stare… while those dumb, meaningless stupid words rolled round the inside of his uncomprehending skull.

  Her throat's been cut…

  At that moment Elizabeth sighed. She pulled herself onto one elbow as if she were in bed waiting for her goodnight kiss.

  All of a sudden words gushed from his lips. It was the question parents always ask: "Elizabeth! What happened to you?"

  The world rushed back into focus around him; he was down on his knees beside her, helping her sit up on the grass.

  Elizabeth struggled to draw breath, then she said, "I fell off… stupid thing!" She tried to kick the bike.

  Elizabeth's answer seemed as obvious as John's question. But at least it explained everything.

  "Jesus, Lizzie," John said, feeling concern burst like a bomb inside his chest. "I thought you were-" Dead? Seamlessly he moderated what he was saying. "I thought you were really badly hurt."

  "I am badly hurt," she retorted. "It's that stupid bike. It's no good."

  "Here… let me have a look. No, hon, lift your chin up for me… uh… that's a bad cut, sweetheart."

  "Are my shoes spoilt?"

  "No, they're okay, hon."

  "I'm not going to the hospital."

  "I'm afraid you are." Now he could see what looked like a second open mouth just under her chin. The skin had well and truly split wide open. Still he found himself shocked by the amount of soil in and around the wound.

  "You've really taken a tumble, haven't you?"

  "Am I going to die?"

  "No." He quickly hugged her and made sure she saw his reassuring smile. "But we've got to get it sorted out… or you'll end up bleeding all over the furniture."

  "Stupid bike."

  "How did you fall off?" Again he realized it was another one of those all too obvious parent-questions (it belonged in the same file as 'If you break your leg don't come running to me').