Darkness Demands Part 35

f.u.c.k you!

He tore the axe from the wall, knocking aside cans of paint as he did so. They rattled onto the concrete floor. From the house came barking as Sam reacted to the noise.

"d.a.m.n you!" he snarled, directing his hatred at the letter writer- whoever, whatever it was. "d.a.m.n you!"

He attacked the briefcase with the axe. The b.a.s.t.a.r.d lock wasn't going to keep him out any more. The big axe blade bit deep into the leather, opening great wounds in its sides. Another axe blow struck the lock a glancing blow, sparks spat across the benchtop. Another blow crushed the handle. Burning with rage, cursing, grunting, he rained down axe blows. The name KELLY exploded below the furious strikes.

The bag slid off the bench onto the floor where John struck it with all the fury of a warrior beheading monsters.

At last the bag burst open, bleeding papers onto the floor. He stood, glaring down, panting, and sweating so hard droplets fell onto the paper, loosening the ink into a series of Rorschach patterns. The inkblots looked like naked skulls with gouged sockets.

s.h.i.t. He'd never felt anger like this. He wanted to find the old Kelly woman, grab her by her thin shoulders, shake her. Yell in her face: Why didn't you tell me! Why didn't you tell me!

"John, what the h.e.l.l's going on?"

He looked up to see Val through sweat-blurred eyes. Still gripping the axe, he dragged his forearm across his face to wipe away the perspiration.

"What's going on," she said again. "Have you gone insane or what?"

"I needed to open the bag."

"At this time? It's nearly midnight for heavensakes."

Once more he found himself on the verge of telling Val everything. But as if Kelly's secretive nature had leaked into his own soul as he slept in the schoolteacher's old bedroom he knew he couldn't.

"I needed to get this bag open." He spoke woodenly- and admit it, he told himself sourly, not altogether rationally.

"Couldn't it wait until morning?"

"I've wasted enough time. I need to start work on the book."

She stared at him. He saw the searching look in her eyes, as if she was hunting for some early symptom of insanity.

"John, it's nearly midnight."

He attempted a smile. It felt like a crazed leer twitching across his face. "Well, hona that's writers for you. We're a wild breed. Tearing up the rule books, acting on impulse, kicking out the nine to five."

"John," she laughed, but it was brim full of unease. "Stop doing this. I don't like it. And put the axe downa I don't want you chopping off my head or anything as impulsive as that."

He realized he held the axe like a weapon. He laid it down.

"Sorry," he said. "Not being able to open the bag was really p.i.s.sing me off." He brushed back his perspiration-soaked fringe. "Maybe it's the heat."

"Come to bed, John. You can work on the book in the morning."

"OK." To his ears his voice sounded calm now. He attempted another smile. It came easier this time. "You go on up. I'll just tidy up here."

With another nervous laugh she nodded at the axe. "But leave your friend behind, won't you?"

"Sure. Now you get off to bed. It's late."

Looking a little more rea.s.sured, she smiled then walked across the patio to the house that rose darkly against a starry sky. He saw Paul's light still burned. His son wrestled with his own torments tonight as well.

When Val had closed the door he picked up the butchered remains of Kelly's case and put them on the bench. Then he scooped up the papers that had fallen out onto the floor. Wiping the sweat from his eyes, he pulled up a stool and sat down to read.

He saw straightaway these were carbon copies of typewritten doc.u.ments. They'd been carefully bound into files backed with stiff card covers. One file was t.i.tled The Skelbrooke Mystery, another simply Five Letters. A third bore the word Cuttings. All the t.i.tles were in the neat hand, John surmised, of Herbert Kelly himself.

John glanced out through the open door. Moths danced like snow-flakes in the shed's hard white light. The house now lay in darkness. Val must have persuaded Paul to go to sleep. Maybe she, too, now lay on the bed, too hot to lie beneath the covers. He imagined her gazing up into the dark, puzzled by her husband's suddenly weird behavior. Maybe she even wondered if he would climb the stairs with the axe in his hands.

More moths swarmed over the window, drawn by some insectile pa.s.sion to reach the light. Did the letter writer operate on that same instinctive level as the moths? Or was there intelligence there? Was the letter writer exquisitely conscious of the alarm and dread instilled into those men and women who were on the receiving end of the demands? Mouth dry, veins pulsing in his head, he pulled the file marked Five Letters toward him. He glanced at the letter he'd taken from Elizabeth's Miss Lenny box. He read it again. Once more he winced at the line that seemed to launch itself from the page right into his heart: Therefore, I will take little Elizabeth Newt'n away with me as a friend.

Dear G.o.d. His stomach muscles knotted. The meaning was all too clear. The letter writer expected John to deliver his daughter to the cemetery. Then to walk away, leaving her there.

He'd already gone through dozens of scenarios centering on the idea (even the hope!) that the letters were a hoax. But gut instinct yelled loudly that they were not. A few days ago he'd made a pact with himself to simply do what the letters demanded. To hand over the beer or chocolate or whatever as the other villagers had done. But that was all before this letter arrived. This piece of poison changed everything.

This letter demanded his daughter. No way would he do that.

He broke away from staring at the window that now seethed with a hundred or more moths. He shook his head. What was it with this village? The place became more otherworldly by the minute. Stars shone bright with witchfire in the night sky, brighter than he'd ever seen them before. A plague of moths had descended on his home. Bats whirled soundlessly round the shed, faster, faster, faster. Frogs croaked in the stream. An owl hooted three times. A meteor slashed through the constellation of Cancer.

These were omens of death. He found himself battening onto the notion with a strange and terrible ferocity. As if the truth had been dangled in front of him for days, only he'd been too blind to see.

Across the patio crawled three hedgehogs. Three bristling lumps in the darkness.

Another meteor flashed across Cancer like a knife cut, opening up a rent in heaven through which the G.o.d of all dark places, all bottomless pits, all poison wells, all open graves could look down on one John Newton. Sweating there in the same shed where the long dead Herbert Kelly sweated, too. Whatever bulbous eye stared down at John from the darkness of outer s.p.a.ce must have seen Kelly reading the letters, gnawing his knuckles, wondering what to doa John sat on the stool, hardly breathing the hot night air, feeling himself coc.o.o.ned in the aura of his own bleak fear. A fear that seemed to leak from his skin like perspiration. He knew he was following in Kelly's footsteps-history repeating itself.

He thought back. Dianne Kelly had described her father weeping against a tree in the orchard. The letters had eaten into him, too. He'd gotten unpredictable. Even to the point of packing his bags and slipping away with his daughter at the dead of night.

Now John sat up, the blood buzzing in his ears. Wait a minute, wait one d.a.m.n minutea Kelly's sudden personality change, leading to the normally loving husband and father to suddenly skip the country with his daughter had puzzled him.

Quickly, John put his hand on the file in front of him. His heart b.u.mped hard against his chest, his fingers tingled. When he opened this file would he see those sinister letters written in the same hand on the same waxy antique paper?

Moments ago he couldn't bring himself to open the files; now he couldn't move fast enough.

He snapped back the cover.

h.e.l.la He'd not antic.i.p.ated this. Not one bit. Instead of letters written in a weird, spiky hand, he saw sheets of flimsy paper bearing a few blurry words. They weren't the original letters. They were carbon copies.

Overcoming the pang of disappointment. John quickly began to read.

Dear Messr. Kelly, 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 sory if yew do not.

Yes, same style. Same archaic spellings. Same demand.

But would the handwriting have been the same? Once more his whole being strained to believe these letters were the work of a lunatic hoaxer. Some s.a.d.i.s.tic son of a b.i.t.c.h, who got his kicks watching the villagers of Skelbrooke make fools of themselves.

Yeah, well maybe a week ago, he might have believed the hoax premise. Not now. A few days had left him a whole lot smarter, hadn't they?

With the pulse thudding in his neck with all the dark power of a funeral drum he turned the pages. Yeah, there was the pinte of porter one. The next letter demanded one red ball. The third a quarter of cake (oh, that one's a variation on my collection, John thought sourly. You wanted something different for a change, you filthy little b.a.s.t.a.r.d). The sourness threatened to become bitter rage again.

He closed his eyes, breathed deeply, steadied himself, then opened his eyes to read the fifth letter: Dear Messr. Kelly, No soul should exist alone. And I, like all people, desire companionship. Therefore, I will take little Mary Kelly away with me as a friend. You will leave her in the graveyard by the sepulchre of Posthumous Ellerby on Sat.u.r.day night. If yew do not yew will be very sorry.

See, John? All your winning lottery numbers have come up at once. Herbert Kelly had kept the last letter secret from his family. Kelly had received a letter demanding that he leave his daughter in the Necropolis.

The mental strain had nearly broken Kelly. But he'd come up with a plan. Before the deadline in the letter expired he'd taken his youngest daughter, Mary, as far away from Skelbrooke as possible. But what about Keith Haslem? He'd tried to outrun the evil influence of the letters but he'd failed, winding up felled by a brain hemorrhage. Maybe you didn't run far enough, old buddy. Maybe if you put a whole ocean the size of the Atlantic between yourself and Skelbrooke you're beyond the reach of Baby Bones or whatever the malevolent little tumor full of pus called itself.

John imagined Kelly's dilemma as he struggled to find a solution. At times, it had gotten so bad he'd broken down. Dianne Kelly had seen her father weeping in the orchard. The man had truly gone to h.e.l.l and back as he weighed the options: stay here, ignore the letter, hoping that ill luck wouldn't visit the Water Mill in spades. Or maybe he considered the unthinkable. Lead his daughter by the hand to the cemetery at midnight, and then leave her for whatever waited there. But no. Kelly had taken a tough option: he'd abandoned his wife and eldest daughter for a new life in Canada with Mary.

John looked up from the file. A vibrating rug of moths pressed against the window, straining to get through the gla.s.s to the light.

I'm walking in Kelly's shoes now, he told himself. The letter has arrived demanding I leave Elizabeth in the cemetery at midnight on Sat.u.r.day. That's just two days away.

Do I ignore this?

Do I take Elizabeth away?

Come on, Newton: think. Think!

What the h.e.l.l do I do?

CHAPTER 31.

1.

The night was h.e.l.l. John slept in short nightmare haunted s.n.a.t.c.hes. His mind seemed intent on recapping the last few days. He dreamt of Elizabeth cycling down the lane where she'd fall to gash her chin. But in this dream version of events a dark phantom shape pursued her before seizing her and throwing her to the ground. He dreamt of letters being borne into the garden by shadows. Then he was standing by Jess Bowen's grave surrounded by a million red b.a.l.l.s that became a million staring eyes. The weeping statue leered at him with a goblin face.

He'd woken, panting in the airless bedroom; hair matted against his head in a sopping cap. Outside, an owl hooted. A fox gave a snapping bark like a demon laughing out on the lawn.

At last he slid away into restless, churning sleep. The nightmares returned; he was back in the Necropolis. The ground curled up round him in waves; tombstones became teeth ready to grind his bones to a milky paste. And behind it all; behind every tombstone, behind every sinister cherub, behind every rotted Christ, he sensed the dark unchanging intelligence that had sent out its insidious demands for the last five thousand years. The fear it generated in men and women in the village became a vast, wet wound from which it sucked with all the gluttonous hunger of a vampire.

Moments later his mind broke through into consciousness again. He lay twisting the sheet in his hands, thinking about the letter that demanded he leave Elizabeth in the Necropolis. How long would it take to get flights to Australia or Thailand or Chile? Any d.a.m.n place provided it was far enough away from Skelbrooke and whatever sucked on the wound that bled a bright red terror.

2.

"You were late getting to bed last night," Val said on the Friday morning.

"I read the doc.u.ments in the briefcase."

"Anything of use?"

"There might be."

The conversation over breakfast was tight. Val repeatedly eyed him as if another head had sprung out of the side of his neck. He guessed she was still perplexed, if not downright alarmed, by the way he'd attacked the briefcase with an axe. But he had to know what was inside.

And now you do know. Kelly received letters just like yours.

Paul had left early for school, his face still dark and thunderous. Elizabeth had made her bed. Now she walked the dog around the meadow on his leash.

"It's going to be a hot one today," Val said, striving to be conversational.

With the letter preying on his mind he was in no mood for small talk; he nodded, however.

"John, is there something troubling you?"

"Nothing out of the ordinary," he lied, then immediately wondered why he shouldn't tell her the truth.

In case you have to leave with Elizabeth in a hurry, he told himself. He looked at Val, his lips pressed together as if holding back what he really wanted to say. I love you, Val. But I can't bring myself to tell you what I know. That there's something out there we can't understand. And that something has demanded that I hand over our daughter. At best you'd laugh in my face; at worst you'd have me committed. I need to be free to act in our family's best interests. Good G.o.d, I might even have to flee the country. The surge of love for his wife grew so intense he had to look away.

Minutes later Val drove out through the gates with Elizabeth in the pa.s.senger seat bound for school. Now John sat in the house with only his worries for company.

The temperature climbed fast. The sun came crunching through the windows like some Martian heat-ray. Even closing the blinds didn't help. With the heat oppressing him on the outside and pure dread chilling him from within, he spread the doc.u.ments from Herbert Kelly's briefcase onto the desk.

This time he opened the file marked The Skelbrooke Mystery. On flimsy paper was what might have been a chapter of a book. Again he was acutely conscious of the fact that Herbert Kelly might have typed these pages in this very room. More than once he looked back, half expecting to see a tall figure standing there. John dragged the sweat from his eyes with the back of his hand then began to read.

THE SKELBROOKE PHANTOM.

by HERBERT C. KELLY A coroner's report of 1787 records matter-of-factly that 'George Spurlock poisoned himself on account of him seeing the face of Baby Bones looking at him through the parlor window gla.s.s.' Delving deeper into church records and other archive material, we find earlier references to a shadowy figure known as Baby Bones. Although more ancient doc.u.ments refer to the character with variations of the name, such as 'Baby Bones', 'Bonnie Bones' or 'Jack-Of-Bones'. A Norman manorial indenture of 1190 names an evil spirit 'that sorely troubled aldermen, yeomen and peasant alike' as 'Father Bones'.

Like many English villages Skelbrooke attracted the attention of supernatural ent.i.ties. What is so unusual is that whereas the dragon, wyrm, hobgoblin, knucker, c.o.c.katrice and other fabulous beasts of legend dwindled into obscurity in neighboring villages, the myth of Baby Bones never lost its grip in Skelbrooke. At intervals of between fifty and eighty years it would issue demands of t.i.thes or payments from certain villagers chosen at random. How it delivered these demands is rather mysterious in its own right.

Legends tell that a child or 'an idiot' would vanish from the village, only to return within days talking 'at first in tongues' then issuing demands for beer and food in a 'voice that wasn't his own'. Baby Bones required that loaves, cakes, and flagons of beer be left on the splendidly named Crackling Hill, which is now the site of the large cemetery known as the Necropolis.

John paused. Kelly had written a background to the Baby Bones myth. He guessed from its reader-friendly style it was intended for publication in his regular newspaper column; also the lightness of tone suggested that it was written before Kelly received the letters. He read on.

Failure to comply with the demands that came via the mediumistic children or village idiots resulted in the village suffering months of ill fortune. Letters written by the parish priest in the fourteenth century lamented 'a grievous conflagration that reduc'd the village households by half and claim'd the eldest son of the feudal Lord Geoffrey Thomas D'Montaine.' On most occasions, it must be stressed, Skelbrooke met the demands with good humor in an ancient festival that greatly predates, yet antic.i.p.ates, the modern Halloween 'trick or treat.'

After a while, Baby Bones began to issue its demands via letters delivered during the witching hour. These, written in an archaic hand are always anonymous, always request some petty trifle such as cake or chocolate, yet are concluded with a threat if the demands are not met. However, on occasion our local neighborhood phantom would revert to employing a human messenger. The last recorded instance was in 1850 when an orphan child by the name of Jess Bowen returned after apparently 'wandering off into the woods for some long days'. True to form, the young child marched into the village speaking nonsense. Then one night he made his rounds, knocking on a door here a window there, before demanding that the householder leave a freshly killed goose on Crackling Hill. The voice that came from the child's mouth held such a deep timbre 'as the ba.s.s notes of a great cathedral organ' it struck terror into all that heard it. However, upon the boy knocking at the door of Benjamin Greensmith of Skelbrooke's Water Mill events took a brutal turn.

On hearing the deep voice thundering its demand from the lips of the half-starved orphan child Greensmith seized a shovel and struck the boy a 'frightful blow' to the head, killing him instantly.

In a spirit of rebellion the villagers refused 'pay their dues' to Baby Bones: not a single goose was left on Crackling Hill. Within twenty-four 'hours, however, Greensmith's infant daughter had drowned in the Water Mill pond. The village priest fell from his horse and lay paralyzed until the day he died. A month later an epidemic of cholera struck Skelbrooke (but not touching any neighboring village or town). By Christmas forty-three of its inhabitants had died and were buried in pits filled with burning lime at the crossroads. Benjamin Greensmith left Skelbrooke on New Year's Day, 1851, an emotionally broken and financially bankrupt man. He would die a year to the day after he killed the orphan boy by swallowing acid.

In order to make amends, little Jess Bowen was exhumed from a pauper's grave and reburied at the village's expense in the Necropolis. The grave was adorned with a formidable granite slab and a rather sentimental statue of a weeping boy. But this charitable act begs the question, were the villagers 'closing the stable door after the horse had bolted?'