Darkness Demands Part 41

"I'll call if I see him," John said. "Goodbye."

Elizabeth made no mention of the call. She stared through the windshield lost in a world of her own. He drove out to rejoin the lane once more. His hand went automatically to the light stalk. A cloud nearer to purple than black had loomed over the horizon to kill the sun, prematurely curtailing the once bright summer evening. They drove down the lane to be swallowed by shadow.

2.

"Dad, stop!"

Short of running Miranda Bloom down he had to stop. She'd stood in the road to wave them down.

Now she came up to the driver's door, her dark eyes doom laden.

"I need to get to the hospital to see Paul," she said quickly. "But the buses don't seem to be running."

"I'm sorry, I'm not going straight to the hospital tonight." A white lie. He wasn't going at all.

"Please. I want to see Paul. I've been going out of my mind with worry ever since I heard."

"Dad, take her," Elizabeth pleaded. "Let her see Paul."

"All right." He opened the rear door for her, then moved the dog to the farside of the rear seat so she could climb in. "Hang on. We're in a hurry."

He'd only gone about a hundred yards or so when he pa.s.sed Robert Gregory in the car. Stan Price sat in the pa.s.senger seat. Neither noticed John.

That's quick, John told himself. At least that was one less thing for him to worry about. Robert Gregory had found Stan. The old gent couldn't have wandered far, after all.

As he drove he glanced in the rearview mirror. Now that was odd. In fact, it didn't make any sense at all. Robert Gregory's indicator lights were flashing. But the wrong ones.

Instead of turning left to drive home to Ezy View in the village, he'd turned right onto a dirt track. And as far as John knew the track led up alongside the cemetery. Nowhere else.

The time approached 9:15. The gloom deepened enough to activate streetlights.

So what on Earth was Robert playing at? Why was he driving the old man up to the Necropolis?

John shook his head. Luckily that's one mystery he didn't have to solve. Hitting the gas, he accelerated away from Skelbrooke and the glowering mound of the Necropolis.

3.

Robert Gregory panted with fear and excitement. No mistakes this time. The dashboard clock read 9:19. As if on cue, dusk drew a veil over the face of the cemetery.

He stopped the car at a gap in the railings. In a separate compartment of his mind he rehea.r.s.ed the story he would tell the police. At the same time he leaned across the old man to open the pa.s.senger door.

Stan's face bled pure bewilderment. Dementia had him in its iron grip again.

"Why are we here?" he muttered. "It's so dark."

"You wanted to see Harry, Dad." Robert smiled. "He's here."

"Harry?"

"Sure."

"Harry? But Ia" Confusion quivered in his eyes. "Ia someone told me Harry had dieda I remember a funeral."

"Now, Dad. What kind of ridiculous talk is that?"

"But it's been so long since I've seen Harry."

"I know it. That's why I've brought you here to see him. He's up there on the hill waiting for you." As Robert helped the old man out of the car he could see doubt seesawing with hope in his expression. "Harry's come a long way, Dad. You don't want to miss him."

"No, I don't, do I?"

With that little shuffling step of his Stan Price pa.s.sed through the gap in the fence into the graveyard.

Robert Gregory waited a few moments. Then he followed.

4.

"Dad, what are you doing?" Elizabeth had to hang onto her seatbelt as John U-turned the car with a screech of tires on hot tar. In the back the dog slipped sideward, too, to go sprawling over Miranda's lap.

John's voice was tight. "I need to check on something."

Miranda leaned forward. "Mr. Newton, aren't you going to take me to see, Paul?"

"It won't take a couple of minutes."

This is crazy, he told himself. You need to put as many miles as possible between Elizabeth and Skelbrooke. You're no knight in shining armor. But guilt would gnaw him to the bone because he knew what was going to happen to old Stan Price. It made perfect sense now. Robert Gregory had made that telephone call to John for Cynthia Gregory's benefit, pretending concern that Stan had wandered away from home again. That was all part of the alibi. Robert, no doubt, had already left Stan someway from the house in a place where he could easily find him. Then he'd told Cynthia he'd go look for him. Moments later he'd collected Stan, now he was driving him to the cemetery. And, G.o.d knows, the Necropolis is a lethal place after dark.

All the clues were there. Gregory planned Stan's death. The police would hear a verifiable story of an old man lost in his own world of dementia, who would wander away from the house. Only one evening he wandered away to meet with a fatal accident. And, hey presto, Robert not only gets away with murder, he inherits Stan's fortune.

The dash clock pulsed 9:22.

A poet once wrote about 'time's maggot on my back.' John Newton felt that now. He felt a wormy, itchy presence there. Less than three hours to midnight.

Both Elizabeth and Miranda were shooting him anxious looks as if asking themselves whether he'd gone mad. And when he swung the car right, bouncing it along the dirt track their expressions of anxiety turned to alarm.

"Don't worry," he told them. "This should only take a minute."

Seconds later, he saw Robert Gregory's car parked just yards from the gap in the cemetery fence.

Stopping, John killed the motor. An unearthly silence stole into the car. This was a lonely place at night. There were no houses nearby. No people. A great hush had settled across the graveyard. Trees stood guard as towering black forms. The sky had darkened, too, the low, oppressive cloud making itself felt rather than seen.

He wound down the window. Hot night air poured across his face as if to steal the breath from his lungs. Breathing in deeply he grimaced as pain bit into his ribs.

For a moment he stared through the railings into the cemetery. There was no sign of the two men. Gregory must have taken Stan Price deep inside, well away from prying eyes.

John knew if he was to save Stan he had to catch up with Gregory fast. He pulled a penlight from the shelf under the dash.

"Elizabeth. Miranda. I need you to stay here for a few minutes."

"Mr. Newton," Miranda's voice wavered. "What's happening? Where are you going?"

"I'm trying to stop something bad from happening." He wiped the sweat from his eyes. "Will you wait here with Elizabeth?"

From the gloom in the back of the car Miranda nodded. Clearly she wasn't happy with the situation, but she'd stick it out. As he climbed out of the car, Sam made as if to follow from the back seat. "No, boy. You stay here-look after everyone."

"Dad?" In the dark, Elizabeth was little more than a ghostly silhouette from which two bright blue eyes regarded him. "Dad, you won't be long, will you?"

The clock read 9:24. "No. I won't be long."

He returned to the car for a moment where she encircled his neck with her arms, hugging him tightly, her cheek smooth against his. "I love you, Dad."

"I love you too, hon." Leaving her at that moment was such a wrench. An aching sense of loss nearly overwhelmed him. "We'll soon be on our way again, hon. Now, lock the doors. I'll see you soon."

She locked the doors from the inside.

As he moved toward the gap in the fence, he glanced back. Her face hung there in the gloom of the car like a white disk. The last thing he wanted to do was leave her. But then he couldn't sit back while the greedy, loathsome Robert Gregory murdered Stan Price.

Like he was diving into a pool of bubbling sulfur, John gritted his teeth before plunging into the cemetery. He walked quickly, not risking running now that the light was all but gone. Grave after grave squatted there in the dark with all the menace of crouching demons. Trees arched over him like monstrous arms thrust upward from out of the earth.

His eyes adjusting to the gloom, he quickened his step. Nevertheless, the grave world he now entered was a disordered ma.s.s of shadows, grays, blacks. The day's heat had squeezed a bitter smell from the plants that irritated the back of his throat. When he coughed his ribs burnt with the white fire of agony.

Trying to quell pain by sheer willpower, he threaded his way among dark islands of stinging nettle. As he walked, rotted Christs watched him pa.s.s with their dead, stone eyes. Gra.s.s stalks caught his feet like so many tentacles that had wormed their way from coffins below the sod. Already dark forces, it seemed, were intent on slowing him down.

His imagination, swollen by the pain in his side, and the torrent of events over the last forty-eight hours, supplied leprous images-of tentacle vines, erupting from the ground to entwine around him, snaring his throat, whipping round his arms and legs before pulling him down into the dirt where coffins swam through their subterranean world like predatory beasts.

He tripped over an angel that had fallen into long gra.s.s. The shock of stumbling to his knees mutated into explosive pain in his ribs. He gagged. Pain became a solid presence that squeezed up through his throat to choke him. For a moment he lay face down in the gra.s.s, struggling to breathe. Every breath plunged him deeper into mindless agony.

It took a full minute to pull his scattered senses together, then rise to his feet.

Time's running out on you, John. Time's running out. Robert's going to crack the old man's skull like an egg, while you crawl about the graveyard like a mewling pup.

Coughing dirt from his mouth, he stumbled to his feet, gagging again on the pain spearing his side.

Gotta move faster, John Newton. Time's maggot is writhing on your back. Midnight's rolling this way like a runaway train. Baby Bones ain't going to be content to stay lonesome forever. Gotta move, John. Gotta move now.

This time he moved at a run toward the heart of the graveyard that waited like a dark phantom with its arms wide. Waiting for him to enter its lethal embrace.

5.

"Harry, is that you? Come closer, I can't see you in the dark?" Stan Price had made it to the top of the Necropolis hill. His legs trembled with the effort. Gloom encircled him, while row upon row of tombstones bore all the noxious presence of decaying teeth. A night bird cried; then again, it might have been the cry of an abandoned baby. After all, the fruit of more than one unwanted pregnancy had been left here before now.

Stan moved on, snapping sticks beneath his feet as if he walked on tiny ribcages.

Snapa snapa SNAP!

Then a thin, hurting cry. Some night predator had found its prey in the dark.

"Harry? Harry?" Stan's voice came as hoa.r.s.e whisper. "Harry. Are you there?"

By now Stan had reached the lip of the cliff. Thirty feet beneath him the maze of burial vaults formed a city within the city of the dead. Pa.s.sageways were ca.n.a.ls filled with shadow. A dark shape moved along one of them.

He moved closer to the edge of the cliff so he could look down at that shape swimming through darkness toward the ramp. The sheer drop plunged away just inches from his feet. "Harry. Is that you?"

A rustle came from Stan's right. He turned to see a figure staring at him from the bushes.

CHAPTER 39.

John Newton moved into the gulf of shadow that was the Vale Of Tears. Adrenaline powered him through the maze of tombs. Door after door flashed by him at enormous speed. Once his hand accidentally brushed a door. The iron chimed with a haunting note, like a gigantic bell touched by a padded hammer.

Through sweat-blurred eyes he glanced at his watch. 9:29. Minutes were racing by. Now he could all but see the hour of midnight hanging over the Necropolis on a vast pair of leathery wings.

But he had a plan. A clear plan. And, good G.o.d, it was simplicity itself. He'd catch up with Robert Gregory. Grab the jerk by the scruff of his neck, warn him if anything happened to the old man then he, John Newton, would see he went to jail for it. Secondly, after leaving Miranda at the hospital gates, he'd race Elizabeth to the airport for the next flight out. If he could put an ocean between Elizabeth and that dark pus-ball of evil inside that hill, then everything would be all right. A billion gallons of salt water would break its hold on the Newton family. Herbert Kelly had beaten the monster. Now so could he.

Sometimes cannoning off the walls like a flesh-bone pinball he moved deeper into the Vale of Tears. Robert Gregory would take Stan to the high ground, he reasoned. A lethal fall would be the murder weapon.

The sound of his own breathing thundered in his ears. He labored to draw enough air into his lungs. But each breath killed him by inches. His cracked ribs shrieked their protest as his lungs pressed against them.