“What about the disappearances?”
She hadn’t heard anyone enter the office. She turned. It was the man she had seen arguing with Prior in the street the other week. Whatever his grievance, it was clear the matter hadn’t been resolved; there was a stiffness in his face as he approached and stepped between her and Rachel - and not the slightest acknowledgement of their presence; his attention was solely on Prior.
“I didn’t expect to see you again, Matthew,” Prior said, sighing as he sank back in his chair. “Come to join the lynch mob?”
“What about the people who’ve disappeared since the massacre?” the stranger went on. “I bet you haven’t mentioned that to any of your clients, have you? Anything to make the sale. If anything happens – ”
“Get into the real world, Matthew,” Prior interrupted. “There’s crime everywhere – these things happen, even in the countryside. The disappearances around here have nothing to do with what happened.”
“You don’t give a damn, do you?” the stranger said, leaning forward, his hands resting on the desk. “You don’t have the right to sell property here.”
“That’s where you’re wrong,” Prior responded. “You may have not wanted to sell your land – your choice – but plenty of other people jumped at the chance.”
“I’m not going to let this go.”
Her curiosity compelled her to speak now. “Who are you?”
He righted himself and turned to her, and she caught a flicker of unease in his eyes. “I’m one of the survivors.”
“I hope you don’t mind us talking here,” Matthew said, putting their drinks down. “I always need a whisky after meeting Prior.”
Kara did mind. The pub was surprisingly busy. After the days’ events, the constant chatter and intermittent bursts of laughter from the other customers set her on edge. But she nodded and smiled, and waited until he had gulped down some of his drink before she spoke.
“It’s good of you to talk to us.”
He took a deep breath. “Well, someone owes you the truth,” he said. “You’re not going to get anything out of that bastard Prior. He could have told you everything if he wanted to.”
“Yes,” Kara said, “he’s been selective with the truth. I don’t think we would have moved here if we had known what happened. He should have told us.”
“Bad for business,” he spat out.
There was a pause. There were many questions, but one she couldn’t bring herself to ask – it had been on her mind since they met.
“You want to know how I survived?”
“Yes,” she answered tentatively. “I’m sorry. I know it must be difficult.”
“It’s fine. I can talk about it now,” he reassured her. “A lot of years have gone by.” He took another swig of his drink. “I was only ten at the time. It’s strange…but when I dream about it it’s as though I’m reliving the experience in the now – always running for my life. Does that make sense?”
Kara nodded. “Were you the only one to survive?”
“There were nine survivors,” he answered, averting his eyes momentarily. “We were lucky to get out. Some of the things I saw that night.”
I know what you saw, she thought, suppressing a shiver as she remembered the killings in the church.
“We were asleep – me and my mother and father - when we heard the screams and cries for help. We couldn’t fathom where they were coming from at first – in the distance, in the street outside, the house next door – it took a moment to realize they were coming from everywhere – something was happening in the village. My father took a look out of the bedroom window. I can still see the stark fear in his eyes when he stepped away – no, stumbled back – from the window. He tried to hide it from us, but he wouldn’t stop shaking. He insisted we stay in the bedroom and lock the door while he went downstairs to call for help and barricade the doors and windows.
“He didn’t get the chance. A few minutes later we heard the front door being broken in, and then we heard my father scream.” Matthew’s hand trembled as he went for his glass again – it was empty. He gestured to one of the staff for another; as he waited, he went on. “We could hear someone moving around downstairs, but we knew it wasn’t my father – if you had heard him scream. My mother threw open the window and looked out to make sure it was safe. It was a good few feet from the ground, but there was no other way. She held onto my arms and told me to climb out. I didn’t want to go. I pleaded with her. I was in tears. But she got angry. She said I had to do it for my father. Still crying, I got out. She kissed me on the forehead and held onto me, lowered me as far as she could from the window, and then released me.
I rolled with my fall – just a few cuts and bruises. I looked up to the window and called out to her to come down – and I saw a hand grab her by the neck and pull her back.”
His eyes glistened with tears. He quickly wiped them away as his drink came. Recollecting himself, he continued. “I ran. That was all I could do. I didn’t even know where I was going. I stayed on the main roads until I saw a poor man being dragged out of his house by the arm. His throat was bleeding at the side, and he had other wounds on his head and arms. He was shrieking for help as he struggled to break free – until the bastard who had him slit his throat again. After that, I kept to side roads and the backs of gardens – and, half hidden, I watched more people being slaughtered, and I caught glimpses of the deformed faces of the men who wanted us dead.
“There was no safe place. I thought I could hide in a field but I came across a woman with a baby. She must have had the same idea, but one of the killers had seen her and was following. She pleaded with me to take the baby. She was going to give us time to get away. I obeyed, and I didn’t look back when she screamed.
She did give us time. When I came to the river, I climbed in. At the side of the river bed, I kept my head and the baby a few inches above the water, and I stayed there until morning – until I heard the police calling out and I knew everything was okay.”
“God,” Rachel breathed, staring down at the table. “How – how many people?”
“Four hundred and twenty people were either found dead or went missing,” he answered. “I suppose we were lucky. The coal mine had been closed for a while - many people had moved away; there was nothing left for them. The truth is the village was dead before that night.”
“So many,” Kara said with disbelief, “and it received a few lines in a newspaper. Why?”
“We were on the verge of war. The authorities felt that the public would make a connection between the massacre and our enemies; it would be bad for public morale, and they couldn’t allow that.”
“Are you sure it wasn’t an enemy attack?”
“Yes,” he said, and hesitated as he deliberated whether to go further. But there was more – she knew there was more.
“Who were they?” she pleaded.
He couldn’t meet her eyes, but he answered. “Two youths playing near the mine followed a trail of blood leading out from the entrance and discovered a wild beast they couldn’t identify – it was badly wounded but somehow it had managed to break through the entrance and crawl out. Whatever the beast was, it required eleven men to go out there to contain it, even though it was supposed to be half dead.”
“What – ” The rest of the words were stifled in her throat. He didn’t notice her trying to ask her question, or her hand shaking against her glass and almost knocking it over. Straining for breath, she seized her wrist with her other hand and held it tight on her lap as he continued.
“The men who went out there denied the existence of the animal afterwards – they claimed it was a wild cat. But others had seen the creature before the men got to it, and they insisted, even when they were ridiculed, that it was unlike any beast they had seen before; that it was silent but the men spoke to it – actually spoke to the thing; the same men who attempted to wipe out the village.”
The tremor in her arm swe
lled out and shook violently at the rest of her body – she couldn’t stop shaking. The voices surged up around her – jarring, incoherent – dispersing her thoughts from her mind. But she had to ask another question – she had to know everything, everything there was to know.
“What about the disappearances?” she asked him, and the answer came in his expression – the flicker of fear she had seen before. “You think they’re alive,” she said. “God, you think – you think they’re still alive?”
“Yes,” he answered, meeting her eyes this time. “Why do you think I’ve been trying to stop that fool Prior? Over the past few years there’s been too many disappearances in this area and the nearby town to dismiss as coincidence. The men I saw that night weren’t human anymore – their faces were malformed by some sickness, and they couldn’t be stopped by any weapon. I know they’re still out there. They’re not dead,” he insisted. “They’re not dead.”
"Why aren't you listening to me?”
For the second time, they were at an impasse. When she finally came home Kara recounted everything – it was the proof he needed to believe her, or so she thought. But she was wrong. Honesty didn’t matter. He refused to go any further than the substance of his ordinary world; anything he couldn’t see, touch or hear for himself had no place in his reality and no amount of talking would change that.
In the living-room, it was her turn to stand at the window. Adrian slumped back in his chair and took a sharp intake of breath. “I don’t know what you want from me,” he responded.
Her patience was gone. “I want you to wake up. I don’t understand what more you need to accept something’s wrong here. The fact is hundreds of people were murdered by ten men – you can’t change that – it happened. It explains what I’ve seen – or is it easier to believe I’ve gone insane?”
“Yes, okay, it happened,” he conceded grudgingly. “It was an appalling tragedy, yes, okay. But it doesn’t mean we have to pack up and leave. The past is littered with tragedies – in the city you’re so keen to move back to as well. We’re here now and we have the right to get on with our lives.”
“No,” she yelled, “we don’t have the right. “If those men are still alive – ”
“Listen to yourself,” Adrian interrupted angrily. “If they’re still alive they’re probably too frail to do any harm, and they’re definitely not here anymore – how could they be?”
“The disappearances – ”
“The last one was a year ago, wasn’t it? Two backpackers who probably got lost and had an accident. When was the one before that? Another year? An elderly couple killed by burglars. Everything that’s happened can be explained. They weren’t abducted by zombies.”
“I don’t know what they are, but this has something to do with the creature they found,” she explained cautiously, watching his reaction. “Somehow it altered them.”
“The creature in your dream?” he returned.
“Yes.”
“You’re conjuring demons,” he said, shaking his head. “If you’re unhappy here, be honest – all this bloody rubbish about – ”
“I don’t know why I bothered to tell you,” she retorted. “You can’t think much of me to just dismiss everything so easily.”
“I’m trying to help you.”
“No, you’re not.”
He stood and faced her. “I’m trying to help you,” he repeated, grasping her arm.
She shook herself free and averted her eyes. "Then listen before it’s too late. I’m sorry but what you think doesn’t change a thing. I know something’s happening here, and I'm not sure we can stop it. We shouldn’t have come to this place - I know that now. Whatever happened in the past is still here; it's been waiting all this time. We've woken it up, and it knows we're here."
"But nothing's happened," he argued. "Nothing at all."
"I think it will," she said breathlessly. "It's just a matter of time. I think it will."
There wasn’t enough space.
With an exhalation of breath, Prior leant forward and peered through the windscreen as the thick-leaved, overhanging trees which lined the edges of the road shifted perceptibly inwards, merged overhead and threatened to collapse under their weight and crush him inside the car – or so it appeared, but the trees had been allowed to grow wild – something would have to be done about them.
It didn’t help that it was night and the only source of light came from the car – a smothered light exposing just metres ahead on a winding road with little space – and the thought almost caused him to stop the car as he imagined the blind progress of another vehicle hurtling in the opposite direction toward him.
“Damn it,” he cursed, slamming his hand down on the steering wheel. “Bloody place.”
The time to leave the quaint little village of West Blackstone couldn’t come soon enough as far as he was concerned. He couldn’t understand how anyone could give up the conveniences of the city – public transport, the wide range of retail stores, decent internet and mobile phone access, cinemas and restaurants – for a slow, backward life in the middle of nowhere. God, he was sick of the scenery, and the tediously slow place; and he was sick of the dull, sedate lives of the inhabitants.
The road widened. The car lurched forward as he increased the speed.
Maybe it was time to leave and hire someone else to sell off the remaining properties. There weren’t many left anyway. He had done most of the work and made him and his partners a lot of money – it was time to let go and start enjoying the wealth he had earned. He deserved –
In time, Prior slowed the car as he caught sight of a lone figure at the side of the road ahead of him. As he passed them by, he glanced sideways to take a look, and grimaced with disgust and confusion as a face with distended flesh and sunken eyes gazed back at him. Uneasily, he turned his attention to the rear view mirror. The man was standing there staring after his car.
“For God’s sake,” he muttered, returning his attention ahead of him – and a rasping cry was torn from his throat as another figure sprang out of the trees; startled, staggering back as they heard the car approaching, but instead of retreating, attempting to cross the road. He slammed the brakes down, but it was too late – they were too close. The car struck the man at his side – his head snapped back and his limbs were twisted behind him as he was thrown into the trees. Screeching, the car swerved a full circle before it came to a stop just inches away from a tree.
Shoulders hunched, hands glued to the steering wheel, he rocked himself back and forth as he debated his next move. He didn’t want to get out. There were no witnesses – he could start the car and drive on before anyone arrived on the scene – pray there were no clues they could use to track him down. But the man had been thrown back – maybe, yes, maybe he was okay. It would be better to know. Damn it, he didn’t need this hanging over him; he had to find out. If the man was okay, then fine, he would pay him off and forget about the whole incident; but if he was dead, he would get in the car and drive away, keep his head down until it was over. It wasn’t his fault. The stupid bastard had run out onto the road. He wasn’t going to go down for something that wasn’t his fault.
Labouring for breath, he threw open the door and climbed out of the car, craned his neck as his eyes scanned his surroundings – and located the sprawled form of his victim face down in between two trees. Glancing hastily around him, satisfied he was alone, he rushed to the body and fell to his knees in front of it - and had to steady himself as a rancid stench of decay stung his nostrils. But it couldn’t be the body, not in such a short time. "Don't be dead," he pleaded, seizing the man’s shoulder and turning him over – and snatched his hands back as he noticed the source of the stench; in the man’s face, yellow, discoloured, skin, protrusions of flesh like malignant growths, and bloodless, open wounds exposing bone. He was already dead. But he had seen the man run out in front of him. What the hell was going on? God, was there another body?
“J
ust get away,” he hissed, frowning as he noticed the man’s clothes - a creased, frayed suit smothered with dust. “Just get away.”
Scrambling to his feet, he turned, and found himself staring up at the stranger he had passed on the road, and up at a countenance, he realized, that was too similar to the one behind him. He hadn’t imagined the eyes. Sunken, lined with a grey film, they squirmed in their sockets.
“Stay away,” he warned, stretching out his hand. “Stay – ”
A rustling in the bushes behind him. He didn’t want to turn his back on the threat in front of him – a moment’s hesitation that left him helpless as ice-cold hands locked around his throat, constricting his windpipe and suffocating his breath as they increased their pressure, crushing bone as they lifted him kicking into the air, clawing futilely at the hands, throwing his weight forward in an attempt to wrench himself free.
His efforts became more frantic as the man in front of him reached out with a jagged knife. But again the harm came from behind. He couldn’t even scream as his attacker sank his teeth deep into the side of his face, purposely ripping away flesh, gnawing into the bone – a mouth burying itself into the wound to draw in the blood. Convulsing with shock, he didn’t even see the man in front of him thrusting the knife into his chest and immediately driving it down to his abdomen.
Lifeless, Prior’s body slipped to the ground. His attackers dropped to their knees and began to feed.
They all came to see.
The vehicle was towed pass their home in the morning, followed by two police cars. Seeing everything from the front garden, she went into the house and called out to Adrian as she put on her coat. But he had seen it from the bedroom window, and he was right behind her as she rushed out of the door.
The sight drew the attention of the other villagers. In the peace and quiet of the village, this was an intrusion – an unwelcome reminder that nowhere was safe, and they came out of their houses and followed the slow-moving vehicles, conversing with each other in subdued voices – some huddled together and their heads lowered like mourners in a funeral procession.