The villagers gathered around the vehicles as they came to a stop in the village square, and watched as police officers got out, and a tall, lanky man in plainclothes, with a frown set into his features, proceeded to throw out orders to the officers with brusque gestures, making not the least effort to moderate his ill temper as he threw out orders to the compliant officers.
Kara recognised the towed car; she had seen it outside Prior’s office enough times. Without a word to Adrian, she pushed through the crowd until she was close enough to inspect the car. The fender was dented. There were dark red stains over the front. This was the confirmation – an indisputable manifestation from the past had finally reached out into their waking world to make itself known to them.
"They are here," she said, her voice sinking to a whisper before she finished, as though she were afraid they would hear her. But it was real - the murderers in her visions and nightmares were more than phantoms now, and she couldn’t rid herself the sensation that they were there with them - watching, listening, waiting.
"Kara, no,” Adrian warned, standing at her side. “I know what you think this is. Please, let’s not jump to conclusions."
"What else is it then?" she argued, turning on him. “For God’s sake, Adrian, you can see the truth for yourself now.”
"All I see is a car that’s been in an accident," he answered steadily.
“The blood – ”
“He could have hit an animal.”
"So where is he? He wouldn’t have just abandoned his car.”
“How do you know?” Adrian countered. “Maybe the car was stuck somewhere and he had no choice. Maybe he got into a fight with a dissatisfied customer – maybe they killed him”
“You’re not taking this seriously.”
“My point is,” he said firmly, “is that anything could have happened – you don’t know the facts yet.”
“I know what I need to know,” she said through clenched teeth, and a decision was made in her mind. “I’m going to say something.”
"Kara, no," he pleaded. But she wasn’t listening. Her concentration was on the man she had seen issuing orders, and, swearing, he could only follow as she made her way toward him.
"Officer," she called out, and realized she had made a mistake. A flash of anger crossed his face as he swung round to face her.
"Detective Inspector," he corrected her, with a restrained glance at his officers. "Detective Inspector Richard Thomson."
"I’m sorry," she said hastily. "Did something happen to Steve Prior?"
His eyes narrowed on her. "What's your relationship with Steve Prior, Miss...?"
"I'm Kara Lewis," she replied. "This is my husband, Adrian. We bought our house from Mr Prior." She pointed to the front of the car. “Those are bloodstains, aren’t they?”
"We’ve still got tests to do,” he said irritably. “Please let us do the detective work. We'll try and keep everyone in the village updated."
And then he turned his back to them.
Her face reddened. "There’s stuff you don’t know,” she went on, keeping her voice steady. “I think it’s in your interest to listen to me.”
It was enough to get his attention. He turned around. “Well, what do you know that might be of help?”
“Do you know about the other disappearances in the town and village?”
"Yes, I do," he answered, thoughtfully. "Why?"
"Don't you think there might be a connection?"
He shook his head. "I'm afraid that's a wild assumption. They all took place under different circumstances. There have also been significant gaps of time between each incident."
"There might also be other disappearances you don't know about," she argued. "Don’t you think it’s worth investigating?"
"Why?" he said bluntly. "Tell me why you think there’s a connection.”
She paused. As she deliberated how to tell him, Adrian grasped her arm. “Don’t – ”
“Do you know about the villagers before us – the massacre?”
“Yes,” he said, with a trace of a smile on his lips. “I can assure you that what happened here has nothing to do – ”
“It has everything to do with it,” she broke in, unable to control her anger. “Don’t you see? The men who committed the murders are still alive.”
There might have been a better way to tell him, but it was too late. His face tensed. “We’re busy, you know. Please don’t waste police time with this nonsense. We’ll be making door to door enquiries if we need any more information. Goodbye.”
“Please,” she pleaded.
But Thomson had already moved as far from her as he could, and, keeping his distance, he deliberately avoided eye contact as he continued to issue orders to his officers.
“What did you think was going to happen?" Adrian said quietly, after they had stood there for a moment.
Her heart was thudding in her chest. Involuntarily, catching her breath, she stared down at the blood on Prior’s car again, and the significance of her failure sank in – another massacre waiting to happen.
"What am I supposed to do?” she cried, suddenly. “Stand back and wait for more people to die to prove I’m right?
"I don't understand how you can be so sure there's more to this," he said honestly. "It seems to me you're seeing demons where there aren't any - you want so much to believe they exist."
"Is that what you think? If I could show you..." Her voice faltered with a sudden realization, an incongruous thought that refused to leave. But if there was a chance – if it would give him the proof he needed. "If I could show you, you'd believe me," she said, finally, still absorbing the idea in her mind. "You'd have to believe me."
His eyes widened. "How on earth are you going to do that?"
"I'm going to raise the dead for you."
It was past two. If it was going to happen, it was going to be soon.
Standing at the back of the living-room, waiting in silence, watching the window where the apparition of the woman had appeared, with the lights switched off, they were like strangers, intruders in their own home. But since she discovered the truth she had ceased to think of the place as their home. The house had never really belonged to them – it belonged to the woman who had lived and died on the land before them. The truth was the whole village had become a graveyard for the people who been murdered. Unless things were put right, there would be no peace for the living or the dead.
There had to be a pattern to the haunting – she was depending on it. What was it Rachel had said, that traumatic events could leave impressions on their environment – recordings waiting to be replayed – waiting for a trigger, a sensitive, or simply waiting for the time of the event – an echo from the past playing itself out repeatedly, with or without witnesses, unable to stop.
"Kara, nothing’s going to happen,” Adrian said, checking his watch and leaning back onto the wall. “I can’t believe I let you persuade me to do this. This is a waste of time.”
Kara opened her mouth to answer, and stiffened as the temperature inside the room dropped steeply. “Wait,” she urged, overcoming the compulsion to keep silent, her voice wavering. “I think she’s – ”
He gripped her shoulder as a semi-transparent shadow-form, with the barest impression of a face – melted eyes and strands connecting the upper and lower parts lips of its mouth - glided into the room and toward the window. As it moved, the entire room – the colour and patterns on the walls, every object and piece of furniture – reeled backward and forward between their own possessions and a stranger's, passing intangibly and swapping places for a fraction of a second. When the apparition stopped in front of the window the room settled and returned to normal. But the apparition itself was undergoing a metamorphosis – liquefying as it squirmed in every direction, erupting with self-contained bursts of light which tore parts of it open, and eventually suffused its entire form, rapidly subsiding to leave the presence of the woman.
> Glancing nervously over her shoulder, the woman’s eyes searched the room, but swept over them as if they weren’t there. Then something else absorbed her attention. With a judder, she pressed the palms of her hands on the window and leaned forward, stared out into the garden.
"How can she be there?" Adrian whispered. He let go of her, and, with his head tilted to the side, reached out and took a step toward the woman.
"Stay away from her," Kara cautioned. "If she’s here, he’ll be coming soon."
He had forgotten the other intruder. Drawing back, he swung around, ashen-faced, his eyes blazing. "He's coming, isn't he?" His voice was hoarse. "What do we do? We can’t stay here.”
"He can’t hurt us," she insisted. "All of this is part of the past – it’s already happened."
“But not with us in it,” he countered. “Are you sure he can’t hurt us? This feels too real. We need to get away.”
"He can't hurt us," she repeated. “Just stay calm.”
“How can I stay calm? Look, you’ve made your point – I believe you. Let’s just get – ”
“No,” Kara cried. “I won’t go.” She pointed at the woman. “We can’t run away from this,” she went on steadily. “This is our chance to learn more. You have to let me do this. We’re running out of time.”
He remained unconvinced, but nodded shakily. “Hurry.”
With her sight fixed steadfastly on the woman, trying not to look past her to search for the intruder outside, Kara took a step forward. “Who are you?” she called out. “Please, you have to talk to us.”
There was no answer, but her nails scraped against the glass and she bent her head closer – her eyes were following something outside.
“Do you know you’re dead?” Kara went on. “Do you know what happened to you? What do you remember?”
A heavy thud close to the window sent the woman stumbling back, her hands stretched out in front of her. Catching her balance, she turned around, her eyes dilated and staring at them – an acknowledgement overridden by an escalating fear which shook her body uncontrollably.
“You know what’s out there,” Kara said urgently. “You tried to warn me last time. “Those men – they slaughtered most of the people in the village – you died as well. None of you have been able to find peace since then. Can you tell us what’s happening here? Are those men still out there? Do you know where they are?”
She had her attention now. Straining to breathe, listening, the woman took a deliberate step toward her.
"If you’re aware of us, you must be able to tell us something," Kara begged. "Please, we’re running out of time."
"Kara," Adrian shouted.
Emerging from the darkness, the man’s malformed face appeared at the window. They saw his fist coming forward, but there was no time to get away before the window was smashed – glass exploded into the room, showering them with shards, stinging and slicing into the skin, as real as anything could be.
“Kara,” Adrian called out again.
They reached out to each other – another shower of glass separated them, threw them back. Adrian made another attempt to reach her, and it was then the woman, standing and watching in all the confusion – an inexplicable action that should have registered as a warning – lunged at her with a drawn-out cry, clutched her shoulders and thrust her back toward the window as the man climbed into the room.
The past couldn't hurt them.
Defiantly, her mind held onto the belief as the man struck her across the head with his fist. The force of the blow sent her stumbling backward to the ground. Head reeling, she struggled to lift herself up – in time to see Adrian rushing at the man before she could stop him. He was thrown against the wall. His eyes rolled back in his head as he lost consciousness and sank to the ground.
The woman had escaped; she had left them to die in her place. Baring his teeth in a grin, the man reached down and clutched her arm, lifted her up just inches and clenched his other hand into a fist. Despite the taste of blood in her mouth, as she looked up into the ruined eyes, she still couldn’t accept it was happening, that an echo from the past was capable of hurting them.
His fist came down.
There was blood in her eyes.
The blood spilled from the wound on her scalp, shifting and blurring her sight intermittently – dripping profusely, it left a trail as the ground, constantly changing, rushed by beneath her.
It took a moment to realize what was happening. She was over the man’s shoulder - his arm was clinched around her waist, and as he pressed on heavily and tirelessly to their destination, her efforts to move were overcome by a wave of nausea which drained and incapacitated her limbs.
They came onto a road. With her sight on the ground, there were glimpses of mutilated and bloodied bodies – and then they passed a man sobbing on his knees, pleading for his life until his throat was slit open.
From everywhere, there were cries for help or mercy – relentless death screams which were cut off abruptly. Turning her head sideways, she saw a woman with a baby keeping inside the shadows of the buildings, disappearing into a side road, and she remembered the woman who had given Matthew – Matthew the boy - her baby to save.
An involuntarily moan escaped from her lips as they passed another dead body. One of the murderers was on his knees in front of it, ripping open a wound in the stomach with his hands and bending down to feed on the flesh.
Their recklessness had brought the murderers to the village - people were being slaughtered and it was their fault. But, no, it couldn’t be – everything about it jarred in her consciousness. This was the old village - the window displays in the shops didn’t belong to the present – and the people’s clothes. This was the past, and it wasn’t her abduction. The woman had changed places with her and made her a witness to the massacre – it was happening again so she could see.
They left the village behind. The cries and screams went on, and she heard them even when they had made some distance – as the man continued on the same road, out in the open, with no one else to disturb him. But there had to be a destination; if there wasn’t, she wouldn’t be alive.
Abruptly, he went off the road, and proceeded to work his way through a maze of thin trees and thick underbrush. But it wasn’t unknown terrain; parts of her surroundings were familiar.
She knew where they were going.
On the familiar narrow path, on the side of the steep hill, he made his way round the hillside until he came to the entrance to the coalmine. The gate was wide open, secured to the hinges, and on it hung the “Keep Out” sign; the same worn sign she had seen discarded on the ground in the present.
He stooped down and carried her into the pitch-black tunnels. Footfalls in the near distance echoed back to them, and then screams which ended abruptly – a moment which pumped the adrenalin through her body and galvanized her into action, because she knew what waited for her. Squirming against his grip, she groped blindly in the dark until she found the back of his neck, and scraped her nails repeatedly against his skin, and then his scalp, and then pulled at his hair – anything to break his concentration, make him loosen his grip – a chance to escape. But her frantic efforts had no discernible effect; if he felt any pain, he refused to acknowledge it.
Ahead, the commotion in the mine grew steadily louder – shoes scraped against the ground, dull thumps reverberated around the walls – a subdued sobbing was muffled into silence. The man slowed his pace, and then the hidden sounds were all around them, shifting continually, with an inexplicable purpose, in every direction.
And then her abductor stopped.
Without warning, he released her and threw her forward. Tumbling blindly, she raised her arms to her face; rolling across the ground, something sharp pierced the side of her leg – she pulled herself free with a stifled scream, and scrambled on her hands and knees in search of a safe place. But after only a few feet her hand reached out over the unmistakea
ble shape of a face. It was drenched in liquid. The mouth was opened too wide. Part of its neck was missing.
Kara shrank back in convulsions, and froze as a dull light in the distance advanced towards her, followed by another, and then another; with their approach, suffusing and lightening the details in her surroundings, uncovering a place that shouldn’t have been familiar but was – it was the place she had visited in her nightmares; a rock-hewn, large, circular open space with a tunnel ahead, feeding the light, and a tunnel on either side of her.
But there was more.
Around the circle, bodies were piled up on top of each other against the walls like carcasses in an abattoir. Some had their wrists and ankles tied together with thick cord; there were flesh wounds where they had struggled against their restraints – like her, they had been alive when they had been brought into the coalmine. Studying the corpses, she noticed they had sustained different types of injuries, but every one of them had their throat slit – a systematic method of death.
But death wasn’t the end here. The repellent marks of mutilation went further than lacerated flesh and deep gashes inflicted by weapons. There were other cavernous wounds that couldn’t have been caused by any kind of weapon – far too crude and with unmistakeable impressions. The flesh had been gnawed - in some cases, to the bone. The dead were food for the wolves.
Although fluctuating, the light now occupied every space. Their hands dripping with blood, the abductors carried or dragged their victims to the walls of the confined space to add to the stockpile of bodies. Bile rose to her throat as she caught sight of a man’s hand twitching; she hadn’t expected any of them to be alive. But his arm was half severed from his shoulder, and he was bleeding profusely. He was as good as dead.
There couldn’t be much time left – soon it would be her turn. The only reason she was alive was because they were certain she would just sit and wait until it was her turn to die. But she had to do something. Her only chance of escape was through one of the other tunnels – it had to be now.