Dark Harbour: The Tale of the Soul Searcher (17 page)

Anger erupted on Tyler’s snarling face. ‘I knew you bastards would come for me again!’

Vladimir shook his head. ‘You need to come with us, Tyler,’ he tried to roar back at him. ‘You’re in danger.’

Tyler could not hear him and so continued with the conversation he was having. ‘I have a message for you and your band, Vladimir. You may think you’re the most powerful in this town, but you’re wrong.’

He pulled the trigger. Again and again and again. Six times in all. Six bullets, spinning through the air at over three hundred metres per second towards their target: Vladimir.

Bullets would cut through his clothes, penetrate his flesh, slice open blood vessels, fracture bone, and lodge within his internal organs. Six pieces of lead compound that within this infinitesimal fraction of time could spell nothing but doom for the person that stood in their way.

But they were only bullets. They were only deadly because of their physical properties, densely ordered material vibrating at a tightly packed level. Beyond an atomic level, they were composed of nothing different from anything else within Vladimir’s existence. The clothes on his back, the floor beneath his feet, the air between he and Tyler. It was all energy, just of varying vibrations within the light continuum.

The fact that these bullets were hurtling through the air towards him was only a problem because one particular vibration of energy was about to collide with a significantly different vibration of energy. If only one of those vibrations could briefly
change
into a different level, a higher level…

The DJ killed the music and the club was filled with the sound of screaming as people tried to escape.

One person who was not running, however, was Tyler. He was anchored to the spot, staring at the person in front of him who should now be lying on the ground in a pool of blood. But Vladimir was still standing as composed and as strong as he was before.

He calmly stepped up to Tyler and removed the gun from his hand.

‘Tyler, it is you who are wrong,’ he said to him as he threw the gun aside.

Jake and Clint appeared back at Vladimir’s side, a little ruffled but unfazed. The thugs had been dealt with swiftly and all nine of them now lay bloodied and bruised on the floor.

They both grabbed Tyler’s arms to drag him away, but he was too stunned to put up any resistance. And so, as calmly as they’d walked in, they now walked out with their Kolley.

Chapter 4.4

In the staff carpark at the back of the nightclub, Jake and Clint were making Tyler very sorry for firing his gun at them. Clint held him with his good arm while Jake jabbed away at Tyler’s ribs.

‘Okay, that’s enough, guys,’ Vladimir bellowed, his arms folded. ‘Let’s save the rest for later.’

Clint released Tyler and he collapsed to the ground, his mouth full of blood. He clambered on to all fours while he groaned and wheezed.

Jake could not resist the perfect opportunity to kick him while he was down, and sent his right foot flying into his already broken ribs. Tyler rolled over onto the ground whimpering.

‘Jake! That’s enough!’ Vladimir commanded.

Jake backed off as Vladimir walked over to Tyler and crouched beside him. Tyler had started to mutter to himself, that strange tongue that he often spoke in.

‘What the hell happened in there anyway? How did he miss?’ Clint asked.

‘Blanks,’ Tyler answered for Vladimir. ‘They loaded me with blanks…’ He again slipped into his secret language.

‘This was no fucking blank!’ Clint moaned, raising his arm.

Vladimir looked closely into his eyes. ‘What’s this crap you speak, Tyler?’

The scoundrel broke off from his incoherent babbling and focussed on Vladimir’s inquisitive eyes above him. ‘You would not understand.’

There was resignation in his voice, resignation to the fate that had been delivered by the man before him.

Vladimir looked him over with disdain. He was such a sad excuse of a human. Such a waste of a soul. ‘Why did you ever come here?’

Tyler propped himself up as his eyes suddenly became very wild. ‘A dreadful fight rages behind, in the head,’ he spat from his slimy tongue.

A shudder coursed through Vladimir’s blood but he did not know why. He broke his gaze from him and stood up. He was sick of looking into the eyes of such a waster. ‘Stand up. It’s time to go.’

Tyler gingerly hobbled to his feet like a newborn deer finding its feet for the first time. ‘I know why you came for me. I know what you want from me.’

Vladimir slowly turned.

‘My father spoke of it for years. Back home. Back there he told me all the stories. Everything there was to know. Including… where to find it. There was just one piece of advice he gave me which I wish I had listened to: When you find it, don’t tell anyone.’

Vladimir heard a soft thud. A bullet hole appeared in the perfect centre of Tyler’s forehead and his eyes pointed inwards as he toppled to the ground.

Vladimir looked to Clint and then to Jake to see which one had shot him. They were both empty handed. He turned around. There stood a man in a lopsided trilby. He was holding a silenced SIG Mosquito that had a wisp of smoke at the end. His other hand was stuffed casually in his pocket, as though he’d been shooting ducks at a fairground.

Lucas Duffy, or The ‘Dim’ Reaper as was the name that everyone called him by, was usually a private operative in Dark Harbour who provided the ultimate revenge service that the Fires stopped short of offering.

‘Now move away from the body, you three fine young chaps, you. Don’t want to make this look like a Tarantino film set.’

Vladimir didn’t move.

‘Now, I know they call me dim, but I’m not that dim that I don’t know it’s not a good thing to have a
facking
gun pointed at you. So, like I said, move away from the pretty boy with the Colgate smile there.’

Duffy always spoke in a dull whine, which was probably what gave him his nickname. Behind his spectacles, a pair of thin eyes squinted at Vladimir. The Dim Reaper was not really a fool though. He was another one of those black souls, like Floyd, only with a brain, and an annoyingly colourful mouth. He was a slight of a man, barely five and a half feet tall. With his Magnum P.I. moustache and his dull features, The Dim Reaper looked more like a secondary school teacher than a cold-blooded assassin.

‘Who are you working for?’ Vladimir brazenly asked him.

Duffy cocked his gun impatiently.

‘Come on, Vlad. Don’t push your luck,’ Clint said.

‘Well said, Clint. Ever the hero, I see. I’ll make sure to kill you quickly.’

Vladimir noticed that Duffy still had the gun aimed at him. He wanted to keep it that way.

‘I ain’t afraid of you, bozzo,’ Vladimir said as he knelt down beside Tyler.

Jake edged closer to Duffy.

‘No, who’s going to be scared of a
facking
gun?’ Duffy whined on. ‘I say, John? John? You’ll give me an autograph, won’t you? I say, Pelé! No running in the London Underground, you hear?’

Vladimir zoned him out as he looked at the corpse. Tyler’s dentally deficient mouth was open but for once it was not forming a grin. Vladimir grabbed the collars on Tyler’s shirt and yanked it apart.

‘Hello? Are you listening to me?’

Resting on Tyler’s chest was a necklace, of a wooden cord holding a dull, indigo coloured gemstone shaped like a shark’s tooth.

‘My God!’ Jake muttered. ‘That’s…’

‘Mine,’ Duffy said.

Vladimir tore the necklace from Tyler’s body and held it very close to his eyes. He needed a good look at this thing. This was the culmination of the thread Henry had been following for the past ten months. Right in his hand he held the very thing that Henry had been searching for.

‘All right then, Vladimir, old chap, give it to me,’ Duffy said to him as he stormed up to him and rested the gun behind his head.

‘You’d shoot me for this?’

‘That’s not my penis you can feel on your neck.’

‘Have it,’ Vladimir spat back as he threw the necklace on the ground. ‘Let’s get out of here,’ he said to his colleagues as he began walking away.

Raising his eyebrows, Duffy eventually aimed his gun at Jake next. They weren’t going to pull any moves. Despite his nonchalant manner, The Dim Reaper was a cold professional who killed everyone and anyone he needed to in order to complete his work. It didn’t matter who it was. If an innocent child was in the way then Duffy was sure to blow its brains out like he was swatting a fly.

‘You heard the man,’ Duffy prompted.

Besides, if they resisted now it would mess up Vladimir’s plan of pretending that the stone was worthless, Vladimir’s bluff, or whatever it was. They retreated.

Jake jogged up to Vladimir and said: ‘So?’

‘So, what?’ Vladimir replied.

‘What the hell are we going to tell Henry?’

‘We had no choice.’

‘Vladimir, don’t you realise what that was? You just gave him the Akasa Stone!’

‘Oh, Jake,’ Vladimir replied, shaking his head as he would have done to a mischievous little kitten. ‘It seems I haven’t trained you as well as I thought.’

Chapter 4.5

At a quarter to four that morning Henry was still awake. Having been debriefed about the operation by Vladimir and Jake, he’d then gone to his eighteenth century Georgian home where he’d lived alone for the past thirteen years. It was located in the countryside of one of the quiet villages a few miles inland from the town.

Henry had poured himself a glass of Cognac and put on one of his Mozart CDs. He sat out on the balcony of his bedroom, staring out across the clear skies onto one half of the universe. Looking into the infinity of space helped give Henry some perspective. It helped remind him that nothing really mattered, if only he could really buy into that idea all the time.

The Andante of Mozart’s Number 21 Piano Concerto also helped to comfort him. Mozart’s infamous piece, which was often found in Henry’s player, was the arrangement that Henry believed was the purest cry from the composer’s tortured soul.

From one soul who had died over two hundred years ago, to the soul that sat on the balcony of a house built sometime during his life, Henry could feel the profundity of frustration that resounded behind each of the punctuating beats of the orchestra, as the gentle, listless music breezed along. That was the genius of Mozart’s work: a playful, reverent spirit on the surface that belied the burning frustration that churned within, glimpses of which appeared when the improvised piano solo would suddenly become agitated and scramble into action with its introspective melody of sadness.

All along, the orchestra kept its gentle pulse, the pulse of life that continued to beat whatever happened: the wind that would always blow, the trees that would always sway in it, the waves that would always sweep up and down the beaches. The harmony of life always existed whatever the people around it were going through. People could slip from playing their tune of the same rhythm into playing their tunes of desperation, crying out to the universe for help.

Although he had died over two hundred years ago, Mozart’s soul was the only one that at this exact moment echoed that of Henry’s.

It just wasn’t fair. The Fires had got there first. Vladimir had the Akasa Stone in his very hands before it was snatched from him!

He knew all about that Dim Reaper bastard who’d stolen it, but surely they could have put up
some
resistance towards him. Since when did the Fires become walkovers? And Henry had sent the cream of the organisation. Not that he would have wanted any of his boys to be harmed in the process of obtaining the Akasa Stone.

He didn’t expect them to understand the stone’s real importance though. Vladimir may be clever and he may be perceptive, but he was still young. He couldn’t properly understand what it was about this stone that made Henry want it so badly.

Where he went from here, Henry did not know at all. The stars filled his eyes, the piano concerto filled his ears, and the brandy settled his stomach, but Henry knew that he wouldn’t find answers in any of these things. Only comfort.

As the Andante moved on to the Allegro, Henry retired into his bedroom. When he got into bed the stars would eventually fade from the sky as the April sun would slowly rise to burn off the morning dew. He would wake the next day and life would go on.

The stars would be back again tomorrow night.

Part 5: Encounters

Chapter 5.1

Danny thought that the universe was conspiring against him. He’d done everything he could think of. He’d tried to lose himself in his college work, he’d been hanging out with his friends more than ever, and he’d even stopped catching that damned 1906 bus.

But still there was no escaping her. In a town the size of this one, it must have been a mathematical miracle the number of times that their paths would cross. She just seemed to be everywhere he went, even the safe places like the one he was at now. It was a café not far from the college, a place mostly frequented by students in between lectures as they topped up their caffeine levels and tried to remember their drunken rollicks from the night before.

Danny knew that the best thing was to try to avoid her as much as possible. It was the only logical thing he could think of. Out of sight, out of mind. Not that it worked as simply as that but what else was he to do?

All the daydreams and the desires he had for her weren’t good for him. He knew they were unhealthy. Just what would someone think if they were to open up his mind and look inside? They would think he was completely obsessed with her. Delusional. What kind of idiot spent that much time thinking about one person?

There certainly wasn’t any way he could talk to anyone about his condition. They would think he was insane for wanting her, crazy for imagining that he and she could be together. It was an impossibility. She was engaged to someone else. Her heart belonged to Samuel’s so there was no room in it for Danny. He was certain a much simpler mathematical equation could be applied to that too.

Danny took another sip of his tea as he looked up from his book.
Great Expectations
was the subject of his latest essay and he’d set the goal of getting through it by the end of next week. This afternoon he’d finished two more pages.

Inside the book was a piece of paper on which he’d made some scribbling, another composition he’d started to write.

It was another poem about her. Writing was better than reading anyway.

After he completed the first poem, things had started to get a bit choppy again inside. There no longer was a way to release those ever-churning feelings and so Danny decided he would carry on writing verses for as long as he had to, for as long as the Stella hurricane would twist and taunt his inner ocean.

It helped to calm him, helped to sedate his so sadistically stubborn emotions. They. Just. Would. Not. Go. Away.

It didn’t matter how far away he mentally ran. It was like some evil goblin was inside him, stabbing all the time at the keys of a grand cathedral organ, playing the disturbing tune of obsession that jangled throughout his every cell. Every moment of the day. From the moment he woke up in the morning, to the late hour at which the organ finally quietened enough to release him into sleep.

He longed to be free of it all. He longed for the day when you could get an emotion-ectomy on the NHS. He even longed to have the courage to take Lou Reed’s approach to nullification.

As he stared into his cup of tea, as though he was trying to find the hints of a better fortune in the tealeaves, Danny picked up his pencil and began chewing on it. He was deep in thought, trying to find a word that would fit on the line he was on, something that would most effectively transfer some of the emotion onto the page.

As he searched for this particular word that seemed to be on the tip of his tongue, he was suddenly distracted when, on glancing towards the front door of the café, yet another one of those mathematical improbabilities occurred.

Why? Why did she have to be here?
Why can’t the universe just give me a break?

The pencil in Danny’s hand snapped in half as he watched her walk across the room. She was wearing a broomstick shaped gypsy dress, lavender in colour. Her silk top was ocean blue, ruffled at the sleeves like the waves. Delicate silver bracelets were hidden beneath her cuffs and resting around her neck were about three different necklaces, hidden in part by her honey flowing hair.

And as she glided past him, the scent of her perfume breezed past him like he’d just smelt the wild flowers of an angelic paradise.

Danny knew that in this moment he would never see anything more beautiful than her ever again. She must be the most beautiful that she would ever be. The precision of her curves, the shine of her hair, the radiant glow from her buttery skin, all of it had come together to this apex of perfection in this one moment.

She sat down at an empty table and her eyes searched the room. Searching, most probably, for the one whose eyes were fixed on her.

Danny.

That same electrifying spasm surged through Danny’s body as she connected her eyes with his. But this time he was not about to break the gaze. This time he no longer cared what his eyes gave away, or whether she was able to look deep within him.

Time seemed to freeze within the ocular connection. She must have been able to see everything there was to see and know everything about him there was to know. Danny could not hold on to it all anymore and it felt like the dam had broken and the waters were gushing out.

The moment went on forever, two pairs of eyes brought together like metal to a magnet, the white hole joined to the black hole, all of Danny’s being on the event horizon as it was swallowed into her amaranthine orbs. It was a moment that abruptly terminated when a waitress came to her table and blocked Danny’s view.

At this point Danny gathered himself and closed his book shut with a snap. He gulped down the rest of his tea, threw his broken pencil that had failed him yet again across the table, tucked the story of Philip Pirrip under his arm, and then got up to leave.

He didn’t look at her anymore. He just left.

Danny could see his hand was shaking as he raised it. Clutched between his finger and thumb was a ten- penny piece which he brought up to the slot of the ten-penny falls. It slid into the machine and Danny watched as it bounced down the panel and eventually crash onto the ever-growing pile of coins inside.

He brought his shaking hand down to his other hand and picked up another coin. One after the other, he slotted them into the machine which seemed to greedily eat them up and spew back nothing in return. Occasionally Danny would hear the sound of coins falling but, annoyingly, when he looked at his tray there would be nothing there.

His own motions started to became as robotic as the machine itself as coin after coin slid in, Danny just idly watching them fall, losing the timing of their drops to the back and forth movement of the pushers.

This place was a good distraction. Surrounded by the merry cacophony of electronic tunes and the flashing lights of the fruit machines and video games, it was a good way to get a cheap thrill and close himself off from everything. Sometimes the penny falls had plastic key rings or tacky jewellery in them and it was amazing how satisfying it was to win such a piece of junk. One time he’d won a key ring of a little water pistol which he’d attached to his flat keys. It now served as a perverse reminder to him that that was the limit of his good fortune.

On this visit, Danny just wanted to calm his nerves. Just what had he done back there in the café? Why had he carried on looking at her for so long like some crazy creep?

It felt like his world had suddenly changed, that the entire dynamics of the universe had been shifted by these actions. It was as though he’d put something out there into the cosmos.

Danny reached his final coin. Almost an entire pound’s worth he’d put into that machine but absolutely nothing had fallen into the tray. It was so typical though, putting so much in and getting nothing in return.

A spark of frustration welled from his stomach, another discordant arrangement from that infernal goblin, and he fired the coin into the machine. It bounced its way down to the pushers and caused a few to fall onto the next level, but the coins on the edge just bunched up even more, seemingly defying the laws of physics as they teetered over the edge so precariously.

His empty hand fell to his side and he stood there staring vacantly at those shiny moon-shaped disks of metal, the random mosaic of heads and tails that had come to this unique arrangement at this unique moment in time. All of a sudden he saw something beautiful in it. Something so beautiful in the fragile yet fateful way things come together.

He felt something touch his hand. Calmness came over him, as though he’d suddenly reached the eye of the hurricane. All the ragged fragments of his being fell into one and there was quiet, the goblin having reached the end of his interminable performance.

It was the touch of another person. That person was her.

Danny turned round as her soft hand slid from his fingers.

‘Hello there,’ she said, in that sweet voice of hers.

Danny opened his mouth but no words came out. There suddenly appeared to be an infinite chasm between his brain and his tongue.

Was he dreaming? Had he really become so delusional that he was now imagining her talking to him? For a moment Danny felt as though he was out of his body, as though he wasn’t really there. It seemed as though time had stopped again as the mechanics of the universe ground to a halt.

Abruptly he heard the crashing, clinking sounds of coins falling onto metal which brought his attention back to reality. He turned to the ten-penny falls and saw that his tray was now full of shiny silver treasures as the mechanics of the falls at least continued with their motions.

He turned to his side again. Sure enough she was still there smiling at him but still he could not deliver any words from his mouth.

‘Come with me,’ she whispered, a glint in her eyes.

All this time he’d thought that her eyes were brown, but being this close up to her he was able to see an orchid-coloured hue within them. Those eyes seemed to have him under a spell, as though they’d whisked him away into another realm.

She glided herself away from him and headed towards the entrance. Danny looked once more at the coins in the tray. What was he still looking at those for?

He cleared his throat and ran a hand over his face. Eventually he was able to put one foot in front of the other as he walked after her. It was time to enter her world.

The sobering sea air breezed past him as he stepped out of the arcades building. In the hazy brilliance of the evening sun, the seafront amusement rides were in full swing as the dodgems battered around and the teacups span. It really was as though Danny had just stepped out into a new world. All of a sudden everything seemed more alive, more colourful.

There was one colour that stood out even more within this illuminating new world, and that was the sparkling radiance of Stella’s violaceous eyes. There she was at the edge of the park staring back at Danny. Once he’d seen her, she walked away through a gap in the wall to the shoreline. And like a helpless child of Hamelin following the melody of temptation, Danny strode after her.

Through the gap ran the promenade, dotted along which were steps leading down to the sand and shingle of Dark Harbour’s beaches. Danny looked to see that she’d walked onto the sands and was looking out across the waves. The sky was just starting to show the first hints of a golden sunset.

Instead of walking to the steps, Danny clumsily jumped straight off the promenade, landing dangerously close to a rock pool. With a slight bit more grace returning, he hopped his way around the water and then coolly walked over to her in his best Brad Pitt walk.

Stella continued to gaze seawards, her honey hair blowing in the wind. Talking to her was something that Danny could only fantasise about before, but perhaps all that dreaming had finally manifested his desire, for here he was about to say his first ever word to the one who had held him under such enchantment for so long.

‘Hello,’ was the word that came from Danny’s now functioning lips.

‘I like to stand here and watch the sun go down,’ she began wistfully. ‘So many times I’ve stood on these shores and watched it.’

Danny was too fixated by her to look at the sun, observing the strands of her hair dancing freely around her face as though they’d been inhibited for a very long time. Most probably feeling his stare, she turned to face him. Again she smiled.

‘Will you sit with me?’ Stella asked as she knelt down on the pebbly sand.

Danny sat down next to her, as close as would seem appropriate.

‘What’s your name?’

‘Daniel. Danny.’

‘And do you know my name, Danny?’

‘Yeah.’

Stella sat back and clutched her knees. ‘I thought you might. Know anything else about me?’

‘I do,’ he replied, not really wanting to expand upon it.

‘So, you’re a reader,’ she then said on seeing the book that was still tucked firmly under his arm.

‘Yeah I’m a… I study English Literature,’ he replied as he placed the book the other side of himself, suddenly remembering the scrap of paper that was shut within it.

Stella stared back towards the sibilant waves as their gentle swirling seemed to lull her senses deeper inwards. ‘Do you ever look at someone and feel a familiarity?’ she whispered softly. ‘Like you’ve just seen some part of yourself in somebody else? Or something long forgotten.’