Eldren: The Book of the Dark (7 page)

He looked round and felt a warm smile of pleasure inside which he daren’t let reach his face. He had their attention again...he was the Magician once more.

There were several protests, not the least of which came from Isobel. He permitted himself one small smile as he looked across at her.

“All right then, I’ll try it again. But don’t blame me if this doesn’t work. I told you that you had to be serious for it to happen.”

He placed his hands on the side of Ian’s head, feeling the heat at his ears underneath the hair.

“He looks pale,” he began.

“He is pale.”

This time they all replied, not quite in unison but the atmosphere of the occasion was beginning to get through to them. Even Nick Bayliss looked like he’s started to take it seriously. Tony permitted himself a quick glance at Isobel but her eyes were closed and she frowned in concentration.

“He looks ill.”

“He is ill.” Six voices replied. Nowhere existed except for that room, that moment.

It’s going to work,
he thought, excitement rising in him.

By now they were all caught in the special atmosphere, so much so that no one noticed the whitening around the lips of the boy between their hands.

“He looks dead.”

“He is dead.”

“Dead?” whispered the head held tightly between Tony’s hands.

“Sshh!” Tony said, pressing his palms even tighter against the large boy’s ears.

“We are now entering the World of Illusion.”

Twelve fingers and one pair of hands lifted but found the body already afloat, bobbing upwards like a helium balloon on a piece of string.

Tony looked down the double row of faces, a triumphant smile on his face, a smile that was wiped out by the sight of Nick Bayliss. The older boy grinned widely, the same old manic grin, the one he always wore just as he was about to stomp all over you. Slowly, looking at Tony all the while, he removed his fingers from beneath the body. The grin never left his face.

Time slowed for Tony, like a projector running down. He had a bad taste in his mouth, the taste of cold metal.

Ian fell stiffly to the ground, head striking a corner of the large boiler with a crack. They all stepped back, first one then two steps and there was a moment of silence as they looked at the body at their feet.

Then Ian began to cry and the spell was broken.

“Come on.” Nick Bayliss said. “We’ll collect our money from Dickie tomorrow.”

The rest left, and Tony’s heart sank as he saw Isobel chatting with Bayliss on their way out. She didn’t look back at him as he bent to help Ian. He didn’t even notice the fine mist that was beginning to seep in through the small window in the corner of the room.

“Come on Ian,” he said. “Let’s have a look at that head.”

The bigger boy sat up, still whimpering as Tony parted the hair at the back of his head and whistled.

“You’ve going to have a hell of a lump there.” He said appreciatively. “How do you feel?”

“Like a piece of shit,” Ian said and giggled. Tony joined him, relieved that his friend had come to no great harm.

He froze as a voice from the corner called his name.

“Tony,” it said, and he almost recognized it.

He turned towards the corner, looking over Ian’s left shoulder and only now saw the gray mist that obscured the shadows.

“Tony,” it said again, and a figure emerged out of the mist...a red-eyed figure from his nightmares. There was more flesh on the creature; red sinews and muscles showing under a paper thin, almost transparent skin…watery, almost pink, blood running sluggishly from a weakly pumping heart, clearly visible between the ribs.

It all came back to him: the stone slab, the darkness of the cave, the still, lifeless body of his friend, the flight through darkness into the light. He stepped back as the creature moved towards him.

“Hey, Tony. What’s the matter?” Ian said as Tony stepped away. Tony couldn’t speak, couldn’t scream, his throat was dry and locked tightly shut. He could only moan, wide eyed, as the taloned hands reached out and grabbed his friend by the shoulders.

~-o0O0o-~

The wind had dropped outside and, although the window was open, blue tobacco smoke hung in wispy layers at waist height. Although it was nearly eight-thirty the sky was only just beginning to lighten in the east, the onset of morning being delayed by the thick fog that hung over the valley.

Brian was trying to concentrate on his newspaper but his thoughts kept returning to Sandy’s story from the night before. He was brought out of his daydreaming by Margaret Brodie; the physical education teacher nicknamed ‘Jean’ by the bulk of the staff. He thought that Margaret was beautiful...five-foot-four feet of pure sex appeal.

He’d first really noticed her last year at a staff against pupils hockey match. Brian hadn’t played very well having spent the bulk of the game following Margaret’s legs around. There was something about short green hockey skirts that always got to him.

Today she wore her hair tied up, which was a pity. She had one of the fullest heads of hair he had ever seen, long, full of body and a deep auburn color that glowed in the sun and looked like smoke in the moonlight.

At one time Brian had harbored high hopes for his future with the hockey player. They had met a couple of times for drinks and she seemed to have enjoyed herself in his company but he had always got tongue tied when on the point of taking it any further.

That had all changed with the arrival of a new young PE teacher who had swept Margaret off her feet and who was now, as rumor had it among the pupils, ‘screwing her arse off’.

“Ah Brian,” she said as she approached, “The very man I wanted to see. Are you still all right for the guitar class after school? I’m afraid that I won’t be able to make it so if it’s okay by you, you’ll be on your own. Do you think you can cope?”

Brian had to force himself to concentrate, to drag his eyes higher than the level of her chest.

“Aye, I would think so Margaret. It’s not as if they’re a rough bunch and there’re only six of them. I’ll teach them something calm and soothing. Neil Young, or an old folk song or two. That should quiet them down a bit...you know how much they hate my old hippy stuff.”

Brian had always had pretensions to being a musician since his own school days. When he realized that he couldn’t make his fingers move fast enough to pass as a rock guitarist he fell back on his first-learned tunes. From there he progressed through American Country rock, through blues and back to his present preoccupation, Scottish folk music.

He usually spent his Wednesday nights giving lessons to pupils but lately there had been getting to be fewer actual lessons in technique, most of the pupils having already caught up with his primitive style. Most often nowadays his time was spent teaching the youngsters new songs and preparing for his big event.

A four-piece folk group, including Brian, were practicing for their first live appearance at a local folk club in two weeks time. It would be a rush but he now thought that they would be ready in time.

“Oh and Margaret”, he called after her as she turned away. “Is there any chance of a drink after work tomorrow? There’s some things I need to talk to you about.”

He never got a reply, for at that moment waves of high-pitched screams echoed down the corridor.

For a long heartbeat they looked at each other before Margaret sprinted out of the room, closely followed by Brian.

~-o0O0o-~

The boiler room was full of small gaping faces; all arranged in tight circles around two figures in the center. Two chairs had been overturned and between them lay a young boy bleeding from a neck wound.

“Blood,”
thought Brian, “
That’s blood
.”

Standing beside the rapidly growing pool was Tony Dickie, obviously the source of the screams. His face was bright red and he breathed in great gasps of air, looking set for a fresh bout.

Brian decided that it was time to do something, anything, so long as he got their attention away from the blood.

“For Christ’s sake get an ambulance somebody...and Margaret, get these kids out of here. Tony, you go with Miss Brodie here.”

The boy looked into space, oblivious to everything except the blood.

“Tony!” More forcibly this time, causing the boy to turn towards him, blue eyes wide in fear.

“Come on son, it’s all right, Ian will be okay, just go along with Margaret.”

The boy’s head shook violently from side to side. As Brian reached out to take his arm he bolted under the grasping arms of Margaret Brodie and off down the corridor, receding footfalls followed by the slamming of the heavy wooden door down at the far end.

Margaret made to follow, but Brian stopped her.

“Leave him be just now, we need to do something with Ian here, he’s losing an awful lot of blood. Go and call an ambulance.”

He tried hard to remember what little first aid knowledge he had. Were you supposed to move someone suffering from a neck wound? He knelt on the ground oblivious to the fact that the knee of his trousers was now in a pool of blood.

Looking up, he noticed that the boiler room was now empty and that Margaret was coming back down the small flight of steps.

“The ambulance is on its way, but they say that it could be ten minutes or so depending on the traffic. Is there anything we can do before that?”

“I don’t know. Maybe we should lift his head up or something. Anyway, we can’t just leave him lying there. Go and get a pillow or cushion or something and we’ll try putting it under his head.”

While Margaret was gone Brian looked around for clues as to what the boys had been doing and wondered if it had been an accident. He knew that Ian had been the scapegoat, but he couldn’t believe that twelve year olds would willfully injure one of their classmates in this way.

He realized that he would have to find Tony Dickie if he was to find out what had happened in this room. He knew the rest of the kids well enough to realize that they would clam up immediately and deny all knowledge of anything that had happened here.

Margaret reappeared at the door carrying a small cushion from one of the staff room chairs.

“I couldn’t find anything else. I tried to talk to Tom, but he’s stinking of drink. I think he’s started early.”

Brian took the cushion and laid it beside Ian.

He was never to forget the next few moments as he raised the boy’s head and discovered that it lolled in his hands, the fingers of his left hand sinking into the gaping hole in the boy’s neck. He pulled his hand away sharply.

Margaret’s screams as Ians’ head fell backwards were counterpointed by the insistent “nee-naw-nee-naw” of the ambulance arriving in the courtyard outside. Brian knew already that they were too late as he leaned forward and pulled closed the boy’s dead eyelids.

THE REST of the day passed in a blur of images for Brian. The visit to the police station with Margaret crying on his shoulder. The questions as to why the children had been allowed into the boiler room in the first place, and the long and loud denials of the kids that any of them had actually been present. All of these seemed dreamlike and distant, his thoughts always returning to the dead boy’s head lolling backwards and the sound of the ambulance echoing in his head.

The only person who knew what had happened in the boiler room was Tony Dickie, but the boy couldn’t be found. He had been home, his mother had confirmed that, but had left again almost immediately, and was not to be found in any of the childrens’ known play areas. The police had several men out combing the surrounding countryside, anxious to find him because they had to know whether Ian’s death was due to an adult, or the result of some schoolboy maliciousness.

The headmaster had been distraught, worrying mainly whether the boy’s parents would sue the school for lack of supervision, and had ‘suggested’ that Brian and Margaret, as the two teachers directly involved, should stay away from the school for a week or so “just until this mess gets sorted out.”

Which was why, at four o’clock on a Wednesday afternoon, when he should have been taking the guitar group, he sat in the lounge bar upstairs from the bar he’d visited the night before, nursing his second double whisky and holding Margaret Brodie’s hand.

This bar was a bit more up-market than the one downstairs...it actually had a carpet and chairs...but was no busier. Someone had obviously thought that lime green velvet was tasteful for the furniture, and had added a nice shag carpet for good measure. It was a pity that the carpet had to be navy blue.

A lone disco globe hung forlornly from the ceiling, a remnant from the days when this bar was used for Saturday night dances. Brian had attended many of them in his youth, back when a frantic grope in a doorway was the pinnacle of his ambition. More often than not though he had ended up blind drunk on a mixture of cider and vodka. Even now, years later, he couldn’t even take the taste of either...one whiff was enough to bring back the memory of vomit in his throat.

Brian and Margaret were the only customers and, after serving them, the bored barmaid had gone back to staring blankly into space, her only sign of life the robotic chewing as she masticated a piece of gum.

A large television set was set above the bar. Thankfully the sound was turned down...the last thing Brian needed right now was the frantic chatter of horse racing commentary.

Margaret was taking Ian’s death hard, and every few minutes she broke into another bout of weeping, her eyes red rimmed and bloodshot. She had hardly touched the brandy that he had brought her over half an hour ago, and it was now sitting on the table just out of her reach.

Brian reached into his pocket and removed his cigarette packet. He got as far as lighting up when Margaret stopped him.

“Please don’t, Brian. I think I’d be sick.”

“It wouldn’t show against the décor,” Brian said. He immediately regretted it as her face seemed to fall into itself and heavy tears leaked from the corners of her eyes.

“It’s just not fair,” she said for the second time in five minutes. “A wee laddie like that. And he was such a smart boy.”

She didn’t quite succeed in keeping the tremor out of her voice.

“You don’t think any of the rest of them would do it deliberately do you?”

She went straight on, not waiting for an answer.

“I mean, Tony Dickie wouldn’t do anything bad, he’s a harmless soul. A bit morbid maybe, but a lot of kids are like that.”

Brian interrupted her, desperately trying to get the subject away from Ian’s death. As he spoke he put the cigarette packet back in his pocket...having them on the table was just too much temptation and he didn’t want to do anything that might drive her away from him.

“How do you mean morbid? He’s been in my class for Elementary Biology, but I’ve never really noticed him much. He doesn’t ask many questions and keeps himself to himself a lot. I had him pegged for one of the middle orders...you know…bright but with no great drive to learn.”

At first he didn’t think she would answer. She searched the brandy glass as if it held the answer to all life’s great mysteries.

When she did start talking her voice was a dull monotone and for the first time Brian wondered if she was in shock. He was about to offer to take her home, but something in her words gripped him and made him pay attention.

“Oh, things like asking about ghosts and whether dead people could come back to life. I had his class for religious education the other day, and all they could talk about was ghosts and ghouls.”

Brian’s drinking arm stopped before it got his glass to his mouth but Margaret didn’t notice...she was lost in remembering.

“I think a couple of them had been playing with an ouija board and they’d had the usual experience, you know the kind of thing…a few bits of possible information mixed in with stuff about your dear departed granny or some such.”

She paused, and in doing so seemed to really notice her brandy glass for the first time. Leaning forward, she lifted her glass, and just at the same moment Brian gave in to an urge he’d been harboring for a few minutes, bent forward and brushed his lips softly across her cheek.

She sat up straight, not exactly shocked but almost spilling her drink.

“What was that for?”

Brian could feel the red heat of a blush move up from under his collar. He didn’t know why he had given in to the impulse...it wasn’t his usual style...but it had felt right at the time and he wasn’t about to apologize at this stage. Besides...she hadn’t rushed out of the room screaming, had she? Not yet anyway. He decided to brazen it out.

“Oh, I just felt like it. Anyway, to change the subject quickly. What about that drink I invited you out for?”

He held a hand up as if to fend off her expected protests. He felt callous, but a part of him realized that he might never get up the courage again if he didn’t at least try now. He pressed on.

“I know we’re having a drink just now, but this isn’t the best time for either of us to enjoy ourselves. Seeing as how we’ve been told to stay off work, we might as well make the most of it, so how about seeing me tomorrow night?”

She looked hesitant, but didn’t turn him down straight away, so Brian pressed on.

“Come on, Margaret, it won’t hurt. I’ll take you down the coast in my old banger; we’ll go to the pictures, then for a meal somewhere and watch the sunset from the top of a hill. I’ll promise not to make a pass at you until at least ten o’clock. How does that sound?”

This time he did get a laugh, along with a peck on the cheek, and an address to pick her up at, at seven. She drained her glass quickly, almost choking as the liquor went down.

“I’ve got to go. See you tomorrow,” she said.

Brian sat, bemused, as she picked up her coat and left, with a backward glance to smile at him.

He’d been expecting her to say no.

~-o0O0o-~

Tony had been running all morning and it felt like a week—a week running and hiding from his worst nightmare come true. But all the time he could feel those eyes, those blood-red eyes that seemed to see straight inside him.

He would never be rid of the sight as the fangs tore at Ian’s throat, the sound of the deep chuckle as the creature fed, the smell, hot and coppery, of Ian’s blood as it sprayed in a fine mist in the air of the boiler-room.

Now, finally, he had stopped running, not because he had got away, but because he didn’t know where else to go. He squeezed his small frame through the railings of the cemetery and headed for the church.

He was afraid. Not because it had spoken to him…no, it went deeper than that.

When Ian Brown was killed the pictures had unfolded in his mind like a video film, the images jerky and fast as if shot under a strobe.

Tony saw his mother, but as he’d never seen her before. She was naked, writhing languidly on the bed in his parent’s bedroom. The vampire was standing over her, its forked tongue sliding wetly between thin lips as it crouched over her body. The fangs slid out from a suddenly red mouth and a long white hand ran over his mother’s thigh, then her belly, and then her breasts. His mother bucked under the hand and groaned in pleasure, bending her head back and offering her throat. The picture stopped, freeze frame, just as the fangs slid into the soft flesh.

The picture in his head had faded out and Tony found himself looking deep into those blood red eyes. And the creature had smiled; its bloodied fangs dripping a flow of red across its chin as it lowered its head once more to Ian’s neck. It was only after Tony found the energy to scream that the vampire stopped its feeding. Tony only looked away for a second...just long enough to register Ian’s body falling to the floor, but when he looked up the vampire had gone. A faint mist drifting in the corner of the room was the only sign that anything had been there and by the time the first footsteps sounded in the corridor behind him even that had dissipated.

After that, he had ran, ran until it felt that hot razors were sawing in his chest, until his breath tore pain out of him with every stride, ran until he stood, crying still, at the back door of his parent’s house.  He had opened the door, slowly, praying that the dog wouldn’t bark, and slipped into the house and up the stairs.  His heart had pounded hard as he felt under his mattress, and it gave a sudden lurch when his fingers met only space. But then he pushed his hand in further and met the rough leather of the old book he’s found back in the ruined Hansen House.

Then he ran again, not stopping until he got to the church.

Now he felt the book, sitting against his skin under his shirt.

He pressed his body against the wall and shivered as the first stars twinkled in the sky above him.

~-o0O0o-~

Sandy patted his pocket, just to make sure that the money was still in place. He smiled as he remembered his conversation with the teacher. Maybe he would see Brian again; he was sure that the story about the house had some mileage left in it yet, and the teacher seemed to be taking it all in. But then again, people always only heard what they wanted, and the teacher was an easy mark.

Good for a few more whiskies yet anyway,
he muttered to himself.

It was really so easy. Mix a few bits of truth with some wild speculation and Bob’s your uncle. Already he was working on the next phase of the story...the ‘researchers’ in the house during the war finding something unspeakable.

In reality it had only been an air raid shelter, but old Sandy had never let bald fact get in the way of a good story, and he wasn’t about to start now. Besides, the bit about the building of the house had been true enough, and the story about the poacher trapping the rabbit had been told to Sandy in the same pub only a couple of weeks ago. So Brian couldn’t complain too much if the rest was all in Sandy’s head, now could he?

Since his return to the town Sandy had taken to walking all of his old paths, ticking them off one by one in a mental notebook as he found out how much, or how little, remained from his childhood.

Before tonight he had been sorely disappointed. Most of his old haunts had either been demolished or “improved” out of all recognition. Even the house he had been born in had gone, replaced by a supermarket. The actual spot where he had been born was now in the middle of a bare expanse of tarmac...a fitting memorial for an anonymous life.

Not that Sandy was complaining...that was the way he wanted it. Nobody knew his business, and nobody cared what he did, which lent him a certain freedom in these increasingly regimented times.

The trip to the supermarket had stirred some memories though, which was why he’d made his way to the cemetery.

His mother’s grave was neat and well tended, as were all the graves around him. But there were no flowers; no touches to show that anyone still remembered her, still cared. Hot tears ran from the corner of Sandy’s eyes before he turned away towards the church.

Being in the cemetery in the dark didn’t bother him. In all his travels, and despite all his stories, he had never yet had any proof of the existence of ghosts. And even if he had, he didn’t think that dead people had the power to hurt the living...not physically anyway.

He was just about onto the path out of the cemetery when something caught his eye, a gray shape moving amongst the stones. He started to call out, but his breath caught in his throat as a pair of blood red eyes turned their stare on him and held him.

And all around him the black rain fell.

~-o0O0o-~

Margaret Brodie was lying in the bath wondering whether she wanted to get herself involved with another loner. Especially after the last time.

The job in Finsburgh had been grabbed quickly after her last one had turned sour. The headmaster had taken a strong interest in her right from the start, making it plain that he wanted her. He was another loner, quiet and studious but she had found out the hard way that there was more to him. He liked to hit women. More to the point he liked to hit strong, self-sufficient women. Of course he’d denied it when she reported him, and it got to the stage where she either stayed and put up with him leering at her every day or resign.