The Midnight Hour (3 page)

His wheels skidded on the gravel scattered at the roadside, and he had to fight to keep the car away from the wooden fence and the sign that announced ‘Country Park’ in the flash of his bounding headlights.

He let out the breath that he had not even realised he’d been holding and relaxed his foot on the accelerator pedal. Take that as a warning, he told himself. Ease off. There’s no point in getting yourself killed.

Almost ten years ago, when he first met her at University, he would never have argued so strongly. He had watched his father take what he called ‘the path of least resistance’ with his mother so many times he just presumed that was the way to behave when you loved someone. Never argue. Just agree. It seemed to work for his parents, who stayed together until his father died. He just wanted the same.

Sarah Anderson was the kind of girl that he, Michael Samson, never stood a chance with. He remembered watching her, the first time he saw her, striding across the campus with such confidence, such poise. Her black hair bounced on her shoulders as she smiled and talked with another girl. He could not remember what the other girl looked like. He had been too captivated by Sarah.

He remembered she wore a loose fitting t-shirt with a bright yellow smiley face on it. The face seemed to laugh and leer at him as her breasts jiggled freely beneath the light material. She wore a short skirt, barely longer than the t-shirt, and her legs were long and shapely. He couldn’t say what she wore on her feet. His eyes never got that far.

He was a geek. He knew it. His glasses were too big, his teeth weren’t straight enough, his body was scrawny. Worst of all, he was no good at sports. He read books. He worked hard. He got A’s for his assignments. But he was no ‘jock’. Girls like Sarah Anderson always ended up with ‘jocks’.

But he didn’t know Sarah Anderson properly back then. He didn’t know she was that rarity, a beautiful girl who was not impressed by the fact, not overwhelmed by the attention, and not interested in sports or the people who played them. She was a bookworm too. She just didn’t look like any bookworm he had ever seen.

Since that day when he fell in love with her at first sight, he had seldom argued, seldom disagreed, never threatened her with anything. Until tonight.

He had hit her.

He had never done that, not in seven years of marriage.

She had provoked him before tonight, certainly, and there had been times when the thought had crossed his mind. But he had never given in to it. Striking Sarah was the last thing in the world he would have wanted to do, before tonight. Tonight the anger had rushed up at him so fast and so hard that his hand had lashed out before his mind could control it.

He remembered the pain in his palm as he slapped her, a stinging pain that was mirrored in her shocked eyes. He, too, had been shocked, more so when he saw the trickle of blood coming from the corner of her mouth where he had split her lip.

She said nothing, just stared at him, her eyes glistening with tears that welled and overflowed down her cheeks.

She had grabbed the car keys from the hall table and was almost out of the door before he caught her. He was still angry, ashamed by his violence yet driven by it also. Driven to dominate the woman he had always been careful to agree with. Driven to abuse the woman he had always cared for.

He grabbed the keys from her hand and pushed her away, feeling nothing as she stumbled and fell heavily. The car was
his
and only
he
was going to drive it from now on!
She
would have to pay for her own in future!

He
had stormed out of the door instead, taking the initiative from his stunned and shocked wife. If anyone was going to disappear dramatically into the night it was him.

It had been work. That’s what the argument had been about, at the start anyway. He had worked late again. He had forgotten to phone to tell her. She had accused him of caring more about work than her. She had even suggested he might not be working late at all. That he might be seeing someone else.

It had been that last twist in the argument that had finally snapped something inside him. He
had
been working late. He
did
need to finish the work, and they needed the extra money the overtime would bring in. But worst of all, there was just that grain of truth in what she shouted at him.

Not that he was having an affair, but he had thought about it. Fantasised about it with at least two girls in the office. That was enough to add guilt to the anger. The mix had been explosive!

He worried that Sarah, alone in the house, might turn suicidal. For a moment even he had considered it. He felt so alone, angry yet miserable, driving through the night on deserted roads. Perhaps he deserved to die? That was when his foot had pressed harder on the accelerator, almost causing him to skid off the road. Now he was more in control. Now he worried more about Sarah.

He did love her, more than anything else. Tonight was just an aberration, a moment of stupidity. They would get over it. He should not have stormed out. He should head back immediately.

The car that pulled out in front of him made his foot slam on the brake. He swore at the taillights as they sped away and then he pressed harder on the accelerator again. No one was going to do that to him!

It wasn’t hard to catch the other car. The driver either did not know the roads as well as he did or was much more nervous about night driving. He was going to flash his lights and beep his horn when the coincidence hit him.

The car in front was exactly the same model and colour as the Ford Escort he drove. Everything, even down to the rust patch above the left rear light, seemed identical. He felt an icy block slide down into his stomach but quickly ignored it. Just a coincidence, that’s all. What else could it be?

He was startled out of his surprise as the car in front weaved, seemed to lose control, and with a grotesque squeal and stomach churning crash cart-wheeled into a roadside ditch.

He braked the car to a juddering stop as metal and plastic was spat into the air behind a cloud of gravel. His car rattled with the dry shower as he stared, horrified, at the scene before him.

As the dust settled he stepped from the car, unable to take his eyes away from the twisted remains that lay crushed against the trees of the wood. No one could have survived that. Whoever had been driving must surely be dead. He had to call the police, anyone.

He was turning to leave when a rectangle of metal caught his eye, lying in the road near the remains of the crashed car. A number plate.

He read it.

He read it again.

His eyes stared. His mouth fell open.

It was the number of
his
car!

But it couldn’t be! It was true that the car in front had seemed identical to his, but not the number plate. It was not possible!

And then he saw the body.

She must have been thrown clear in the crash, but it had not saved her.

The mangled remains of a woman lay twisted on the road, arms and legs snapped and bent, head at an angle that suggested it was barely part of the body anymore, and the clothes....

The clothes. He thought he recognised the clothes.

He stepped nearer, not daring to think it, not daring to look but having to. He stood above the body and looked into the dead staring eyes of his wife, Sarah.

He screamed but no sound broke the stillness of the night. He turned to run back to his car but there was nothing there. How could there be? His car lay mangled in the roadside ditch.

He fell to his knees and raised his head to the sky, his mouth open in a long, silent shout of anguish.

And then the road was empty, save for the bloody remains of a wife who, in anger and shock, had driven recklessly away from her raving husband.

In the living room of the house Michael and Sarah Samson had called home, Michael Samson lay dying on the carpet, trails of blood leading from his wrists to the razor blade almost lost in the deep pile. There was no sound from him, no outward sign that his life was rapidly ebbing away, but his eyes were wide and terrified, filled with horror at what he had done, at what he had forced his wife to do.

Now he knew. It really did
not
matter who had started the argument. It really did not matter at all.

RIBBONS OF BLOOD

They floated in on the breeze, light as gossamer, translucent in the sun that hung low and hazy over the fields. No one noticed them. The farmers were too busy with their work and of those few others awake at this time of the morning, none were looking to the sky. Rippling, almost invisible, they snaked over the clock tower, the church spire, the homes and work places of Sheldsville, and no one knew they had arrived.

Until people began to die.

Paul Walker pulled the delivery van into the curb and let the engine idle. He checked his paperwork. Pickup at 7am, Sheldsville Wholesalers. He checked the dashboard clock. 6:40am.

Smiling, he killed the engine and picked up the well-read paperback from the passenger seat. It wasn’t much of a job, but as long as he made his pickups and dropoffs his time was his own. And he liked to get out early in the morning, before Janet, his spinster sister, dragged herself from her morgue of a bedroom and began nagging him. He knew they needed more money, but he didn’t see why he should be the one to change his job. She claimed to be an artist, a painter, but she hadn’t sold anything in years. At 34 she was eight years older than him, but he felt the more mature of the two. After the death of their parents he had been the one to organise the funeral, the house, everything. She had done nothing but wallow in melodramatic grief. It had set the pattern for the last five years.

Pushing his bitterness to the background, determined it would not spoil the start to his day, he opened the book at the scrap of paper that acted as a bookmark.
Dracula’s Guest
, the chapter that didn’t make it into
Dracula
. The book had other stories by Bram Stoker, but it was to
Dracula’s Guest
that he kept returning. He loved the atmosphere, the village, the chase. He loved the gothic, the vampire, in fiction. His collection ranged from the classics of Sheridan Le Fanu and Bram Stoker to more recent interpretations, Anne Rice, Brian Lumley. He loved them all.

He glanced down at his black t-shirt, black trousers, black shoes. He caught sight of his close cropped black hair in the rearview mirror and raised thick eyebrows in amusement. If only he had the cape and teeth to match.

He laughed, settling in the warmth of the morning sun coming through the windshield, and began to read. Time for a few pages. Time to immerse himself.

He jumped as something hit the windshield with a loud thump and looked up in time to see it slide from the glass, leaving a greasy smear. In that brief glimpse he could make out little other than it was long and almost clear. Like a jellyfish stretched out and rolled flat.

He leaned forward but could see no sign of it. For a moment he considered climbing out the van and looking for whatever it was, but his curiosity was not that strong and he didn’t want to waste good reading time. Instead, he pumped the washers, flicked the wipers and managed to clear most of the smear from the glass.

Satisfying himself that it was probably from a nearby tree, some strange piece of foliage like sticky weed or similar, he returned to Transylvania and Jonathan Harker.

Janet Walker shuffled into the kitchen, her nose twitching at the smell of coffee left bubbling by Paul. He was thoughtful like that. Knew she would need coffee when she finally faced the daylight.

Her head pounded with each small movement and she felt just about ready to let last night’s pizza see the world again. Why did she drink so much? Why did she end up eating pizza? She didn’t even like pizza! Then she remembered. It was all they had in the fridge, and she had needed to eat something, anything, after her night on the town.

Coffee was the only drink she could face now. A cup of coffee and then some fresh air. Might just blow the cobwebs away.

They floated in over the buildings of main street, silent and unseen. At first glance it might have seemed they flew randomly, but further and careful observation would have detected a pattern, a twisting, sweeping pattern.

They moved together. As one drifted one way, another would fill those areas it left behind. Between them they covered the centre of town.

They were searching for something.

And every now and then one would find it and drop out of formation, down towards the street. Fast. Still silent.

Ed Malone was one of the first to see them as he unlocked the door to Sheldsville Wholesaler. He saw the one dropping out of the sky towards him.

Paul saw his first dead body at 6:55am, outside the wholesaler.

The man lay half in, half out of the open doorway. Face down. A smear of blood stained the sidewalk by his head.

For a moment Paul sat in his van, staring, a sweat forming on his brow, not sure what to do. He quickly looked around the street but saw no one. It was all down to him.

Moving slowly, licking lips that had become suddenly dry, he turned off the engine. He reached for his mobile phone on the passenger seat, where he always kept it. He needed to phone an ambulance, maybe the police.

It wasn’t there.

Frantically he searched the cab. The floor, the dashboard, the door pockets. Then, with an angry growl, he remembered. It had needed charging. He had left it charging at home. He didn’t think he’d miss it for one day!

He dry swallowed in a dry throat. There was nothing else to do. He would have to get out of the van. He would have to go and look.

Perhaps the man wasn’t dead? Perhaps he was just unconscious and needed to be helped up? At the very least there was a phone inside the building.

His heart thumping he pushed open the door and climbed out. The walk across the street to the body was one the hardest he had ever taken. His legs shook. Sweat trickled down his back, pooling, he felt sure, at the base of his spine.