Darkness Demands Part 38

This was when life hung in the balance. High in the cemetery a s.h.i.+ver of antic.i.p.ation ran through long dead bones.

"My G.o.d!" Val shouted. "My G.o.d!"

The sheer emotion in her voice brought him back. He looked into the gel-like water. Spray stung his face. The torrent's roar thundered against his head.

Val shouted in disbelief, "He's moving!"

The outflow stopped just for a second.

Like some echo of birth, Paul's head appeared. His hair a matted cap; green weed formed a cawl across his face. Water spurted around his shoulders as the pressure built behind him.

The t.i.tanic force of the current squeezed him through a narrow aperture inside the tunnel's opening. At last, with a wet sucking sound, he came through, his arms down by his side; pushed out by the force of water to splash down into the stream.

John, with Val and Elizabeth pulling, too, hoisted Paul up the gra.s.s banking to the path.

Then John stood back. Val frantically rubbed Paul's chest and arms, repeating his name over and over. Elizabeth ma.s.saged her brother's stomach with both her hands. The dog circled them all, unable to take his eyes off the teenager's face.

Paul's eyes were closed. His face was gray. Very gray.

CHAPTER 35.

1.

Singing. Who can sing in a place like this? A man stood by a water cooler singing to an imaginary audience, his hands held out before him. Fiftyish, with the ringed eyes and over-abundant nose of the alcoholic, he sang in a foreign language. He was singing because he was drunk. And he was singing here in the hospital's casualty department because, tired of this world, he'd cut his wrists. Now sutured and bandaged he waited for a bed in the psychiatric ward.

Only the staff were too busy. So he stood there. Sang. And held out his bandaged wrists for everyone to see.

John Newton no longer wanted to smack the man in the mouth. But he wished someone would take him away. In whatever language the man sang, he was singing a sad song.

John glanced to his left. Elizabeth sat between him and Val. No one had spoken for a long time. The heat boxed them in. Even though it was close on ten that Friday evening it was still light outside. All three were grimey, their hair stiff with sweat and stream water.

Three hours had ticked by since Paul's accident.

They'd taken turns to see Paul. John had wondered if Elizabeth should see her brother. She was only nine years old. But she'd taken the shock better than her parents.

John found himself unable to see Paul as he really was. For some reason he found himself seeing Paul through the filter of a half-remembered Sci-Fi flick where an android, pummeled by gunfire spills its gut of wires, tubes, and fistful of ribbed hoses through plastic skin. As Paul lay on the ventilator in ICU, John saw wires and tubes snaking from his nose, mouth, arms and chest, and yet he didn't see his son but an android with chrome endoskeleton and mock human flesh.

"Paul," Elizabeth had shaken her brother's shoulder. "Paul. We're here. Wake up."

The doctor fed them strong coffee and explained. "Paul must have been underwater for a long time. We know his heart stopped beating for a while. What we don't know is if he suffered any permanent dam-age.

"Brain damage?" Val had asked and the doctor had nodded.

In the lounge area the man still sang his sad song. The seats were full and the hot air dirty with sweat, dust and the exhalation of so many people. They'd been waiting hours to have their wounds treated, whether it was a man who'd put a garden fork through his foot or a drunk who'd fallen flat on his face.

John rubbed his forehead. Immediately the movement struck up a whole symphony of pains in his side where he'd cracked his own ribs. Maybe he should get someone to look at them? No. Not yet. He had to be sure Paul was going to be all right first before he could even think about himself.

Yeah, Paul. Why was he letting his attention wander to other people? His son lay with tubes coming out of every hole in his body. John realized his mind still tried hard to evade reality.

The doctor had told it straight. Paul had drowned. Fact. For five or six minutes Paul had been dead. Fact. The paramedics had jolted his heart. It had resumed beating. Nevertheless, Paul's immediate future was uncertain.

Now there were three alternatives.

One. Paul might wake at any moment fit as any teenager.

Two. Paul might wake with brain damage; this might be slight enough to leave him with slurred speech for a month or two. Or it might be severe enough to put him in a wheelchair forever.

Three. He might not wake up at all.

A nurse took the singing man away. His voice faded down the corridor until all John could hear were dying echoes. That was the moment Val took a deep breath. "There's no point in all three of us sitting here," she told John. "You take Elizabeth home. I'll stay here with Paul." She sounded so matter-of-fact.

"I want to make sure that Paul's OK before I go," Elizabeth said in a small voice. "I can't leave him here."

"Don't worry, hon. He'll be all right."

She paused for a moment. "Dad. He saved me, didn't he? If he hadn't got me out of the stream it would have killed me, wouldn't it?"

Was there any real answer to that one? John hugged his daughter.

It should be me in there instead of him, John half-expected her to say, but she fell silent. No doubt, however, those very words were going round in her mind.

Perhaps this is where shock gives way to self-recrimination. He winced as the pains speared his side. If only he could have held onto Paul, he'd be all right now. He'd have climbed out of the stream, grinning and joking about the dunking. Everything would be fine. But you're weak, John Newton. You could have saved your son. You had a good grip on his wrist. But you let him go. You're gutless. You never fought to save hima He deliberately hurt himself by taking a deep breath, the cracked ribs s.h.i.+fting before his expanding lungs. That's it, Newton. Try and wash away guilt with pain. But then you've never been a fighter, have you?

Just you wait and see, he told himself. The fight's only just beginning.

Despite the harrowing evening he knew the clock was ticking down the minutes until midnight tomorrow. The letter demanded he hand his daughter over then to whatever lurked in the cemetery.

No way.

NO WAY!.

2.

After leaving the hospital, John drove Elizabeth for a hamburger. It was close to eleven by now. The place was crowded with kids in their teens. They were laughing, shouting, having a good time.

But he and Elizabeth sat in silence as if they'd been sealed into their own sphere. Outside that everything seemed disjointed, people looked like alien life-forms. John wondered if other people could read the anxiety on the faces of the little girl and the man who sat pus.h.i.+ng French fries into their mouths as if they tasted of paper. He guessed not. Those young people were so happy they'd never notice the melancholy pair in the corner.

Neither he nor Elizabeth finished the meal. Soon they were in the car again, heading home. By now night had fallen properly. The car's lights splashed across the road. At one point the headlights caught the Necropolis gates. Headstones were black, soul-less eyes staring down from the hillside. Above them, trees had become hunched monsters that reflected the car's headlights with the cold flash of ghost-light.

John drove on. He felt that he had a stone for a heart. It grew even heavier when he pulled into the drive and saw the stream that took his son just a few hours ago.

The instant John opened the front door Sam ran out to the car. When the dog saw Val and Paul weren't there he returned to the house, his head hanging low.

Mechanically they got ready for bed. John yielded at last to the pain and swallowed paracetamol. He chased that with a tumbler of whiskey. The painkiller had no effect. He lay there on the bed gnawed by teeth of sickening pain.

Elizabeth cried for a while in the next room. Then fell silent.

Shadows swarmed across the walls. Once or twice he heard the dog yelp in his sleep.

Long past midnight he drifted off himself.

He dreamt that a face looked in at him through the window. It was ghost-white with gouged sockets for eyes. A mouth opened that could have been an axe wound. He watched as a pair of eyes oozed out like snakeheads through the empty sockets in the skull. They were lined with veins as thick as worms, while the pupils were fierce black points that stood out from the eyes as hard as warts. These were eyes that feasted on the ghosts of children. Hungry eyes that wanted more and more and more.

A voice ran through his head. A nitric voice that sounded burned, whispery and so low it vibrated the whiskey gla.s.s on the table. Listen to the sound of the clock, John Newton. It's ticking the minutes away. You know what you must do. Hand over the girl. I want hera "No!"

You know what will happen if you don't. You must pay the forfeit.

"I won't!"

What happened to your filthy little son, John Newton? That was a warning. Hand her overa Beyond the window the face looked in. The eyes no longer bulged but withdrew into the sockets, leaving empty chambers that were dark as an open grave.

"You're not having her!"

He shouted himself awake. The sun blazed into the room as if a furnace door had opened. Straight away, he turned to the clock on the bedside table.

Six o'clock.

In just eighteen hours it would be midnight.

Zero Hour.

CHAPTER 36.

1.

Herbert Kelly had put an ocean between his daughter and Skelbrooke. That had broken the link. Whatever power festered there in the hill couldn't reach them in Canada. Nor, apparently, had it been able to wreak its revenge on Skelbrooke's inhabitants. For seventy years it had retreated back into the cemetery dirt (or wherever it made its home) and it had bided its time before reawakening.

John Newton sat on a garden bench, staring at the Necropolis as it rose above Skelbrooke village, brooding on this and other thoughts. Even though it was not yet nine o'clock in the morning he'd begun phoning airline offices, trying to get himself and Elizabeth on a flight before tonight. The mobile phone lay on the bench beside him. It was early the staff claimed. There was a glitch with the booking computers. They'd get back to him. So he waited in the shade. The temperature climbed. Soil cracked wide open. Even the branches clicked as bark shriveled in the sun. Already the heat made it difficult to breathe. When he inhaled, his cracked ribs jagged hard enough to make him wince.

Wincing pulled on the cracked bone, hurting like h.e.l.l. And so the cycle repeated itself.

Elizabeth sat on the gra.s.s not far from him. Alongside her lay the dog.

He glanced at his watch. Ten past nine. Why didn't the airline ring? He needed those tickets now. But what he'd tell Val he didn't knowa she was going through a nightmare as it was. How could he just announce he was taking Elizabeth to the other side of the world?

The phone rang. He s.n.a.t.c.hed it from the bench. "h.e.l.lo?"

He'd expected the airline. Instead, he heard Val's careworn voice. His heart lurched. G.o.d knows, he expected the worse.

"John, I'm telephoning to tell you about Paul. He's still unconscious. There's no change."

"Have they been able to give you any more information about his condition?"

"No. They keep stressing it's a case of wait and see."

Elizabeth had heard the phone ring. Putting his hand over the mouthpiece, he told her Paul was still asleep, that there was nothing to worry about.

"What was that, Val? Yes, we're both fine. I'll come through in a little while."

"Oh, could you bring me a change of clothes and my toilet bag? They say I can stay here so I can be near Paul."

"Will do."

"Sorry, if you can't hear me properly," she said over voices in the background. "It's busy here this morning. Of all things there's been an outbreak of meningitis in Skelbrooke."

"Christa"

"As if we didn't have enough to worry about. From what I can tell they're trying to identify it. If it's the bacterial C strain of meningitis then Elizabeth will have to be vaccinated. Apparently there's a couple of children from her school down with it."

"G.o.d what a mess." The cause of the meningitis outbreak? h.e.l.l. As if I didn't know. It's you Baby Bones, isn't it? You came down into the village at night to breathe your poison onto the faces of the children as they slept.

"John?" Val raised her voice over the voices nearby. "Did you hear what I said?"

"Sorrya"

"All h.e.l.l is breaking loose here-they've just rushed in more cases. I'm sure one of them is Elizabeth's friend, Emma. d.a.m.n, this is just what we don't need. John?"

"Yes?"

"Will you keep a close eye on Elizabeth? This epidemic's going through Skelbrooke like wild fire."

"Of course I will."