Darkness Demands Part 43

Reasoning any illumination's better than none, she reached into the car, hitting the b.u.t.ton that activated the hazard lights. The flas.h.i.+ng orange bulbs sent a ruddy ghost light into the cemetery to illuminate those monstrous trees that loomed over her, seemingly ready to pounce the moment she stepped inside those railings.

She forced herself toward the entrance to the Necropolis. She had to find Paul's sister. She was responsible for her safety. If anything shoulda A shape lumbered out of the darkness toward her.

"Miranda? What are you doing out of the car?"

"Mr. Newton?"

Into the field of flas.h.i.+ng orange light John Newton appeared. There were two figures, John Newton and an old man she recognized as Stan Price. Both looked exhausted as if they'd just come down from a mountain.

"Miranda, get back into the car. I need to take Stan Price home."

Miranda was frightened to say the words but she had no choice. "Mr. Newton, I-I'm sorry, but Elizabeth ran off after some girl. The dog followed her. I don't know why she went or-"

"Elizabeth's gone into the cemetery?" A look of horror transformed his face into a wide-eyed mask.

Miranda nodded. "I'm sorry. I never even saw any girl, but she-"

"Oh, G.o.d." His voice dropped to a whisper. "Help Stan into the car. I'll be back as soon as I can."

Then he disappeared into the cemetery, calling Elizabeth's name as he ran, the penlight flas.h.i.+ng from headstones, sending shadows racing across the ground.

4.

Where was her father? Had he fallen here in the dark? Was he hurt? But if he was hurt how could she help him?

The ghostly shape of the girl running along the path ahead of her twisted through the darkness and the headstones with a dream-like slowness. Elizabeth followed, weaving amongst all those Jesus's and angels whose faces had rotted into ugly, monstrous things, that leered as she ran by. Inadvertently, she stepped on a grave. Something clutched at her heel.

Slipping free, she ran deeper and deeper into the cemetery. Trees arched over her, then shadow swallowed her burying her in darkness.

Seconds later she entered the eerie maze of pa.s.sageways with iron doors. Behind those, she knew, there were coffins that contained the bones of dead people.

Still following the girl in old-fas.h.i.+oned clothes she ran along the pa.s.sageway. As she did so, she happened to glance down and saw that Sam ran beside her, his eyes bright, and his ebony body sleek.

Ahead of her, the girl had now stopped outside a tomb.

The door lay open. When she saw Elizabeth she beckoned her. Then she went into the velvet blackness of the vault.

Why had her father gone in there? Why didn't he wait at the door for her?

Elizabeth decided he must have hurt himself, that's why he hadn't come out to meet her.

With the dog still following faithfully she went inside.

5.

John moved quickly through the cemetery. The darkness here all but complete. The penlight cast its meager radiance ahead of him; a little of the light splashed against the tombs.

His cracked ribs chafed against each other as he ran. The pain was immense. That, and the hot airless night, conspired to leave him with a suffocating breathlessness. He strove to take deep breaths, but they only triggered fresh agonies.

He followed the path as it meandered across a landscape scabbed darkly with eighty thousand tombs. Ivy swarmed over them like an infection. Rotting in man-sized cavities beneath the earth, skulls would grimace up at him; eyes that had been devoured by maggots now bulged with mushroom growths; they glared at the soles of his pa.s.sing feet and gleamed with antic.i.p.ation, sensing what was to come.

In a weird, dislocated way his mind slipped free to swoop like some spirit bird down through the brown mist of earth. It glided amongst the burials lying there. He saw it all: Rotting coffins revealing their occupants that are slowly melting into the soil. And in the casket beneath the humpbacked angel is old Abraham, the miller who'd slipped between his millstones one winter's morning, which ground his skull to splinters. He'd burnt the letters that came to him in the dead of night. Then he mixed the ashes with salt and buried them where the gallows once stood at Skelbrooke crossroads.

It didn't do any good.

The demands must be met.

John knew that now.

He ran on into the darkening heart of the Necropolis. At every bend in the path he willed his daughter to be there.

Once more his imagination took him underground, down through the coffins that stretched out for half a mile or more in a single, vast formation. Black lozenge shapes flying through the mists of eternity. His mind's eye flew deeper and deeper into the hill, where something pulsed with a violet light. Something that was old when the pyramids were new. It pulsed, slowly hemorrhaging its evil out into the dirt where it spread outward, polluting the lives of everyone it touched.

Five thousand years ago it was known by a different name that was now lost to history. A thousand years ago it was Father Bones, five hundred years ago it was Jack O'Bones. Three hundred years ago the name mutated into Baby Bones. Three hundred years from now it would probably attract a new name. But it would carry on the same age-old business. Slumbering. Waking. Issuing its toxic little demands. Nouris.h.i.+ng itself on outbreaks of terror and submission. Then once more slumbering until the next time.

A branch raked his face like a claw. He shook himself out of the trance. The pain in his chest was worse; his breathing had become so restricted the oxygen barely reached his brain. Somewhere across the hill the clock in the cemetery chapel struck midnight.

At last the entrance to the Vale of Tears hung before him, clad in the same darkness that lies between stars. s.h.i.+ning the all too feeble penlight in front of him, he lumbered into the alleyway; ahead of him stretched the crypts with their iron doors.

In one such alley the body of Robert Gregory would lie cooling. John had intended to call the police from his mobile. That, however, was forgotten now.

He must see Elizabeth. He needed it like he needed breath. It had become a burning demand of his own body.

He moved along between the slumbering tombs, working his way deeper into the maze of pa.s.sageways that were now held by a dreamlike stillness.

Then he stopped. Ahead, stood the tomb of the Ellerby family.

Slowly he approached. Silent, forbidding, secretive, the iron door was now shut. As if someone had closed it to commit a private act.

"Elizabeth?"

He'd intended to shout. But his voice came softly. "Elizabeth?"

He approached the iron door that was now so firmly sealed against the outside world. He shone the light at it. A few strands of light brown hair that looked a lot like Elizabeth's hung down where the door closed against the frame.

"Elizabeth." He struck the door with the flat of his hand. The echoes came back at him before slowly dying away.

It may have been a trick of his ear but as the sound faded, it sounded like the faint bark of a dog receding far underground.

He took a deep breath, then cried out: "Elizabeth. Where are you?"

This time the stone swallowed his voice; there was no echo. And he knew there never ever would be a reply.

EPITAPH.

ONE YEAR LATER.

0.

"Every year thousands of people go missing. Some come back. Some vanish without trace. And you never know-it might even happen to youa"

1.

John Newton had one more goodbye to say before he left Skelbrooke forever. With the house behind him, awaiting its new owners, he eased the car onto the old Roman road. If most of the traffic on that two thousand-year-old highway consisted of ghosts then his car would be joining them. It would be the last time he would drive on these bone-dry cobblestones.

He pa.s.sed the spot where he'd found Elizabeth after she'd fallen from her bike all those months ago. Dandelions blazed a bright gold there in the mid-day sun. He reached the end of the road, then crossed over into the village. There were few people out and about. Not one of those met his eye as he pa.s.sed by. On the pond in front of the inn, a lone black swan drifted on the water.

For the last year, ever since his daughter had vanished, John had existed in a state of emotional coma. Life went on. But he'd not been connected to it. The umbilical that fastened him to reality had broken the moment he'd seen the door of the tomb closed: that's when he knew that Elizabeth had gone from his life.

First had come the ma.s.sive publicity of the police search. He and Val had received kind letters from strangers the world over. But they'd been unable to touch him. After three months the police scaled down their search to a minimalist 'leaving the file open.' Privately, their expressions told the Newtons that Elizabeth must be dead. Publicly, all they'd state with any certainty was that one Sat.u.r.day night Elizabeth Anne Newton, aged nine years, had left the family car parked near the Skelbrooke Necropolis. Then, accompanied by the family's dog (also not found), she'd entered the cemetery never to return.

And so life had gone on. John b.u.t.toned up his emotions. He did not cry. His face became a stone-like mask. No one knew that a wound had opened up inside of him, a great weeping cut that would not heal.

Of course, there was no funeral. No small white coffin. No flowers. In his mind, therefore, he could not lay his daughter to rest.

He finished the book. Without Trace made it to the best-sellers list. A Golden Dagger award followed, then the television doc.u.mentary. He deposited royalty checks at the bank, pa.s.sed the time of the day with the cas.h.i.+er with something on his face that impersonated a smile, but all the time his inner face was turned inward to that vast, weeping wound.

Medical authorities identified the meningitis outbreak as the C strain. Antibiotics stopped the bug dead. There were no fatalities.

Paul made a full recovery. Now he was on vacation with Miranda. They planned to study at university together. This afforded Val some consolation. "It's good to see them so much in love," she'd say after reading one of Paul's cheerful e-mails.

Love hurts. Love tears people aparta John pulled up in front of the imposing gates of Ezy View. Straightaway he saw old Stan Price sitting in the shade, still wearing the funny old hat. John climbed out of the car to be met by Cynthia like a mourner at a funeral, her eyes grave.

"I'm glad you could say goodbye, John," she said shaking his hand. He noticed that this once timid mouse of a woman had blossomed since her bullying husband's death. She wore delicately framed gla.s.ses, her hair had been expensively made over; the gray had gone, replaced by a rich chestnut color. For her, life had moved onto a far more pleasant chapter.

She led the way across the lawn to Stan Price. He sat with his hands on his lap, his head slightly down. As John approached he looked up. No look of recognition lit his eyes this time. Dementia had his mind well and truly nailed now.

"He's like this every day," Cynthia whispered. "He doesn't know anyone. Not even me. Sometimes he'll call me Mother, but it's rare that he speaks at all now."

John crouched down and rested his fingers on the back of a liver-spotted hand. "I'm going now, Stan," he said gently. "I've just dropped in to say goodbye." He gave the hand a squeeze.

"Dad, John Newton's saying goodbye. He's going to live in Los Angeles with his wife. He's working on a movie of one of his books. Hasn't he done well, Dad?"

Yeah, the boy done well.

The open wound inside John Newton bled until it hurt. But his outward expression remained the same.

"Goodbye, Stan. You look after yourself." John stood up.

Cynthia bent down to look at the old man's face. "Look, he's smiling. I think he recognized you after all."

John wasn't so sure. Not that it mattered. If the old man was in a world of his own now it was one that made him happy. His face was relaxed, the eyes sleepy. A moment later John returned to the car, leaving Stan Price sitting in the shade on this fine summer's day.

Stan closed his eyes. When he opened them he found himself lost in a dark wood. He was frightened. He'd been lost here for a long time. It was a place engulfed with shadows. Moss-covered trees rose all around him, cutting off his escape, while fungus formed white faces on tree trunks that leered down at him as he pa.s.sed. He stumbled on beneath the canopy of branches, searching desperately for a way out of that eerie gloom.

As he struggled on through the choking undergrowth it seemed as if someone far away called his name. He headed toward the source of the voice, knowing it was important he find it.

After a while he pushed his way through a dense curtain of bushes. Sunlight dazzled him as he moved away from the wood to find himself on a riverbank. A sun-tanned boy turned to look at him. He carried a fis.h.i.+ng rod in one hand. A catch net hung from the other.

"What on earth kept you, Stan?"

"Harry?"

"What, me old china?"

"Harry, is it you?"

"Of course it's me, y' daft monkey. Where on earth have you been all this time? No-never mind that now. Come and give us a hand with this net."

Stan looked at the back of his hands. They were healthy boy hands, with dirt under the fingernails, and sc.r.a.pes and scratches, and all those trophies that go with being ten years old.

"Come on, Stan." Harry grinned broadly. "You don't want to be late meeting the new girl, do you?"

2.

From the village John Newton drove to the cemetery. After parking the car, and taking a bunch of flowers from the trunk, he walked along the overgrown paths to the Vale of Tears. With his heart growing heavier with every step he found himself approaching the iron door of the Ellerby vault that was now firmly sealed against the outside world. In their search for Elizabeth the police had opened every vault. There had been no sign of the nine-year-old girl with the exception of her footprints leading into the tomb. Naturally, there had been some speculation why her footprints had not led back out again. But in the end no official conclusions were drawn. There were, however, more mysteries for the media to chew over. The body of retired doctor, Dianne Kelly, had been found in another tomb. While in the back of the Ellerby tomb police had discovered the bones of the long dead Herbert Kelly. A father, John knew, who had never deserted his daughter.

John stood in the shadowed labyrinth of tombs. He felt as if he was carved from the same dead stone as the angels and the Christs that watched him from the strangling brambles and vines.

For a long time he stared at the implacable iron door.

He'd given what the last letter demanded.

At last he laid the flowers on the ground before the door. Then, leaning forward, until his cheek touched the cold metal he whispered, "Good night, Elizabeth. Sleep well."