Secrets of the Dead

  Nine minutes past eleven. In the apartment next door, Fletcher Brown walked past the table where his father sat. The man rested his head on his arms, which lay flat on the table. His father was dead to the world. He slept soundly despite the loudness of the television. The noisy car chase on-screen didn’t disturb the man. He didn’t even flutter so much as an eyelid when the girl in the film screamed in horror.

  The news about Fletcher’s mother tonight had been bad.

  ‘She’s slipping away from us,’ his father had told him. ‘Your mother doesn’t even know I’m there when I sit by the bed.’

  His dad wasn’t interested in what Fletcher had to say. Instead, he’d simply told Fletcher to go to bed. Fletcher had to bottle up his emotions. His mother might be dying, but his dad didn’t appear to care one jot about Fletcher’s feelings. Dad had switched on the television, turned up the sound, and tried to lose himself in the story.

  His father now slept soundly. Fletcher put on his boots and went outdoors. The night was warm. Moths flew around the lamp fixed to the gatehouse wall.

  Fletcher ran. He wondered if he’d be able to release the sadness he felt for his mother if he could yell and cry. But he rarely showed any sign of emotion. His blood felt hot enough in his veins to the point it hurt him – the scalding flood actually stung the inside of his body from head to foot. All he could do was run and keep running, in the hope that exhaustion would cool his blood; then, perhaps, like his father, he could sleep.

  Even though he was just twelve years old, he understood that sleep was a blessing at times of grief like this. Sleep allowed an escape from reality. Sleep could help heal emotional wounds. Fletcher knew full well though that sleep would elude him. He’d be condemned to remain awake with his worries.

  Fletcher ran along the forest path. Enough starlight filtered through the branches to reveal the way. The eyes of animals glittered at him from the dark. Bat wings whispered through the air above his head. He glimpsed a fox with a dead blackbird hanging from its jaws. Fletcher ran and ran, hoping to outrun the sadness he felt for his mother. Of course, he never could quite run fast enough. The memory of her thin face lying on the pillow in the hospital ward gnawed away at him persistently – agonizingly.

  Opening his eyes, Oliver Tolworth gazed up into the darkness. He felt wide awake. When he realized he couldn’t get to sleep again he checked the luminous dial of his watch. The time stood just before eleven thirty.

  ‘Sleep,’ he told himself.

  Nope … not working. He pushed back the sheet and sat up in bed. By touch alone he found the light-switch on the bedside table. Click. Light flooded the bedroom. Deciding to get a drink of water, he climbed out of bed. It had been so warm lately that when he got water from the bathroom it was tepid and had an unpleasant dusty taste so, deciding to help himself to nicely chilled water from the jug in the refrigerator, he went downstairs. Everyone else in the house seemed to be fast asleep. The door to his parents’ bedroom was partly open, and he noticed that the bedside lamp had been left on. What’s more, his dad slept with his arm out of the bed as if he’d fallen asleep as he’d attempted to switch off the lamp. That looked funny. Oliver grinned and headed downstairs, where he could hear the slow, rhythmic breathing of Ben Darrington from further along the corridor.

  Oliver couldn’t get over the fact he’d suddenly got a new brother out of the blue. A grown-up mystery brother, at that – one he’d never met before. Heck, I never even knew he existed at all, Oliver told himself with a renewed sense of amazement that this stranger had suddenly appeared here at their house.

  Curiosity tugged Oliver, pretty much like someone tugging a dog on a leash. In no time at all he stood outside the back parlour that had been converted to Ben’s bedroom. He gently eased open the door. Of course, the stupid thing gave a loud creak that would make anyone wake up with a furious yell. Oliver froze there, the corridor light spilling across Ben’s bed, lighting up his face. Ben, however, slept soundly. Oliver padded across the floor to look down at the teenager. The face was so much like Dad’s, Oliver realized. Ben had the same mass of bristly curls as both Oliver and his dad. Ben was a stranger, but then he didn’t look like a stranger, or even seem like a stranger. Oliver liked Ben. It felt like he’d known Ben for … well … forever.

  A rucksack leaned against the wall. That was Ben’s bag. Oliver felt the irresistible tug of curiosity again. He didn’t question himself if this was wrong or not. It just seemed an OK thing to do. He wanted to find out more about his new brother. Oliver stealthily approached the rucksack. He opened the top to find lots of clothes. They weren’t folded well; in fact, they weren’t folded at all. Students, Oliver thought. They’re always messy, aren’t they? He checked a side pouch. A phone in a case; scuffed and scratched. A wallet, with a couple of banknotes and a student union card. Ben peered at the ID photograph. Ben’s hair looked like a funny bush on his head. There were pens in the side compartment, old train tickets, timetables, a dice, gum wrappers. Messy students.

  Oliver picked up the heavy – hugely heavy! – rucksack in order to put it back where he’d found it. When he put his hand against the yielding fabric at the bottom he felt a square shape. Once more he felt the tug of curiosity. The square shape was probably nothing much, but Oliver reasoned that, in a way, he was paying Ben a compliment by taking an interest in his possessions. He opened up the rucksack again, wormed his hand down between the messy cram of T-shirts and jeans and stuff until he reached the bottom. With a great deal of tugging, he managed to pull out a plastic box of the kind you might put sandwiches in. He pulled off the lid.

  ‘Wow.’

  Whether it was the Wow Oliver uttered he didn’t know, but Ben stirred. Oliver tensed, waiting for angry accusations about invading privacy. All Ben did, however, was sigh as he turned over in bed. His eyes remained closed. Soon his respiration returned to normal.

  Oliver stared at what he’d discovered in the plastic box. Wrapped in clear plastic was white stuff. One poke of his finger told him that the plastic bag, which was about the size of a bag of sugar, contained white powder.

  ‘Drugs,’ he uttered. ‘These are drugs.’

  He stared at the white powder with a mixture of dread and astonishment. He’d never encountered drugs before in real life, but he’d seen them often enough on television. When he looked at this bag of white powder he could almost feel its badness – it had an aura of crime about it. Quickly, he put the lid on the box and stuffed it back down to the bottom of the rucksack. He replaced the rucksack where he’d found it, confident that Ben wouldn’t notice that it had been disturbed.

  Oliver trembled. Just seeing drugs in real life felt wrong – like something he could get into trouble for. He pictured police cars stopping outside the house. He’d even touched the bag with the white powder inside, which, to him, seemed a million times worse than just seeing it. His mouth had gone dry. He really did need that drink of ice-cold water now.

  Swiftly, he padded out of Ben’s room to the kitchen. He took the jug of iced water from the fridge, poured himself a glass, then, raising the glass to his lips to take a drink, his eyes went to the kitchen window. A figure stood on the other side of the glass. The kitchen light revealed it perfectly. He saw a metal band around the forehead of the skull. The eyes were closed. Cracks in the dry face resembled fracture lines on a planet devastated by some horrendous catastrophe.

  The mummy’s eyelids slid back, revealing eyes that were plump and bulging and white and glistening – big, staring eyes with brown irises and fierce black pupils.

  The glass fell from Oliver’s hand. He slowly backed away. The husk of a creature vanished from the window. A moment later, the handle of the back door moved downwards. Then slowly, silently, with no sense of hurry, the door was opened from the other side. Oliver watched in horror as the mummified figure stepped into the kitchen. Those bulging eyes fixed on him – fierce eyes, angry eyes.

  The mummified figure walked slowly across the kitchen tow
ards the door that led into the rest of the house. Strips of cloth criss-crossed its chest. The metal headband it wore on its head gleamed beneath the kitchen light. The creature’s eyes were unblinking – a fixed stare of hatred and utter fury. This was the same mummy that had grabbed hold of him when he’d gone night-walking with Fletcher. The mummy had seized him and run with him, like it intended to carry him away. Now it was back.

  Oliver couldn’t take his eyes off this gaunt invader. He glimpsed naked bone through cracks in the skin. One hand had been stripped of its fabric wrappings to reveal individual fingers and fingernails that gleamed like mother-of-pearl. The other arm looked shorter – what’s more, the end of the limb still bore its wrappings of ancient cloth. The effect was bulbous – almost as if an attempt had been made to make the arm into a weapon; a club to break the skulls of this creature’s enemies.

  With a dreadful sense of inevitability, the monster walked through the kitchen. Grey strips of cloth hung down from the body, which was part skeleton. The mummified corpse had a sense of purpose. It was here to do something – and that something would be bad. Oliver knew that. The monster was here to hurt his family. Perhaps even to kill.

  Oliver backed into the fridge door. The bump was enough to snap him out of that almost hypnotic state of fear. He darted through the doorway and raced upstairs, yelling at the top of his voice. ‘Dad! Wake up!’ He charged into his parents’ bedroom. ‘Wake up, there’s something in the house! Dad?’

  His mother and father slept soundly. The bedside light remained on, illuminating their relaxed faces and closed eyes. Oliver stared at them both in shock. What’s happening? Why aren’t they waking up? I’m shouting as loud as I can!

  ‘DAD! DAD! IT’S COMING UP THE STAIRS!’

  Indeed, he heard the slow thud … thud … thud of its feet as it climbed. Any moment now, it would step through the door. That dead husk of a thing would be inside his parents’ bedroom.

  ‘Dad!’ Oliver put both hands on his father’s chest and pushed hard, trying to shake him awake. ‘Dad. It’s getting closer. You’ve got to wake up … please … open your eyes!’ He yelled until his throat burned. He shook his mother, too. She didn’t move, didn’t even so much as murmur in her sleep.

  ‘Why don’t you wake up?’ Tears ran down his face. ‘Why don’t you wake up?’ He was so scared now. The boards on the landing creaked as the corpse neared the bedroom. ‘Please, open your eyes NOW!’

  At that moment, he remembered what Fletcher Brown had told him. He’d said that the mummies in the castle could make people sleep – a magic sleep that they couldn’t be woken up from. Fletcher had said that when this happened you could shout in their ears, scream in their faces, pull their hair, shake them until their teeth rattled, yet it would be impossible to wake them. Oliver had thought that Fletcher had been telling him a story to try and scare him. But it’s true, he told himself with absolute dread. The mummies can make people sleep. They do something to their minds so it’s impossible to wake them.

  Oliver stopped yelling at his parents to wake up. He took a step back from the bed. His father lay there on his back, his arm extended towards the bedside light as if he was already dead. His mother lay on her side, her eyelids closed. She looked so vulnerable there. Neither his mother nor his father could do anything to prevent themselves from being attacked in their own bed – that special, safe place. A bed is that deeply personal refuge from the world: a secure nest of soft pillows, mattress and duvet, where people surrender consciousness to sleep. Even though they don’t know what is happening around them, they trust they will remain safe and unharmed in the comfort of their own bed. The monster was going to violate that safe refuge.

  The mummy entered through the doorway. Eyes bulging from its head, it stared at the two sleepers. They were vulnerable, helpless; they couldn’t fight to protect themselves; they couldn’t run away. Oliver knew that they’d lie there fast asleep, and that this nightmare of dry skin and bone could do whatever it wanted to his parents. The mummy walked slowly towards the bed. Strips of bandage dangled from its arms. Its upper lip had shrunk after all those years in the tomb – it formed a permanent snarl, exposing a line of glinting teeth.

  ‘Mum. Dad. Please wake up.’ Oliver knew that he made a last forlorn plea.

  They didn’t stir: dead to the world.

  Dead … Oliver knew that within moments the intruder would kill them. Oliver closed his eyes for a second, breathed deeply, and knew what he must do.

  Opening his eyes again, he stood in the mummy’s path. ‘No,’ he said in a clear voice. ‘I won’t let you hurt them.’

  The nightmare man approached … closer and closer.

  ‘You won’t touch them. I won’t let you.’ Oliver lifted both hands, ready to push the thing back, although he couldn’t prevent the attack. This grim figure could break him apart as easily as if he was made out of twigs. The creature moved closer. Those blazing eyes fixed on his mother as she lay sleeping. It seemed fascinated by her face.

  ‘No! You mustn’t touch her.’ Oliver added in sheer desperation: ‘It’s not allowed. You are not allowed to touch her.’

  Then something strange happened. The mummy looked down at Oliver, as if noticing him for the first time. It took hold of his chin and lifted his face so it could examine the features closely. For a moment they stayed like that, the corpse holding Oliver’s chin as it stared into his face.

  Then it was over, as simply as that. The gaunt figure turned and walked out of the bedroom. Oliver heard the sound of its feet going downstairs. After that, silence.

  The next thing he heard was Dad saying, ‘Ollie? What’s the matter? Don’t you feel well?’

  Oliver turned round to see his mother and father sitting up in bed; he saw their expressions of concern. Oliver opened his mouth, ready to explain exactly what had happened tonight, how the house had been invaded by someone that had died thousands of years ago, but the room began to spin; he dropped to the floor like a stone before he could utter a single word.

  FIFTEEN

  They filmed the man being tortured. DVDs of this gruesome and violent footage would be distributed to the gang’s drug mules and underlings to demonstrate that disloyalty would result in brutal punishment. Films such as this ensured employee obedience. The victim’s wrists had been tied to a bracket set above his head in the cellar wall. The man being tortured was in his early forties, and he’d been stripped to the waist so that the figure in a red hood which completely covered his head and face, save for two eye holes, had access to his bare chest and stomach.

  Methodically, the hooded figure touched the man’s exposed skin with the end of an electric cable – this thick, black wire was plugged into a control box that would deliver a painful jolt, but not a lethal, heart-stopping shock. Blue fire arced from the exposed copper strands at the end of the cable; the bolt of electricity plunged into the man’s flesh with a loud CRACK! The victim convulsed. A piercing scream erupted from his lips, his knees sagged and the nylon cord dug into his wrists. The man’s jaw dropped open in a slack way, as if he was surprised by the pain of the electric shock.

  The torturer in the red hood poured a bottle of water over his victim’s head to revive him somewhat before the next round of punishment. The man was dazed. He extended his tongue to lick at the dribbles of water running down past his mouth. His thirst burned his throat. He needed that water. That cold liquid tasted so good.

  The torturer grasped the black cable and applied its tip to the man’s roving, pink tongue. CRACK! A flash of blue fire. Smoke pouring from the tongue smelt the same as overcooked bacon. The man jerked his head back so violently that he smacked his skull against the brickwork. His expression of agony intensified. Blood streamed from the cut in his scalp. Crimson flooded down his neck, over his shoulders and chest. Those shoulders began to heave as he sobbed.

  A second man stepped from the shadows to the camcorder mounted on a tripod. He zoomed in on the man’s suffering face. Tears glinted i
n the basement lights. Blood painted crimson stripes down his chest. Here was a man who couldn’t take any more pain. He’d reached his limits. Shaking, sobbing, bleeding, he began to choke out words. A blister had formed on the tip of his tongue. The electric shock also caused it to swell, making speech difficult.

  However, he desperately needed to talk in order to stop them inflicting any more pain. ‘I haven’t got it any more. The coke’s safe … I didn’t give it to the police. I haven’t told anyone about you. I’m sorry … It’s just a misunderstanding, OK?’

  The hooded man moved the end of the cable until it was just a couple of inches from the tip of his victim’s nose.

  The man, tied to the wall, shuddered, anticipating the agonizing heat of electricity if the live copper strands should touch his nose. ‘There’s no need to hurt me any more. I’ll tell you what you want to know. Anything.’

  The man who operated the video camera extended his hand in a gesture that invited the torture victim to speak.

  ‘It’s all there. I haven’t used any of the coke … I haven’t sold so much as a gram.’ The man took a deep breath. ‘I persuaded my girlfriend’s son to keep it for me. His name’s Darrington … Ben Darrington. Have you got that? Ben Darrington. He’s staying with his father in Devon. I don’t know exactly where, though. You’ve got to take my word for that. I don’t know the address.’

  The torturer didn’t take his victim’s word. He pressed the exposed copper wires to the man’s chest.

  Once … twice … three times … three blue flashes filled the basement with light. The screams were so loud that they seemed to penetrate the bricks in the walls and pierce the dirt to the ends of the Earth.