Secrets of the Dead
The lane would bring the pair to within twenty feet of where Micky concealed himself. He unzipped the rucksack, pulled out the pistol, clicked off the safety catch, then settled down to wait. His prey approached slowly on account of Ben’s condition, the crutches tapping against the ground as he heaved himself forward. Despite the effort, and probably the pain of moving the broken leg, Ben smiled as he chatted with the boy: the pair enjoyed each other’s company. The boy pointed at squirrels running up a tree trunk, and both paused to watch the animals.
Micky whispered to himself, ‘Keep walking, guys. Just a bit closer. Then I’ll step out and say hello.’ Micky curled his finger around the trigger. The weapon felt as heavy as a brick in his hand. In the ammo magazine were eight bullets. On pulling the trigger, the bullet would speed from the muzzle at five hundred miles per hour – that was as fast as an airliner. Just imagine the damage a bullet travelling at that speed would do to the human body. Micky allowed his imagination to supply bloody images of that bullet smashing into Ben’s chest. ‘Pow,’ Micky breathed with satisfaction. ‘Ben, I screwed your mother. Now I’m going to screw with you in an entirely different way.’ He grinned, pleased with his cool sense of humour.
Micky waited behind the bush. Sunlight filtered down through the trees. A yellow butterfly flitted in front of him. Ben and his little friend were walking again, coming this way, getting closer. Any moment now …
‘Oliver … it is Oliver, isn’t it? Ahoy there!’
The voice of another man encouraged Micky to dip his head lower so that he wouldn’t be noticed. Carefully, he parted the branches of the bush so he could see. Damn it! A guy on a bicycle rode up to the pair then stopped. Wearing a white shirt, with a blue necktie, he was dressed for the office rather than a bike ride. Not that it was his choice of clothes which annoyed Micky Dunt. The arrival of the stranger complicated things. Micky had intended to step out from behind the bush, aim the pistol at Ben, and then demand the return of the very valuable consignment of cocaine that he knew was in Ben’s possession. Now this … Another person arriving on the scene had ruined his plan.
It got worse. A car drove slowly along the lane. It, too, stopped. The driver, a woman with blond hair, began chatting to Ben and his group. The woman soon drove off; however, the guy on the bike dismounted and all three began walking back in the direction of the houses. Another guy, aged about forty or so, emerged from one of the houses and came to the end of the drive. He waved a greeting at the three in the lane. After that, he stood there, waiting for them to join him.
Micky clicked on the safety, put the gun back in the bag, and retraced his path back to the car. Not yet, he told himself. Too many people about. Wait until the sun goes down. Strike then …
Philip Kemmis perspired as he hurried towards the gatehouse. He’d been walking for miles in the hope he would exhaust himself, which might permit him a good night’s sleep. The problem was he’d forgotten to take his medication with him, the pills that helped keep his anxiety under control. Now that anxiety came blazing back with a vengeance. His heart beat faster. He panted hard as he rushed along the path. Vines that climbed up the branches of a bush suddenly had the appearance of venomous snakes. He heard vicious hissing. Out of the corner of his eye he saw snake heads dart at him, their jaws open wide, revealing glinting fans. When he spun round to look at them the snakes weren’t snakes at all, they were simply vines that swayed in the warm breeze. Should have taken my pills, he thought. Hallucinations are flaring up again.
He moved faster along the path. From the corner of one eye, he glimpsed dark figures in the shadows that watched him – they were potent with menace. They wanted to hurt him. Of course, when he twisted his head to look at them directly, those still figures became tree trunks again.
‘You’re not real,’ he snarled as he caught sight of the dead husk of a woman; for a second he saw bandages fluttering from her arms and head. He stopped and stared at the creature, his heart pounding so hard that it hurt.
No … there was no mummy there. It was just an old gatepost. He knew that his anxiety levels had gone nuclear. What Philip’s doctor referred to as ‘your old trouble’ had exploded back into his head. Philip’s right hand began to throb painfully. It felt as if the bones in the hand were being crushed one by one; an agonizing sensation. Yet he had no right hand. An accident, his parents had told him, just a freak accident. Philip knew the truth, however. He knew alright.
He groaned with pain. Clutching the stump at the end of his right arm, he stumbled towards the gatehouse door that led to his apartment. The puckered skin at the end of the wrist stump hurt so much, like it had been plunged into boiling cooking oil.
Philip clawed at the door handle and entered the hallway. In every doorway inside the apartment, he glimpsed bandaged figures in the shadows. Dried-out corpses. Strips of cloth formed criss-cross patterns across their chests. Even though the eyes were lifeless, they did see him. He sensed it. Those dead eyes gazed into his soul and saw his terror.
Philip somehow made it into the bathroom. He swung back the door of the wall cabinet. Grabbing a blister pack of pills, he popped out two, the prescribed dose … choking, gagging on the hard pills in his throat, he nevertheless managed to swallow them. For good measure, he took two more. He cupped his hand under the cold water tap and gulped a few mouthfuls of water to make sure the pills went down his throat into his stomach. Sighing, relieved to have taken the medication, he closed the cabinet door and saw what stared back at him from the mirror.
Kadesh looked into his eyes. Philip couldn’t see his own reflection. There was only Kadesh, the mummy. Philip saw the band of metal around the top of the skull. The eyes were closed.
With shocking suddenness, the eyelids slid back. Philip stared into the mirror; he saw two plump, living, glistening eyes in the dead face. They glared with absolute ferocity from that ruin of dried skin that had broken open in places to reveal the bone underneath. The lip curled back, exposing the monstrosity’s teeth.
From shrivelled lips came a hiss: ‘Be ready … be ready.’
Philip threw himself back against the bathroom wall, covered his face with his remaining hand, and screamed as loud as he could.
The screams from the adjoining apartment reverberated through the living room.
Fletcher’s dad yawned. ‘His Lordship’s in good voice.’ Picking up the TV remote, he thundered at the wall that separated the apartments, ‘Shout louder, I don’t think you’ve woken the dead yet!’ Fletcher’s dad pressed the volume control, making the TV louder, in an attempt to drown out the sound. ‘God help us, living next door to a madman.’
Fletcher knelt in front of a coffee table. The TV cop drama boomed loudly enough to make the toy soldiers he was lining up on the table wobble. Fletcher was too old to play with these plastic soldiers – his mother had bought them for him years ago as a surprise gift when she worked as a cleaner up at the castle – but he had taken them out of the tin from under his bed to remind him of the time when his mother had been a healthy and cheerful woman. Just twenty minutes ago, the hospital had telephoned to say that Mrs Brown had taken a turn for the worse. The doctors couldn’t wake her. Respiration had become laboured. Fletcher viewed this decline in his mother’s condition with equanimity. He did not feel sadness. The fact that his mother was dying was simply that: a fact. He viewed her failing health dispassionately. Fletcher realized that some might think him cruel, but he knew he wasn’t like other people. Emotion rarely affected him. He often told himself those rocks out on the hillside felt more emotion than him.
It hadn’t concerned him particularly when their neighbour, Lord Philip Kemmis, had started screaming thirty minutes ago. Every few days the man would have screaming fits. OK, this one was louder and more prolonged than usual, but neither Fletcher nor his father were perturbed by it. If anything, his dad was annoyed by the shouting.
Even though the TV blasted out sound at full volume, Fletcher could hear some of the things that their
neighbour yelled: ‘Get out of my house! I did not give you permission to enter this room!’ The voice still had its customary posh tones, although Fletcher could hear the man’s terror.
Earlier, Fletcher had told Oliver that he could sense emotion in objects such as trees, rocks and buildings. This morning he’d sensed their dread – when he looked at the faces of the plastic soldiers, they wore expressions of dread, too. Now Philip Kemmis expressed terror and dread in the way he screamed.
His father shouted above the sirens on TV, ‘Fletcher! I might have to go out tonight! If the hospital phones again about your mother, I’ll go over there!’
Fletcher pulled the last soldier from the tin. ‘My mother’s going to die tonight.’ The world around him emoted dread. These walls wore an expression of anguish, or so it seemed to him. Then, Fletcher could see what nobody else could see. Oh, people would laugh and be scornful if he told them that walls, trees, fences, toys, cars, furniture and just about everything else could sense the approach of an ominous event. They say I’m insane, he told himself, but I known that objects express emotion. They detect what will happen in the future and react accordingly. This time they reflect the impending death of my mother. He knew his thoughts would seem oddly precocious to people … or just downright odd.
His father stirred himself from his own thoughts. Once again he shouted over the din of the television, ‘If the hospital telephones about your mother, I’ll drive over there and sit with her. I don’t want you to come. You stay here. Play with your …’ He waggled a finger at the toy soldiers. ‘Just lock the door after I’ve gone and stay indoors. Don’t go out walking when it’s dark.’
Fletcher repeated what he’d said a moment ago: ‘My mother’s going to die tonight.’
His father didn’t express surprise at the statement. He’d got used to his son’s peculiar behaviour over the years. ‘Yes,’ he said matter-of-factly, ‘she probably will.’
Fletcher Brown finished lining the toy soldiers up in front of him on the coffee table. In the apartment next door, screams had given way to a kind of moaning, as if their neighbour’s terror had exhausted him. At that moment, the telephone rang. Fletcher’s dad killed the sound on the TV as he took the call.
‘Yes? Alright. I understand. I’ll set off now.’
Fletcher placed his arm flat on the coffee table and slowly swept the toy soldiers, which his mother had bought him, into a waste bin that was half full of pizza crusts, cigarette butts and orange peel.
His father stood up. ‘I’m going to the hospital to see your mother. Remember, lock the door, and stay at home.’
This seemed like another world to Micky Dunt. He was used to living in cities. The countryside here in Devon unsettled him. Too quiet, for one. Also, all this greenstuff, the plants, trees, grass, and miles of moorland, seemed a chaotic jumble compared to neatly ordered urban streets and buildings.
Micky sat in the car waiting for night to fall. Already, it had become gloomy here in the forest clearing. Above him, streaks of red cloud could have been savage claw marks running across the sky. He took the time to check that the gun operated smoothly. He unloaded it and loaded it again with those shiny, gold-coloured bullets. He’d have liked to fire the gun. The weapon was new to him; he’d only rented it from a guy this morning. However, he knew if he fired the gun it would make a heck of a bang. In a silent wilderness like this, the noise would be heard for miles. No … he decided he couldn’t risk taking any practice shots. The air was so warm that he lolled back in the driving seat with his legs hanging out through the open door. The only moving things were animals. He’d not seen a single person come anywhere near the car. There were squirrels though; they’d startled him by scampering over the vehicle’s roof, with a skittering sound. Rabbits had come out of the long grass to stare at him. It was like he was an intruder in their world. More animals had emerged from the shadows to stare at him – stoats, foxes, rabbits, squirrels, mice, badgers. They’d stared like they disapproved of his presence here. Micky Dunt sensed them resenting his presence. That expression in their staring eyes annoyed Micky. Even made him a bit paranoid. Those creatures were hostile. They didn’t like him. He’d have loved to kill a couple of them with the pistol – show them who’s boss, but, again, that BANG would send out a signal to people in the castle grounds that there was a gunman somewhere close by. Micky needed to remain out of sight. An invisible assassin. He didn’t want people giving his description to the police. The bruises on his face would be as obvious as the flashing light of a beacon.
So Micky Dunt waited. He didn’t wait patiently, but he waited.
As the sun went down, Micky checked his emails. One had come through from Karl Gurrick, the mobster who’d sent him here to retrieve the cocaine that Micky had entrusted to Ben’s care. The email simply said: ‘Just a friendly message to ensure your fealty.’ There was a link to a website. Micky knew better than to ignore such web-links from this ruthless gangster; there might be an important message for Micky on the website. There was … of sorts … The link took him to a video. Micky watched footage of two masked men beating a sweaty, black-haired guy with baseballs bats. The black-haired guy screamed and shouted what seemed to be some words of Spanish. Micky noticed a photo of a young girl stuck to the wall behind the guy. The two masked assailants stopped smashing the guy’s face with bats. One reappeared with a shotgun and blew the victim’s head to pieces. The hair was no longer black.
Micky had seen videos like this before online. They were used by gangsters to reinforce the loyalty of their own employees. Sometimes they were copied to disk and posted to border guards, custom officers and police – anyone who the gangsters wanted to intimidate into turning a blind eye when a consignment of drugs, for example, came through a border checkpoint. Probably, the little girl in the photo on the wall was the daughter of a cop or border guard. Micky knew that the use of these torture-murder videos was particularly prevalent on the US–Mexico border. Boy-oh-boy. You didn’t need subtitles or voice-overs to explain that the kid in the pic would get the same treatment if her border-guard father or mother didn’t ignore the packets of white powder in the drug mule’s suitcase. ‘And they say nature is red in tooth and claw.’ Micky enjoyed a sadistic chuckle.
He glanced up to see a pair of eyes staring at him. Damn it. He nearly jumped out of his skin. ‘Clear off.’ He waved his hand, and the owner of the eyes, a sheep, trotted back into the shadows and disappeared.
A chirp told Micky he’d got a text. He opened it up. Oh shit … it was from Gurrick, and this was what it said: ‘I’ll make you an offer of fealty. Do this to earn back my trust. Film torture of Darrington. Email to me by tomorrow morning at latest.’
‘Fealty? What the crap does fealty even mean?’ Micky shook his head. This was getting seriously heavy. Gurrick not only expected him to retrieve the stash of coke, he also demanded that Micky film himself beating up Ben Darrington. The torture video would be used by Gurrick to bolster his status in the criminal underworld. It would also be a way of Micky winning back Gurrick’s trust. ‘Fealty? Fealty? What does he mean by that?’ Micky googled the word. Ah … he began to understand when he read the definition. Fealty was a pledge of allegiance. In medieval times, men pledged an oath of loyalty to their local lord. Fealty was a solemn pledge to serve the lord, remain loyal, and woe unto the dude who broke their oath of fealty. If they did betray the lord, or failed him in some way, there would be consequences. No doubt violent and bloody consequences.
Micky Dunt understood what was going on here. He’d been given a chance to repair his relationship with the vicious gangster Karl Gurrick. If Micky failed to return the drugs and make that torture video, then Gurrick would punish Micky – and probably in such a way that the high-voltage cruelty of a couple of days ago would seem just about as painful as being tickled with a feather. Micky knew he’d have to hurt people tonight. What’s more, he’d have to take explicit footage for his new lord and master. There’s nothing like the use of te
rror to guarantee obedience.
Shadows crept into the garden. The setting sun had left a splash of vivid red on the horizon. Despite the night closing in, the air remained so warm that nobody felt inclined to go indoors just yet. John brought Ingrid her lime tea to her where she sat on a lounger on the patio. He perched himself on a low wall beside her and sipped his coffee. Ben Darrington hobbled along on crutches to make sure that Oliver didn’t burn himself as he lit citronella candles dotted about the garden on the tops of ornamental walls and tree stumps.
Ben had comfortably slipped into the role of big brother, offering advice to Oliver, while keeping a watchful eye on the way the boy handled the matches. ‘Don’t point the matchstick downward too much,’ Ben said. ‘It’ll burn up too fast and toast your fingers.’
Oliver laughed. He was enjoying the attention of the brother he never even knew existed until a few days ago. ‘Is this better?’
‘Yes, that’s better, Ollie. Don’t let the flame get too close to your fingers. Blow it out and light another match.’
Oliver called out, ‘Dad, can we light the big lantern hanging from the tree?’
‘I don’t see why not. Though you might want to let Ben light that one for you.’
‘It’s OK,’ Ben said. ‘I’ll lift Ollie up.’
Ingrid smiled. ‘Just don’t go hurting your leg. Oliver is heavier than he looks.’
Oliver and Ben chatted happily to one another as they made their way across the lawn to where the lantern dangled from a branch six feet above the ground.