Emily drew up her legs away from the corpse and lay there waiting for her heart to slow its beat, her breathing to return to its normal pace. She would have to find the strength – and the courage – to lift him back into the bed. Then she would have to dress him in pyjamas, clean him, give the appearance of having looked after him in his illness. After that, she would have to call in the doctor, act grief-stricken, pretend she hadn’t realized how ill he had been. Secretly, she knew how ridiculous her story would sound, and that the doctor would only have to see Cyril’s withered condition to know it had been a deterioration of weeks and not just days. But she refused to consciously admit this fact to herself.
She suddenly shivered. She hadn’t had time to notice how cold the room was before. Wondering if he had somehow managed to open the window in a bid to call for help from the High Street below, she looked over towards the light source. No, it was still locked for she could see the latch in its socket, and the curtains remained half-drawn. Curiously, it wasn’t the natural coldness of a winter’s day; it was a deep, clammy sort of coldness. Perhaps it was just the coldness that accompanied death.
But the chill became much more than just an uncomfortable feeling when she heard the low chuckle. It became an icy cold hand that clutched her heart in its fist, causing the blood circulating through her body to freeze and her body to go rigid. She slowly forced her head to turn towards the prostrated body, her eyes unwilling to confirm what her ears had heard. Cyril hadn’t moved. She watched his form for a few moments, waiting for the sound again, watching to see if it had come from his dead body. She’d heard that even after death corpses sometimes moved or made sounds; it was something to do with the build up of gases within the body. It came again: a strange, almost whispered, laughter. And it hadn’t come from the corpse.
It appeared to originate from the other side of the room, from the darkened corner behind the open door, yet somehow it filled the whole bedroom. She stared into the gloomy corner and her eyes could find no hidden shapes lurking there. But she felt its presence; and it was more loathsome than the creature that lay on the floor before her. Then the door began to slowly swing shut, the room growing dimmer as it did so, the poor winter light from the half-closed curtains providing only a soft grey hue to combat the gloom. The door closed with a soft click and the shadows around the bedroom deepened.
She heard a whisper and it sounded like her name. It came again, but this time from a different corner of the room, then from behind her, then from the foot of the bed. Then from Cyril.
She looked at him in horror.
His head still faced the ceiling and his lips barely moved as he spoke – as he whispered – her name. The head turned towards her and she saw that the eyes were now fully open, but somehow still not registering. They reminded her of the eyes of the dead fish she had seen laid out on a fishmonger’s slab – sightless and flat.
Emily watched with paralysing fascination as he – it – raised itself on one elbow and stretched a hand towards her. She tried to scream but only a sharp, rasping sound came from her throat. The corpse was on its hands and knees and began to crawl in her direction, the stiffness in its limbs making its progress slow and deliberate. The grin on its face had suddenly become real and full of malevolence. The thing that had been Cyril whispered her name again.
Emily pushed herself back against the wardrobe in a vain attempt to get away from this terror, her head turning, but her eyes refusing to look away from the approaching horror. She fell sideways, twisting her body, her hands scrabbling at the carpet in an effort to drag herself clear. But it had crawled over her lower limbs now and its face was against her back, parodying the sexual position he had forced her into so many times in the past.
This time she did scream as his lips drew level with her ear and he whispered an obscenity to her. And now there seemed to be others around her; dark shapes, faces that somehow wouldn’t focus, figures that appeared then faded before taking form. She could hear the laughter but it came from inside her own head.
Cold, cold hands clasped at her breasts and she felt herself being lifted backwards and up. Other unseen hands clutched at her body, lifting her by her arms and her legs. Emily rose towards the ceiling and found herself looking down at the upturned face of her dead husband. One hand was gripped around her throat and the other was between her legs, supporting her weight. The hand around her throat began to tighten, forcing the life from her, making her as he was. Her eyes began to force themselves from their sockets and her tongue protruded like a living creature trying to escape from a collapsed cave. Saliva ran from her mouth on to his upturned face in a smooth, sticky stream.
The other figures below her began to take on a more definite shape and, just in that moment before her own sight dimmed as a red mist passed over them, she saw their forms clearly. But there was something wrong with them. Her mind barely had time to realize what that wrong was before it succumbed to unconsciousness but, in a last moment of clarity, she saw that the faces, the hands, the limbs that were not missing – all were blackened and charred. It was as if they were bodies risen from a fiery hell.
The gurgling noise that was meant to be a scream faded on her lips as she fell unconscious. Still holding her aloft, the thing that had been her husband walked towards the window, the eyeballs now beginning to roll inwards in their sockets, so that only white showed through the closing lids, the grin once again becoming a grimace of death.
It reached the window and stood poised, waiting. The voices told it what to do.
9
Keller’s reflexes, thanks to his excellent training and his own natural instincts, were still way above average despite the traumas he had so recently been through. He jammed on the brakes just as he caught sight of the glass from the first-floor window breaking outwards in the periphery of his vision, and the car had screeched to a halt by the time the two bodies had spattered against the unyielding concrete of the road. For a moment, the High Street had become as a still photograph, with the people standing transfixed, staring at the bloody, misshapen bodies lying in the road. Then, faces began to appear in doorways and at windows, hesitating before crowding into the street. Somebody screamed. A woman fainted. A man vomited against the side of a building. Nobody approached the procumbent bodies.
Keller sat there stunned. His car had stopped about five yards from the twisted tangle of flesh and he had an unobstructed view of the grotesque tableau they presented. Although they had not fallen far, he knew from the angle of their fall – headfirst – they would have stood little chance of surviving; their necks must have snapped on impact. It was all the more startling when he saw the fingers belonging to the outstretched hand of the figure lying beneath the other slowly begin to curl inwards then out again.
He jerked open the car door and ran towards them. He went down on one knee, trying to ignore the pool of blood forming beneath the bodies and seeping outwards. For the first time, Keller realized that the figures were those of a man and woman, and, strangely, the man was completely naked. As the co-pilot examined the figure on top more closely he noticed, even more strangely, that the stiffened limbs, the greyish-white, emaciated flesh and the tightened, almost bald scalp, indicated that the man had been dead for some time.
The gurgling sound abruptly disturbed him from his observation of the man and he quickly turned his attention to the woman beneath. The noise was coming from deep in her throat, as though she were trying to speak, but the blood trickling from her lungs was distorting the sounds she made. He noticed the fingers of her left hand were still moving, grasping the thin body of the man beneath the shoulders, and fighting down the feeling of revulsion at the touch of cold flesh, he pulled him easily aside. Then he gently slid his fingers under the woman’s head, between her face and the road, ignoring the sticky blood that flowed on to his hand. He shifted the angle of the head very slightly so that she might be able to draw in air through her mouth – if she was still capable. He had to close his eyes for
a second or two at the sight of her flattened, bloody face.
Keller leant closer to try and catch her words but they were feeble and unintelligible. For an instant, the eye that was turned towards him fluttered, then opened. It looked straight into his and suddenly it widened as though in fear. Abruptly, life left it and he realized she was dead.
He stood up, feeling a deep remorse for the poor woman whose very last moments had been clouded with fear. Oddly enough, he felt nothing for the naked man who also lay at his feet; maybe it was because the frail body hardly seemed human – it was more like a frozen carcass. Or perhaps it was because somehow he knew the man had been responsible for both their deaths. He must have pushed her from the window and, because of his obviously weakened state, fallen through after her.
The co-pilot looked down at the blood on his hands then noticed the pool had spread so that he was standing in it. The blood. Cathy’s face. A sudden flashback!
But the memory was interrupted by a voice at his side and the picture of Cathy’s terrified face, covered in blood, those wide eyes filled with alarm, the mouth opened as if screaming or shouting something – it vanished instantly into those hidden caverns of his mind.
Tewson spoke again: ‘Come on, Dave. Let’s get you cleaned up.’
Keller looked up from his hands and stared blankly into the face of the AIB investigator.
‘Harry?’
Tewson took the dazed co-pilot by the arm and led him away from the crowd that had now gathered around the two bodies lying in the road. He leant Keller against the bonnet of the Stag and gave him a few moments to get over the shock.
‘Did you see what happened?’ he asked eventually.
Keller breathed out and his body seemed to lose some of its tension. ‘I saw the window break and then the man and woman falling,’ he replied. ‘I didn’t see anything before that.’
Tewson shook his head. ‘My God,’ he said sympathetically, ‘as if you hadn’t been through enough recently. Get in your car, Dave, and we’ll put it out of the way somewhere. Then I’ll take you over the bridge into Windsor where the AIB’s got rooms in a hotel. It’ll be quicker than driving all the way round by the main road and you look as if you could do with a good stiff drink.’
Just as they climbed into the car, Tewson in the driver’s seat, Keller in the passenger’s, a blue-uniformed figure broke away from the crowd gathered around the corpses and came hurrying over to them.
‘Excuse me, sir,’ the police constable said, just before Keller had closed the door on his side, ‘but did you see how it happened?’
The co-pilot repeated what he’d told Tewson. The investigator leant across Keller and flashed an identity card before the policeman’s face. ‘I’m with the team investigating the air crash. We’re booked in at the Castle Hotel just over the bridge and I’m taking Mr Keller there to get him cleaned up. If you need a statement of any kind, could you contact us there?’
The policeman nodded. ‘That’s all right, sir, there were plenty of people about who saw the accident. But I was told that Mr – er, Keller? – Mr Keller here got to the bodies first and I was just wondering if they were still alive, and if they were, did they say anything?’
Keller shook his head. ‘No, the man was already dead and the woman died almost immediately. She didn’t manage to say anything.’
‘Very good, sir. We may need a statement later and if we do, we’ll get in touch with you at the hotel. I must say, I don’t know what’s bloody goin’ on here today – strangest day Eton’s had since I’ve been here.’
Keller looked up sharply but, before he could say anything, Tewson was reversing the car carefully back down the road. He reached a turn-off on his right and drove forward into it, parking the Stag in the small car park at the rear of the local council offices. As he fed a coin into the ticket machine, Keller, still sitting in the vehicle, began to wipe as much of the blood from his hands as possible with a handkerchief. He noticed there was some blood on his trousers where he had knelt beside the bodies and the toe of one of his brown shoes was stained a darker colour. He felt he wanted to scrub himself all over, not to rid himself of the bloodstains, but to cleanse himself from the touch of that naked dead body. There had been something abhorrent about it.
As the two men walked back towards the bridge, purposely taking the road that ran behind, and parallel to, the High Street to avoid the distressing scene, the co-pilot pondered over the constable’s parting remark. Tewson was looking over towards the fields where the remains of the wreck lay when Keller asked him what the policeman had meant.
‘Oh, there’s been a series of incidents this morning and last night,’ the investigator replied. ‘None of them connected in any way, of course, but I’m afraid the people of Eton are a bit jumpy nowadays what with the crash and all, and they’re lumping everything together. Must say, I’ve sensed a feeling of gloom around the place for weeks now. Not to worry, though – it’ll all clear itself once we and the last of that wreckage are away from here.’
‘What do you mean – incidents? What kind of incidents?’
Tewson turned and regarded Keller, slowing his pace slightly. ‘Dave, you’ve got enough on your mind without bothering yourself with unrelated events exaggerated by morbid townspeople with nothing better to do.’
‘I want to know, Harry.’
‘There you go again,’ Tewson said, and then resignedly: ‘All right, at least this isn’t classified information. Last night, a couple of policemen on duty around the wreck heard screams coming from the other side of a field. One of them ran across to investigate and was joined by the vicar of the local church here. They found a girl alone in a car, terrified out of her mind. She was so hysterical she couldn’t tell them what had happened to her but, obviously, she’d had a bad fright. She still can’t, according to the police guarding over the wreck; she’s in hospital under sedation.’
‘Why would she go to the field by herself at night?’ Keller asked.
‘Well, apparently she didn’t go there alone. The police have traced the car to some young man – her boyfriend probably – but he hasn’t returned home yet. I reckon he let his courting get out of hand and when the girl got hysterical, he ran off. Now he’s too frightened to show up again.’
Keller was silent as they turned the corner leading to the blocked-off bridge. Finally, he said, ‘What else?’
‘A man was dragged out of the river this morning on the other side of the field. He’d had a heart attack while fishing.’
‘Fishing’s hardly the sport to give you a heart attack.’
‘He was a big man, too much weight; it could have happened at any time.’
‘Go on.’
‘Er – the vicar – the same vicar who’d gone to help the girl – well, he was found in a collapsed state inside his church this morning. He hasn’t recovered properly yet, so God knows what happened to him! Maybe it was mental exhaustion. He’s had to cope with all these distraught people lately and he also gave the Last Rites to the dead man this morning; not to mention what he went through on the night of the crash, of course. I mean, it went down just behind his own church. He was bound to crack up sooner or later.’
They were crossing the old iron bridge now. ‘What do you mean when you say he hasn’t recovered properly yet?’ Keller asked. ‘Is he unconscious?’
‘No!’ Tewson paused. ‘Apparently he’s still gibbering like a madman.’
Keller stopped to gaze down at the water. ‘And now, those two people falling – or jumping – from the window. And you don’t think there’s anything odd happening?’
‘Of course there’s something odd happening! Christ, I’d be a fool to say there wasn’t! But I put it down to a sort of mass hysteria.’ Tewson leant back against the bridge rail and looked sideways at Keller. ‘Look, nothing catastrophic has happened in this town for years – probably centuries – and then one night, bingo, the biggest air disaster ever to hit Britain happens right on their doorstep. It’s
bound to have a strange effect on them. I mean, they’re just not geared up to cope with a disaster of this magnitude. It’s brought all their hidden neuroses, all their pent-up emotions, to a head! It’s like a chain reaction; and the crash started it off.’
Keller took his eyes from the water and regarded the investigator coolly. He smiled thinly. ‘You’re terrific,’ he said.
‘Oh, come on, Dave! What’s the alternative? The field’s haunted? Is that what you believe?’
‘I don’t know what I believe any more, Harry.’ He began walking again.
Tewson slapped his raised hand down at his side with dismay and followed the co-pilot.
They reached the hotel and, as they passed through the lobby, Tewson ordered a large brandy to be sent up to the AIB rooms, then changed his mind and made it two. They entered the lift and rode up to the fourth floor, the investigator still trying to convince Keller that all the events were unrelated except for the general hysteria that hung over the town.
Keller stopped him by asking if he knew for sure that all the people involved were from the town of Eton. They stepped out of the lift in silence and walked down the corridor until they reached the spacious double room which the AIB had taken over as an on-the-spot operational headquarters. Here, all the information could be assimilated and sent back to their normal London offices. Gerald Slater looked up from his makeshift desk as the two men entered the room. He raised his eyebrows when he recognized Keller as the young copilot who had survived the crash. The other two investigating officers who were also working in the room exchanged surprised glances.
Tewson smiled at Slater uncertainly. ‘Er, sorry to disturb you, Chief,’ he said, ‘but there’s been rather a nasty accident down in Eton and Keller here was a witness. I thought, er, he could clean himself up a bit, and perhaps get a chance to recover from the shock. That all right with you?’