Eldren: The Book of the Dark (30 page)

The wrinkles around his eyes were getting deeper now, and his beard was totally gray, but he still looked like a little lost boy.

“Do you remember the first night you had a curry...our first night out?” he asked and the sparkle in his eyes told her that she was going to have her leg pulled. Again.

“You bought that story about the old house hook line and sinker. And the expression on your face when I jumped out of the bushes at you, what did you think I was? The bogey man?”

Margaret felt a tingling at the base of her spine. There was something about that night at the house that she had to remember. Something about Brian.

But it was all so long ago, and the heat from the fire seemed to numb her senses. She held out her empty glass and Brian poured the liquid into her glass, filing it almost to the brim.

“Why Mr. Baillie,” she said, “If I didn’t know better I’d say you were trying to get me drunk.”

“Why Mrs. Baillie,” Brian said, an exaggerated Southern drawl. “I do believe I might.”

He clicked his glass against hers and downed most of his wine in one gulp. He stretched his arms wide and let out a spectacularly false yawn.

“My God. Is that the time,” he said. “Better be getting off to bed...busy day tomorrow.”

He wasn’t joking about that. Since becoming principal teacher of Biology he was knee deep in paperwork.

And she wasn’t much better...her senior netball team were into the play off for the British finals...each day was taken up trying to keep them to their training schedule...and she couldn’t ask them to do something she wouldn’t do herself.

But then again, Brian didn’t seem to have sleep on his mind.

“Do you want to fool around a bit?” he asked, and she had to laugh. He got her every time. She remembered that she had wondered about him back then, on their first date, whether he wasn’t just too much of a loner. God, she’d nearly made a huge mistake. He was kind, witty and made her laugh at least twice a day. She hoped he would keep doing it for years to come.

She sipped at her wine, playing out the moment. The fire crackled and spat at her.

“Could you go and lock up?” She said. “I’ll be up in a minute.”

She watched him as he struggled to his feet and had a sudden vision of them growing old together. “Till death us do part,” she had said, and she had meant it. She smiled as she remembered walking down the aisle. The first thing she had seen was Tom Duncan, trying to look smart in his kilt and waistcoat but only succeeding in looking like he’d been dressed by a four year old.

A sudden chill ran up her spine despite the heat from the fire. There was something about Tom Duncan, something about him dancing too close, far too close. She had a feeling that she should remember, that it was important.

There was a noise from across the room. Brian was on his hands and knees, completely naked, making puppy dog noises. She laughed, and all thought of Tom Duncan was forgotten as Brian nuzzled at her knees.

“Take off your necklace,” he said. “You know I keep getting my beard caught in it.”

Margaret smiled as she remembered their first anniversary; the day Brian bought the necklace. They’d gone away for a weekend. The weather was beautiful, the scenery majestic, but they had spent all their time in bed. That had been when they’d first noticed his beard’s affinity with the necklace.

“Come and take it off yourself,” she whispered, but Brian shied away. Was that fear she saw in his eyes?

“Come on, Margaret. Stop messing about and take off the necklace.”

Just for a second she didn’t know the man in front of her. His eyes blazed in a deep red. Then she blinked, and saw that it was only the reflection from the fire.

Brian smiled and something inside her melted. She took off the necklace and laid it down on the floor. Brian took her in his arms and lifted her as if she was filled with helium. She felt his warm arms around her and smuggled closer to his chest as he carried her upstairs to the bedroom.

~-o0O0o-~

Tony watched as Billy once again beat his high score on the computer game.

“You’re getting too much practice,” Tony said, and Billy nodded, never taking his eyes from the screen.

“Dad likes to play against me,” Billy said, “But he’s not that good.”

“I know what you mean,” Tony said. “My dad is hopeless. He said that he would buy me the CD ROM machine next to see if that was any better.”

He watched as Billy shot down several more dragons. He was about to complain about Billy hogging the machine when a voice shouted from downstairs.

“Billy. Your dad’s here for you.”

Billy zapped one final dragon then let his character get killed.

“Sorry,” he said. “I’ve got to go. I’ll see you tomorrow?”

Tony nodded.

“Maybe we can go up to the Hansen House again?” Billy said.

“Oh no,” Tony said, laughing, “you’re not getting me in there again.”

He remembered the last time, when his torch had failed in the air raid shelter. Billy had nearly given him a heart attack, pretending to be a Morlock.

Billy gave him a friendly thump on the arm, and suddenly Tony had a fleeting glimpse of something else, something that felt like a memory. There was a sword, gleaming silver, and there was something about a book, a black book. But his dad shouted again from downstairs and Billy was already up and out of the door.

The two fathers were waiting at the bottom of the stairs, like twin brothers in their neat gray business suits and shiny shoes.

“Come on, boys,” Tony’s dad said. “You’ve got to sleep sometime. Besides, we’ve got a surprise for you.”

The men smiled, sharing a secret, and it was Billy’s dad who spoke.

“We’ve decided that the families should go on holiday together this year. How does Florida sound?”

Billy looked over at Tony; his smile so wide that it looked like his face might split.

“See you tomorrow,” they both said simultaneously, and all four of them laughed together as Billy and his dad said their good-byes.

“Do you mean it about Florida?” Tony asked after they had watched their friends turn away around the corner.

“Of course,” his dad said. “You know I’d do anything to keep you happy.”

“I love you dad,” Tony said.

“I love you too son. Now take that medallion off. I’ve told you before that you shouldn’t wear it all the time.”

Tony fingered the heavy chain around his neck. He took it off, being careful not to tug at the chain, and held it out to his dad.

“No,” his dad said, and Tony was surprised to see fear in the man’s eyes. Only for a second, but it was there nonetheless.

“Put it on the table. You can get it in the morning,” the man said, and when Tony obeyed and turned back his dad was smiling again.

He was still smiling as he lifted Tony in his arms and carried him upstairs.

~-o0O0o-~

Jim Kerr opened his eyes slowly, unaware at first of where he was. There was a movement above him and he tried to raise his head, to follow the soft fluttering noises, but he was so weak that even reopening his eyelids after a blink was an immense effort.

Something had just left the room, going up the ladder, that much he could tell by the sound alone.

He had no feeling in his body, only a dull leaden deadness. The way you feel when you first notice you’ve got a hangover.

For long seconds he lay there, staring into the blackness in front of his eyes, content to let the dead feeling seep further into his bones.

Images played behind his eyes, of hot summer days and cool pools of water, and it seemed that he was rocked by small waves, rocked into a sleep from which there was no return.

Recent events came back to him only slowly, as if his brain was breaking it to him gently. He remembered meeting the woman and the boy, and he remembered the bloodsuckers coming into the room.

But how did I come to be lying here on the floor? And what had happened to the woman and the boy?

He tried to move, and was rewarded only by the merest twitching of his fingers. The feel of cold stone under his hand acted like an electric shock, galvanizing him into action. He remembered the fight, and heard again in his head the crack as his leg broke.

Slowly he walked his fingers across the floor towards his leg and gingerly prodded at his wounds. His fingertips met only a jagged wet shard of bone that jutted through his flesh and went out through his heavy trousers. But there was no pain.

He knew that he was in shock. Intellectually he could accommodate the idea. He felt like two separate people. One was lying, bleeding, half-dead on the floor of a cellar in a run down house. The other was still inside his head, cold, calculating and ruthless. But what use was he going to be if he couldn’t get his body on the move?

It took him five minutes to push himself into a sitting position and, even though there was no pain, the strain brought heavy sweat all over his body and his arms shook in tremors that he couldn’t stop.

There was a dead woman at his feet...he could feel her as he ran his hands through the darkness. No. Not a woman...a bloodsucker. Someone had staked her, and Jim wrinkled his nose as his hand met the edge of a pool of blood that was just beginning to thicken and cool.

He felt down his body and found more blood, coating him from knees to chest like a red blanket. He wondered how much of it was his own.

He was in trouble. Deep trouble. He knew he had lost a lot of blood...the big question was, how much? But even the answer to that would have to wait. His first priority was to get out of here...there was a high possibility that there were more bloodsuckers around, and he didn’t want to meet them in his present condition.

By rolling over sideways he found that he could pull himself along on his elbows. He tried to get to his feet, but after the third attempt was forced to admit that his leg wasn’t going to hold his weight.

It was pitch black in the room, and he had no idea where the ladder was. He couldn’t even remember if it reached all the way to the floor...he might be right underneath it even now.

His hand met something as he swept it in front of him; something that rattled with a metallic scrape as it skidded away from him. He slowed down the sweep and a short while later his hand fell on the warm wooden butt of the crossbow.

Somehow it made him feel stronger, more assured, and he felt even better when he found that he still had five quarrels in his shoulder holster.

Now all he had to worry about was the ladder.

He found out how hard that was going to be several minutes later.

His hand hit one of the metal uprights and he pulled himself along the ground using only the strength in his arms until he hugged the lower rungs of the ladder. He looked up, but there was only blackness.

There was still no pain from his leg, and when he touched the wound with his hand it came away sticky, not wet. He wasn’t losing any more blood, but he had a feeling that there was a good reason for that...he didn’t have much left to lose.

He knew that he had to keep moving. If he stopped moving the lethargy would return, and if he lost consciousness he would never regain it. And then, the next time he woke, he might be one of them. He fingered the crossbow then put it away deep in its specially sewn pocket in his overcoat.

He grabbed the ladder with both hands and began to pull himself upright until he stood on his right leg. The room seemed to spin and for once he felt thankful for the darkness.

Gritting his teeth against the complaints from every muscle he started to climb.

And as he climbed he became aware of a sound, quiet at first, but getting steadily louder, a glottal chant that was almost a song.

The bloodsuckers were up there, in the house. If he was going to escape, he would have to get past them first.

TONY’S BEDROOM was full of people, and it had grown, widened and expanded to many times its normal size. It wasn’t his bedroom anymore, yet somehow it was. It was both familiar and strange, a duality that his mind struggled to encompass.

He looked up into his father’s face, his mind full of questions. He tried to speak, but he was choked with emotion. He felt so much love for this big man who carried him. Already his head was full of dreams of Florida. His dad looked down at him and smiled, and with that smile all Tony’s remaining worries disappeared.

His dad laid him down on his bed and Tony sank back into the soft pillows. Stars spun above his head, but still that didn’t seem out of the ordinary.

He watched the stars dance as his dad moved away from him and stood, not more than four feet away. There was a faraway look in his dad’s eyes, a strange longing for something Tony didn’t understand.

Dad started to sing, a strange, mournful tune that spoke to Tony of far away, long ago times. The other people in the room joined in; a dissonant chorus like a group of cats in the early hours of the morning. Tony raised his head to see better.

Why are all these people in my bedroom?

There was the headmaster, his always-crisp suit now wrinkled and creased. And surely that was Mr. Potts the janitor? He looked somehow naked without the ever-present cigarette hanging from his lower lip.

Another voice joined the chorus, a high sweet soprano, and Tony turned his head and looked straight into the eyes of his mother.

“Don’t worry son,” she said, but it didn’t sound like that. It sounded like she was chewing on a persistent lump of gristle, almost as if she had just returned from the dentists. As if to confirm it a thin stream of drool ran from the left-hand corner of her mouth.

Tony suddenly felt fear, an instinctive feeling that something was badly wrong. He squirmed on the bed but it was as if he was held tight by strong, heavy ropes.

The singing got louder, then louder still, the beat speeding up, thumping and drumming its way into his head, synchronizing with his heartbeat. The people crowded closer around his bed but they were held back, as if by an invisible wall. The stars danced faster overhead and his father seemed to grow and swell until he stood head and shoulders above the rest.

And then another figure moved into view, one that he knew, that he thought he should know better.

Miss Brodie, the PE teacher stood above him. She looked down at him, but her eyes were looking at something else entirely, staring sightlessly at something further away...much further away.

Tony squirmed, trying to move against the invisible cords that bound him. His left hand touched something at his waist, something leathery. As his hand closed over the black book the room span and swirled and reality crashed in around him in the space of a heartbeat.

He screamed.

~-o0O0o-~

He wasn’t going to make it.

Jim Kerr hung by his fingertips from the ladder. He was almost halfway there…somewhere between the roof and the floor of the second cellar. But it had been harder than anything he had ever done in his life.

He swung his right foot forward, trying to gain purchase on a rung of the ladder, but his foot only met air, and again at the second attempt. He shifted his body slightly to the left, almost dislodging the precarious hold he had.

He should have rested when he reached the second floor, but he knew that once he stopped he’d never get started again.

Not that it mattered greatly. He was just going to hang here for a while, the next rung an impossible eight inches above him.

His left leg felt like a block of ice, a block that was getting heavier and heavier, as if he dragged a small iceberg beneath him. He had no feeling left in his arms, just a warm deadness, but his neck and shoulder muscles were on fire, the sinews standing out proud from his flesh.

There was a trickle of blood from the wound at his wrist, black ooze that looked more like engine grease than blood, and he felt that he was sliding in and out of sleep. It was hard to be sure...the climb had become one long nightmare and he could barely remember anything other than the need to reach the next rung. There was nothing in the past behind him, and only blackness ahead of him.

He tried to relax, to do the trick with the numbers, but even that failed him as his concentration wavered and the pains in his body grew too much to be ignored.

Blackness filled his sight and his mind, creeping through his body, offering sleep and rest. His fingertips began to slide from the metal and Jim Kerr was almost thankful.

And that was when he heard it. Muffled, far away, but a sound that pierced him and brought coldness where there had been warmth.

He grabbed at the rung with fingers that had suddenly taken new strength. His right foot swung, back, forward, and found a purchase.

He pushed himself upwards, heading for the one sound in the world he would never be able to refuse...the scream of a child in mortal terror.

~-o0O0o-~

“Put me down Brian,” Margaret said. “I’ve got to check on David.”

As she was lowered to the floor she looked into Brian’s eyes and had to step back at the flame of naked lust that burned in him.

“Down boy,” she said. “I’ll only be a minute.”

But as she walked along the corridor to their son’s bedroom she felt the chill again, the ice that seemed to have settled deep in her bones.

“Go and warm up the bed,” she called over her shoulder. “I don’t see why it should always be me that does it.”

She put out a hand to open the door to David’s bedroom and immediately jerked it back as a deep pain spread through her fingers and palm, up as far as her wrist. It was as if someone had just ran a red-hot poker through her hand.

For an instant, as short a time as the blink of an eye, there was a dirty blood soaked bandage covering her hand. She almost remembered, almost got hold of the memory, but then she blinked and there was only the smooth skin of her hand and the cold metal of the doorknob.

The doorknob spun loosely in her hand and she told herself to remind Brian to fix it in the morning...she’d been at him for months about it. He’d always been hopeless around the house but she was determined that she wasn’t going to do it all. She couldn’t let him hide behind a plea of incompetence forever.

She pushed the door open, slowly so as to avoid creaks. Moonlight was streaming in the skylight window above the boy’s bed, lighting his face in silver and black.

Margaret staggered, hit so suddenly by a memory that her brain almost couldn’t contain it.

There had been another moonlit night, a dome of glass in an old house, and a mosaic that was almost alive.

She remembered it, vividly, but it could never have happened, for in that memory Brian had disappeared, and hadn’t she just left him outside their bedroom? Hadn’t they been married for twelve years?

Hadn’t they?

David moaned in his sleep and she moved into the bedroom. The boy looked so much like his father it almost broke her heart to look at him.

But there was something wrong. The boy was thrashing and tossing, and she could see his sweat stain his pajamas. She moved closer, just as the boy’s eyes snapped open.

A stranger’s eyes looked out at her from her son’s face…brown where they should have been blue. The boy screamed, so loudly that the sound reverberated around in her head. And singing joined the echo; a deep chant that seemed both far away and very close, as if it was fading in and out of reality.

“Margaret,” the boy on the bed shouted, and she gasped. David always called her Mum, but there was something in the boy’s voice that she recognized from long ago, from a time that was more of a dream than a memory.

“Tony?” she whispered, and suddenly the pain in her hand was back. The shadows around her seemed to shift and meld into one another until they had become a throng of people pressed close around the small bed.

The boy on the bed strained, trying to move, but he seemed to be held down against the sheets.

“Margaret?” a voice said, and at first she thought it was the boy again, the strange boy with her son’s face. Then the call came again and she turned to see Brian standing by the bedroom door.

“There’s something wrong with David,” she said, but Brian only smiled, and she got the chill back again.

“Oh yes,” Brian said. “There’s definitely something wrong with him.”

The boy screamed again, louder this time, and the distant chanting got closer and louder.

“Look closely,” Brian said. “Look at his teeth.”

She bent over then recoiled as twin fangs slid from the boy’s mouth. She felt something being put in her hand, something cold and heavy. It took several seconds for her to realize that she held a sword.

“Where did you get this?” she said.

There was no answer. Then, above the chanting, a gravely voice spoke.

“You must kill him,” it said. “Kill him and be free.”

She looked at Brian. Only it wasn’t Brian anymore.

The illusion fell away, as if it had never existed. Thirteen years of her life faded and dissolved, the memory fading to gray until it was the dream and the dream was the new reality. Tears threatened to flow at the corners of her eyes, but the sight that came into focus around her quelled them at their source.

~-o0O0o-~

She stood in the domed room, moonlight bathing her in shades of gray. Tony lay at her feet, struggling as if tied up in ropes although there was no visible sign of confinement.

They were in the middle of the mosaic, Tony’s head resting just above the great jaws of the serpent. Encircling the mosaic, but not stepping inside its perimeter, was a ring of vampires, all chanting and swaying, eyes closed and mouths open revealing sets of fangs that drooled silver streams of saliva to the floor.

They stamped their feet in time with the chant, raising small clouds of dust to hang in the air. The chanting got louder, and the stamping grew more frenzied. The sword felt ever heavier in her hand and she would have dropped it but her fingers refused to release their grip.

But that wasn’t the worst. There was something else in the circle with them, something tall and white and powerful...a creature with blazing eyes that Margaret couldn’t refuse.

Her wrist flexed and the sword came up. She stared at the moon reflected in the shining metal, transfixed by its glare. The chanting rose to a crescendo as she brought the sword up over her head in one easy action.

The boy on the ground beneath her screamed her name, twice, and although she heard him, her body was following other orders. She brought the sword down and the vampires screamed in ecstasy.

~-o0O0o-~

Brian was getting used to the sensation. Hills and roads and trees flashed past him, but he found that if he kept his eyes open and stared straight ahead he could keep the nausea at bay. The sensation of things coming at you at speed was still disconcerting, but little more so than being involved in a fast arcade game.

And he didn’t have long to suffer it. Barely ten seconds had elapsed when he seemed to take one last step and his foot crunched down on gravel. The world stopped moving with a jolt that threatened to throw him, disoriented, off his feet, and his legs felt as if he had just stepped off a boat after long hours in rough seas.

They were in front of the house again, its black stone seeming no less menacing than before.

Donald Allan put a finger to his lips in an exaggerated request for silence. At first Brian didn’t hear anything, but then it came to him…the far off, muted chorus of chanting.

“Come on,” Donald Allan whispered, and, walking over to the nearest wall began to climb it as it had steps and handholds built in exactly where he wanted them to be.

Brian was about to complain, but he realized that this was just another manifestation of what he had become, just another piece of his learning. He had no idea what he was doing here, no concept of what they were up against. All he knew was that Donald Allan was his best hope. He walked up to the wall looking up to see the vampire some ten feet above him.

He placed his hands to the stone, not knowing what to expect. He found that his fingertips found crevices and holds of their own volition. He pulled himself upwards, feeling as light as a small bird, and was surprised to look down and find the ground already five feet below him.

Donald Allan was only another black shape among the turrets above him, and it wasn’t until the vampire moved that Brian could pick him out and follow him upward. Ten seconds later they were standing together on the edge of the roof.

Far off to the east there was a red glow in the sky, a glow that flared and spat, lighting the low clouds in shades of vivid pink. Across the night air came the sharp retorts of weapons fire and, just once, Brian thought he heard a high animal scream that was sharply cut off.

From behind them the sound of chanting was coming louder…louder and faster, as if building to some kind of a climax.