Fade to Black (37 page)

“Quick, move to the front of the stage; he’ll be there,” Allie yelled again. Michael heaved disgruntled onlookers out of the way as they raced forward. Britt stepped off his chariot from the heavens and acknowledged the crowd. Another huge cheer went up all around. Without waiting for their cue, the crowd switched the little white plastic crosses to ‘on.’ It was quite a sight. Britt beamed from the stage and mouthed ‘thank you’ as twenty thousand people swayed to the music, their illuminated crosses moving side to side as one.

Allie and Michael reached the security line in front of the stage. There was no sign of Wendell. A burly security guard came straight for them. Clearly, they had upset a lot of people fighting their way to the front. Allie flashed her warrant card, which elicited a wave from the advancing guard. He lost any professional interest.

Britt smiled at the crowd and half-turned as an iridescent blue Fender Stratocaster guitar was brought out for him. He threw the strap over his shoulder, causing the crowd to erupt again. The music segued into his new hit song, ‘Faith Evermore’. The screams and applause were deafening.

“Do you think Jesus ever got a reception like this?” Allie asked, regretting the question the moment it left her lips.

“Yes. They were smaller crowds, though.”

Two more guitars chimed in to mask any deficiencies in Britt’s playing. Allie scanned the crowd again; she could see nothing unusual and definitely no Wendell. Her hands were killing her. She didn’t dare look at them.

*****

The big black BMW stopped by the dirt track as arranged. The driver’s side electric window hummed as it came down. “Get in,” the well-spoken man said, the sleeve of his gabardine coat just visible to the onlookers. “I’ll take you up there. You can put that contraption in the back.” The boot lid jumped up with a loud click.

“Perfect, thank you,” one of the men said. “All hell will break loose shortly.”

The driver smiled. “I’m banking on it.”

*****

The song was an upbeat rocker; for Allie, it was more reminiscent of something by Wolfmother than anything she would normally have acquainted with her understanding of ‘Christian’ music.

“Wolfmother?” Michael asked. “Never heard of ‘em.”

“An Australian band.”

“That explains it.”

The song ended with a blistering solo from a guitarist at the back of the stage, although the guy in white nearer the audience took credit for it.

“Very Christian of him,” Michael observed.

Britt was relieved of his guitar by a stagehand and pulled his long, blond hair back off his face. Teenage girls went into orbit. Fresh rain splattered into the sodden earth. Walking to the microphone stand, he took hold of the mobile mic mounted on top of it. Fans went wild as he launched into a gyrating pseudo-ecstatic dance, not at all in time to the music. Allie grabbed Michael’s coat sleeve.

“This is not right!” she yelled, climbing the security fence.

The crowd hushed as smoke fumed from Britt’s slack mouth. Allie jumped for the edge of the stage. Grabbing the metal strip at the perimeter, she levered herself up and rolled onto the stage floor. Britt burst into flames. Sparks flew from his fingertips, but the crowd wasn’t fooled. They knew this was real and it was
wrong
.

Allie sprinted across the stage towards the convulsing Britt, his left cheek sagging and melting as she approached. The ragged end of his bitten-off tongue plopped onto the stage. The skin on his hands simmered and smoke burst from his feet. His band members stopped playing, one by one, as realization hit, apart from the bass player, who was in his own world. The dull, rolling thump of his bass and the horrified screaming of the crowd produced a macabre soundtrack to a new-age horror show.

She cannoned into Britt in a full tilt rugby tackle, managing to break his grip on the microphone, but not before collecting a brief jolt through her own system. She and Britt tumbled in a smoking, stinking heap to the stage floor as the control panel at the back of the stage blew up in a shower of sparks. She flailed at the persistent flames engulfing his cloak. The audience screamed and continued screaming as 20,000 volts surged through a bare, opened-ended cable that led from the control panel to the waterlogged ground in front of the stage. Rivers of blue, high voltage electricity snaked across the ground, running up wet legs and wriggling in to rain-soaked crevices. A spider web of crackling blue pulsed, jumped and hissed through bodies on its way to God knew where.

Allie was spent, but had to heave the smoldering-hot Britt off her. She did not know if he was alive. In a way, it would be better for him if he were not. She rolled onto her side. Her eyes were drawn to Michael’s gigantic frame. He moved to one side of the stage, bent down and then stood in full view; the live cable now bucked in his left hand. The crowd compound went dark. People were heard dropping heavily into the mud. She saw Michael look at her for what seemed a long moment, then close his right hand over the bare end of the wire. He lurched as he took the full onslaught of the massive flow of electricity. A quizzical look come over his face before a blinding flash of white-blue light hurt her eyes. She looked away, the light imprinted on her retina. She heard an explosion behind the stage. All went quiet. She looked anxiously for Michael, but the residual white light swam in her eyes. She tried to look around it, if that were possible. She tried squeezing her eyes shut and opening them again. It worked. Darkness enveloped the stage and the crowd compound. Michael was gone. She hit the stage floor.

Allie woke in an ambulance, her hands heavily bandaged, only her thumbs protruding. Despair gripped her.
Michael
! What had become of him? The consequences of his death would affect all mankind. And she had caused it. He had sacrificed himself for the people here and not brought his demon to heel. Three deaths and the problem was still out there.

“You’re with us, I see!” The cheery ambulance attendant peered hard at her. “How are you feeling?”

Allie looked away, hiding her tears. “Nothing. I feel nothing.”

Her phone blipped and her spirits rose like a rocket.

You know where to find us. We have a special treat for you. Don’t dally now.

Her shoulders slumped. It was not Michael. She should have been elated; it was contact from the murders. But she didn’t care anymore about cosmic games and evil spirits or whatever the hell they were. She texted back, her right thumb working overtime.

Go screw yourselves.

From her perch in the ambulance, she watched dull eyed as police and volunteers attended to fallen members of the crowd. It looked to her as though the majority was ok, but there would be exceptions, of course, especially those who had stood closer to the stage. Britt, she assumed, had died. A familiar face poked its head around the corner of the ambulance. Ray Riley.

She turned her head away. A hand gripped her arm. “What you did there, Allison St. Clair, was the bravest thing I ever saw.”

“Did Britt survive?” she asked, her gaze still averted.

“Fuck
him
,” Riley said with surprising vehemence. “Self-centered little bastard.”

She was confused. “Is he dead?” she asked again.

“No. Incredibly, they say he’ll survive. Be a veggie of course. His brain is fried, but he was heading that way anyway.”

She was tired and had no appetite for any more talk.

“But
you
,” Riley continued, “would have been a
real
loss.” He patted her leg and walked away.

“Better get those hands sorted,” he said over his shoulder, his right hand up in the air, waving a flippant goodbye. “Oh, and sorry about that big minder of yours—ouch, such a terrible way to go.”

She dropped her gaze to the blanket covering her, then after a minute, looked again toward the stage. A fire crew sprayed fried bits of equipment and the roadies stood about muttering.

Her phone chirped.
Go screw ourselves? That’s not very sisterly of you.

She sat up straight.
What did that mean? Sisterly? What th’?

“Oh no, surely not…” she said aloud to no one. She thumbed her parent’s phone number in. Her father answered. She yelled into the phone, “Is Robert there?”

“Allie, is that you?”

“Yes, Dad! Is Robert there? It’s urgent!”

“No, he’s not. He was going to be here for dinner with us all, but he rang this afternoon and begged off. And then you cancelled as well. Your mother’s very—”

“Where is he?”

“He’s gone with that music group of his to our old stomping ground. I never thought he’d ever want to go back after the accident.”

“Glastonbury,” Allie said in a barely audible voice, an unbearable tiredness weighing on her.

“Yes, of course—Glastonbury.”

*****

Three men sat quietly in the back of the black BMW saloon. Another, much bigger and unconscious, was scrunched into the boot alongside the chrome and rubber contraption. Two of the men in the back of the car didn’t feel like talking and the third was gagged. The driver said nothing as they approached the exit gate. The police who had previously manned it were attending to the injured and dying at the main stage area. The car slid unobserved out of the car park and onto the road to Glastonbury township, just a few miles away, the back of the car hanging low, unable to cope with the massive rearward weight.

“
Holy fuck, Arthur. Did you see that guy’s eyeballs poach back there? And the crowd! Talk about electric blue! Woo-hoo!”

Arthur Wendell did not acknowledge the voice in his head. He stared straight ahead past the driver to where the headlights illuminated the wet, narrow road.

“
Arthur? C’mon, man, don’t tell me you didn’t get a ‘tingle’ out of that? Too ‘shocking’ for you, was it? Hahahaha.”

“Fuck you.”

Arthur’s partner turned to him. “Don’t let him goad you.”

“The psychopath who lives in my head, you mean?”

“Yes, Mr. Black. We’re old friends. Sorry, I lied to you earlier about that.”

Arthur laughed. It was a harsh, cynical sound.

“And here’s me thinking I’m the only one who’s nutso. We can travel to hell together when this is done.”

“That’ll be three of us, then,” the driver said quietly. The gagged passenger in the back seat tried to scream, but the shiny silver tape stifled all sound.

Chapter Twenty-One

The young PC drove Allie St. Clair toward Glastonbury. His name was Trevor Gordon and he’d been a policeman for exactly one year. He looked twelve years old and in need of orthodontic work.

“Where would you like to go exactly, Chief Inspector?” he finally mustered the courage to ask as they approached the main road.

“To the Tor.”

He frowned. “Mind if I ask why? In this weather, you’ll see nothing.”

“It’s not a sight-seeing trip, PC Gordon. Drive as fast as you can.”

“Right.” Despite the curtain of rain, he pushed the Vauxhall well beyond the speed limit. She glanced at him. He still had adolescent pimples and she guessed he’d be lucky to weigh ten stone. She wouldn’t expose him to any danger, but she had to get to the hill fast. She’d arranged armed backup that she hoped was already gathering at Glastonbury.

Water ran in shallow rivers across the road, the rain again falling hard, filling the crude agricultural drainage culverts to overflowing. One mile from the town that sat at the foot of the strange hill, lightning rent the sky. The Tor was clearly visible in the blue flash, rising five hundred vertical feet above the township in a gothic tableau worthy of Mary Shelley. St. Michael’s Tower stood at its peak, every inch an ancient sentinel.

“Gives you the shivers, doesn’t it?” PC Gordon asked.

“It does. It always has.”

Constable Gordon was keen to engage in further conversation. Picking up signals was not his strongpoint. “Did you know it’s supposed to have been where King Arthur lived?”

“The way my week’s going,” Allie replied without enthusiasm, “he probably still does.”

She saw him look at her, unsure whether or not she was kidding.

“I used to come here as a child,” she explained. “It’s where it all begins and ends.”

Trevor Gordon felt in his pocket for his St. Christopher medal.

“Stop when you see Wellhouse Lane, please—I’ll get out there.”

“We’re almost there, actually,” he said, peering through the pelting rain on Coursing Batch. “In fact, the corner is…”

The bent figure in the white trench coat stood in the middle of the road, the headlights of the car throwing a jaundiced glow on his angular face. The police car, with lights flashing, was right on him. PC Gordon wrenched the wheel violently to the left, putting the car into a spin, the slick road offering no traction. The car somehow missed the man, but spun completely around, plowing into a low, dry stone wall, hitting hard on Gordon’s side. Allie was shaken, but unhurt. But Gordon was unconscious, his head hanging limply towards her. Blood ran down the driver’s window. The man from the middle of the road opened her door, startling her.

“Are you alright?” he asked, concern clearly evident on his long face. "I’m terribly sorry; my damn dog has run off.”

Allie unbuckled her seat belt and felt the young police officer’s neck. His pulse was weak, but regular.

“Do you have a mobile phone?" she asked the stranger.

“Yes, yes!” he fumbled madly in his sodden coat for it.

“Ring an ambulance, please; I have to go.” She looked up towards the Tor. “When the police arrive, tell them I’m up there.”

The man looked aghast. “In this weather? Good heavens, what’s going on?”

“Just tell them,
please!
”

She levered herself out of the car, putting a hand on the man’s shoulder. “Thank you.”

“Right you are,” he said. “Don’t worry. I’ll tell them.”

Allie sprinted across the road toward the copse of ancient oak trees that she knew masked the start of the paved track to the summit of the steep-sided Tor. The man in the trench coat watched her until she disappeared from view. He bent down and checked that the driver was still unconscious. He smiled, straightened and threw his phone into a drainage ditch that barely contained the near-flood waters. He turned and walked the short distance back to his big, black BMW.