Hunters: A Trilogy (81 page)

Mary whispered in his ear: ‘Don’t you worry, Mikey, love, it’ll be fine. I’m seeing Doctor John tomorrow and he’s going to tell me it’s alright, you just wait and see…’ She sobbed and then tried to disguise it as a cough. ‘Pass me the tissues, will you? There’s a good boy.’

He reached for the box and laid it gently on her lap, saying: ‘Yeah, Mum, it’s all gonna be cool, don’t worry, just drink your chocolate and eat some of those cookies, they’re ace!’ He kissed her cheek, straightened, and then picked up his mug before heading towards the stairs. Turning back he stopped and said, quietly: ‘Have a good day tomorrow, Mum – I’ll see you when I get back from school.’ He turned back to the stairs, his own tears were just about holding back and he felt the dam about to break, but he wouldn’t do that to her, not now, not ever.

‘Night Mikey, love you, baby,’ she murmured.

‘Love you too, Mum, he whispered. ‘Please don’t stay up too late!’

Michael clambered back upstairs, pausing at the top to glance back down at her. She was looking at the fire; he couldn’t see her face but knew she was crying. Her golden hair was duller these days and he saw it shuddering in time with her shoulders as it lay dankly across them. He blew her a kiss, then walked into his room and shut the door. Michael drank his chocolate and took the empty mug into the bathroom when he went to clean his teeth. After rinsing his mouth, he washed the mug out and left it upside down on the window ledge, then dropped his clothes and stepped into the shower.

The hot jets of water washed away his fears; he let himself stand there for five minutes, staring at it spinning down the chrome plughole between his feet. It fascinated him, its crystal spinning took him back – the scene behind the curtain beckoned him once more. The boy tried to see through it, something behind the curtain belonged to him. It was part of him and his young mind struggled with the feeling. Then the water backed up and the swirling ceased, the action took with it the strange sensation he’d been having. He let the thoughts calm him.

‘A fifteen year old boy looking down at a gurgling plughole is all it is, nothing more, Mikey, nothing more at all!’ Michael shook his head, lifted his face upwards into the jets of hot water and reached for the shower gel with his left hand. He spent a further five minutes in the shower before twisting the tap off and stepping out onto the rug. Wrapping a towel around his waist, he headed for his room, climbed onto the bed and flicked the television on. There was a documentary he wanted to see, it was about the Space Station and he had been waiting for weeks to watch it.

In no time at all, Michael was engrossed in the words and pictures of the media piece. Spinning plugholes and shadowy figures behind shower curtains were easily forgotten, especially when there were gold-covered space gizmos and astronauts to be watched.

Later that night he would have been more than happy to be awake and watching something, anything at all, anything rather than the darkness that was currently trying to enter his head. It came like a mist, creeping up over the banks of a black stream at midnight. He had fallen asleep whilst watching TV and the dream, which came upon him, was so real that for a few moments he wondered if he had woken up and was watching the same channel, only it was now showing some horror movie instead of the space programme. Michael shook his head.

Then he saw the darkness and he knew it wasn’t the TV.

With all his might he summoned his father’s face, felt for the roughness of his hands against his cheek, sniffed for the smell of him. Michael couldn’t seem to find him, mind freezing as the black mist rose higher. It, too, seemed to sniff, sniffed at him like a dog who’d realised he was afraid of it. Its ethereal substance took on the blurred shape of a man’s face, a man-dog with yellow eyes and thick, shapeless lips. It kept changing shape, from mist to dog-man and then back again. The thing had pointed ears and a flat, rippled forehead. It sloped down to the creature’s weird nose, an ugly, wide nose that looked like it belonged on the adder living in the glass tank at the back of the biology classroom.

Mist and dog-man, dog-man and mist, he wasn’t sure, was it a man-dog or a dog-man? Either way, it looked pretty weird and seemed to be trying just a bit too hard to scare him. ‘Stupid thing, you stupid, ugly thing – go away!’ Michael felt the fear lift from him and he giggled in the darkness.

Then the dog-thing blinked at him, he saw it blink!

The yellow eyes darkened for a moment and then opened fully, as they did so, he unwittingly looked into them. It was a mistake. They pulled him into their yellow depths. He felt himself powerless as they sucked him into their terrible mire – it was as though he was peering through some weird binoculars that looked into another world, lots of other worlds.

Michael saw stars and planets, whirling black holes, fire and blood. He saw people and faces, faces of people, people who he felt as though he knew. He saw blood and flesh, ribbons of blackness swirled past him and he heard them laughing. He saw awful things, sights he couldn’t comprehend, but he knew they were bad.

His host returned the giggle – the fear raced back into Michael’s young mind, he couldn’t breathe and felt the blackness try and get into his mouth, it wisped about his face, tried to slither up his nose. He smelt it. The hot, yet squeamishly damp, odour caressed his lips. Michael knew he would not be able to take one breath, for if it were to enter him then he would be done, forever ruined. He pushed it away with his mind and watched as it bloomed backwards from him like smoke in the wind. It gathered itself and slithered towards him again, the yellow eyes opened and then so did its previously unseen mouth. Two rows of yellow teeth smiled at him with such terrible intent that Michael wondered how he hadn’t screamed.

Then the thing spoke, in his half-crazed dream world, Michael heard it speak.

‘Don’t you be interfering here now, boy, there are things here you ain’t got no truck with, you hear? None o’ your damn business! You just go back to your studies and looking after your Momma, are you hearing me, boy?’

He didn’t recognise the accent, it sounded tinny and false, like someone trying to be posh when really they had been raised in the gutter. The mouth opened again and an enormous black tongue slid out. It reminded him of the giraffe’s tongue he had seen at the zoo when he was younger. It was nearly as long as his arm and was mostly black; it looked like a giant, over-active slug.

The fear within the young boy became so great that this time he did scream –the noise came out like a howling giggle. It was the thought of that thing trying to be posh that made him giggle. Michael was so shocked by the sound of his own mirth that he actually did burst into manic laughter, this only made everything worse, he laughed some more and this time it was a burst of near-hysterical hilarity that came bubbling from his mouth.

The sound of his barely-controlled madness sent dog-man, with his giraffe tongue, into a seething rage. The blackness rushed from its lips, with a low snarl, its tone turned to rust, vile words rasping like venom across those black lips.

‘Fukin’ funny, is it? Yore Poppa thought it was funny too, that muthafuka ain’t laughing now, is he? Yoo weren’t laughing last time either, were yoo, Michael?’

This time there was no posh accent, pure backwoods-twang, coupled with rusty nails, was all Michael heard. It was an awful sound. The thing drooled smokey saliva at him. The boy snapped his mouth shut.

It spoke again. ‘Yeah, ain’t sooo funny now, is it, boy? Just tell ‘em to fuk off when they comes a knocking fer yore attention. Tell ‘em to fuk off! Yoo just stay here and take care of yore Momma. If’n yoo don’t, well then, just yoo remember that I have seen the colour of yore piss-weak blood before, and I don’t mind seeing it again, yoo little pig’s prick!’ It snarled at him. ‘I am the sorrow in yore pathetic little life, I am the tears in yore Momma’s eyes. I am the one who put the cancer in her guts. Oh yeah, and I am the one who will be waiting to hold her fuking dead hand when she comes to this world – I am the one! Fuking laugh at that, yoo little muthafuka! Don’t say that I ain’t told yoo, we don’ need you here; just yoo stay where yoo are and live yore happy little life – yoo make sure yoo hear me! Do it, cunt-boy!’

Then, Michael did scream, and this time it was a real scream. With a howl, he shot outwards from the dream, crashing to the floor of his bedroom, narrowly avoided striking his head on the bed-frame as he thumped to the floor, impact sending flashes of pain shooting up his shoulder. He lay still, shuddering from head to foot, trying to catch his breath. He was panting and spitting, determined not to have one tiny atom of the blackness in his mouth.

Rising unsteadily to his feet, he lurched into the bathroom. Nausea overcame him and he puked into the sink, streams of dark spew flew from his lips, caught in the back of his throat and squirted up into his nose. In the darkness the vomit was black in colour, its stain standing in stark contrast to the sink’s white porcelain. Michael knew it was too late; he’d swallowed some of the black mist! He snapped the light on, peering fearfully into the sink.

The puke was dark, dark-brown, hot-chocolate puke. He felt his knees giving way in relief. Turning the cold tap on, Michael splashed some water onto his face and washed his mouth out before taking a long drink of the icy fluid. Feeling somewhat less unsteady, he looked into the mirror and blinked, the recent fear made his eyes blaze. He leaned forward and splashed another handful of cold water onto his face.

Keeping his eyes shut, he reached for the towel, dried his face, and without looking back at the mirror, flicked the light off and left the bathroom. Fear filled him, fear and anger. ‘Damned dream, damned black mist,’ he thought. ‘What’s this about? It was so real, that thing, man…it scared the hell out of me. Jesus, I was scared, Mum…I mean, it said some bad stuff!’

Still shaking at those thoughts, he slid under the quilt, leaving his bedside light on. For what felt like hours he tossed and turned, images of the dream running through his mind. Then, in typical fashion, his young mind switched itself off as a deep, and thankfully dreamless, sleep fell upon him.

He wasn’t alone in this world and would never be without help in his battles against the blackness. There were others here, centuries of family history and buckets of bad blood. Michael’s first meeting with the Demon was over and he would learn from the experience. George and the others would make sure he did. After all, it’s what Michael had been born for, born into a place where he imagined he had always been.

Michael’s mother never did get better, the Demon made sure she didn’t. Mainly because it had been the cause of her illness in the first place – yes, the Demon had given her a souvenir of his own, one filled with evil and despair, a black lump of a gift. When her husband had set forth for his final battle with the Dark One, Mary had no idea that she would never see her beloved Jack again – no idea about the dream that would give her more than just a headache the very next morning. It was on the night Jack died when she had taken the Demon’s gift, and the effects were still with her. They would make sure she never recovered.

In her sleep, on that fateful night, she had seen her husband surrounded by a blue light, he shone like a beacon. In fact, the light did appear to be some sort of shield around him, a shield he was using, generating, to ward off a black mist. A mist that whirled and soared around him, it rose above him like a black eagle and then cascaded down upon him. A horrible shrieking noise accompanied its plummet. Mary Wildeman watched in silent horror as her man fell to his knees under the torrent of darkness.

The blueness of her husband’s radiance flickered and dimmed before magnifying intensely, its brilliant beams forcing the blackness away from him once more. The power of his light blew it away like a firecracker would have exploded a bag of coal dust. Shimmering black particles flew through the surrounding, losing all semblance of their former cohesion.

Jack collapsed and lay motionless upon his back.

The particles of darkness rained down in a black mist, and just like the coal dust would have done, they began to settle across the ground, and across Jack. As he lay on his back, he became covered in the dust. He was completely spent, exhausted – she cried out for him. Whatever it was that he had been doing, emitting the light and fighting the mist, had emptied him. He lay spread-eagled on his back, arms flung wide and face thrown to the sky.

The air around them was a lilac colour, Mary saw that her husband was on a high plain somewhere, so high it seemed almost halfway to the moon. He lay at the foot of a mountain, in which there seemed to be carved a door, or entranceway of some kind. She wondered: ‘Where am I? This is too real to be a dream.’ Mary had a stupid thought about having cheese and crackers with her hot chocolate before going to bed.

Then she heard someone…or something…chuckle, the horrid noise focused her mind as she looked at her surroundings again. All thoughts of cheese and crackers leapt away from her. Mary knew they were high up; she was able to see the snow-covered peaks below the track where Jack was sprawled. His old rucksack lay open behind him; the bag was on its side, green glow pulsing from within.

The other thing she noticed was the blood.

There were two large splashes of crimson on the beige toecap of his left boot. Blood was seeping from his nose, she saw him smile and then cough as he tried to speak. Drawing a slow, painful breath, Jack grimaced before saying his final words to her.

‘I love you, Mary, sorry about this,’ he gasped. ‘You can’t win ‘em all. I guess we’ll just have to try again!’ He choked once more, and then said, ‘I’ll be okay, it’s just the way things are, take care of Mikey, he’s something else, he’s special and it’ll come for him. It’s scared of him, scared of us! It should be, because we’ll never give up, ever!’ He stretched out his arm and reached for her.

In her sleeping world, Mary reached out for him; she opened her mouth and screamed his name. ‘Jack! Jack! Please don’t leave me, don’t give up, Jack!’