King Carrion (4 page)

CHAPTER SIX

As the daylight faded through the cracks in the wooden boards, Zeke regaled them with a variety of conspiracy theories and his views on politics, religion, and Sylvester Stallone films. When Zeke asked Mason if he was married, Mason merely shook his head and looked away. Calvin gave Zeke a look, so he changed the subject.

     “Let’s get baked.”

     “You’ve got some?” Calvin said.

     Zeke smiled smugly as he pried one end of a loose floorboard open and reached down underneath it. When he pulled his arm back there was a small polythene bag of weed in his hand. He shook the bag between two fingers and grinned.

     Calvin gave a round of applause. “Good man.”

     Zeke chuckled. “I know you love me.” He looked at Mason. “You want some, too?”

     Mason finished his tea and placed the mug on the floor. “Might as well; I haven’t got anywhere to be.”

     “That’s the spirit.”

     Zeke rolled a thick spliff with expert yellow-stained fingers, humming a cheerful tune under his breath. He wet his lips then placed the joint between them and lit the end with a plastic lighter. Zeke closed his eyes and inhaled, and when he opened them he took the spliff from his mouth and blew a ring of smoke into the air.

     “Not bad. Not bad at all.”

     “Where did you get the weed?” Calvin asked.

     Zeke coughed into one hand. His eyes watered. “Usual place.”

     “Mental Mike?”

     “Yeah.”

     “How is he?”

     Zeke took another hit on the joint then passed it to Calvin. “Absolutely fucking mental.”

     “Haven’t seen him in a while.” Calvin sucked on the joint. He closed his eyes for a moment and turned his face towards the ceiling as he exhaled. “Last time I saw him, he was in trouble with that Russian gang from Southampton.”

     “That’s all settled now,” Zeke said. “The Ruskies only took a finger from him.”

     “He was lucky then.”

     “Fuck, yeah. They were gonna cut his dick off. Now he’s freaking out because of the disappearances.”

     “The disappearances?”

     Zeke shrugged his bony shoulders. “He said some people have gone missing in the last few days.”

     “Who?”

     “He didn’t say.”

     “Sounds like bollocks, Zeke.”

     “I dunno. He was pretty unnerved.”

     “It doesn’t take much to unnerve Mental Mike.”

     “I know,” Zeke said. “But you didn’t see him. He was afraid he’d be taken next.”

     “Taken by who?” asked Mason.

     Zeke looked at Mason like he’d forgotten Mason was in the room. “Mike didn’t say. All he said was the people were taken at night.”

     Mason folded his arms to hide the shiver that passed through them. “Sounds like a fucking ghost story.”    

     Calvin passed the joint to him. “All yours, lad.”

     Zeke scratched at his face.

     Mason hesitated with the joint at his mouth. When he realised Calvin and Zeke were watching him, he took a drag and held it in his chest. Then he breathed out a long drawl and wiped his eyes. He coughed to clear the smoke from his throat.

     Zeke looked at him. “Good stuff, eh?”

     “It’s been a while.”

     Zeke snorted as he took hold of the joint. “Just make sure you don’t throw up on the floor.”

*

Within half an hour the room was filled with a haze of smoke that turned the air thick and spongy.

     Night fell outside. The candlelight waned.

     Mason felt the world soften and grow numb. His eyelids were heavy and he found the shape of his hand amusing. And then he fell asleep smiling for no reason at the ceiling.

*

Sometime in the night Mason woke to someone muttering breathlessly outside the house. A low voice speaking the words of an unknown language. He imagined desiccated vocal chords and a face pressed close to the door.

     He looked at Zeke and Charlie, both passed out and oblivious, then considered going to the front door to listen closely to the voice, but in the end he rolled onto his back and looked at the swaying ceiling and let his eyes close to return him to sleep.

*

Mason woke groggy and desperate for water. A lone candle threw shadows at the walls. He sat up from the floor, dizzy and confused, gasping with a mouth leeched of moisture, and glanced around the room as he pawed at his chest with numb hands. The air smelled of weed smoke and the burning candle. There had been dreams of the Dead Girl in the car. Visual fragments lingered behind his eyes. Tormented by the vision of her face, he banged one fist on the floor and gritted his teeth until she went away and his heart quietened.

     “I’m sorry,” he muttered. He put his head in his hands.

     When he went to grab the water bottle from his rucksack, he noticed that Zeke was gone. Charlie was asleep with his mouth open to the ceiling. Zeke’s bedding was crumpled, discarded.

     “Zeke?”

     No answer. He was probably in another room. Taking a piss, probably.

     A memory came to Mason. Or was it a part of a dream? Someone outside the house, muttering against the front door. Wanting to be let inside. Desperate to be greeted at the threshold. He thought it must have been a dream, as he sipped water and swilled it around his dried mouth. But then he turned towards the front of the house, and a cold breeze from outside slipped over his face.

     The front door was open.

CHAPTER SEVEN

Mason stepped through the doorway, glimpsed Zeke walking away from the house, and called out to him.

     Zeke vanished into the darkness.

     Mason called after him again, but there was no answer. The night was silent. Mason followed, fumbling with the penlight torch from his pocket. He looked up. Endless stars filled the sky. The moon was made hazy and indistinct by a thin sheet of cloud, and when it was revealed again it gave definition to the wasteland around him. Shadows formed from the shapes of trees. Mason looked towards the distant town centre and the faraway streetlights. He switched on the torch and pointed it ahead, but its reach was meagre and did little to help him pick his way across the sodden ground. And he scanned the way ahead, and glanced around, but there was no sign of Zeke. No trace of him at all.

     Mason halted, shivering in his clothes, teeth chattering from the cold. He cupped his hands to his mouth and called out to Zeke again. There was no answer. Just silence and the ghosting breeze.

     “Where did you go, Zeke?” he whispered. He considered returning to the house to wake Calvin, but something in his gut told him to keep moving and he would find Zeke soon enough.

     Away to the left, there was something like a burst of breathless laughter. When he pointed the torch that way and squinted into the dark, he was sure he had imagined it, because no one was there. The night was merely broken shapes. Or someone was mocking him. Maybe Zeke and Calvin were playing a joke on him. He exhaled and tried to gather some spit in his throat. Then he called Zeke’s name again. He looked towards the sky and wished he was away from this place.

     The Dead Girl appeared before Mason, startling him. He let out a little cry. Her mouth was open in a silent scream as she pointed at him. There was blood trickling down one side of her face. Her neck was twisted to one side.

     Mason stepped back, shaking his head to cast away the apparition. He closed his eyes and counted to ten. When he opened them, the Dead Girl was gone. He sighed with relief then smacked his forehead with the heel of one hand. He looked around again, mouth trembling, eyes darting inside their sockets.

     When the figure coalesced out of the darkness ahead of him, he assumed it was Zeke returning from wherever he’d gone. But as the figure approached, Mason realised it was a tall hunched thing covered in rags. It raised its cloth-covered face towards him to show eyes blazing with red light.

     Mason almost wished to see the Dead Girl again.

     He froze. A voice announced itself in his head, promising him great kindness and an embrace he would never want to escape. The figure reached towards him with one crooked hand upon a long thin arm, and bid him to stay.

     Mason almost didn’t see the sharp teeth emerge from that wet black mouth.

*

He stumbled back towards the house, too scared to look over his shoulder, gasping for breath as he tried to stay on his feet upon the damp ground. Once he was inside the house he shut the door behind him. There was no lock, or even a bolt to throw. No furniture to use as a barricade. He stood there with his hands near his face. He stared at the door and backed away, then went to rouse Calvin.

     The old man woke with a grumble and one swipe of his hand, which Mason managed to avoid as he crouched next to him. He looked at Mason with reddened eyes and frowned. His breath stank of smoke and bad teeth.

     “Zeke’s gone,” Mason said. “There’s something outside. I think it did something to Zeke.”

     Calvin rubbed his eyes and yawned. Then he looked at Zeke’s crumpled bedding against the wall. “Outside? What’s outside? Where’s Zeke gone?”

     “I think something took him.”

     “The police?”

     “No, not the police.”

     “What are talking about, lad? Are you still stoned?”

     “I wish I was. I woke up and saw that Zeke was gone. I went outside and saw him walking away. He vanished. Then this figure appeared. Something in rags and a cloth mask, that beckoned to me. I heard its voice in my head.”

     Calvin put his hand on Mason’s shoulder. “Calm down, lad. You’re sure Zeke isn’t playing a joke on you? It was probably just him dressed up in an old Halloween costume he’d found somewhere.”

     Mason wiped at his watery eyes. His heart floundered in the cold cavity of his chest. His voice wavered. “I don’t know. I’m not sure.”

     Calvin smiled with sympathy and rose to his feet. “Let’s go and sort this out. Don’t worry – I’ll give Zeke a bollocking when I see him.”

*

What occurred next happened so quickly that Mason simply stood near the doorway with his hands at his sides and his mouth quivering in shock.

     Calvin paused at the front door with his torch in hand. He craned his neck to listen. An expression on his face Mason couldn’t identify. Maybe amusement or disbelief. Then he looked at Mason.

     “What is it?” Mason said.

     The door was ripped away from its frame, and before Calvin could retreat or even raise a hand or a question, something thin, incredibly swift and made of shadow reached out from the darkness, plucked him from the floor and pulled him outside. And he screamed only once. Then there was just silence and the night spilling through the doorway.

     Mason backed away, mute with terror, and raised his penlight torch. The darkness gathered around him. The cold seeped into his bones. He was caught in a fit of tremors, murmuring idiot sounds of anguish.

     When Calvin’s body was returned, thrown through the doorway to land on the floor all broken, and ripped at the throat, Mason could only stand and stare. Calvin’s eyes were open, his beard and clothes soaked with his own blood. The ruin of his opened throat glistened in the torchlight.

     A low voice drifted from beyond the doorway, out in the night, close to the house. A glimpse of movement outside; a shadow-shape flitting through the rain.

    
Come outside. Be of my flesh and blood. Receive my blessing. Receive the gospel.

     Mason turned away and fled deeper into the house.

*

He tried the back door with grasping hands, even as he glanced over his shoulder and waited for the shadow-thing to appear and come for him out of the dark corridor.

     The door finally gave when he went at it with kicking feet, and it burst open out into the night. He stepped outside and started into a staggering run across uneven land, too scared and witless to worry about tripping over and falling. He only looked back once at the house. Once was enough. After that, he fled, and the only light was that of the torch swaying about his feet.

CHAPTER EIGHT

He ran away from the house and the shrieking of awful mouths until his lungs failed him and he hunched over with his hands on his thighs, coughing and retching to the ground. His vomit was thin and acidic. Wiping his mouth and sniffling into his hand he staggered onto a narrow track that led to a house with lights in its windows. He cried with relief.

*

The door was ajar when he arrived at the house. No one came to greet him when he knocked. He pushed the door open and stood in the doorway, casting a glance back at the darkness behind him. Trembling with cold and fear, he stepped into the small hallway and looked around.

     Coats hanging on a rack. A throat of stairs led to a darkened landing. The smell of floor polish. Past the cramped hallway and the kitchen, a television flickered in the darkened living room. A jumble of tinny voices.

     He opened his mouth to call out, but his voice failed him. It was a struggle to move his feet, but in the end he did, and he stepped slowly through the kitchen and into the living room, where he found a man and woman sprawled on a sofa, their lifeless eyes still intent upon the black-and-white film on the television. Their throats had been torn open and their clothes were stained with blood. The woman had lost a slipper. Her dressing gown was open down the middle. Mason’s eyes didn’t linger. The man was leaning to one side, his head upon the armrest. The wound of his neck still gleamed wetly.

     Mason stepped back until the wall stopped him. He put his hands to his mouth. A flashbulb image of the Dead Girl in his mind only helped the bile rise in his throat.

     “Oh shit, oh shit, oh shit.” His voice faded to a whisper then to nothing but the movement of his mouth.

     He tried the telephone on a table in the corner, but there wasn’t even a dial tone when he placed the receiver to his ear. Nevertheless he dialled 999 and waited, but there was nothing. His heart shivered in bursts and hitched with each breath. The pit of his stomach fell away. He put the phone down then returned to the bodies on the sofa, and considered going through their pockets for their mobiles before he realised he was standing in a crime scene.

     He stood shaking in the middle of the room, facing the darkness past the patio doors. Blood spray on one of the white walls and upon the cream-coloured carpet.

     When he heard the creaking of floorboards upstairs, he looked towards the ceiling then noticed the framed photos on the shelves at the edges of the room. Family photos.

     A man, a woman, and a boy.

     A little boy. Shit.

     He raised his face again to the ceiling. A breath caught in his throat. Then he went to the foot of the stairs and looked up to the landing with one hand upon the globe-shaped finial at the foot of the bannister.

     Beyond the top of the stairs and the landing, soft footsteps padded across the floor. The brush of fabric against a wall. And then a soft voice, drifting out of the dark, wordless and almost mewling.

     Mason waited, unable to move, covered in cold sweat.

     The boy appeared on the landing and looked down. He was dressed in blue pyjamas and his hair was combed to one side above his moon-white face. Mason raised his torch towards him, and the boy shied away too late to hide the awful wound on the left side of his neck, that had bled onto his pyjama top and down one leg.

     Mason’s heart sank. He lowered the torch.

     The boy took the first step down. He showed sharp teeth inside his curved mouth.

     “What the fuck?” Mason gasped. “What’s happening?” He felt the world shrink until it was just them both, facing each other. The edges of his vision fluttered and shook.

     “You should stay,” the boy said, descending the stairs. “We can wait for my parents to wake up.” He grinned, but it was a cold thing, devoid of any warmth.

     “Wake up?” Mason said. “But they’re dead.”

     “Death is not death anymore, not when you’ve been blessed. Not when you are visited by
him
. Because he came here, to this house, and gave us his blessing. His gift. It’s beautiful and terrible and wonderful. But the gift is hungry, and that hunger burns and craves. And I am so very hungry.” 

     Mason’s knees locked rigid with fear.

     Something moved in the living room. He took his eyes away long enough from the boy to see the man and woman rising unsteadily from the sofa.

     “Stay with us,” the boy whispered. “Be of our flesh and blood.”

     The man and woman made low sounds of yearning when they saw Mason at the foot of the stairs. They started towards him with intent, stalking across the floor on bare feet.

     Mason turned back to the boy just as he lowered and reached for him. He shrank away from the grasping hands and lurched towards the door with a terrified cry in his throat. His foot slipped, he almost tripped on a fallen umbrella, and he knew that if he fell down now that would be the end of him.

     He stumbled into the door and pulled it open. The night air pricked at his face. The starless sky above was indifferent to his terror.

     “Stay,” the boy said, grinning. “Please stay.”

     Mason staggered from the house, back into the dark he’d previously fled. The boy and his parents called for him to return with their tender voices and promises of comfort.

*

He emerged gasping and without thought into the streetlights of a suburban street and narrowly avoided a speeding car as he fell into the road. The car’s horn blared, and the driver’s reflection glared at him from a side mirror before the car dwindled to a small shape down the street and took an adjoining road at a mini-roundabout.

     The sudden silence. The cold pavement. Air so frigid that his teeth ached with each breath. The houses to one side of the road, their windows dark. No one came out to help him.

     Mason swayed on his feet and squeezed his eyes shut. When he opened his eyes, his vision swam and the voice of the boy echoed inside his head. The peel of a distant siren somewhere in the city. A helicopter rattled overhead and disappeared beyond a row of houses.

     Hunched over next to a streetlight, he dry heaved onto his feet and wiped his eyes with shaking hands after he was done. He thought of Calvin and Zeke, and the family in the house. Dead people. But they weren’t
really
dead, were they? They were something else. He put his hands to his face and cried, and realised he had left his rucksack at Zeke’s place. He bit at the tips of his fingers when he thought of returning to that house for his belongings.

    
Not tonight. Not ever.

     Mason shambled down the pavement, slipping in puddles, beseeching the darkened windows of the houses. He was lost and half-delirious, glancing about like a frightened animal. He thought of Ellie, and his face creased and his heart winced at painful memories. The cold air and the exhaustion in his limbs slowed him until he was barely at a shuffle. His teeth chattered.

     The moon was revealed from behind the clouds, and he stood and stared at it for a long while until the sky spun away from him. He reeled like a drunk. Stumbling about, he found a cramped nook between some recycling bins and a stone wall outside a community centre. He cowered next to stinking refuse bags and curled up against the wall, muttering to Ellie as if she were there beside him.

*

Two police officers found him some time later and directed questions towards his makeshift shelter of refuse.

     “Excuse me, sir…”

     “Are you okay, mate?”

     Mason looked up at them and flinched from the torchlight. Words stuck in his throat. He sobbed. He shouted. Then he rose from his pungent nest, and before his legs buckled to send him back down, the officers held him by the arms and lowered him gently to the tarmac of the windswept car park. And he sat there, his shoulders trembling as he rambled and muttered, pressing the knuckles of one fist against his forehead.

     He talked of monsters.