| |
The first thing Craig noticed was pitch blackness. He knew he had woken, but for how long he had been knocked out, he didn't know. A blunt pain hung in the back of his head like someone had inserted half a tennis ball through his skull. The pressure made him wince as he tried to move.
Something prevented him lifting his hand to rub the sore spot. It bit his skin and reminded him of something recent.
His voice sounded unfamiliar and distant as it escaped his parched throat. "Colonel Blaze?"
A tortured scream erupted from his mouth before he realised something had sliced his skin. It felt like a fiery needle had scraped him.
But no other sounds came to him. No raspy breathing from a silent observer. Not even the scuff of shoe tread in the darkness.
However, a horrible pungency reached his nostrils. A stench of death. Then his fingers touched cold steel. Chains. Visions filled his mind. He saw a large man, covered in stinky sweat that glistened around his throat, huffing as he carried part of a large carcass into the room. The vision grew brighter as fluorescent lights flickered to life and cast a sickly glow across the room. A cow's carcass, skinned and bare, flopped onto the table upon which he lay chained and shackled. The corpse passed through his body, blood trickling from its already drained veins to the table, and Craig repressed the urge to vomit. A large saw whirred to life and sang a deathly chorus as it descended from the ceiling above towards him and the carcass. Its spinning teeth ripped into the meat, slicing it. And Craig wanted to scream, but he knew it wasn't happening. This was the past he saw, a ghost of times long gone.
Then the vision faded, leaving Craig alone with his heart beating like the drums from a Tarzan movie.
Pain flashed through his joint like lightning as it tore through his arm. The scream blasted from Craig's mouth like a searing ball of hellfire. His head burned and throbbed. And when his screams stopped, his chest rose and fell with each greedy suck of breath he could take. The vision faded to blackness, and he was alone in the dark again.
***
"But the devil didn't have me yet!" Khan's eyes were wide with the excitement of his tale. Melody listened from the side, her face a picture of deep thought, and dodged as Khan brandished an empty Jack Daniels bottle like a sword. "I weaved, ducked, and parried. The blighter was good, but I possessed three hundred years of experience then."
Tyrone was impressed. "Do you forget things as an immortal?"
"Only humility," Melody interrupted with a grin.
Khan swung about, staggering a fraction from the heavy drinking, and lifted a finger in rebuke. But the sound of a phone ringing interrupted them.
"That's Craig's phone!" Emily's eyebrows raised. "I never heard him return."
Everyone looked around, their gazes falling upon a sheepish-looking Turner whose white ghost complexion turned a pink rosy colour. Emily clicked her fingers and tapped her foot, her hand outstretched.
"Hand it over, Mr Turner!"
The thieving ghost reached into his jacket pocket, rummaged about, and found the phone which he held out to Emily to took it away. She gazed at the screen. "It's Brianna!"
Tyrone took the phone from Emily and answered. "Hey, Bree, how are you doing?" A frown crossed his face as he listened. "Uncle Craig's at the station now to pick you up." He paused. "Yeah, he left about two hours ago when you rang him." Melody and Khan raised their faces in deep interest. Tyrone raised a hand to quiet their words. "You never called him? Then who-? Yeah, okay. We'll be here."
Tyrone switched off the phone call and looked at Turner, anger in his eyes. "Why do you have Uncle Craig's phone?"
An embarrassed expression was his only reply as the Cockney ghost shrugged.
"The ruffian can't help himself!" Being the only one who could do so, Emily punched Turner in the chops, with a blow her fellow Scots would have appreciated as the English ghost dropped to the ground. "Pray the lad is unhurt, or I will-" Emily stopped herself. "Did you say Craig has been away two hours, and no one wondered?"
Turner stood with shaky legs and rubbed the spot on his mouth where Emily's blow had hit him. "Gawdon Bennet! Thee didn't seem an' all worried abaaaht 'im, y' know wh't ah mean?"
Emily landed another blow that caused everyone who heard it to wince. Turner spun and fell to the ground, upsetting the bottles on the coffee table. "I didn't know you had stolen his phone." With a flick of her crimson hair, Emily turned and headed out the door. "I can't understand how you came to be Tyrone's guardian spirit."
"Where are you going?" Khan called after her.
"Brianna will be here soon herself to pick us up to search," Tyrone told her.
Emily offered a smile to Tyrone, her hand cupping his face. "You're a good lad," she offered him. "And I'm proud of how you're growing up. I'll find your Uncle Craig myself, and then I'll be back to let you know he's all right."
And with a wink, she vanished out the door.
***
Another slash. This time it traced from his solar plexus to his navel, where it stuck for a moment, before jetting towards his pubic bone.
Craig howled in pain. The wounds felt deep enough to expose organs and burned as though touched by pokers. To push the pain from his mind, Craig hissed. It soothed, but his body still wanted to curl up.
"Do you want to die, Mr Ramsey?" The voice sounded cold, harsh and hateful, and possessed evil intelligence. It was an intellect so vile, it made the James Bond movie version of Blofeld sound like a boy scout.
Craig forced the words through the fiery pain. "And. Miss The. Fun?"
A deep chuckle rocked and echoed across the room. "I have waited to meet you for some time... Craig Ramsey."
Craig shivered as a cool breeze wafted across his sweaty skin. He hissed in pain again. "Should. Have. Tried. Yellow Pages."
"I once watched you some years ago," the voice replied, taking a memory lane voice.
"That explains the fogged up windows." Craig couldn't resist commenting.
"You use humour to distract yourself from pain." This time the voice whispered next to his ear. With it grew the stink of death, and it drifted across Craig's nose and into his nostrils where it pervaded his throat until he choked and dry heaved. "But will it keep you from mental pain?"
Craig's eyebrow lifted in the blackness. "What does that-" Something round touched his finger. An instant later, a psychic vision engulfed Craig.
***
The darkness swirled like the water curling down the drain, tinged with grey blood, from the movie Psycho. Only it lacked the staccato slashes of the stringed instruments. As it washed over him, the current drew Craig into the plug-hole's abyss and into a recognisable scene he had not set eyes upon in years. He rubbed his wrists, now released while in the vision, and memories absorbed him like liquid in a paper towel.
It was Craig's old home, a small house he once rented years ago when life was new with youthful optimism. The quiet suburban street he stood upon once played host to the neighbourhood children playing street cricket. Today, all was quiet and bare, except for a red Ford Fiesta parked two houses down the street towards where he knew a single mother lived with her three or four daughters. And he couldn't remove his eyes from the house before him. It had once been home to him and Celina. Above him, the sun shone hard, yet it cast no shadow upon the bitumen. This wasn't merely a psychic vision. It was a reconstruction of an event for him.
With caution, Craig stepped onto the lush green lawn of the footpath and towards the front pathway lined with shrubbery on either side. Reconstruction of a memory or not, the brick paving stones had the same bump in the middle with the weed pushing its way between the cracks. He had tried so many ways to kill the weed, but no matter how many times he sprayed or pulled it out by the roots, it returned with a vengeance and waved its yellow flowers in defiance. It was the plant version of Eensy Weensy Spider, for it always came back up the cracks.
The front door, brown and wooden, beckoned him as the security door squeaked open for him.
Craig's heart hammered hard as he stepped towards the closed door. The sounds of singing drifted from behind it, voices he had not heard in years. The door opened as though by an unseen hand, and he paused at the step as he beheld the sight within.
A tsunami of pain, mental, not physical, but just as terrible, passed through Craig as he watched Julia, not dead, but alive for now, toddling across the living room's carpeted floor towards the large television. She held the remote control in her hand and was flipping channels. Loud music blared from the speaker. The nursery rhyme, Oranges and Lemons, and a ghastly animation played from it. What rubbish did they play for toddlers and young children? Yet Craig as watched her, he couldn't help grinning through the pain and wished he could touch his little girl. But it was an illusion, a projection of psychic vision, and one can't hold a shadow any more than they can catch the wind with bare fingers. Craig opened his mouth and mimed his daughter's name.
Her little fingers paused on the television remote. She turned to face him, looked into his eyes. "Daddy!"
What?
Julia ran with stumbling steps towards Craig, her pigtails flying about. His heart wanted to stop. She was so pretty, and the finger of sunlight shining through the window danced from her light brown hair. He had forgotten how he ached to feel her arms around his neck, to hold her close and -
She passed through him.
Craig had felt ghosts pass through him before. It's like walking through a light gossamer sheet, but it permeates you instead and feels like fine feathers. But this was worse. He felt his heart wrench from want.
Julia walked backwards through him again until she faced him. "Daddy?" Her voice was soft, but he heard it still against the heavy background music. "Why can't I touch you?"
"Julia!" A young woman walked into the room, wiping her hands on a tea towel. The suds from dishwater were heavy on her fingers. "Daddy's not here. Who are you talking to?"
A perplexed look crossed the little girl's face, furrowing her otherwise smooth brow as she looked at Craig. Then she glanced back to her mother. "Just playing, Mummy."
"Go, change into your other clothes to visit Grandma and Granddad, will you?" Celina's voice cracked, and Craig stood to regard his first love.
She was as beautiful as he recalled. Celina's hair normally hung shoulder-length in a blonde waterfall that cascaded and bounced. But now it was wet from a shower and was brushed back from her face to reveal her fine features better. It emphasised her crystal-clear eyes and delicate chin. He ached to touch her, to hold her again one last time.
Craig's jaw dropped in surprise as he realised. This was the day Celina and Julia left to visit her Celina's parents. Later that day, they would die on the roads of Mount Lucrapana!
What if he could stop them?
Craig watched as Julia hurried away on her little legs to her room. Then he stood and looked into Julia's brown eyes. Old memories popped into the present like bubbles in champagne. He still loved her, but it didn't feel the same as back then. Pain from the loss remained, but this time...
***
He was in the dark. Again.
Oranges and Lemons. The song continued playing. Its volume cranked higher until the sounds rattled through his bones and into his being. The vibrations sickened him, made him want to vomit and explode. And tiny spots of red danced before Craig's eyes which still swam in salty water from the vision. Then the music stopped, and relief flooded his screaming body's flesh and bones. Every nerve sighed, thankful for the reprieve.
"Tears!" The harsh voice whispered in the darkness beside his ear.
The spots rushed in, alighting upon Craig's face, and he smelled searing flesh before the pain seized him and ushered a scream from his emotion's bowels. And as he cried, he realised how much sadness he released. Sadness for Celina, sadness for Julia, and sadness for their loss to him.
"It hurts to lose someone, doesn't it, Mr Ramsey?" The voice mocked him in the darkness. "Did you see them before they died?" Craig refused to answer, gulping back the sobs as other memories rose to the surface along with his self-hate and loathing. Why couldn't he have lent Celina his car instead? Why didn't he take away her car keys, hide them, so she couldn't find them and had no choice but to use his instead?
The voice rose in volume. "You petulant baby! Which part did you see?"
Craig stopped his crying, not because of the voice, but because something else occurred to him. "Why did you show me?"
"It hurts, doesn't it?" The unseen captor paused. Was that a smirk behind the silence? "It wasn't a quick death, you know."
Craig's brow furrowed. He held it a moment before realising the bait. His lips hardened in resolute silence.
"No, Craig, it wasn't a quick death at all. What did the authorities tell you? They swerved? Hit a tree?"
But Craig stayed quiet. Only the sound of his watch's sweep hand ticking reached his ears. He tried concentrating on the sound, allow the distraction to clear his head of the pain.
The demonic creature had other ideas. From his other ear, Craig heard the intake of breath, the grin behind it, and then it spoke. "Do you know she yearned for another?"
Craig fought back more tears. He recalled someone tried moving in on Celina and him once. But Celina remained faithful to him. He knew for a fact. His psychometric visions would have picked up anything else.
"She wanted him so bad."
Doubt stole into his mind like a thief through the night. There was a way Celina could have cheated on him without him knowing. Tyrone and his late sister Debbie, his adoptive niece and nephew, had done it. Could Celina have too? No! He couldn't believe it.
"You're full of shit."
Yet the voice persisted. "Yes, Craig, she wanted him. Every time you boned her, every time you joined her, and every time her legs wrapped around you as you thrust, she imagined it was him. And she didn't call your name when she died. It was his."
Every word permeated Craig's mind and created a new vision. Each image featured Celina having sex with another man. In one vision, Julia stood outside the open bedroom door as Celina writhed in ecstasy with a faceless man. Tears flowed from Craig's eyes. He couldn't stop them. Tears of anger, frustration, hurt. He knew they weren't so true, yet the visions persisted, smashing the precious memories he held of the woman he loved the most in younger days and his little girl.
"And do you know who she was, Craig?" The voice paused, smacking its lips.
Craig's lips trembled. "She?"
"Yes. She." Footsteps. A slight scraping sound from his feet. "She who you loved and who betrayed you."
Craig's voice came like a zephyr. "Celina."
"WRONG!" The voice boomed hard, echoing against unseen walls in the darkness. "She was related to the snake you befriended. She was the Lamia's daughter!"
Craig's jaw dropped in the darkness. What? Silence replied, waiting, listening to Craig's breath rasp from his dry throat.
"That, Craig, is why I had to kill her. Do you understand?"
The music from Oranges and Lemons cranked again, blasting the air, echoing from the walls about him, and vibrating into his core. It wasn't the words, nor was it the music. It was the volume. It permeated his mind, rocketed through his spine, and jangled his nerves.
Oranges and lemons,
Say the bells of St. Clement's.
You owe me five farthings,
Say the bells of St. Martin's.
When will you pay me?
Say the bells at Old Bailey.
When I grow rich,
Say the bells at Shoreditch.
Shock filled Craig's chest, constricted his throat, and trapped the words inside him. All he could do was move his lips in silent rage. Through the darkness, he mimed the words. "I will kill you."
Suddenly light blazed through the room with blinding intensity. Craig groaned and shut his eyes hard against it, squeezing his lids against the assault. Rough fingers pried at his eyelids. Craig tried shaking his head to stop them, but one powerful hand gripped his skull like a vice and held him still while fingers compelled his eyes to open. A dark shape moved across the light like a moon across the sun and blocked the painful rays. But by doing so, Craig's eyes focused upon something worse. Much worse.
When will that be?
Say the bells of Stepney.
I do not know,
Says the great bell at Bow.
The first thing Craig noticed were its eyes, the same blazing red coals he had seen in nightmares. To see them in dreams was terrible; but in life, they curled his stomach. However, where the eyes burned, the face looked like a victim to the red orbs. At first, Craig thought bandages covered it, wrapping it like an Egyptian mummy he had once seen in the London Museum. But a second look revealed no shape under the bandages, and the wrappings were more like a wilted pumpkin's skin, cracked with age and dehydration. Yet, it wasn't a skin he had seen before. Moreover, the stench! Craig wished he could free his hands to hold his nose. The best he managed was screwing his nostrils up, but that only opened them more, and breathing through the mouth made it worse. The creature, because that was all Craig could call it, poked a grisly piece of flesh from its mouth, which was a hinged slit, similar to that of a sock puppet. With a slurpy flick of its tongue, it grinned, the slitted mouth stretching until it seemed it might crack and break.
Words, none of them complimentary, and all of them born from surprise, spilled from Craig's lips. He couldn't help it. His mind, tortured from the visions and now the incessant super-loud music blaring through his ears, snapped.
The pumpkin creature bobbed its head closer to Craig's eyes, its mounded nose pressed against his, and it roared. "You want to kill me? You think you can, mortal?" It stood back, rocked its head in laughter loud enough to accompany the blaring music. And from its grotesque non-lips screamed the rest of its song. "Here comes a candle to light you to bed, And here comes a chopper to chop off your head! Chip chop chip chop the last one is DEAD!" It screamed the last word hard into Craig's face, its putrid breath forcing through his nostrils until he gagged.
Craig almost missed what happened next. The creature moved too fast for his eyes catch more than a fleeting glimpse, like looking through a strobe light in the darkness. A flash. A blade.
Pain ripped through his shoulder as a blade sliced through his pectoral muscle and bounced off bone.
Darkness fell, covered by a crimson curtain. The last thing he heard were voices, somewhere in the distance.
But it was too late...