Seventeen

Mark, Chadderton and Joanne exchanged no words as they drove to the General Hospital that night. Joanne had started humming; a small, childlike lullaby as she cradled her daughter in the back seat of the car. Helen had slept through the nightmare of the burning, was still sleeping as they arrived at the hospital, and was admitted for shock. Chadderton did all the talking. There had been an accident. Mother and daughter had been in a car smash while returning from a shopping trip. Mother had hit her head on the windshield, daughter had been severely shaken up. Joanne had insisted that she was all right as she was given treatment for the cut on her head, and then had collapsed as her daughter was taken away. Joanne was admitted, too. Also suffering from shock. Chadderton had flashed his ID, the Nurse-­on-­Duty had failed to notice that it was no longer valid, and the necessary forms had been filled in.

Silently, Mark and Chadderton walked back to the car. In the car park, Mark suddenly broke down, one hand covering his face, his shoulders convulsing as sobbing racked his body. Tears flowed freely between his fingers. He had not cried that way since he had been a child. Chadderton moved on to the car, lighting a cigarette with fingers that shook badly, allowing Mark the privacy of a grief that was more like relief.

The drive back to Mark’s house was also made in silence. Black and blue shadows chased across their faces. It began to rain and liquid light and shade joined the chase as they moved on through the night. When they finally took the turning into the driveway, the wreck of Mark’s car was hidden in the larger shadow of the house, crouching against the porch. The moon sparkled on the garden pool and Chadderton could just see the rim of the ornamental fountain jutting from the dark water. A tyre track gouged its way across the garden into the shadow. Chadderton parked his car in the drive. As they both moved towards the house, the shattered door frame creaked slightly in the evening air. Chadderton turned to the wrecked car, leaned in and braced himself against the window frame to push. Mark came forward to help but Chadderton shook his head: ‘You’re in no fit state. See what you can do with the door.’ They were the first words that had passed between them in over two hours.

As Mark went into the house, Chadderton heaved against the car, using his anger and feeling the crunch of tires on broken glass as it moved. Minutes later, the car was in the driveway. Mark had found a piece of panelling in the cellar and had just finished nailing it to the shattered door when Chadderton entered. Without a word, they both mounted the stairs to the bedroom. Mark flicked the light switch. The smell of ozone was still strong. Together, they stared at the pile of ashes in the corner of the room; both knowing that it would not have vanished, that the pile would still be there. Evidence of the nightmare.

‘Why didn’t the room catch fire?’ asked Chadderton quietly, almost to himself. ‘Why couldn’t we move?’

Mark tried to say: I don’t know. Why did any of it happen? But the words would not come.

‘It’s time to talk,’ said Chadderton.

‘Yes.’

‘What happened between you and Aynsley?’

‘Not here. Downstairs.’

In the living room, everything seemed more real. There were no shattered doorways, no broken glass, no pile of ashes that had once been a human being. Mark began to speak as soon as he had put on the gas fire and sat heavily on the sofa. He explained what had happened at the surgery: the dream, the hypnosis, Aynsley’s disappearance.

‘The tape? What the hell happened with the tape?’ asked Chadderton.

‘Aynsley told us,’ Mark replied. ‘Something evil attacked me on that train. It got into my mind and hid there like a parasite, feeding on my fear. When Aynsley unlocked that secret and made me remember, it came out of me and invaded his mind.’

Chadderton was looking down as he listened, clenching and unclenching his hands.

‘The tape was playing while all this happened,’ Mark continued, ‘so the evil was taped as well. It had possessed Aynsley but we got rid of it somehow when we came back for Helen and Joanne. God help us, I summoned it up again by playing the tape. That’s how it got into our minds.’

‘Then it’s still in our minds, hiding in there as it did with you.’

‘No . . . Something happened. Helen was involved somehow. Something she was able to do got it out of our minds altogether and chased it back to where it came from. Listen, Chadderton – when you saved me from throwing myself in front of that train, the evil was in me then. But it was . . .’ Mark hunted for a different phrase to express himself from the one that immediately sprang to mind, but could not find it. ‘. . . It was cast out of me by your actions. It was temporarily beaten. It had to get away, feed and grow strong enough to try again. And when that happened I could feel that something had also happened inside my mind. It’s been in there, Chadderton,’ Mark continued, rapping on his forehead with his knuckles, ‘and because it’s been in there, it has inadvertently opened something up. I don’t know what it is but it’s like a new awareness. I can understand how this thing behaves without knowing exactly what it is yet. Aynsley tried to help me. But his mind was really too far gone. I know that it’s a force . . . a very old . . . very evil force. It’s probably been “alive”, if you can call it that, since the beginning of creation. Aynsley called it Azimuth. It feeds on fear, Chadderton. It feeds on our greatest fears and under the right circumstances it can conjure them up. Somehow, it lives and travels on the King’s Cross train. And it’s . . . growing . . . towards something.’

‘I don’t understand. You say that the Evil’s on the line – then it’s in you, it’s in Aynsley and it’s on the tape at the same time.’

‘It exists on the line. You heard Aynsley. It’s somehow trapped on the line and it’s been travelling there for years. It left a trace of itself in me, a trace in Aynsley, a trace on the tape. It has put a trace of itself into everyone who’s ever travelled on the line and committed one of those atrocities afterwards. Can’t you see it? Someone gets on a train at King’s Cross. The Evil is also somehow on that train, on that line. It chooses him as its . . . its . . . food. It works its way into the person’s mind, feeding on his everyday fears and doubts. But it has to make those fears greater, has to build them up so that it can feed well. It continues to feed, and the fear grows stronger and stronger. Hours later, the person gets off the train at his station in a dangerously psychotic condition. And by that time, a trace of the Evil is able to leave the train with him. But only for a short time, because the Evil is still tied to the line . . . and while the sphere of influence exists in the mind of its victim, the person causes more fear, death and horror. And the Evil can feast again before it’s forced to withdraw its trace and return to the railway line.’

‘You say “the line”. There isn’t a specific carriage or train, then?’

‘No. It’s the line itself.’

‘All right. So the line is . . . possessed or something. There’s something very old – ancient – and evil. It’s not human and it feeds on people’s fear like some kind of vampire. It can conjure up a person’s worst fear in that person’s own mind. Just like it did to us, earlier.’

‘Right. When Aynsley touched my hand, he was somehow able to convey all of this to me before he burned. Somehow, his act has heightened my own awareness and instinct about Azimuth.’

‘But how the hell did it get on the line in the first place? The King’s Cross to Edinburgh line was operative from the 1850s. That’s over one hundred and thirty years ago. How did it get on the line? Why is it trapped there? And if it’s as old as you say it is, where did this thing exist prior to that? Why can it only exist on that one stretch of railway line – why can’t it spread and travel to the other railway networks?’

‘I don’t know yet. Something’s blocking me off. I only have instincts in general about it. My mind’s still closed on certain things. I still don’t know what happened to me on the train; still don’t know what threw me off. Aynsley may have found out, but he wasn’t able to pass it on to me.’

‘What did you mean about standing stones?’

‘What?’

‘When you broke contact with Aynsley – or whatever it was you were doing – you said, “Standing stones”.’

‘Did I? God . . . yes. Aynsley told me something – but nothing specific enough to help.’

‘I don’t think we can ignore their significance in your dreams either, Davies.’

Mark remembered fleeing down the Ghost Train track with Robbie and seeing the standing stones on either side of the line like silent gravestones. He opened his mouth to tell Chadderton about that last deadly fantasy, but then noticed how the other’s gaze was suddenly being directed towards the rows of books above Mark’s stereo unit.

‘You’ve got quite a few volumes up there.’

‘Yes. I’ve done a lot of reading since the accident. That’s all I’ve been really capable of.’

‘Bet you’ve got a book up there on prehistoric remains,’ said Chadderton.

Mark felt his heart lurch for a reason he could not explain. ‘Yes . . .’ he said slowly, ‘there’s a book on them there somewhere. I had it before the accident . . .’ Before the accident . . . now why did I say that? he thought.

‘Ever looked at it recently? Ever tried to tie up some of those dreams that you were telling me about? See if any of the places you dreamed about really exist?’

Mark suddenly felt a small knot of fear in his stomach, the impulse to tell Chadderton that he was being a fool. The standing stone dreams were all part of the fantasy that the Evil had conjured up in his head. There was no relevance. And then he knew he was wrong. The standing stones, the burial chambers and the carved stones were relevant. He had always thought so; had been thoroughly convinced in his last nightmare that they were somehow very important. It was the fear of discovering the Evil’s secret that prevented him from recognising the fact; the fear of what the consequences of the discovery would bring.

‘I’ve never looked in the book. It would have been like giving my nightmares some kind of credence, substantiating all the fears that I was trying to hide. I think you’d better get the book now, Chadderton.’ Mark was suddenly beginning to feel a little sick. ‘It’s on the third shelf.’

Chadderton crossed to the shelves, rummaged around and finally found the volume he was after. Seconds later, he had the book spread open on the coffee table in front of Mark.

‘Before we start,’ said Chadderton, and Mark could see that his hands were shaking badly as he turned the pages, ‘I’ve got to tell you that I can’t make myself believe everything you’ve told me. I just can’t do it. But there’s something about what’s happened to us, something about what you’ve told me, that I can’t ignore. I’ve seen things that I can never explain and I don’t want to believe them. But I’ve seen them and I know I’m not mad – so I know I’ve got to believe them. But something inside me is fighting it all the way. I’m following the logic of what you’ve said and of what Aynsley was babbling before he . . .’ Chadderton suddenly could not find the words to describe what had happened. ‘I think I might know the relevance of these things. But before I say any more, I want you to go through this book with me and tell me every time you think you recognise any of the sites. Okay?’

He turned to the first page. Instantly, Mark saw a familiar grouping of ancient, weatherbeaten stones from a familiar nightmare.

Meanwhile, two miles outside Bamburgh, in an isolated cottage, the Catalysts were in commune with their Master.

An hour later, Mark finally sat back from the three-­inch thick volume. The spasm of fear which had first curled in his stomach at Chadderton’s mention of standing stones had stayed with him as he crouched over the book. Now that he was sitting back, the weariness of the last two days was settling on him like a dark mantle. His shirt was soaked in sweat, clinging to his back.

Chadderton had pulled down an RAC road-­map from the bookshelf and spread out a map of England on the coffee table beside the book. And every time Mark had recognised a grouping of stones or an ancient burial mound from one of his nightmares, Chadderton marked its position on the map with a large cross. Chadderton had scribbled down the name of each site as Mark recognised it and, with each identification, the memory of the nightmares had flooded back to Mark with a startling intensity. The map was covered in crosses.

Chadderton gazed at the map for a long time. He was clenching and unclenching his fingers again. Mark closed his eyes, fighting back the weariness, afraid to sleep in case his nightmares should return, despite his new-­found inner conviction that when the . . . thing . . . had left his mind, so had his bad dreams. He closed his eyes, feeling the strain pounding on the nerves behind them, and heard Chadderton scribbling something. When he looked over to him, the other man was sitting back in his chair, taking the volume with him and pulling the map roughly across the arm of the chair.

‘What are you thinking . . . ?’ began Mark, but Chadderton silenced him with an impatient gesture. Mark’s eyes were closing again. Despite himself, sleep was going to win. His body needed to recover. The last thing he saw before unconsciousness overtook him was Chadderton hunched over his book, his eyes far away; lost in the depths of some undeniable, inescapable conclusion.

Mark’s sleep was deep and dreamless.