Chapter 42

I made my way back to the gardens and crouched down under a bush. I could see the steps beneath the undergrowth but the walls either side were swamped by ivy. The wind was picking up driving the rain sideways; the salty air was filled with the ting, ting of the yachts. I took the remaining bomb out and then slid the storage box into the leaves and crouched low as I searched the area. I studied the grasses and brambles for breaks aware that every footstep caused the sound of cracking twigs. Although the noise was minimal, each tiny snap sounded like a bullwhip cracking in my mind. I heard something but I wasn’t sure what it was. The noise of the storm and the marina was drowning everything. I listened hard and there it was again, a sobbing noise.

I froze and listened intently, nothing but the ting, ting of the rigging and the rustle of the wind and the rain dripping from the trees. I relaxed and took another step and there it was again but this time it was more of a cry. The rain was distorting where the sound was coming from. I held my breath and waited; another sob and then the muffled echo of a door being slammed. I wasn’t the only one who heard the noise. A rat the size of a toy dog bolted from the ivy thicket. The sudden movement stopped my breath and tested the strength of how anally retentive I was but it also gave me a clue as to where the door was. I looked down at where the rat had come from and sure enough, there was an area of trodden ground. It was barely visible in the thick undergrowth but there none the less. Muddy prints were visible beneath the vegetation. I used the shotgun to lift the thinner branches of ivy. Behind it, there was a narrow doorway, arched at the top. The cracked wooden door was decorated with metal studs and a plaited metal knocker. The frame was warped and the rats had chewed holes through the weather bar. I took a deep breath and ducked beneath the ivy, pushing the door open with my foot.

I looked around a gardener’s storeroom; the gardener himself at one with earth, his body long since riddled with worms. The image of his rotten skull jumped into my mind. Hideous millipedes slithered out of his empty eye sockets, pincers snapping closed. I could smell the stench of rotting flesh; it was almost overpowering. I blinked and the image was gone replaced by the web strewn room in front of me. My mind tried to comprehend what I’d seen and what I thought I’d seen. I focused on reality. A heavy grass roller stood against the far wall next to a dilapidated clothes locker. The floor was littered with broken terracotta pots. The vision of the rotting corpse had startled me. I hadn’t experienced anything like it since the last time I’d been in close proximity to Jennifer Booth. I wondered if she was aware that I was here and she was playing with my mind or if it was just my imagination picking things up. She said that I had the type of imagination which could see more than most. I clung to that rather than believing that she could get into my head. I had to believe that or I was finished.

A stifled cry shook me back to reality. I looked around. The storeroom was no bigger than the average bedroom. There were no doors and no windows. The floor was compacted earth. I looked up. The ceiling was vaulted and made from limestone bricks. If the lone figure had come in here then I couldn’t see how he’d got out. Voices murmured, almost whispers and then I heard the sobbing again. I walked over to the locker. It was made from tin. I pulled it from the top but it wouldn’t budge. There were metal fastenings bolted to the wall, the metal was warped and blistered by time. I opened the doors, hoping for a Narnia type door but there was nothing but spiders and rust. I jammed the second device into the corner of the empty locker, primed it with liquid metal and then set the detonator. I didn’t know where it was but there was an entrance to somewhere in here. I just had to find it.

I tugged the grass roller but it wouldn’t move an inch. I grabbed both handles and yanked hard. There was a creaking noise and then a snap as the handle ripped off. I was sent backwards by my momentum and landed heavily on the soil. The noise was enough to awaken the dead. I held the Mossberg tightly against my shoulder and waited for the onslaught. Nothing happened. After long seconds, I put my hand on the ground to push myself up and felt a draft on my wrist. I flicked a large piece of terracotta pot with the back of my hand but it didn’t move. The soil around it felt spongy. I put my face to the floor and felt the draft once more. I could also hear sobbing. Not just one voice but several. I stood up brushed the shards of pot with my boot. Some of it was stuck, fixed with some kind of adhesive. Then I saw a dull metal ring beneath the rim of a large piece. I pulled it and a trapdoor lifted. There was a rush of foul air and my video screen vision was awash with an orange light.

Slimy stone steps led down to a corridor below and although I could only see a small square, I could tell that the rock floor had been worn smooth by time and use. Candlelight flickered giving the place an eerie glow. I had come too far and seen too much to be frightened. Whatever was down there needed to be equally as afraid of me. I took the steps slowly keeping the shotgun aimed high. As I went lower, I closed the trapdoor above me. There was a bolt which fastened it to the joists around the hatch and I slid it home. It could delay my escape if I was in a rush but it was better than allowing more of them to come from behind me. The steps curved to the left and then met the corridor. The walls were carved from the rocks, the floor was uneven and pitted with lips and ledges. The ceiling was higher in some places than in others. I knelt down and looked along the length that I could see. It looked like there were doors fitted randomly on both sides. The stench was stomach churning a mixture of animals and death. I could smell decaying flesh but I could also smell the living. The smell of body odour and human waste was choking.

At the end of the corridor another set of carved steps led upwards. The murmuring voices were coming from that direction but the sobbing wasn’t. It was coming from somewhere much closer. I stayed low and edged down the corridor slowly. The first doorway was shoulder high. There was a hatch near the top of the thick metal door and a keyhole fitted halfway down on the left. The size and shape of the keyhole told me that it was very old. I listened against the door but couldn’t hear anything. I slid the hatch open and peered inside using the goggles. I recoiled at the smell that came from the hatch; stale urine and excrement and the putrid odour of unwashed humans. I held my breath and looked again. There was a green figure in the far corner of a tiny cell, which was nothing more than a two metre hole in the rock. It cowered against the cold rock. I couldn’t make out any features but it had long wispy grey hair.

“Hey,” I whispered. The shape twitched but only made itself smaller still. “Hey.” The figure trembled visibly. “I’ll be back to get you out, okay?”

“Fuck off!” it hissed. I couldn’t tell what sex it was. “I like it here. So will you.” The creature cackled like a witch from a cartoon although it wasn’t funny at the time. “You’ll love it when they come for you!”

I figured that they had lost their marbles, sympathy replaced disgust. “I’ll come back,” I whispered. “Just hang on.” There was no response. I slid the hatch closed and moved on. The urge to hammer the door down was almost irresistible but my primary goal would be compromised. The murmuring voices seemed to be growing louder; an incantation or a chant in a language which I couldn’t identify. I reached a doorway on the opposite side of the corridor identical to the first. The sobbing which I’d heard was coming from inside. I slid the hatch open and stepped back to allow the worst of any offensive smells to dissipate.

“Help me!” a voice sobbed from within.

“Who are you?” I looked in and caught my breath. A young boy stood naked in the cell. There was a pentagram painted on his chest and his arms were tied behind his back.

“My name is David,” he whispered. “Please get me out of here.”

“I will, David,” I kept my voice low but firm. “I will come back for you.”

“No please don’t leave me.”

“I promise that I’ll be back.”

“Oh, God, please help me, mister!”

“I will,” I tried to reassure him. “How did you get here?”

“I was hitch-hiking to Ireland to find my grandmother,” he began to sob. Tears rolled down his face leaving tracks in the dirt on his face. “My mum died and they put us into care. We ran away. We got into a van and they took us here.” He broke down and cried hysterically. Snot dribbled from his nose and dangled from his chin. His knees buckled and his head was against the damp floor. “Please help me!”

“Who were you with, David,” I tried to calm him. “You said ‘we’. Who were you with?”

“My sister, Sarah,” he blubbered. “They took her up there.”

“Where?”

“Up the stairs to the big room,” he sobbed incoherently. “That where they hurt us.”

“When was this?” I asked. “When did they take her?”

“Years ago!” he screamed. His voice echoed from the rocks down the narrow corridor. “Fucking years ago, you fucking idiot!” He threw himself against the door violently. His nose cracked against the hatch and his top lip split like a burst grape. Blood splattered against my face and I staggered back against the wall. “She’s coming, she’s coming. I can hear her!” He screamed. His voice echoed down the tunnel. I aimed the gun at the stairs waiting for an army of niners to rush down them. My breathing was shallow and there was a cold sheen on my skin. “She said you would come,” David whispered. His voice seemed to float on the air. “She said that you would come and save her but you didn’t. You didn’t. You didn’t. You didn’t. You didn’t.”

I stepped back to the cell door and cautiously looked inside. The rank stench of decomposition hit me like a baseball bat. The boy was gone or at least his image had. There were skeletal remains curled up on the floor in the foetal position. My mind was reverberating with his voice, the tortured please to release him yet he didn’t exist. Not any more anyway. I knew the remains belonged to a boy called David, the boy that I had seen walking and talking just a moment before. He had been dead for years. I knew all this and yet I couldn’t explain how no more than I could explain the vision of him begging for help.

I knelt and tried to gather my thoughts. I could no more explain what had happened than I could explain any of my living nightmares. I was dicing with evil, pitting my frail human mind against the most ancient malevolence known to mankind and yet I was searching for reasonable explanations. That was madness itself. I gave myself a mental kick up the arse and stood up. I was here to kill Jennifer Booth and as many of her followers as I could not to provide answers or solutions as to how to remove cosmic evil energy from the universe. Even Stevie Hawkins would struggle with that one. I smiled to myself inside at the thought of him trying to explain that one and headed for the stairs.