Don't Fear The Reaper (2 page)

SAMMY BENULLO
was weary and sore but elated an hour and a half after giving birth to a baby
boy in The London Welbeck Hospital. Home wasn’t far away. She and her husband
lived on Harley Street. He’d been present at the birth, holding her hand
dutifully all through labour. Yet upon leaving their home in a mad hurry, Frank
Benullo remembered he’d left the TV and computer on.

Sam had been a renowned plastic surgeon for four years, Frank a general
practitioner and qualified chiropractor. Both of their careers took years to
get financially comfortable. Sam was born and raised in London. Her parents
would be at her bedside later today to see their first grandchild. Frank was
Italian and had come to the UK to study medicine at Cambridge University.

They’d met by chance one evening waiting for a bus and began talking to
pass the time. Before either of them knew it time had flown by and evidently
the bus wouldn’t be arriving that evening. Frank had hailed a cab and offered
to take her to her home free of charge. Half an hour after later they were
exchanging mobile numbers and arranging to meet up and go out.

Fast-forward five years and Sam was lying in a hospital bed, channel
surfing absentmindedly while she gazed wonderingly at the tiny bundle that was
her newly born son, Elias.

He looked so tiny and fragile lying in the coat wrapped up in his white
blanket, fast asleep. Sam felt the urge to reach out and trace her fingertips
over his soft-as-silk face. If she did she’d wake him. Yet even the sound of
his cries upon leaving the womb and being born unto the world was dulcet music
to Sam’s ears.

Elias had been alive for approximately two hours and had done nothing
more than cry and sleep. Sam too had cried. Now she fell asleep…

*

Catherine
Hughes the midwife who’d been present at the birth of baby Elias Benullo had
finished washing him. She sat in the staff changing rooms on a bench with her
back to the lockers. In a daze, she’d managed to remove her uniform and get
dressed into casual attire.

The birth of baby Elias had been routine. However, an inexplicable dread
had overcome her since holding and washing the baby. She couldn’t explain the
emotion herself, in her own mind, never mind to anyone else.

There had been no complications whatsoever during the birth. In fact, it
had been surprisingly easy. As soon as Sammy and her husband Frank had burst
through the entrance into the hospital and rushed into theatre, everything had
transpired swiftly. No more than forty-five minutes later the couple became
parents.

Since then everything for Catherine had not been easy and stress-free.
Baby Elias had wailed in protest at being washed of blood. He still cried when
Catherine had dried him and wrapped him in a blanket. Yet as soon as she
returned the baby to its doting mother the crying ceased. Elias evidently knew
who his mother was from a stranger, although Catherine did feel a pang of hurt.
She hadn’t done anything wrong. The crying at being washed was to be expected,
she reasoned. But when she wrapped him up nice and snug and held him close he
continued to cry.

There was something else too. It sounded ludicrous but her conscience
insisted it was true.

When Elias had opened his eyes, she didn’t know how she was certain of
this, but she saw pure hatred. That had to be impossible. Elias had no
awareness of how he appeared. All he knew was the water was wet and that’s why
he’d cried. Understandable. Yet even at that precise moment Catherine felt the
hairs on her arms and neck bristle. A sensation not related to physicality
coursed through her. A presence so dreadful she shuddered involuntarily. They
said that dead bodies did the same when someone walked over their grave.
Catherine didn’t believe in the supernatural or hocus-pocus. But whatever she’d
felt was as real as anything else in her life up until that point.

She had no idea how long she’d been sitting there on the bench. It felt
like an age but couldn’t have been any longer than five-to-ten minutes at the
most. She was about to rise when from behind her and the rows of lockers, a
door opened and then closed. The noise was deafening in the silence.

Catherine swivelled round keen to know who it was. She listened intently
and still could hear no footsteps across the tiled flooring. Nevertheless, she
intuited a powerful presence nearing, regardless of being unseen and unheard.  

Her cheeks quivered as though static electricity danced. Heat from within
flushed her face. She had no idea what was transpiring, yet knew it wasn’t at
all positive. Strangely, when she rested a hand to her ample bosom she couldn’t
detect her heartbeat. Icicles of profound dread swam through her veins but her
heart beat slowly, calmly. Probably the only aspect that kept her feet rooted
to the floor was the normal beat of her heart.

She tried to call out, to get the individual’s attention, but the saliva
in her mouth had dried. Her lips had sealed shut. And when she did moisten them
with her tongue and pry her lips apart she didn’t trust her mousy voice in the
quiet.

And when she saw the source of the presence that had entered the changing
rooms, Catherine’s last coherent thought was,
It wouldn’t have made any
difference
.

The Grim Reaper swarmed into her vision. Nothing else existed. Her
peripheral vision narrowed and zoomed in on the huge figure drifting towards
her. Catherine didn’t quiver but shook, as though she were suffering from a
seizure. Her eyes bulged from their sockets like two cue balls. The entity in a
long black cloak crowded over her. Its pallid skeletal visage glowed
incandescently. Then it reached out with the bony hand not holding the
long-handled scythe and rested upon the midwife’s brow.

Instantly, the shaking ceased and Catherine became motionless. Her
protuberant eyes reflected what lay beyond the valleys of the hood, into the
chasm of darkness.

*

Dr
Simon Tait was anticipating retiring for the day with only ten minutes before
the end of his shift at 5:00am. He usually went straight home and slept until midday. Then he’d have a few hours to himself at his own leisure, which consisted of a
good DVD and Chester, his feline friend, sitting either on his lap or next to
him. It was surprisingly relaxing, especially after a long shift. Simon worked
four twelve-hour shifts and then had three days off. By the fourth day he was
usually out on his feet and needed the extra day off work to recuperate and
remind himself there was a life outside the hospital worth living.

He’d just finished stitching a drunken husband’s cheek up (after his wife
had thrown a beer bottle at him which had smashed and sliced him). He’d given
him some anaesthetic, although the consumption of alcohol he’d filled his body
with the night before numbed him. He could barely speak coherently. His wife
had apologised but also added he needed to cut down or stop drinking
altogether. And yet it was her rage – not the booze – that had induced the
vicious wound in the first place. Dr Tait chose not to voice his opinion and
concentrate on the task at hand.

He bade the nurses a good morning as he ambled down the corridor towards
the changing rooms. His shoulders and neck were taut with strain. It would be
good to get home and have a hot bath.

Dr Tait was thinking pleasant thoughts as he pushed open the door to the
changing rooms and went to his locker. He got his tracksuit bottoms and Nike
T-shirt out and sat down on the bench. He cried as soon as his bum touched the
timber and jolted to a standing position. When he whirled around he saw that it
wasn’t just the bench that was wet but the far side of the tiled floor. The
puddle glowed beneath the fluorescents.

That’s strange
.  

What the doctor considered strange was even if the water had presumably
come from the shower then the water would have to pour over the lip into the
stall. Either that or the toilet was blocked. Yet as he edged out of the aisle
he noticed the trail continued away from the showers and toilets to the far
wall.

Curious to find the source, Dr Tait ventured forward. He halted when
something in his peripheral sight got his undivided attention and he turned his
head.

He reeled backwards, blinking but unable to look away from the crumpled
form with its legs curled up, leaning against a row of lockers. However, the
most horrifying aspect was the face belonging to the body of a uniformed nurse.
The sight of the face made Dr Tait’s, who’d seen his share of awful sights and
cadavers, mouth hang open.

The face of the deceased looked as if the life had been sucked right out
of it. The eyes were rolled back and the whites seemed to have fallen into a
well. Black streaks ran from the oval sockets down the sunken cheeks. The head
was a fusion of pale, purple and rotten green. A trajectory of burst blood
vessels surfaced on the nurse’s face like lines in a road map.

Worse than anything else was the bronze nametag pinned to the navy-blue
uniform breast revealing who it was that he could no longer recognise.

Dr Tait recoiled into the wall, buried his throbbing head in his hands
and focused on breathing slowly and deliberately to prevent hyperventilation.

He didn’t succeed…

*

THE SUN

NURSE DIES
IN GRUESOME

AND
UNEXPLAINABLE FASHION!

By Gill Davies.

At
approximately 5:00am on 6 June Dr Tait of The London Welbeck Hospital
discovered the body of fellow colleague Catherine Hughes (48) in the changing
rooms. There is no explanation for the cause of death and who the perpetrator
may have been. ME Michael Morris stated that the cause of death was brought on
suddenly by a massive shock; heart attack being the probable cause.

Mrs Hughes of West London had been an employee at The London Welbeck
Hospital for sixteen years. Her fellow colleagues said that she was an affable,
funny and well-respected, experienced member of the hospital and was liked by
staff and patients alike for her ability to make those suffering laugh out
loud.

Her family have been notified and are equally stunned by the sudden
death and the cause. Her brother David said, “It’s a complete mystery. She was
a strong, kind, lovable woman and never had an enemy. I can’t imagine what it
was that scared Catherine to death. It doesn’t make sense. She hardly drank,
didn’t smoke and never took drugs. She didn’t have Diabetes or high
cholesterol.”

Police have assured the family that they will do a thorough
investigation, but admitted they were clueless as the ME and everyone else.

Saturday 10 June 2006

THE SUN
slinked
beneath the horizon, bleeding a maroon hue across the sky. The sight was
postcard perfect. The breeze that had been refreshing during the day became
chilly at dusk.

Roland Goldsmith retired to bed at 9:00pm. He ‘wasn’t feeling himself’,
he told his mother for whom he was caring in her elderly years. She’d asked him
what his symptoms were and Roland found he couldn’t articulate them as physically
he didn’t have a headache, or a bad stomach or anything else of that nature.
Instead intuition or common sense advised him to go to his room and lie down.
Perhaps he was exhausted and nothing more. He’d driven his mother, Aida, to
Tesco supermarket earlier, carried all the bags of shopping and unpacked them
when they got home. After that he’d pulled up the weeds sprouting through the
patio slabs in the back yard then drove to Aberavon beach where he and Aida had
some chips and breathed in the sea air.

Nevertheless, that hadn’t even sounded like a strenuous day. Quite the
opposite in fact. Both productive and enjoyable.

Being at work five days a week (he was a painter and decorator for the
council)  and coming home to cooking and doing the dishes was tedious and
tiring. In the mornings he’d fix himself and Aida some breakfast, make sure
there was enough food and tea stocked up in the kitchen; that Aida had her
Evening
Post
and
The Sun
newspapers. Aida insisted on being in front of the
TV watching
Murder, she Wrote
and
Columbo
which were followed by
game shows.

He’d noticed this feeling of constant drudgery on Tuesday. He couldn’t
afford to put his mother in a care home where she’d receive 24/7 attention.
Also, his mother as demented as she was fast becoming was all he had.

On Tuesday he’d come home to find his mother pouring scalding hot water
from the kettle into her handbag. When he inquired what the bloody hell she was
doing, she said, “I was doing myself a cuppa tea before I went to Bingo.”

If it hadn’t been so dangerous Roland might have laughed. Even when he
said, “But why would you pour your tea into your handbag?” to which she
replied, matter-of-factly, “’Cause I couldn’t find a flask,” he couldn’t laugh
about it.

He retired to bed that night thinking,
What the fuck!

The bed had been made and yielded beneath his weight. Then he closed his
eyes and lay supine, welcoming the comfort of sleep.

He woke to find himself standing on a narrow road on a steep incline.
When he pivoted he saw he was standing on a road high up in the mountains. His
eyes swept the panorama of a copse of larch trees. Also, this vantage point
permitted him to see how the environing hills were rolled into one. A herd of
sheep were speckled out on the other side of the valley. Roland marvelled at
the sporadic farmhouses; three in total. He wondered how tranquil it must be to
reside in the wilderness, breathing in fresh air, away from the din of the town
centre, main roads and motorways. It was quite literally a different world up
here.

He vaguely recognised the terrain but couldn’t place it until he looked
out and saw the Crai Reservoir a few hundred feet below. The dying sun sparkled
off the ripples. Two dedicated fishermen were dismantling their rods and
collapsing their tents before hauling their belongings into their vehicles. The
keen motorcyclists were nowhere to be found. The road below was deserted, not a
soul in sight.

What Roland couldn’t fathom was how he’d managed to arrive here at the
Brecon Beacons without any recollection whatsoever.

A chill turned his exposed flesh to goose-pimples. Darkness descended in
seconds, dragging the ebbing daylight out of the sky and reigned supreme.
Roland thought it was too fast for it to be natural. Also, the ambience had
dissolved into a sinister atmosphere. If asked to explain this, there would be
no need for some things need no explanation. The sight itself of the black
skies too dark and foreboding to be the work of nature or God swarmed over him,
so that he was mesmerised and fearful beyond comprehension.

As he pivoted, the presence that did not belong to this world towered
over him. The pale white horse’s impassive gaze appeared to search his mind and
soul. The Grim Reaper stared at him, for how long he didn’t know, from the
chasm of nothingness beyond the hood of its cloak and then reached out and
pointed. And when it performed this gesture, magically white dazzling light
shone the way over the sty and up a steep hill over the brink towards the
summit.

Roland gazed wonderingly at the light shining down on a path to somewhere
unknown to something unseen. He knew then what was being asked of him, though
no words of guidance were exchanged. There was no need. The understanding was
given to him from another entity from another plane beyond the realm of earth. 
   

Then he woke for the second time… and rose from the bed.

*

He
descended the stairs vigilantly, mindful to his mother’s whereabouts. Halfway
down the stairs his body relaxed at the sound of Aida’s snoring. She’d passed
out in her Laz-Y-Boy in front of the TV, the remote still in her gnarled grasp.
The world could have been tottering on the edge of the black hole and she
wouldn’t have known anything about it.

Roland reached the foot of the stairs and, without making a sound,
slipped on his Addidas trainers, checked he’d brought his car and house keys
with him and kept glancing back and forth from the front door to his mother. He
didn’t relish abandoning her at five minutes to eleven on a Saturday night. If
she woke and went to his bedroom she’d panic at his sudden disappearance. If he
left a message, what would he say? He couldn’t fathom what he was going to do
himself. What he knew though was that he had no choice but to do it.

The tricky part of this would be getting out of the house without causing
his mother to stir awake. Fortunately, she sounded fast asleep.
Dead to the
world
. He eased the front door open and closed it, cringing at the sound of
the latch clicking shut. Then he waited for a few moments on the doorstep. If
his mother had heard the door closing she’d wake and come and see what had
happened. Roland prepared himself for that. He’d tell her he was standing
outside, needing to get some air. Instead a minute passed uneventfully.

Wasting no further time, Roland headed to the Ford Mondeo, removed the
handbrake and let the car roll down the rutted path. He applied the handbrake
again when the front end protruded the kerb into the road.

Now that he felt at a safe distance, Roland turned the headlights on and
drove away, turning onto the main road, glancing in the rear-view mirror. Guilt
knocked incessantly in his conscience. In the back of his mind all he could
think about was his overprotective, frail mother, searching their home for her
son. He floored the accelerator on the quiet suburban roads on his way to the
Brecon Beacons to perform his deed. Having no knowledge of what this deed would
entail didn’t perturb him in the slightest. All would be revealed upon the time
of arrival, and no matter what it was he daren’t refuse. His life and soul
depended on it.

*

The
absence of streetlights and other vehicles on the steep mountain road shrouded
the car in pitch darkness. Even with the headlights on full beam, the darkness
insisted. A sense of foreboding filled the interior of the Ford, but still
Roland drove onwards. The road hugged the side of the precipice, meandering up
and around. Roland had to slow down vastly as the road careened to the right,
merely a yard or two from a black hole that ended after two thousand feet. One
minor miscalculation and that gorge would suck him into the night. Probably be
dead before the car exploded and a fireball erupted.

Ascending the mountain on a glorious summer day was often arduous. The
narrow road permitted vehicles to travel past one another in opposite
directions but was barely wide enough for one car. At night with only the
headlights illuminating the road ahead, everything else on either side
disappeared. The power steering and 1.6 engine aided him. God help him if he’d
still had the transit van.

Roland could feel the fingers of death coil around his jackhammer heart.
The road seemed steeper still at night. He might as well have been trying to
drive up a wall. He leapt on the brake pedal when the road turned sharply and
gasped. He didn’t even see the hairpin bend until the last second. Any later
and at this moment he’d been flying through the air, not even capable of
bracing himself for the fatal impact.

By the time he got to the summit, Roland’s heavy breathing came close to
panting. As cold as it was outside, his brow was drenched in a film of sweat.
He pried his curled fingers off the steering wheel and saw he’d left imprints.
His knuckles cracked and his arms felt laden with tension and lactic acid. 

He killed the engine but decided to leave the headlights on. Over the
edge Roland could dimly make out the Crai Reservoir, undulating languidly.
Sighing, he pivoted and faced the sty he’d need to climb over and the hill to
the summit.

The cold settled into his marrow. Roland shivered and cussed his
forgetfulness and stupidity not to bring a hooded sweater or coat with him.
That notion had totally slipped his mind. Although it was June and the sun had
been out earlier, high up in the mountains of Brecon Beacons it was chilly.
He’d made this mistake once a few summers ago when he took his mother for a
spin and decided to stop and sit outside. That was during the day when the sun
shone on them. This time was far worse. The sun was a distant memory. In this
darkest of nights, Roland knew the sun or any type of warmth had no business
being present.

Rubbing his exposed arms he crossed the road and swung one leg at a time
over the sty and ventured to his destiny.

He’d warmed up a bit from the climb. Snot poured out of his nostrils. He
wiped it away absentmindedly as his hands gripped the grassy knoll for
purchase. Huffing and puffing, he hauled himself up and rolled onto his back.
His breath escaped him in steamy exhalations. When he got himself into a
sitting posture, Roland flinched at something he was certain he’d detected in
the corner of his eye.

There was nothing or no one present anywhere in the vicinity.

What’d you think you seen?   

It was hard to define as it had only been a momentary glimpse, but Roland
was positive that amidst the forever darkness there had been a pale white horse
observing him no more than twenty feet away.

So sure was Roland he ambled in that direction, hoping he wasn’t losing
his marbles and he hadn’t imagined the dream earlier which was more a vision
where the Grim Reaper had made contact with him from another realm.

Yeah ’cause that explanation doesn’t sound insane
, he chastised
himself.

His legs still hadn’t properly recovered from the climb but intuition
informed him time wouldn’t wait for him any longer. The ground he traversed was
uneven and he staggered and fought for balance half a dozen times before the
turf receded and the terrain felt harder.

By now his eyes had adjusted to the dark and as he squinted Roland could
see the shapes ahead of him were stones and pebbles. The ground he moved over
was unyielding rock. A sloping path drooped around a massive boulder and
revolved back to the right again out of sight. Without any hesitation Roland
followed this path, mindful of his footing. He comforted himself by reaching
out and feeling the stone wall of the boulder and leant against it for support.
Then as he cornered the boulder and the path rose again the council worker
ceased at the grand entrance. Before him was the most amazing spectacle created
by man, carved out of stone more than a century ago.

What stopped him and amazed him was a rectangular-shaped monolith, (some
sort of ancient relic) at the centre of a sunrise amphitheatre.

Roland gasped.

This was what had drawn him. Or rather, this is what the Grim Reaper had
drawn him to. Now he had to enter the sunrise amphitheatre where the risers
rose up and circled the arena. The plain, indistinctive monolith appeared
incongruously no matter how well concealed. It was an onyx hue, quite possibly
made out of marble. Roland sensed it calling to him in a myriad of innumerable
incantations.

He should have been afraid. However, the incantations of voices without
form soothed his trepidation and welcomed him, encouraged him to enter without
fear and approach this inhuman creation at the centre of this extraordinary
architecture.

The monolith exuded an energy source so powerful it could have been a
substation of transformers. Roland’s exposed arms prickled with static. An abnormal
warmth overcame him and the incantations of a legion rose in volume. In spite
of all these ominous signs, he unwaveringly continued to progress further into
the amphitheatre. Fear had taken a vacation and all that remained was his
destiny calling to him.

Reaching the centre of the amphitheatre brought Roland to a standstill.
The monolith had to be close to eight feet in height. Arching his head back,
the chosen one gazed shaking from the din of incantations writhing through him.
There was no plinth in front or behind this uncanny relic. Its plain,
indistinctive façade was ambiguous. Had it not exuded the undeniable energy and
whispered incantations growing to a crescendo the closer one got or had tilted
to one side it wouldn’t have exuded the otherworldly aura that seized Roland’s
undivided attention in the first place.     

Roland stood directly in front of the monolith and tentatively placed his
palms on its smooth, undisturbed surface. His palms appeared to sink into the
stone and remained in their place until, without sound, the monolith slid down
into the fissure in the ground it protruded from. It did this slowly and
slickly. No rumbling or force emitted from the fissure. The monolith didn’t
totter in the slightest. It descended as it had risen. Roland stood motionless
with his arms outstretched, palms facing away from him, as though the monolith
hadn’t moved an inch. The fissure in the ground widened and a green, incandescent
fog billowed out, blinding him, enveloping him in its mushroom cloud. The
light, as blinding as sunlight, issuing from its core pulsed and shone into
Roland’s bulging eyes.