Electric Light (Blair Dubh Trilogy #3) (7 page)

“Bye Gary,” Craig replied absently, his mind still ticking over the scene in Adam’s bedroom. Murder/suicide. No way, not Adam. His eyes scanned the pub, studying each person in turn. One of these people had murdered the McNabs and set up Adam to take the fall. What worried him was whether whoever was responsible was finished with Blair Dubh yet.

CHAPTER 8

Graeme stood on the hilltop beside the castle, staring down at the village below. Dark was setting in, slowly encroaching over the small, steadfast cottages. The humidity had risen even more and the air felt thick in his lungs, the pressure weighing him down, making him feel sluggish. The storm was just beginning, rolling in over the sea, the odd flash of light amid the unsettled black clouds accompanied by the occasional rumble of thunder. This was just the calm before the storm.

He closed his eyes and was once again twelve years old, hiding under the table in his parent’s kitchen, watching that huge pair of black boots pace the floor, his dad’s dead body off to one side, chest and head ruined. He’d held his breath, silent tears rolling down his face. The fear was paralysing, stopping his brain as well as his body. He’d never felt anything like it before, the fear of the dark or the certainty that a monster lived in his wardrobe didn’t even come close. He didn’t know what to do and he wished his dad would wake up and tell him.

When those boots suddenly stopped pacing warmth seeped through his trousers. He wet himself with terror as the owner of those boots slowly lowered himself to the floor. He found himself staring into a huge, florid face with a big black beard. Drops of blood and something else that made him want to be sick were stuck in the hairs of that beard. Even more disturbing were his black eyes, which were just vacant of anything. It was then he realised monsters didn’t live in wardrobes, they lived in houses and looked like ordinary people. He could see the huge shotgun clutched in one of Malcolm’s enormous, calloused hands. The sight of it, instead of scaring him, just fascinated him. That was what had caused the terrible destruction, that long, thick lump of metal. He wondered what it would feel like to wield such power.

Malcolm followed his line of sight. “You like this do you wee man?” he said in his deep, hard voice that sounded like nails being shaken around in a tin can.

He slunk backwards, away from him, cowering against one of the solid, sturdy legs of the table. His eyes remained locked on the end of the barrel as it was raised and pointed at his face. It looked huge, two massive yawning holes as empty as Malcolm’s eyes. Any second he expected to hear a bang, to fall to the floor, knocked over by the brute force of the weapon, to be wracked with intense pain as the shot tore his childish body apart.              

But that didn’t happen.

Voices just outside the house drew Malcolm’s attention from him. The gun vanished as Malcolm got to his feet, heavy boots rushing towards the back door. There was a howl of wind as the door opened, cut off when it slammed shut behind him.

He was torn - hide under the table or poke his head out and see what was happening?

Curiosity got the better of him. He scrambled out from under the table, experiencing a strange sense of floating, of being out of his body and looking down on himself. His father’s body lay to his left, his mother’s past that in the small corridor that linked the kitchen to the living room. Although he couldn’t see her he knew his sister was lying dead in the front room. She’d been the closest to the front door when Malcolm had burst through it, brandishing the shotgun. He’d heard her screams before the massive blast that had silenced them forever.

He forced himself not to look that way as he walked across the kitchen floor, trainers slipping and sliding on the warm, congealing blood of his father. He tried not to think about the danger, tried not think about the fact that his entire family was dead as he rushed to the window. For some indefinable reason it was incredibly important to him that he witness what was about to happen.

The back door hadn’t been shut properly and the wind banged it about in the frame, the sound drowned out by the loud clap of thunder overhead. Cautiously he peered out of the window, the lightning raging overhead, illuminating the scene.

He saw three men all armed with shotguns, again all men he’d known his whole life. This was a farming community so practically every household owned a gun. They were all yelling at Malcolm, pointing their weapons at him. He in turn had his own shotgun pointed right back at them. He remained calm and unafraid, facing his potential death with equanimity. This was the decimator of his family but he still experienced a curious sense of admiration. He seemed so strong, so fearless. To a little boy who suddenly felt incredibly weak and powerless it was exhilarating.

He couldn’t hear what they were saying, the ferocious thunder was too loud but he could see the three men screaming at Malcolm to put the gun down. When he didn’t they shot him. The roar of the guns all firing in unison was even louder than the tempestuous weather. Huge holes appeared in Malcolm’s body as the hungry shot ate its way through him, his limbs agitated by the force, body dancing like a puppet on strings. The spray of blood was black in what little light there was. The deafening noise seemed to go on and on but he refused to cover his ears, refused to look away.

When the noise died down Malcolm was splayed on his back in the mud. The giant had been felled. His slayers stood over him, one poking at his leg with the toe of his boot. They took his gun from him and threw it far away into the mud.

The lightning crackled around them, raising the hairs on his arms. He was in the centre of something incredibly primal, nature at its most primitive - the violence of humanity and the violence of the natural world as one. The men weren’t sorry he was dead. They would be later when the shock finally hit, but as yet they were just glad he was gone and they were glorying in the kill. Unlike Malcolm’s dead eyes theirs were bright, almost frenzied, reflecting the dazzling light of the storm. Bloodlust had them in its grip. They looked down at Malcolm as though hoping he’d get back up so they could kill him all over again,

He watched as they all looked at each other, lips curling into ghastly smiles. Another flicker of lightning, a clap of thunder and his heart rate soared, breath coming out in shallow gasps as he delighted in the kill with them. He’d never felt so alive.

One of the men - a man named Harold who had been his dad’s best friend since they were small boys - spotted him watching through the windows and pointed him out to his friends. He calmly waited for them as they stepped over Malcolm’s body and entered through the back door.

“You okay boy?” said Harold, crouching down before him.

He was hardly listening, his eyes riveted to the shotgun that Harold had cracked and slung over one arm, the gun that had ended the madness.

Harold saw his best friend lying on the floor, his chest and head blown apart. “Jesus Christ, not you too Chris,” he whispered. The frenzy had died in his deep blue eyes and now they just looked sad and tired as they fixed on him. “Did he hurt you boy?”

Solemnly he shook his head.

“What about your mum and sister?”

Slowly he raised an arm and pointed towards the sitting room. Harold nodded at the other two to check, who skirted round the massive pool of congealing sticky blood and lumps of flesh that had once formed his father. There was a muttered oath then they both returned, shaking their heads.

“Damn,” was all Harold said. “Come on boy, let’s get you out of here.”

Harold wrapped him up in his dad’s big coat then steered him out into the night, forcing his face into his side so he wouldn’t have to look at the dead Malcolm but he fought against him, pushing him away. Just as he turned to look the lightning broke through, illuminating the corpse in all its bloody, ruined glory…

Graeme shook himself out of the past, returning to the present. The pleasure he’d got from seeing that body still disturbed him. It had been different to seeing his dead family, that had just been sad. Seeing Malcolm slain had made sense to him. Evil had come into the village and it had been eradicated. In the aftermath of the massacre the authorities had banded words about like
depression
and
snapped
. But Graeme had known different. He’d looked into those black pits in Malcolm’s face and known he was looking into pure evil and - just like Harold and his friends had done - he must join in the fight against it.

Graeme caressed the rifle in his hands. He’d used a shotgun in his first kill when he was just nineteen. He’d bided his time until he’d stopped being passed from pillar to post between old aunties and uncles who hadn’t a clue what to do with a traumatised teenager and he’d fallen off Social Services’ radar. Then he’d taken a shotgun that had belonged to the deceased husband of one of those old aunties, cleaned it and taken care of it.

He’d seen killing but he hadn’t known what it would feel like to actually take a life, so he’d followed one of the farmers into an isolated field, a grumpy old bastard who’d caused everyone around him nothing but misery. The man had been a tough sod but he was old and Graeme, though wiry, was strong and young. He’d overpowered him, jammed the shotgun into the old man’s mouth and pulled the trigger. No one had thought anything of it. Suicide had been the verdict. Everyone had quickly put the incident to the backs of their minds and moved on. It had been so ludicrously easy he couldn’t believe it. But it had made him realise that he didn’t like to use a shotgun as a weapon. At first he’d thought using the same weapon Harold and his friends had used to slay the monster in his village would be almost poetic. However every time he’d picked it up and felt the cold steel beneath his fingers he was reminded of that terrible night and the bodies of his family popped into his head with gruesome clarity, destroying his concentration and resolve. He’d discovered the rifle during his time in the army and everything had finally fallen into place. That weapon felt like an extension of himself, like a fifth limb and he’d taken to his mission with gusto.

He’d served his time in the army, gathering all the skills he needed to complete his mission. When he’d come out he was alone, having lost touch with the old uncles and aunts who had tormented him through his teenage years. This isolation was good though, it meant he was free to move from village to village, staying for a while, blending into the background, working out where the rottenness lay then eradicating it before it could spread. Often all that was needed to stop the rot were just one or two quiet little executions. That was until he’d come across the village in the north west highlands that had been almost as decayed as Blair Dubh - a paedophile teacher, a blackmailing old crone, a teenager who’d stabbed someone to death for fifty quid, the man who’d insisted on driving everywhere far too fast until he’d run over and killed a child. Scum. Useless, pathetic, wastes of space. The world was a much better place without them. But their evil had already infected others - the victims of the blackmailing crone had stooped to base behaviour to protect their dirty secrets, friends of the car driver blamed the dead child for being near a road in the first place, contacts of the paedo teacher used their influence to shield him from the consequences of his actions. They all had to go too. No one had ever linked him with the eight deaths in that village. He’d come and gone without anyone really noticing, using an alias, changing his appearance. His natural hair colour was actually a shocking red and very memorable. He’d dyed it for years, alternating between brown and blond, cutting it short and letting it grow, putting on weight and losing it again. He’d also used twelve different aliases. It was ridiculously easy to pretend to be someone else, even in the age of Big Brother, you just had to know how.

Graeme looked out over the water, the thick black clouds rolling in ever closer, occasionally lit up from the inside by flashes from the storm they struggled to contain. The sea was whipped up into a fury, throwing the boats about in dock. Summer was coming to an end so there weren’t as many moored as there would have been at high season.

It was all a sign, the wildness of nature once again guiding him. Every time he’d struck there had been a storm, just like the night his family was slaughtered, it was his cue to begin his great work. He had heard Blair Dubh was subject to frequent storms so it had amazed him that last year had passed without a single one.

A fresh clap of thunder made his heart pump hard. For a moment he was back under that kitchen table, cowering, staring into the face of evil. He gripped the rifle tighter. It was time to begin.

Soft voices were carried to him on the breeze - hushed voices, nothing more than whispers, which were full of mischief. Someone was up to something.

Scanning the area Graeme spied a couple hand-in-hand hurrying up the hill towards the graveyard. Raising his binoculars he saw they were only young, probably late teens, both attractive. He didn’t recognise them, which meant they weren’t Blair Dubh residents. They looked around furtively before ducking into the graveyard, shielded from his view by the thick stone wall that marked its boundary.

Curious, he followed, wondering what they were up to.

Keeping low, he peered over the wall and saw the man leading the woman towards Father Logan’s grave, which had once been marked by a grand headstone but was now nothing more than a slight lump in the ground. The young couple lay down on it together and frantically began kissing and tugging at each other’s clothes.

Graeme was livid. The village had attracted ghouls and thrill-seekers hoping to experience some of the Blair Dubh darkness but this was the fucking limit. They intended to copulate on hallowed ground. It was a blasphemy, evil, wrong.

As he vaulted over the wall and landed soundlessly behind a large headstone he drew the silenced pistol from his belt, the same one that had killed Adam Michie.