The Monster Man of Horror House (26 page)

Obviously
we were now standing in fire, but this was preferable to the alternative and we
hopped and skipped through the roasting grasses, chasing them through the
churchyard until we stumbled upon a flagstone path.

Behind
us, Bob, Arthur and Ronnie dallied over their leap from the frying pan for so
long that they missed their chance. The grasses that would’ve singed their
ankles but protected their souls burnt out after only a few seconds and the
residual smokes now doused their crosses so that suddenly they were standing on
the far side of the wall clutching blackened window frames tied together with
leather belts.
 

The
spectres made their move, gliding in from behind the graves and dropping out of
the trees to surround Ronnie, Arthur and Bob on all sides. There was no rush,
no desperate lunge from the shadows; they had the three of them for dead and
they took their sweet time over this, feeding on their terrors and prolonging
their agonies for the sheer sport of it.

“Oh
sweet Jesus, help us please!” Arthur bellowed above the pitiful wails of the
others, but even if our Lord and Saviour could hear him above the delirious
hissing of their abominable assailants, he clearly didn’t fancy his chances and
all at once the darkness engulfed the trio.

“God
no, Billy! Get out…!!” Ronnie shouted as the shadows lapped over them, which
made no sense to us, but then again none of this did. Perhaps it finally did to
Ronnie. Perhaps he now knew why all this was happening. Because we sure as hell
didn’t.

The
grasses were still burning around our ankles, so Brian grabbed me and Pongo and
we ran the last dozen yards up to the church steps. Pongo got the key in the
door at the third time of asking and we fell inside as the shadows retook the
churchyard, smoking headstone by smoking headstone.

Brian
slammed the door and bolted it, presumably just to pass the time, and the three
of us backed up the aisle towards pulpit where the cloth covered alter creaked
under the weight of five carrots, a manky cauliflower and four-dozen candles.
It had either been a lean year for crops or a great year for candles.

I
flicked on a nearby light switch and a couple of 60 watt bulbs warmed to a glow
to take the silt off the pews, but the church was still steeped in gloom. Up in
the ceiling I could see our constant companions moving backwards and forwards,
crawling over the beams and around and around the stained glass windows, watching
our every move, but unable to come any closer because of the candles.

Brian
flashed his torch up towards them, briefly scattering them to the cracks and
crevices of the 800 year-old roof until I grabbed his hand to stop him.

“Better
to have them where we can see them, than to have them where we can’t,” I reasoned.
Brian thought about this for a couple of flickers then clicked off his torch.
As quickly as they’d fled, they sidled back in to reoccupy the eaves, moving as
silently as satin on glass and circling as closely as they dared.

“What
are you?” Pongo finally asked the phantoms. “What do you want with us?”

They
didn’t respond; they just slithered and crawled over each other in a perpetual circuit,
biding their time as our candles burnt down to milky pools. And they had some
time to wait. These candles were fat white columns of wax. They’d burned since last
Sunday and were only halfway through. They would easily last another two hours.

But
then what?

This
was the thought that now occurred to me. What did we do when the sun came up?
We’d been so preoccupied simply trying to make it through the night that we
hadn’t even given it a thought.

“We’ll
get the bejesus out of here,” Brian reckoned. “Get as far away from this damnable
place as possible.”

This
sounded like a sensible plan – in theory. There was only one problem.

We’d
already tried that half a dozen times the previous evening.

ix

Something was holding us here. Something had stopped us from leaving. Long
Fenton was a goldfish bowl with rounded sides that we could not see beyond and
it had something to do with the shadows. Of that I was certain.

But
what?

Pongo
had spent the best part of the last hour ripping through the town chronicles for
some sort of clue as to who they were but there was nothing like this anywhere
in all the volumes; a few fires, a couple of harsh frosts and man who’d been
hanged for eating the proctor’s daughter, but that was all. There was simply no
precedent.

“Even
if we make it to daybreak, if we can’t leave this place we’ll be right back
where we are the next night,” I told the others.

“But,
we’ll just cut across the fields or summat. We’ll just go anywhere.”

“I
tried that, remember. We’ll end up walking in circles until nightfall just like
we already did.”

“But,
surely if we just walk in a straight line?”

Pongo
reached the end of the last volume and read aloud the line that had been
scribed there as recently as last week.

“
Fertiliser plant work finished. Opening soon
.
Richard Deekings to cut the ribbon
.” He
closed the book and removing his glasses. “That was to be today. We were to
have a party to mark the occasion.”

“Well
some of you’s was, not I,” grumbled Brian, still unable to bury his hatchet in
spite of all that was happening. Now that was commitment to a cause for you.

And
then it occurred to me.
 

“Do
you think this has anything to do with that?” I asked, voicing niggles I’d been
carrying since all this weirdness had begun without being able to put my finger
on exactly what. Brian was predictably onside straight away.

“Yeah,
them fuckers. They’d done been poisoning our minds or summat with their unnatural
chemicals!”

“Possibly,”
I considered, although I still couldn’t see the business angle. “But I don’t
think all this in our heads. I mean people are actually dying out there.”

“Or
maybe we just think they are,” Brian put forward.

“If
you believe that, then do be my guest and blow out the candles, mate,” I told
him, to which Pongo jumped up in dismay.

“No
please Lord, don’t!”

“I
ain’t about to,” Brian reassured him, glancing up at the increased swirling
overhead as if the mere mention of blowing out the candles had stirred their black
blood in their black veins – if indeed they had either. “But if it ain’t
in our heads, what then?”

“Perhaps
it’s some sort of secret government weapons programme they’re cooking up. Test
it on us lot before spraying it on the Russians, that sort of thing,” I
suggested. “Or maybe they’re from outer space.”

“Outer
space?” Pongo repeated.

“Yeah,
like from Mars or somewhere,” I said. “I mean, for all we know this could be
happening across the entire world, not just here. It could be an invasion from
space.”

“Flying
fertiliser plants over from Mars?” Brian asked, unwilling to consider anyone
else to blame now that I'd mentioned the fertiliser plant.

“No
I don’t mean the aliens are from the fertiliser plant, I mean…” I started to
explain, only to be interrupted by a fourth voice from the far end of the nave
that saw me almost stacking it across the candles.
 

“You
can’t hide from something in the light,” he said from the gloom of the
baptistery, drawing all eyes, natural and unnatural upon himself. For a moment
I couldn’t see who’d said this, but then he spoke again and stepped forward.
“You can only blind yourself from the truth.”

When
he stepped into the light I saw that he was a little red-headed boy, aged no
more than about eight. Brian and Pongo seemed to know him at once and stared in
open-mouthed horror, their expressions a mirror of one another’s.

“Alex?
How is this so?” Pongo finally asked.

“How
do you think?” Alex replied, taking another couple of steps towards us until he
was only a few feet away. His appearance was dark, darker than it should’ve
been, as if he was a mere projection shone against a burnt figurine.

“Are
you real?” Brian barely dared to ask, his voice a whisper in a quake.
 

Alex
blinked. “As real as you are.”

“Who
is he?” I asked, aware that I was a chapter or two behind the others as far as Alex
was concerned.

“It’s
Alex,” Brian replied, recapping the facts so far.

Pongo
went a little further with his explanation. “Alexander Earlcott, Ronnie’s son,”
he said as if introducing the two of us at a village fete. Alex turned to look
at me and Pongo added, “He’s dead”.

A
few years earlier Alex had been playing with matches in the hayloft of Ronnie’s
summer barn when he'd started a blaze that engulfed himself, his four-year-old
cousin, Jacob, and four horses in the stables below. He had been warned about playing
with matches time and time again but fire was his fascination. He simply
couldn’t help himself. This is how everyone knew what had happened despite
finding only cinders and ashes and their shoes outside. It had been a tragedy
that had tipped Ronnie over the edge and one of the reasons he’d sold his land to
the fertiliser plant with barely a backwards glance; no one to hand it on to
– too painful to keep. And once Ronnie had sold up, the others had quickly
followed.

That
had been four years ago. Yet here he was, standing before us large as… well,
perhaps not life, but he was here all the same.

“Are
you a ghost?” Brian asked the obvious.

“Are
you?” he replied.

“What
do you mean? I don’t know what you mean. Alex, please just tell us, what’s
going on?” Brian pushed, figuring if anyone knew, a spooky long dead arsonist kid
might know.

“Don’t
you remember?” Alex simply said.

“Remember
what?” Brian replied.

“Remember
what you did?”

Brian
looked at me and Pongo for clues, but we had no more answers than Alex. “What
did I do?” he asked once more.

“You
will remember,” Alex told him. “When the time comes, you will remember what you
did.”

Alex
now looked at me and stared without blinking. “You are John Coal.”

“You
know me?”

“You
shouldn’t be here,” he said. “This is not your destiny.”

It
was an odd thing to say, but then again he was an odd boy. In an odd village.
Invaded by odd shadow monsters. But it did get me wondering if there was an
angle here I’d not explored.

“Will
you let me go then?”

“I’m
not holding you here, John. Only you are the only one who is doing that.”

“How
am I doing that?”

“By
not leaving,” he said.

I
was caught in two minds as to whether to say a rosary for him or put him over
my knee and spank him back to the grave but in the end I bit my tongue and
pressed the point.
 

“And
how exactly do I leave?”

“The
same way you arrived. It is your way back,” he said, which was just gobbledegook
designed to frustrate me no doubt. I’d tried every route out of here the night
before, including the track back up to my car on the main road and I’d ended up
standing in the centre of Long Fenton every single time.

“Alex,”
Pongo now said, stooping to rest on one knee in front of him.

“Yes
Pongo?” he replied with the merest hint of a smirk. Even in death Pongo would be
Pongo. Good to know that even shadow monsters had a sense of humour. The Parson
composed himself and asked the question he had to ask.

“Are
you with God?”

“Are
you?” came back his inevitably evasive reply.

Pongo
thought about this and mentally flipped a coin. “Yes. Yes, I am.”

Alex
thought otherwise. “Those with God do not seek answers. They already have them.”

Alex’s
smirk now broadened to a thick malicious grin and he laughed a childish laugh.
In a night of heart-stopping horrors, it was probably one of the most
horrifying.

Then
there was a blinding flash and Alex suddenly burst into flames. He screamed in
agony as he burned in front of our eyes and his death howls went on for an unbearable
eternity until he stopped stock-still and glared at us in a fury.

“I
burn! You all
buuuuurnnnnn!!!!!
”

A
gust of hot wind knocked us onto our backs and Alex disappeared into pall of smoke
as his angry squall raced around the church, knocking over pews and ripping the
light fixtures from the ceiling until he finally hit the alter...

…
and extinguished every candle in the church.

x

We were plunged into darkness and flat on our backs for the taking, but Brian
had foreseen the oncoming trickery and was ready for the onslaught, cutting
through a swarm of descending demons with his Ever Ready scythe and bellowing
at the blackness to bring on its worst. But Brian couldn’t protect us all. Not
with a single beam. And it was too late to relight the candles and too blustery
with Alex still racing around the place to strike a match. If we stayed where we
were we had just seconds to live so I ran. Blindly. Anywhere. More or less in
hope than expectation. I ran.