Discoredia, page 26
“I never saw this path. I was panicking too much, if truth be known. I must have run straight past it. I was almost to the main road when…” She paused. This was the weird part.
“When?” Shelly prompted.
“When a load of rabbits ran out of the woods and blocked my path.” She waited for Shelly to laugh at her, or tell her not to be silly, but she did neither. She simply sat there waiting for Carmen to continue.
“And I mean loads. They covered the road. When I shouted, they sat there. When I moved toward them, they sat there. They wouldn’t shift. There were too many to jump over, and the woods were too overgrown to go around. I was at my wits’ end. I couldn’t run through them in case I hurt them, even though I wanted to because I was desperate to find you.” She caught herself before she started babbling and took a deep breath.
Composed once more, she continued. “I was frantic, and I’m annoyed with you for putting me in that situation.” She gave Shelly what she hoped was a stern look but wasn’t. “And then one rabbit came out of the pack––a white one, would you believe?––and hopped past me before stopping. When I turned to look he hopped a bit further, but when I turned back he came toward me. Every time I looked at him he set off and when I turned back he came back. It was like he wanted me to follow.”
Shelly winced, feeling the pain in her ankle. “Was he wearing a waistcoat and a pocket watch?” she asked, and forced a smile.
Carmen smiled back. “Don’t be a smart Alec. He was bigger than the other rabbits, though.”
“So you followed him?” asked Shelly.
“Eventually, what else could I do? It seemed like something out of Lassie or Gentle Ben when I followed old Brer Rabbit down the road. Half expected to find you trapped in an old mine shaft.” Shelly looked puzzled, as the references to ancient TV shows meant nothing to her. “Then he veered onto this track.”
“So where’s this magical rabbit now?” There was a mischievous twinkle in her eye, as though she believed Carmen but wanted to tease her anyway.
“Vanished as soon as I came onto this track. Must have shown me what he wanted and shot off down a hole.” There was a BOOM in the distance, coming from the direction of Discoredia. They could still hear the music and see a few errant fireworks snaking up into the sky.
“Your dad must be having some time of it tonight.”
“Guess so.” Shelly replied. She looked upset at the mention of her father and Carmen cursed herself for mentioning him.
“Come on, let’s find you a crutch and get you somewhere warm.” Carmen got up and brushed off her skirt. “We don’t want you catching pneumonia.”
Another explosion lit the night sky with a brilliant white flash, and more fireworks punctured the star spangled blackness of the night sky.
“Carmen.”
“Yes Shell?”
“Happy New Year.”
“Happy New Year to you, too.”
CHAPTER 41
The patrol car screeched to a halt at the edge of the car park. P.C. Stubbs was unwilling to drive into the demolition derby that greeted him. People were running this way and that and cars were jostling for the exit, many simply ramming others out of the way in desperation.
Discoredia was ablaze, and stepping out of the car, they could hear numerous small explosions coming from the direction of the building. Stubbs and Sellers stood side by side as more explosions sounded, acting as an accompaniment to the BOOM BOOM BOOM of the music. It was an apocalyptic scene set to a thumping soundtrack, reminding Sellers of his visit to the film studios in L.A. where he’d taken the Armageddon Tour. Stubbs grabbed the radio clipped to his shirt and called for assistance: police, ambulance and fire brigade.
“What’s going on here?” Sellers shouted at a young man who was running past them, fleeing on foot from whatever had gone on, but his question went unanswered. He tried flagging down the cars, which sped past him like the proverbial bats from hell, but none had any intention of stopping and it was clear that they would sooner run him down.
“Over here,” shouted Stubbs, and shot off to his left where he grabbed the arm of a colored girl in a lime green mini dress. The gash in her leg prevented her from making a run for it and she turned to the two police officers with a look they both recognized as shock.
“It’s okay. We’re here to help. We just need to know what’s going on,” said Stubbs, his voice gentle and reassuring, but it was useless. The girl was struck dumb with fear, and although she kept tugging as if to break free from his grip, there was no real effort being made; it was a token gesture. He led her back to the car, grabbed the first aid kit, and began to dress the gash in her leg, which was nasty, but superficial. “Now stay here, there’s more help on the way.”
Sellers was busy trying to get through on his phone, but it was no use, no signal. “She okay?” he enquired.
“Yeah, backup’s on the way, but it’ll take time. I’ve asked for the air ambulance but haven’t received confirmation,” replied Stubbs.
To their right, two cars collided head on. The driver of the first, a silver Mondeo, got out to remonstrate with the driver of the yellow Yaris conjoined with his bumper. Stubbs made a move toward it, but Sellers held out an arm to restrain him. “There are more important things to deal with than an R.T.A. with no injuries. Come on, we need to see if we can find out what happened here.”
As they stepped forward they heard the girl in the car scream, “It’s Judgment Day, he came to play, he made us pay.” She was foaming at the mouth and her eyes had rolled back into her head, leaving only the whites visible.
“Shit, she’s having a fit,” said Stubbs, but by the time he opened the car door the girl was calm once more. She looked at him and whispered, “He’s going away,” before closing her eyes and slouching in the seat.
“Is she dead?” asked Sellers, who turned pale. Another car screeched past, almost knocking him over.
“Seems to be asleep. You have any idea what all that was about? She said ‘he’s going away’. That mean anything to you?”
Sellers shrugged. “No idea, probably the drugs and the stress talking. If she’s asleep just shut her in the back and come on. Someone must know what’s going on here and we can question her later.”
They were half way across the car park when the music suddenly increased in volume, sped up, and ended. The explosions had also stopped and all they could hear were the crackle of flames, car engines, and the barely perceptible sound of approaching sirens. They briskly walked past a number of wounded individuals with cuts to their faces, arms, and torsos. Everywhere they looked someone was sporting an injury and it was clear they were witnessing the aftermath of a major incident. There was too much going on and they couldn’t determine what to do.
Head inside looking for answers? Help the casualties strewn around them, or look for those who’d been unable to get out of the club and may be in greater need of help? An Asian girl in a long white skirt and tight white t-shirt shuffled past them. Her clothing was covered in mud, dirt, and clearly visible footprints, suggesting she’d been attacked or trampled in the rush to get out. None of Stubbs’s training prepared him for the nightmare he was in. They continued walking forward, not wishing to run in case they missed something vital, not wishing to stop in case the answers were somewhere ahead. Then Stubbs did stop.
“Christ, it looks like there’s bodies hanging in the gateway!”
Sellers barely registered what Stubbs was pointing at when a CRASH grabbed their attention. A Land Rover burst through a set of wooden doors, the hassle of opening them apparently too much bother for the driver. Once free, the vehicle careered across the car park, missed a handful of shell-shocked ravers by inches, and slammed into a minibus two vehicles away from where the two officers stood. They saw the young driver pound her fists against the wheel and step out of the vehicle. A look of absolute unmitigated terror swept across her face.
CHAPTER 42
She entered the VIP garage by a side door and was thankful to find the garage unoccupied. Unoccupied, that was, other than by the body of a youth. She knelt beside him and checked his pulse. He appeared to be dead and in a surprisingly advanced stage of rigor mortis. The boy looked barely sixteen and there was no evidence of what happened to him, but his body was hard and rigid as though petrified. A tear began to run down her cheek. She wiped it away with the back of her hand before covering his face with her jacket.
Warren’s Land Rover started up at the first turn of the key. Perhaps everything she was experiencing didn’t belong in a clichéd horror movie when sods’ law kicked in once again. She pressed the red button on Warren’s key fob, but the garage doors refused to budge. Her eyes began to sting as she fought back tears, but she had cried enough for one night. She held her nerve, wiped her eyes clear, and got out to look for a lever or a handle. There must be a manual way of opening the bloody doors? Relief swept over her when she found one, then vanished like morning mist when it wouldn’t move. She looked around and realized that the main lights in the ceiling were out; their smaller emergency cousins were providing the only illumination. It was the last straw. She got back into Warren’s vehicle, put it in first, revved the bollocks off it, and prepared to go through the doors. Literally.
Her right foot pumped the accelerator, her hand rested on the handbrake. Three, two, lifted the handbrake and prepared to release, one. Her hand froze. Before the car stood the boy. The dead boy. His left hand reached out, holding her jacket, a look of sadness playing across his cold grey features. Now the tears did come. In a flood. The boy’s lips never moved, but she could hear him say, “Stay with us. Stay with me. We can live here forever. Please stay, pretty lady. I’m lonely. So cold and lonely.”
Her right hand drifted toward the ignition key. Perhaps she should stay? What did she have to live for now that John was dead? Killed by her own hand. In fact, why not make it a murder suicide? Why not get out and suck on the exhaust pipe until she fell into the arms of death herself?
BOOM. The explosion outside saved her. It jolted her consciousness with its ferocity and she saw the boy shimmer. A spike of clarity burst through her mind and all thoughts of suicide were gone, and with them, so was the boy. Her hand moved away from the ignition and grabbed the steering wheel, her other hand grabbing the handbrake. She counted quicker this time. Three, two, one. And floored it.
The crash through the garage doors didn’t faze her, nor did the skid as she swerved to avoid the people standing directly in front of her when she burst through the garage doors. The collision with the mini bus didn’t really shake her; she’d been through enough to take a little crash in stride without a second thought. But the sight that greeted her when she got out of the Land Rover was the icing on the cake, the piece de resistance.
It was a figure in a police uniform with the head of a pig.
Laugh? Cry? It was too much to do either. Her mind was in tatters. And as she stared, the figure changed. First a man, then a pig, then a man, then a pig. The figure approached her, held out a hand, a trotter, a hand, a trotter, a hand. The image stabilized. It was just a hand; he was just a man, a very average looking man in a police uniform. She looked around. There were less people about, and despite their injuries, it was clear that none of them were zombies, or mutants, or undead ghost boys.
An image flashed in her memory: John on the balcony floor with half his head blown off. No open sores, no puss. “God no, please God no,” she muttered, as she put her head in her hands and pressed her palms into her eyes, forcing them back in their sockets. “Please no, please no.”
She felt a hand on her shoulder, someone was saying something, but the words seemed far away, drowned out by her memories. She saw a man with a mushroom growing out of him, puffing out wisps of purple spores. She saw John standing before her, his flesh peeling from the face she had adored so much. Then she saw him again in the same scenario, but just as he had always looked.
Then an image from before twelve: a man with a corny I’m a fungi to be with t-shirt, and later the same man in the courtyard, but with dark red blood, not purple spores, pumping from his shoulder. Back to images of John. Which memories were real and which were wicked lies? She didn’t know.
I couldn’t have. I couldn’t have. I couldn’t have.
She repeated the mantra in her head but knew that perhaps she had. Perhaps she had made a mistake. More memories of the night were coming with a strobe like intensity: an image of Warren giving someone both barrels on the balcony. Had there been any need to kill him in such a cold-blooded fashion? He’d been an inconvenience, and a threat, but did he have to die?
John again: “I’m not fucked, I never took it.” In her memory he looked fine. The glitter and lipstick was still there but other than that? Nothing amiss. Had she killed him over that? The images played on: John pleading with her. Her pointing a gun at his chest. John pleading some more.
“It’s okay to cry.” But that wasn’t what he said. Or was it? Had she misheard? Allowed his own words to damn him? To damn her? She could recollect two faces, one good, one evil, a leering leper, a concerned lover. The Jekyll and Hyde visions were shouting at her, “Die. Cry. Die. Cry. Die. Cry.” They came together and the images moved into the final reel, the part of the picture in which she saw herself shoot him. Mercilessly gun him down. The top of his head shattered in her mind’s eye. His healthy head ripped apart. She started to shake, started to cry. How could it be?
And then it began to click. An image of Gary in the courtyard: “That Woodrose is behind it.” An image of John holding out his hand, his palm clean and healthy, a white pill with purple speckles standing proud upon it. More images, a pool table, the VIP bar, Warren saying, “Thank an associate of mine, Mr. Woodrose, for the drink, he sent it.” John saying, “If anyone’s fucked here it’s you.” Back to the balcony, he was smiling, and there was nothing wrong with him, nothing at all. Back to the bar: John drinking lager, her and Warren drinking champagne. That was it. It had to be. There could be no other explanation. The fucker hadn’t just spiked the pills. He’d spiked the champagne.
The policeman pulled her hands away from her eyes firmly but gently. “I’m P.C. Stubbs, Clive if you prefer, and we need to know what happened here. Can you help us out, Miss?”
She was about to tell them everything. The drugs, the champagne, the hallucinations, the way she had killed her own boyfriend, but before she could, she saw a figure approach them through the main gate. Someone she recognized at once, despite his drawn and gaunt face, his shuffling gait. It was the brother of the man she had both loved and slain. It was Chris. In one hand he held an axe, not a hand axe, but a huge vicious Battle Axe, designed to hack at bodies rather than wood. An axe so heavy he dragged it on the floor behind him rather than carry it. In the other hand, he carried what was left of his brother’s head by its right ear.
“Stop right where you are, son, and put that down.” It was a man in a suit, a man whose name she didn’t know, but who she assumed was here with P.C. Stubbs, and from that, assumed he was also a member of the police force.
Chris kept coming, and Emma began to wish that the British police carried guns like their American and European counterparts. She never liked Chris, and as much as she hated herself for killing John, she hated him more for his desecration of the body. She wished for him to be gunned down. Wished that she kept the gun she used to kill John, so she could kill his brother.
John’s head came flying through the air toward her, and landed with a thump near her feet. There was no denying it. The face, what was left of it, was free from disease; the leprous visage she fired upon had been nothing more than an evil hallucination, but one which would haunt her dreams for the rest of her life.
“He told me you did it. Fucking killed him in cold blood because he was having a good time and you weren’t. Selfish evil little bitch.” The words were spat as much as said and Chris advanced with the axe held high above his head. “I’m the teacher now. I’m gonna split your fucking skull and crack your fucking brain, bitch.”
P.C. Stubbs placed himself between her and Chris, putting his life on the line to protect hers, when she wasn’t even sure if she deserved to be saved. “Put that down, you don’t want to do this. There’s been enough bloodshed tonight.”
The other policeman moved around in an effort to blindside Chris, but even two against one she didn’t fancy their chances. Chris had the crazed look of a madman in his eyes, and the weapon he wielded more than made up for him being outnumbered. Stubbs extended his baton, but it looked feeble compared to Chris’ axe, the moon glinting off its savage curved blade.
More blood was to be spilt that night, but it wasn’t Chris who shed it. Nor was it P.C. Stubbs, or the detective, or Emma. Instead, Emma got her wish.
“Jeeiihaaa, die pig.”
The shout came as Chris raised the axe and prepared to strike down the policeman who dared to get in his way. It was followed by a single shot, which grazed the cheek of its intended target before hitting Chris in the forehead, dropping him where he stood. A screech of tires followed, and a car sped out of the car park before Sellers had time to register what had happened, and get the registration plate of the would-be cop killers. It was a parting shot, which brought the terror of Discoredia to an end. Though for some, like Emma, the horror would never, truly, leave them.
CHAPTER 43
TWO YEARS LATER
The carolers were half way through Silent Night, having finished Emma’s personal favorite, Away in a Manger. She sat on the bench waiting for the bus home after a hard day at work; it was good to be working again, even if it was only a temporary Christmas job in Argos. It was a step forward, and although she knew she would never be allowed to teach again, after what had happened, her life was at last moving in the right direction, even if she couldn’t escape her past.
