DARK COUNTY Read online

  ‘Shall we go and play football in a bit?’ Jake asked Steve.

  His older brother shook his head.

  ‘Sorry, Jake,’ he signed. ‘I’m going round a friend from schools house. We’ll play tomorrow, though.’

  Jake often wished that he could go to Steve’s friends’ houses with him, but knew that it was not cool to drag your little brother around with you all the time. Steve was so good to him, playing with him far more than he probably wanted to at his age, that he did not begrudge him some time to himself.

  When they had finished the washing up, Steve left for his friend’s house. Jake went out into the back garden and kicked the ball around on his own for a while, but it wasn’t the same.

  His mind kept drifting back to the bridge, and the tunnel and the ghost of Alison Rawlins. He thought that maybe if he went and proved he could face her ghost, that Steve would be so impressed that maybe he would take him out with his friends sometimes.

  Jake ran into the house and told his mum that he was going for another bike ride. She looked at him and frowned. She never liked it when he went out without Steve. She worried about him not hearing cars that were near him.

  ‘I’m not sure that’s a good idea,’ she signed.

  ‘But Mum,’ Jake replied, ‘I have mirrors all over my bike and I’m always really careful. Please can I go?’

  Mum sighed.

  ‘Alright, but don’t go to far and be back before it gets dark,’ she said.

  Jake hugged her and then ran off outside and grabbed his bike.

  When he reached the bridge, he left his bike in the same spot that he had done earlier. The bright sunlight that had been there when he left the house had dulled off a little as the sky had clouded over. A slight breeze blew in his face as he approached the path down the bank.

  All of a sudden, as he looked down the narrow path that snaked down to the railway tracks, Jake felt less sure of his own bravery. Even the trip down the path now looked scary. The trees and bushes that surrounded it were the perfect place for someone, or something, to be hiding in wait for him. He pictured himself walking down the path, and an arm of rotting flesh reaching out and dragging him into one of the bushes. He would never be seen again. He would become a local legend himself, the little deaf boy who disappeared one Sunday afternoon.

  He told himself he was being stupid. The ghost of Alison Rawlins was supposed to haunt the tunnel, not this path, so why would a dead arm grab him from the bushes? He forced himself to begin the descent to the tracks.

  When he got to the bottom of the path, he looked up the tracks. They were straight and he could see for miles this direction. There was no sign of any trains, so he walked onto the tracks and headed towards the tunnel.

  The arch of its opening looked like a wide, hungry mouth ready to devour him. The tunnel was not that long, only about forty feet, so he could clearly see the sunlight and the track on the other side. There was no sign of a train in this direction either. He looked behind himself just to check and saw that it was fine. He took a deep breath to steady his nerves and stepped into the tunnel.

  Instantly as he stepped inside he felt how much cooler the air was in here. The wind seemed to swirl around inside the tunnel, making it feel even more chilly. He looked at the walls of tunnel. On the left hand side someone had spray painted ‘Alison will get you’ in red on the wall. He shuddered. Perhaps this was a bad idea. Perhaps he would be better off going home right now. No one knew he was here, so no one need ever know that he had chickened out.

  He would know, though, and he would hate himself for it. This was the first chance he had in his life to do something his older brother had not been able to do. He loved Steve, but like everyone, there was sibling rivalry, and this was an important moment for Jake.

  He carried on along the tracks hoping he would be able to tell the exact spot he had to stand. He needn’t worry, whoever had spray painted the warning on the wall had also marked the exact spot he need to be on.

  Jake positioned himself on the red mark they had sprayed onto the track. He took one last look up the track, in both directions, and saw that it was clear. He closed his eyes and began to count in his mind.

  One.

  Two.

  Three.

  He felt something, he couldn’t explain it. It was just a sense that he was not alone, a vibration in the air. He felt his heart pounding in his chest as he imagined her shuffling up the tracks towards him.

  Four.

  Five.

  Six.

  There was a smell now, something he could not quite place, but that had not been there a moment ago. It smelt like decay.

  Seven.

  Eight.

  Nine.

  The hairs on the back of his neck stood up as he felt her hot breath on his flesh. A voice in his head screamed at him to run, there was no shame in running. People are meant to run away from things like this. He told the voice to shut up. He was terrified, but he had to do this. He had to finish.

  Ten.

  Jake opened his eyes. There was nothing in front of him. He had feared that as soon as his eyes were open she would be there.

  He sighed a little, but then felt the hot breath on the back of his neck again. He turned around slowly.

  The things he had imagined, the horrors his mind had created when he thought about what she would look like, were nothing in comparison to what he saw.

  There she stood, her body twisted at the waist, several of her ribs protruded through her grey oily skin. One arm was missing; there was just a spaghetti like mass of torn skin and sinew hanging from the stump. Her neck had been broken and her head hung at a funny angle. Her lower jaw had been detached, and hung, flapping by a small amount of skin on one side. Her black, massive tongue lolled around free of the prison of the jaw. One eye was grey and milky in its socket, the other hung from the optic nerve halfway down her face. Yellow crud oozed from the gaping socket. The top of her skull was flapping open revealing her brain. The beautiful, blonde hair that Steve had described was now dirty and matted with dried blood.

  Jake tried to breathe, but could not take in any air. It was as if she was swallowing up all of the life around him. He felt his bladder release and the warmth of his urine wetting the front of his trousers.

  Her one gnarled arm lifted up and reached out for him, her bony fingers trying to grab hold of him.

  The voice in his head was telling him he had to run. ‘If she catches you, she kills you.’ This was what Steve had said earlier, Steve who had not been brave enough to finish counting. Steve who had been spared this horror. Steve who right now was probably playing computer games with his friends whilst his little brother was in a railway tunnel about to be murdered by this foul entity.

  He wanted to run, but he could not move, so great was his fear. She leaned closer, the smell of death surrounding him. Her outstretched finger caught hold of the collar of his shirt, and with great ease she lifted him up. She pulled him closer to her. Jake knew that this was it, this was the end.

  Suddenly she swung him hard to the side and let go her grip. Jake flew through the air like a discarded doll. He felt a thud and his back collided with the wall of the tunnel. He slid down the wall and collapsed on the gravel at the side of the tracks.

  Alison Rawlins looked at him, and then she was engulfed in blue. The air was sucked away from Jake and vibrations shook him violently. The chill of the tunnel was replaced with heat, and the smell of death was replaced with the hot smell of engines.

  The train sped past him, unaware of his presence. He watched it go by, amazed that he was still alive. If she hadn’t have tossed him aside the train would have hit him for sure.

  When the train left the tunnel, there was no trace of Alison. She had vanished as quickly as she appeared. Jake got to his feet and ran out of the tunnel. He climbed the bank as quickly as he could and grabbed his bike.

  He pedaled as fast as his shaken legs could manage. He had braved the tunnel. He had c
ounted to ten and he had seen the ghost of Alison Rawlins. He knew the truth now. She was not some murderous spirit. She was a protector, stopping people from dying in the same horrendous way she had. Alison Rawlins had saved Jake’s life, and that was something he would never forget.

  THE CROWS

  They’re mocking me. The crows. I can hear it in their malicious cawing; it’s as though they are laughing right at my face. I look around me, flat expanses of field for miles, glowing in the uncharacteristically hot spring sun. A trickle of sweat runs down my aching face. One of the crows caws loudly off to my right, and soon they all join in, a cacophony of sound that makes my head hurt, and my mind itch. At first there had only been a few, and they had been wary, but soon they had grown in confidence, gorging themselves on the freshly sown seeds, then their friends had turned up. A message had gone out on the great crow grapevine that there was a delectable feast to be had in Harper’s field, and all I could do was watch.

  God I was thirsty. I seemed so long since I’d last had a drink, and the sun was beating down at full strength. I guess I have no one to blame but myself for my situation, well no one except that bastard Harper. It should have been so straight forward, a simple job that would keep me financially secure for years, but there’s no such thing as simple job.

  I’d first heard about Harper’s gold in the local pub. A group of the locals had been talking about weird old Harper. I had only lived in the village a year, but knew well enough that the hulking great farmer had a reputation for being odd. Firstly, he lived all on his own in that big farm house just outside the village, he had lived there all his life. After his parents died, he had inherited the house and the farm. The other odd thing was that not one single person had ever heard him speak, not even the shop owner. Once a week Harper came into the shop and bought his groceries, but never once had he even said so much as thank you to the shop owner.

  To me, a city boy, all of the locals had seemed odd, but Harper was definitely the strangest. The first time I had encountered him I had been crossing the road to get to the post office. Harper had been coming down the road in his beaten up, old Land Rover. I swear to God, that when he saw me in the road, he smiled and sped up. I had to run and jump out of his way to avoid being hit by him. I took exception to this and shouted after him.

  ‘Watch it, wanker!’ I had yelled.

  Then the brake lights had come on. The Land Rover began to creep backwards, slowly, heading for where I stood at the side of the road with my heart still racing. When he pulled up along side me, I could see just how big he was. He looked like one of those guys you see on the World’s Strongest Man competition at Christmas, only he was disheveled in his dirty brown corduroy trousers, tatty green sweater, torn wax jacket and filthy tweed flat cap. His thick curly hair was black, but speckled with a frosting of grey. He looked filthy, as though it had been years since he had even seen a bath, let alone had one. He looked me in the eyes, his face betraying no emotion. There was something about the way he looked at me, that made me look to my feet. I heard him laugh and then drive off.

  A few weeks later, I had been discussing the incident with a few of the regulars in the local pub. They had joked that I was lucky to be alive. Harper was crazy, they said. His mother had grown up in the village, but his father was an outsider. They said that when Mr Harper senior had first moved to the village, he had the the hint of a foreign accent, they couldn’t quite agree on what sort. Some felt it was German, others said Russian, one even suggested it was Swedish. The only thing they agreed on was that Harper wasn’t his real name, they believed he’d assumed it to sound more English, apparently within months of moving to the village, his accent was gone. He married a young woman from the village and bought out her family’s farm. They had one child, the monstrosity that had tried to kill me with his Land Rover, and kept themselves to themselves.

  However, they had not been so isolated as their son was to become. They would, on occasion, come to the pub or ask for assistance from on of the local tradesmen. It was one of these, Mickey Welby, a plumber, who had been the first to suggest the secret of the gold. He had gone up to the farm house to fix a water leak, old man Harper had to pay him with money out of the safe. Mickey had sneaked a look as the safe door opened and saw a stack of gold.

  ‘It was those bars you see in all the films,’ Mickey, now seventy-five, had told me.

  ‘Ingots’ I said.

  ‘No, it’s the truth,’ he said defensively.

  ‘No, the gold bars are called ingots,’ I explained.

  ‘Oh right, yes then it was ingots,’ Mickey said smiling. ‘I remember it clear as day, there was stacks of the stuff, at least sixty bars.’

  I wanted to put the rumours down to nothing more than Mickey’s overactive imagination, and village gossip, but I couldn’t. The tale of a ton of gold in a safe was like a red flag to a bull for me. I’d moved here to go straight, get away from that life. Six big bank jobs and I’d never been arrested. It was only a matter of time, though. I decided to get out while the going was good, leave London, come to Lincolnshire. Buying the house had eaten up most of the money I’d made, though, and if things carried on getting more expensive I’d soon have to go out and get a proper job.

  At first that idea had appealed to me, it was something I’d never done, and I would be able to prove to myself I really was going straight. Harper’s gold kept going through my mind, though. It would be so easy, it was sure to be an old safe, the sort I could crack with my eyes closed, and if there was only a quarter as much gold as Mickey suggested, at the price it was at the moment, I’d be set for life. There was no real decision to make.

  I started watching Harper’s farm, trying to figure out the best ways in and out. I timed how long the fucking ogre spent doing his weekly shop. It took him an hour and a half to drive to the village, do his shopping, pack it into his car and get back to his front door. It wasn’t long, but I thought it would be long enough.

  The week before I planned to do the job I waited for him to pull out of his driveway and then scouted out the house. There were no alarm boxes or wires, and when I knocked on the door there wasn’t a sound, he obviously had no dogs. Out of curiosity, I tried the door. To my astonishment it opened. I laughed to myself; the idiot didn’t even bother locking his doors. This really would be like taking sweets from a baby. I took the opportunity to go in and look for the safe, the more I knew about it, the easier it would be. I was expecting to be looking for a wall safe. The house was dimly lit inside, and smelt as though no fresh air had entered in the last thirty years.

  The first room I came to was a living room. It was tidier than I expected it to be, but very dusty; I guessed that Harper didn’t spend much time in there. There was also a dining room; it had a large oak table, with one chair. I felt a little sad for him, living so alone, but it was his choice. Off the dining room was a large farmhouse kitchen, you could easily cook for a hundred people in that kitchen, yet there was only one plate and one glass on the side. I went back into the hallway and tried the door at the end; this was a study. There was a desk with papers all over it and there at the back of the room was an enormous free standing safe.

  It was old and rusted in places, but it was a beauty. A Dottling, a luxury German brand. From its design and the state it was in I guessed it came from sometime in the 1940’s. At that time Dottling were making some of the best safes in the world. Good old-fashioned combination lock. This was the sort you saw in movies, with the big dial on the front. I could see that it was a hundred digit dial, which was about standard for a safe this size.

  I had cracked similar before, but never this model. They usually had a three to six digit combination. The good news was it wouldn’t take many tools. The bad news was it might take some time. The thing with these safes was that they were shipped from the manufacturer with a try-out combination. This was usually a standard code, that all of the same model would use, it was not uncommon for people not to change the code. If I was
lucky, I might be able to find the try-out combination through some of my contacts back in London. If old man Harper hadn’t bothered to change the code, this would be easy. If he had, I’d have to try manipulating the lock. This method got the best results and left no damage to the lock. If I shut it back up after, it could be ages before Harper even knew he’d been robbed, by which time I would be long gone.

  I considered getting started now, but when I looked at my watch I realised I only had fifteen minutes to go before Harper returned. It could wait a week.

  God, it’s so hot, and the crows, they are still laughing at me, their caws echoing across the field and into my ears. One of the fuckers just took a shit on my shoulder. If I could get my hands on them I would rip their bloody wings off, but I can’t. I just have to wait. So thirsty. So very thirsty.

  The following week, I parked my car a little nearer to Harper’s farm, so I would be able to see him pull out of the drive in that Land Rover of his. Once he was around the bend, I would drive up and park outside the house. If there was really as much gold as Mickey Welby claimed, then I was not going to manage to carry it down the road to the car in the time I’d have when I’d got the safe open.

  I’d put in a call to an old friend. I say friend. In the criminal world, you don’t really have many of them. Most would willingly turn you in to save their own skin, so really he was more of an acquaintance. Among safecrackers, he was known as the professor due to his encyclopaedic knowledge of almost every safe ever made. He had plans for them, he had try-out codes for them, he even collected the bloody things and sold them as antiques. He was the go to man if you had a question about a particular safe.

  ‘Well, fucking hell,’ he said, in his thick Cockney accent. ‘Everyone thought you were dead, mucker. No one’s seen hide nor hair of you in months.’

  ‘I decided to get out of the game,’ I said. ‘It all got a bit too intense after that job in Brixton.’