DARK COUNTY Read online

  ‘Fuck’s sake,’ Tom said snatching the knife out of Steve’s hand. He walked over to the old man’s body and stuck the knife into his back. He looked back at Steve. ‘Alright?’

  Steve nodded. Tom shook his head and walked away. As he passed him, he handed the knife to Walker.

  The silent youth walked over to the old man’s body, though by now Benton suspected the correct term was corpse, and knelt down. He looked up at Steve, their leader nodded.

  ‘You know this is wrong?’ Walker said.

  Benton was not the only one who was surprised by this; it was clear from all of their expressions that it was a real rarity for him to talk. His voice was for more gentle and eloquent than Benton had expected.

  ‘What?’ Steve said. His rage was building again.

  ‘The way you lot have been wildly stabbing this guy,’ Walker said. ‘If by any chance he was still alive, it was just fucking cruel. This should have been done first.’

  Without a second’s hesitation, Walker lifted the old man’s head up by his hair and dragged the blade across his throat. Then he got up and walked away, handing the knife back to Steve.

  Benton’s heart sank. He was the only one left, the only one who had not taken a turn. Despite the fact that they knew it was wrong, Joe, Tom and Walker had all done their duty for the gang. Benton, though, had only been a part of the gang for one night, and decided before the saw the old man that he didn’t want to be any longer. Now he was faced with the prospect of stabbing a man. Legally he knew he was probably already an accessory to murder, but if he took hold of that knife and stuck it in the old man’s corpse, he would feel it emotionally.

  ‘You’re up, Nick’ Steve said, holding the knife out to him. No one except his mother had called him by his first name since he had started secondary school; he was always just Benton. It was a connection to when they had been little children, when he and Steve had played together, when they had been friends. They had been so close. Yet the monster standing in front of him now bore no resemblance to that small boy who had been his childhood playmate. He did not recognise the creature he had become and wanted nothing to do with him. If this meant Steve killing him, too, so be it, at least he would die with his conscience clear.

  ‘No,’ Benton said, with a strength of conviction that he had never had before in his life.

  Steve’s eyes burned, but he smiled.

  ‘What?’ he said, poking his finger in his ears. ‘I don’t think I heard you properly.’

  ‘You heard me, alright,’ Benton said. He was aware that none of the others were moving, he wasn’t even sure they were breathing. They just watched on, half of them wishing they had had the nerve to stand up to Steve, the other half wanting to see Steve tear him apart.

  ‘Didn’t you hear what I told him?’ Steve said, pointing the knife at Tom. ‘Anyone who doesn’t do their part gets the same as this old fucker.’

  ‘I heard you,’ Benton said. ‘I’m just not scared of you. There’s nothing you can do that’s going to make me stab that poor old man, even if it means you killing me.’

  ‘You’re too right it means killing you,’ Steve said, then took a step closer.

  Benton took off running, hoping he could get back to the old people’s estate before the others could catch him. Of course, he had forgotten that Sam, the psycho, was stood behind him and to the right. On seeing him turn, Sam jumped left and grabbed him. Benton kicked and tried to get free. Sam was like a spider, though, his grip constantly shifting to be in the best place. Jason ran over and joined in, grabbing Benton on the opposite side to his twin. Together they managed to drag him to the ground. Benton continued trying to fight his way free of the twins, but it was no use.

  Steve stepped over and knelt on his chest. His weight was unbearable, Benton felt like he couldn’t breathe. Steve leered down at him, his face a mask of menace.

  ‘I warned you, Nick,’ he said, putting the knife up to the side of Benton’s face. ‘I fucking warned you all.’

  Steve dragged the blade across Benton’s cheek hard. He screamed in pain as it cut at his flesh. Steve pulled the knife away and admired his handy work, as the blood poured from Benton’s cheek. He smiled and nodded to himself, like a workman taking pride in a job well done.

  ‘One last chance,’ he said. ‘Take this knife and stab the old fucker over there, and this is the worst you get.’

  Benton gasped for air, the weight of Steve on his chest made him unable to speak. Steve realised and stood up.

  ‘What did you say?’ Steve asked.

  ‘I said, go fuck yourself, Steve,’ Benton smiled, despite the pain and the fear he was feeling inside, he had stuck to his guns. If he died now, at least he knew he would have died with some dignity.

  ‘You little prick,’ Steve said. He moved to kneel down on Benton once more, but something stopped him. A sound. They all heard it, each of them looking around to see which of them had done it. There had been a definite laugh, a low grating sound, like a motor trying to start.

  It was clear from all of their faces that none of them had made the sound. Then they heard it again, this time its point of origin was much more obvious. It came from the bloodied corpse of the old man. He laughed again. This time they could see him moving, his body shaking just a little with each laugh.

  Sam and Jason loosed their grip on Benton, both of them watching the old man intently. They looked to Steve, but their leader had no more idea what was happening than they did. All of the boys, Benton included, were stood there, staring in disbelief.

  ‘What the fuck?’ Steve said.

  At this, the old man roared with laughter. He put his hands under himself and pushed him self up onto his knees. Everything about his expression made him look dead, the slack jaw, the glazed eyes, and yet he was moving. He got to his feet and turned to face them. Without his mouth moving a voice came from him. It was not the voice they had heard earlier; this one was darker, and stronger.

  ‘Nice work, boys,’ the corpse said. ‘But crimes like this don’t go unpunished.’

  They were all too terrified to move. Every fibre of Benton’s being was screaming at him to run, and not look back. Yet he couldn’t, he could not look away from what he was witnessing.

  The old man reached up with his hands to the gaping wound on his neck that Walker had inflicted. He placed one hand below the wound, and one above, and then slowly slid his fingertips into the bleeding gash. In what was like a grotesque parody of one of the mask scenes in Mission Impossible, the old man began to tear the skin off his head. When the flesh mask was removed, they saw his face, his true face, the one that had been hiding below the surface all along. It was perfect, flawless. It reminded Benton of a statue carved in marble, only it was red. Not from the blood, either, his skin was bright red. His teeth were gleaming white, but all filed to sharp points. His eyes glowed with fire, and his long black hair cascaded back in sweeping waves. Protruding from his forehead were two small but clearly visible horns.

  He threw off his jacket and bent forward. Two enormous, skeletal looking wings ripped out of his shoulder blades.

  ‘Pleased to meet you, boys,’ the thing said with a wry smile. ‘Hope you guess my name.’

  He looked around their terrified faces. Each of them stood there with their mouths open, unable to look away.

  ‘I love the smell of fear,’ the thing said. He slowly raised his hand and pointed straight at Benton.

  Benton wanted to scream, but no sound would come from him.

  ‘You,’ the thing said, still pointing at him. ‘You don’t belong here. Go, now, and don’t look back.’

  Suddenly Benton was able to move again, he turned to run. He took one last look at the other boys. Their eyes begged him for help, but he had none to give. He set off back up the path along the riverbank.

  ‘Oh, Benton?’ The thing said after him. Benton stopped in his tracks and looked back. ‘Stay out of trouble, or we might meet again.’

  Benton ran, not k
nowing what hell awaited the others, just knowing that ‘Hell’ was exactly the right word. As he made his way quickly along the path, he could hear the tortured screams and cries and pitiful begging of the other boys, but he didn’t look back. From now on, he was staying away from trouble, far, far away.

  THE HOUSE BY THE MARSH

  I first laid eyes on the house by the marsh when I was fifteen years old. At that time, my family lived in a village called Wyberton, which was just outside the market town of Boston in Lincolnshire. It was a fairly dull place to be a teenager, but I was lucky enough to have a large group of friends. We would spend our time flitting between each other’s houses, hanging around the local SPAR shop, or just roaming the streets.

  Sometimes, usually in the summer when the weather was good, we would wander across the A16, the road that had split the village in two, and head out into the countryside. We would walk past the church and the graveyard and down the narrow winding roads that led to the marsh.

  There was a network of these single lane roads, all of which seemed to converge at the marsh. I thought that we had walked all of them over the years, but it turned out I was mistaken.

  It was a warm May evening when we had set off from my friend Wayne’s house. He was the only one of us that lived on that side of the main road. That night there were seven of us hanging around in his bedroom. There was myself; my best friend Rob; Danny, the joker of the group; Rob’s sister Zara and her friends Lizzie and Wendy; and of course, Wayne himself.

  We had grown bored of listening to music and drinking too-warm bottles of cheap French beer. We thought about heading to the shop or maybe paying a call on another of our friends, but we were all skint and couldn’t think of anyone who would be home that night. Instead, we made the decision to walk out towards the marsh. If nothing else did, this would always keep us entertained.

  It was around seven in the evening as we left Wayne’s house. The sky had taken on that darkening grey colour of a spring evening, but the air was still warm. The group of us set out down Wayne’s road, passing the familiar landmarks on our way. First, we came to the bridge that went over a small stream. As always, Danny would try and pick Rob up to throw him into the stream, and as always Rob would fight his way free of Danny’s grip. He may have been small, but Rob was as slippery as a fish when you tried to get hold of him.

  Then we turned down the road that led to the church. Even back then I always thought it was a beautiful little church. It seemed secluded and peaceful, tucked away from the main road, its churchyard surrounded by trees. It had a little graveyard around it, with crumbling old tombstones you could barely read anymore.

  A little further down the road was the more modern cemetery; this was hidden behind a large, red brick wall and was accessible only through a wrought iron gate. Despite the fact that it was newer and tidier, this was the one that freaked us out the most. In there you could clearly see the names and dates of deaths and some of them were painfully close to home.

  We carried on walking down the lane until we passed the last row of houses, then there was nothing around us but fields on either side of the road. The sun had sunk a little lower in the sky by this point, engulfing the bottom of the vast sky in shades of orange, pink and red. Due to the flat nature of most of Lincolnshire, you always got these massive skies. With nothing to block them, they were often breathtaking, and this was no exception.

  As we walked the open country lanes, we laughed and joked, talked about school and all the random crap that went with it. Time always seemed to pass slowly on those walks, after all, we were young and without a care in the world, except for those we created for ourselves.

  The air got a little cooler once we were out in the open. With nothing to stop it for miles around, the wind was usually quite strong. Out of nowhere there was a clap of thunder, the skies darkened significantly and then the heavens opened with a ferocity I had never seen before, nor have I seen since. The rain was so heavy that we could barely see. We ran blindly for an open barn in the field to our right, soaked to the skin and looking a rather sorry state.

  The storm only lasted a few minutes, but made the earth soggy in the field. The girls had enough; when the rain subsided, they decided that they were going home. We decided, though, that as we could not feasibly get any wetter we may as well carry on walking out to the marsh.

  After the girls had left us, Wayne pointed out the road opposite the one they had taken.

  ‘I bet that goes back to the church, too,’ he said with mischievous glee. ‘We could double back there and scare the shit out of them by jumping out of the graveyard.’

  The general opinion amongst the rest of us was that this was quite possibly the greatest idea that Wayne had ever had. We hurried out of the field and went quickly up the other road, not running, but wanting to gain enough ground to get there ahead of the girls. The only problem was that the road suddenly took a swing to the left around a hairpin bend. Instead of heading for the church we were now back heading for the marsh. It was too late now to find another way back in time to scare them, so we decided to follow the road to its end.

  Like all of the other roads we used to walk around there, this one was narrow and winding. Unlike the others, though, it was tree-lined most of the way down. Tangled branches reached for each other above our heads. There was something creepy and beautiful about it all at the same time.

  As we got nearer the marsh, the smell of the sea became more apparent. Some people didn’t like the smell, but I always found it refreshing. The road veered off to the right, another hairpin bend. As I would find out a few years later, this road was a nightmare to drive unless you knew it well.

  One thing that struck me as odd, even that first time walking down there, was there were no houses. The other roads were desolate yes, but there was always the odd home here and there, but this one was empty for miles. As the bank that ran along the marsh came into view on our left, we saw the house. It stood there alone, up ahead on the right. Even from that distance it looked wrong, out of proportion in some way. It looked like it had been a small house originally and then extended badly, to create something that just didn’t look right.

  Something about the place had stopped us all in our tracks without one of us saying a word. I looked to my friends; each of them was staring towards the house with an expression of intrigue and trepidation on their faces.

  ‘That’s a creepy looking place,’ Danny said, finally breaking the silence that had befallen us.

  ‘Too right,’ Wayne seconded.

  ‘Let’s get a closer look,’ I said.

  ‘Yeah,’ Rob replied.

  At this stage, I should point out that Rob and I were obsessed with horror movies and ghost stories. They scared us stupid sometimes, but nevertheless we were thrilled at the idea of exploring such a foreboding looking place.

  The other two were a little more apprehensive, though they tried not to show it, not wanting to appear like cowards compared to us. So, the four of us continued down the road towards the house.

  As we got closer, it became clear that the house was derelict. The windows and door were boarded up with slats with gaps in between. There were black marks above the front door and windows, evidence of a fire at some point. The garden was a state, it was overgrown, but all of the plants looked brown and dead. Its state of disrepair made it look even more ominous. As we approached the short fence that surrounded the property, a gust of cold wind blew across our faces, strong enough to bring tears to our eyes.

  I felt something in the pit of my stomach, a kind of dragging sensation that made me feel queasy. I knew what had caused the feeling. It was the house. It was my body telling me to leave as the house tried to pull me towards it. I looked to the others for some sign that they were experiencing it, too. Though they looked a little nervous, I could see that none of them were having the physical reaction to the house that I was.

  ‘It’s burnt out,’ Rob said as we looked towards the house.

>   ‘Yeah, but it doesn’t look like it was a bad fire,’ Danny, whose father was a fireman, said. ‘Looks like a small fire to have done that.’

  ‘Oh, God,’ Wayne said. ‘I know what this is. It’s the paedo’s house!’

  We all looked at him, confused. He, in turn, looked back at us for some recognition and saw none. We had no idea what he was talking about. Wayne was often in possession of information about local goings on that we were not because he had an older brother who knew the area well. I was the youngest in my family and had two older brothers, though we had only moved to the area when I was twelve, so my brothers didn’t grow up round here or go to school here. Rob and Danny were both the eldest in their families.

  ‘It was about eight years ago, I think,’ Wayne began to explain. ‘They found out some kiddie fiddler was living out here. He had been abusing kids for ages. The police didn’t have enough evidence to convict him so they let him go. Some of the parents of the kids he’d messed with didn’t like it, so they came down here to burn his house down.’

  So far, we were all pretty convinced that Wayne was in fact just repeating the origin story of Freddy Krueger, especially as we were all big fans of the Nightmare on Elm Street films at the time.

  ‘Thing is, the police were watching the house so they got the fire brigade here before the fire could really take hold. Your dad might have been one of them,’ he said to Danny.

  ‘Maybe,’ Danny said, knowing that his father would never tell them about actual fires he’d been to, just the dangers of fire.

  ‘Anyway,’ Wayne continued. ‘When they went in to fight the fire, they found the paedo hanging in the hallway, he’d killed himself.’

  I got a chill down my neck as he said this. Six months earlier, unbeknownst to any of them, I had tried to hang myself. I wouldn’t find out for many years, but I was suffering from bipolar disorder. Sometimes I just felt like life was not worth living, for no reason. I had a happy home, a family who loved me, friends who were great, yet still there were these dark periods where nothing seemed to make me feel better.