Chasing the Dead dr-1 Read online

  ‘Who is he?’

  Michael didn’t reply.

  ‘Is he in charge?’

  ‘No, not in charge.’ Michael looked at me. ‘We got him in at the start, just for one thing. His…experience helped us. But then we started needing him more and more, and slowly he became more powerful. Manoeuvred himself. And, after that, he started bringing his own… ideas.’ He stopped, shook his head. ‘So, no, he’s not in charge. But he might be out of control.’

  ‘So stop him.’

  Michael said nothing.

  ‘Stop him.’

  ‘He can’t be stopped, David. The God that I know, the God that has your wife, isn’t the same as the God he works for.’

  I frowned at him. ‘What the fuck are you talking about?’

  ‘“And they come to Jesus, and see him that was possessed with the devil, and had the legion, sitting, and clothed, and in his right mind: and they were afraid.”’

  ‘Speak in English.’

  ‘His name’s Legion…’ Michael said, and glanced towards the laptop, and the painting open on it. ‘“Because many devils were entered into him.”’

  * * *

  I wrapped duct tape around his wrists and ankles until the roll was finished and then bundled him into the corner of the room, tying him to one of the radiators.

  ‘I’ll phone for an ambulance,’ I said.

  ‘So you’re not a killer after all?’ Michael said. ‘No — don’t phone for an ambulance. We don’t like to involve the authorities unless necessary. I think you can probably understand why. If I don’t check in every six hours, someone will come for me. It’s a routine we have. A form of protection against people like you. Until then, I’m sure I’ll be fine.’

  He studied me while I collected up my things.

  ‘You know, I never felt any animosity towards you, David. I was always fascinated by you. By the determination you have.’

  I didn’t say anything.

  He looked down at the wound in his leg. ‘But they will hurt you now.’

  ‘I’ve already been hurt.’

  He shook his head. ‘Not by him.’

  He watched me with a look I recognized. I’d seen it before in war zones; in the little pieces of hell I’d walked through and written about. It was the look people had when they were in the middle of a street reduced to rubble, cradling someone they loved in their arms.

  It was the look people had when they were gazing into the face of a dead man.

  Legion

  Legion came out of the darkness and clamped a hand on to the man’s face. The man shifted in the chair, trying to wriggle free, but every effort to lean away from the hard plastic of the mask saw the devil move in closer, eyes darting, breath crackling through the tiny nose holes. The man’s wrists and ankles were bound to the chair; the chair was bolted to the floor. Legion’s fingers dug deeper into his skin. Then, slowly, he turned the man’s head, forcing him to look directly at the mask.

  ‘Do you know where you are?’

  The man shook his head.

  ‘You’re at the gateway to your next life.’

  Legion smiled inside the plastic mouth slit and then pushed his tongue out between his lips. The two ends emerged, wriggling like fat worms breaking the surface of the earth.

  ‘Oh, God.’

  Legion stopped. Stared at him. ‘So, do you believe in God?’

  ‘Please…’

  ‘Do you?’

  ‘I don’t kn—’

  ‘Do you believe in God?’

  He felt alarm move through his chest again. He closed his eyes, trying to prevent himself having to look at the mask. Then, something Rose had said came back to him: ‘Sometimes I think he might actually be the devil.’

  He kept his eyes shut and tried to force his arms up, hoping the duct tape might tear. But the harder he tried, the harder Legion pressed his nails into his face. When he stopped trying to fight, the pressure released. He felt blood run down his cheeks, a residue on his skin where Legion’s hand had been. He wanted to touch his face, wanted to wipe himself clean, but he couldn’t move.

  Finally, he opened his eyes.

  In front of him, Legion placed a hand on the mask and lifted it, up past his chin, his nose, his eyes, until it was on top of his head. His real face was angular and taut, his skin pale, his eyes dark, blood vessels running like a road map across the top of his cheekbones where the skin, bizarrely, appeared almost translucent. He looked in his late forties, but he moved with the purpose and efficiency of someone much younger.

  ‘I never joined because I believed what they did,’ Legion said, his fingers touching a scar running along his hairline and down to the ridge of his chin. ‘The people here, they believe this is some higher purpose. A calling. A mission from an understanding God.’ Legion moved in closer, putting a finger playfully to his lips. But then he smiled again and there was nothing playful in it; only darkness and menace. ‘Sssshhhhhh, don’t tell anyone, but I just saw this as an opportunity. They needed me to do some dirty work for them. And after I left the army, I needed somewhere to stay.’

  He pulled the sleeve up on his right arm.

  ‘That doesn’t mean I’m not a believer. I just don’t believe in the same God as them. Most of them here, they believe in a God that forgives; a God that will bend to whatever mistakes we make, and sanction a second chance. I don’t. I suppose you could say I’m more of an Old Testament kind of guy.’

  He turned his arm so the tattoo was more visible. It was bluey-black, smudged by age, and ran along the centre in two lines, from his wrist to the bend in his arm.

  And they were afraid.

  He touched a finger to the last four words of the tattoo.

  ‘I’ve seen the wrath of God. I’ve watched people being blown to pieces. I’ve seen men bleeding out of their eyes. I’ve seen floods and earthquakes. I’ve seen destruction. And you know what? We should be afraid. You should be afraid.’ He paused, pulling the sleeve of his shirt back down. ‘Because God doesn’t forgive. He doesn’t believe in second chances. He punishes. He tears apart. He consumes. And the question I always ask myself when I see Andrew and Michael and all the others preaching about the power of redemption is: if God doesn’t care about me, why the fuck should I care about you?’

  Legion stepped aside.

  Beyond him, a double door opened up into the next room. It was semi-dark, but the dull glow from a strip light showed what awaited.

  ‘No,’ the man said. ‘No, please.’

  ‘This,’ Legion said, waving an arm towards the next room, ‘is my contribution to this place. This is the gateway to your new life.’

  In his ears all he could hear was his heart crashing against his ribcage, battering against the walls of his chest. When he tried to swallow, he realized his throat was closing up. Sweat had soaked through to his clothes. Saliva was running down his face. He looked at Legion, then ahead again, into the room where they were going to take him. At the device standing in the middle.

  And then he gagged.

  His throat forced up whatever he had left, and he leaned forward and let it fall from his lips. It hit the ground and spread, filling the cracks in the concrete; spreading like a disease across the floor. He was breathing heavily now. Struggling to take in air. The panic, the crushing sense of what was in store, felt like it was closing down his body, one organ at a time. His veins were pumping out blood, but nothing was coming back in.

  Finally, he summoned the strength to look up again.

  Legion was gone.

  He glanced left and right. Around him nothing moved. Nothing made a sound. There was no sign of the devil. He swallowed. Tears started filling his eyes.

  ‘Do you know who Lucifer was?’

  A voice, right behind his ear, fierce and violent, like shattered glass.

  He whimpered.

  A pause. ‘Are you crying?’

  He tried to hold the tears back. But then he looked at the device in the other room, a massive
, harrowing shape in the darkness, and imagined himself being dragged across the floor towards it. Quietly, he tried to beg for his life again, but as he went to speak, his words got lost. And then he felt a wet patch move out from his groin, along the inside of his leg.

  ‘Oh dear,’ Legion mocked. ‘Someone’s made a mess.’

  In the corner of his eye, he saw Legion loom out of the darkness, about six feet away. The mask was in place again, eyes blinking in the eye holes, tongue moving in the mouth slit.

  ‘In Ezekiel,’ Legion said, his voice crawling with power, ‘it says, “Thou art the anointed cherub that covereth; and I have set thee so.” It’s talking about Lucifer here. It’s talking about the origins of Satan. “Thou wast upon the holy mountain of God; thou hast walked up and down in the midst of the stones of fire. Thou wast perfect in thy ways from the day that thou wast created, till iniquity was found in thee.”’ Legion paused. ‘Do you know what that means?’

  He shook his head.

  ‘It means Lucifer had everything he could possibly want. He had God’s ear. But even that wasn’t enough for him. So, God cast him out of heaven.’

  The devil glanced to his left, to the room with the device.

  ‘Do you think a God that cast out one of his own angels can hear you when you beg? Do you? He doesn’t hear anything you say. Nothing. God wants you to be scared of him, cockroach. And he wants you to be scared of me.’ Legion leaned into him. ‘Because I am the real Lucifer. I am God’s right-hand man. I am His messenger.’

  ‘Please,’ he sobbed.

  Legion stepped away, his fingers like a nest of snakes, opening and closing. ‘And His wrath moves through me.’

  His skin crawled — the feeling moving up his arms and across his chest — as he stared at the devil. Trying to make eye contact. Trying to look inside the mask, and seek out whatever goodness Legion had left. But as the man in the mask came at him, darkness swirling around him like a cloak, he realized something terrifying: there was no good in him.

  PART FOUR

  34

  Lochlanark was a small town halfway between Oban and Lochgilphead. It looked out over the islands of Scarba, Luing and Shuna, to the Firth of Lorn, and to the misty, grey Atlantic beyond. It took seven hours to drive up from London, and I stopped only twice the whole way. Once to fill up the car, and once to call in at a petrol station to make sure I was on the right track. They told me Old Tay was a one-street village about seven miles north, right on the edge of the sea.

  When I got there, I found five cottages and a sloping village green that dropped all the way down to the ocean. Inland, there were woods. The rising peaks of Beinn Dubh were beyond, streaked black and green, small streams of snow in every fold.

  And right at the end of the village was the entrance to the farm.

  I parked in a frozen field, about a hundred yards from the entrance. The sun clawed its way up past the mountains behind me just before eight o’clock, and an hour later no one had come and no one had gone. The place — the farm, its surroundings — were deserted; as quiet and still as if the bomb had dropped.

  Wire-mesh fencing circled the property and the main gate was locked. A CCTV camera was positioned to see who came and went. Next to it was a keypad. Using binoculars, I could pick out two main buildings. One, the smallest, was close to the road, about twenty yards from the entrance. A path, footprints frozen in the mud, led down an incline and around to the back of it. There was another CCTV camera on the front, pointing up towards the gated entrance to the farm.

  The second building, the farmhouse, was large enough to incorporate at least five bedrooms, and was much further down an uneven gravel track. Its windows were blacked out. The walls were peeling. If snow hadn’t been brushed into neat piles either side of the front door, it would have looked as if it had never been lived in. A third CCTV camera was bolted to the roof, pointed towards the front door.

  The approach to the second, bigger building was untidy. Old, disused barns littered the path, full of frozen hay bales and rusting chunks of machinery. Beyond the farmhouse was the sea, crashing on to sand scattered with sheets of ice. Every time a wave reached for the shore, it pushed the smell of the place towards me on the back of a bitter Arctic wind.

  I leaned over and flipped the glove compartment. Inside was a pair of wire cutters. I’d go in through the fence at the furthest end to the property, where the CCTV cameras weren’t trained, and then head into the first, smaller building.

  From there, I’d figure out my next move.

  I removed the wire cutters, checked them over, and looked back into the glove compartment. It was empty now, except for a box of .22 bullets.

  And the gun.

  It was a fully loaded Beretta 92. The same series as the fake one Dad had got mail order. The same series as the one I’d found in a South African war zone, and from which I’d taken the bullet I always kept on me.

  I undid my black jacket and took out the bullet from the inside pocket. Let it roll around in my hands. I remembered that day in the township: the gunfire; the fear; the sun melting the tarmac beneath our feet. Then I remembered my dad shadowing me, moving behind me as I headed into the forest. As a kid, I’d fired the Beretta to please him. Never with any passion, any commitment, any intention of taking it beyond the boundaries of the woodland we’d hunted in. Now I held a real one in my hands.

  I’d fired a gun two days before and taken a life. And I still felt nothing for Zack. Nothing for Jason either, as he lay there with his brains leaking out of his head, his blood spattered across my clothes and my skin. A realization, a flutter maybe, but nothing more. It was why I couldn’t call the police. The reason I had to do this alone.

  I’d killed twice already.

  And I’d have to do it again.

  35

  The smaller building had an old cottage-style look to it: pale red windowsills and frames; trays of dead flowers; a nameplate next to the door that said BETHANY. I came in diagonally from the hole I cut in the fence, using the empty barns as cover. There was a second door at the back, blistered and old. I slid the gun into my belt, and pushed at it. The door shuddered and slowly creaked open.

  Immediately inside was a kitchen. The sink was missing taps and parts of its plumbing. Some of the cupboards had been dismantled. A table had been chopped into pieces and left in the centre of the room. Off the kitchen were two doors: one to a pantry, the second to a living room without any furniture. A door in the living room led to the stairs.

  I headed up.

  There were three doors on the landing but no carpet. The first was for a bedroom. An ‘A’ was carved into the door. Inside, about halfway along, a square chimney flue ran from floor to ceiling, coming out of the wall about three feet. At the windows, there were no curtains, just sheets. They moved in the breeze as I stepped up to the door. No beds. No cupboards. Water trails ran down one of the walls, coming from holes in the ceiling.

  I looked into the second bedroom, a ‘B’ in the centre of its door. This one was different. It was bigger, and the crumbling stone walls had thick cast-iron rings nailed into them, spaced out at intervals of three or four feet. From each of the rings, a set of handcuffs hung down. I moved forward, into the room. It was about twenty feet long and smelt repellent. Exposed wooden floorboards, scarred and dirty, ran the length of it, and there were four windows, all covered by sheets. I turned and looked down at one of the rings closest to me, half-hidden behind the door. Above it, someone had gouged out a message: help me. I leaned in closer. In the grooves of the letters were pieces of fingernail.

  I backed out, and turned to face the third door.

  The bathroom.

  It had most of its fixtures, and a basin, toilet and bath. The bath was filthy — full of hair and broken pieces of tile — but the basin was clean, used recently, droplets of water next to the plughole. There was a mirror on the wall above. I moved to it. The bruises on my cheeks, and at the side of my head, had faded a little. But my eye wa
s still full of blood. I leaned into the mirror to take a closer look.

  Then, behind me, I spotted something.

  The bath panelling didn’t fit properly. I knelt down and pushed. It popped and wobbled, then regained its shape. I pushed again. This time the corners of the panel came away. The edges were slightly serrated, all the way around, like they’d been cut using a saw. I pulled the panelling out, fed a couple of fingers in through the gap and pulled at it. It came away completely.

  Inside the bath, stacked around the half-oval shape of the tub, were hundreds of glass vials. They climbed as tall and as wide as the bath allowed, dark brown, opaque and identically labelled. Instructions for use were printed at the bottom of each vial in barely visible type, underneath the message Caution: for veterinary use only. At the top, printed in thick black lettering: KETAMINE.

  I reached in and took one out.

  Snap.

  A noise from outside. Stones scattering.

  I went to the window of the bathroom. Someone was approaching. A woman. She was young, probably nineteen or twenty. Dark brown hair in a ponytail. Pale, creamy skin. Tight denims, a red top and a white and pink ski jacket. On her feet was a pair of chunky, fur-lined boots. She crunched along in the snow, kicking loose pieces of gravel into the fields.

  I didn’t have time to get out — didn’t even have time to get down to the pantry — so I put the bath panel back and moved into Room B, the room with the rings. Behind the door, I took out the Beretta and flipped the safety off. My hands were clammy despite the cold.

  Then I remembered the extra bullets.

  Still in the car, buried in the glove compartment.

  Shit.

  Footsteps sounded at the staircase. I had a narrow view between the door and the frame. Enough to see the woman get to the top of the stairs, move across the landing and into the bathroom.