Binscombe Tales - The Complete Series Page 18

  ‘That’s okay, we’d have to be out and about soon anyway. Closing time’s coming up.’

  ‘Of course. Talking of that, how’s Debbi?’

  ‘Still drinking, I’m afraid.’

  ‘Pity. Still, it’s better than what went before, isn’t it?’

  ‘Never mind all that,’ interrupted Esther Constantine, who had been boiling with silent fury all through the conversation. ‘We don’t want to hear your domestic trivia when we’ve got urgent business to settle. Come on, Disvan!’

  ‘Suit yourself, lady,’ said Phil the ambulance man, ‘but it seems a bit late to attempt rewiring a whole house. Are you sure you know what you’re doing?’

  Both Dorothy and Esther withered him with a gorgon-like stare and then swept indoors, scattering police and ambulance men in their wake. Some half-heard abuse about ‘running dog tools of state oppression’ wafted back to us.

  ‘I’ll explain it all to you some other time,’ said Mr Disvan to the assembled uniformed parties. ‘If I’m able to, that is.’

  Mumbling apologies to the public utilities and feeling somewhat sheepish, I followed him into the house.

  * * *

  ‘Did you manage to wedge the door into the gap, Mr Oakley?’ said Dorothy Constantine.

  ‘Reasonably well. It’ll keep the draughts out till a carpenter arrives in the morning.’

  ‘Thank you. Now Mr Disvan wants to see you in the kitchen.’

  ‘What for?’

  ‘I’m not sure.’

  I walked along the hall, turned a corner and saw that Disvan and Esther Constantine were standing in the kitchen doorway.

  ‘What’s up?’ I said, not liking the way in which they were clearly awaiting my arrival.

  ‘Go in and see for yourself,’ said Disvan, nodding towards the kitchen.

  I was resolved to pass whatever sort of test this was with flying colours and marched in without another word, hoping that my inner doubts were not expressed upon my face. Standing in the centre of the room, I turned to see that Mr Disvan and the Constantines were watching me closely.

  ‘Feel anything?’ said Disvan.

  ‘No, not really but—Hold on, yes, there is something, I feel like... like... I’m surrounded by static. A great field of static electricity.’

  ‘I guessed as much,’ said Mr Disvan. ‘Your hair is starting to rise and there’s sparks flashing off your clothes. Static would account for that.’

  Once I allowed myself to perceive it, I realised just how powerful this feeling was. It seemed to be applying pressure evenly all over my body, producing a strong sense of tension and anticipation. My clothes felt as if they were floating free a few molecules above the level of my skin. By way of experiment, I went to touch the work surface near the sink and received a painful shock causing me to pull my hand away. The movement caused the atmosphere in the kitchen to crackle.

  ‘Are you okay?’ said Disvan.

  ‘Yes, fine. It was just a mild shock, that’s all.’

  ‘So it’s safe for us to come in, is it?’

  ‘Yes, I suppose so.’

  ‘Good, I was worried it might be something dangerous.’

  I stared at Mr Disvan and the Constantines, who all suddenly seemed very alien and strange to me

  ‘I thought that you’d already... Do you mean to say that you got me to walk in here to see if it was dangerous?’

  Disvan and the two sisters looked at me as if unable to understand my outrage. He considered my question for a few seconds before replying.

  ‘Yes, that’s about the shape of it. Why, do you mind?’

  I was temporarily lost for words and Esther Constantine stepped into the gap.

  ‘It seems to be centralised in here but spreading all over the house. The whole atmosphere is charged.’

  ‘And can you catch that low buzzing noise?’ said Dorothy. ‘I’ve heard it since we came in.’

  We all listened carefully and realised that, just on the edge of audibility, there was indeed a persistent humming noise like that of a faraway machine, slowly warming up.

  ‘Never mind that,’ I said, crossing the room, crackling wildly and striking sparks in all directions. ‘I want a word with you about using me as a guinea pig. What gives you—‘

  ‘Are you still going on about that?’ said Disvan, an expression of mild surprise on his face. ‘There are greater issues at stake here, you know.’

  ‘Yes, don’t be so selfish, Mr Oakley,’ said Esther Constantine. ‘Let Mr Disvan speak.’

  ‘As I was about to say,’ Disvan continued, ‘whatever it is afflicting this house seems to be using the power supply as a medium and has now become so strong and active that we can feel its presence all the time. Things are clearly coming to a head when its life force can seep out and pervade the whole building. Not only that, but it’s starting to signal to the outside world—starting to draw other people into its story.’

  Mr Disvan shook his head sadly. ‘I’m afraid we can’t have that happening. It mustn’t be permitted. Everything’s developing faster and worse than I expected—far worse, in fact. I never thought it would get this bad. It’s now in my mind, you see, that the hate which motivates this creature is so strong that it could encompass and destroy more than just the Constantines. At the rate the child is growing, pretty soon it could spread further afield and find its way up other power cables—into other houses and in time into the main grid. Once it was running free in there, we’d never find it again.’

  ‘Why the devil would we want to find it again?’ said Dorothy Constantine, making what I thought to be a reasonable point.

  Mr Disvan looked at her and spoke with a note of resignation in his voice.

  ‘Think, woman. If it can do all this,’ he waved his hand in the air to signify the house in general, ‘drawing on just your power usage, imagine what would be possible if it had access to the National Grid. Imagine its strength if it found a power station, a nuclear power station perhaps, to take sustenance from.’

  We started to imagine as we were bidden but Disvan interrupted our apocalyptic thoughts.

  ‘Mind you, that’s largely academic. If it got to that stage, none of us exist any longer. You ladies, Mr Oakley, myself, Binscombe—we would all have been swept away.’

  He had succeeded in alarming me. ‘Well, what shall we do? Do you still propose to reason with the thing?’

  ‘I’ll try, Mr Oakley, but I suspect it’s too late for that. I think that all we can hope for is to placate it or kill it, but either way time is very short.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Do you mean to say you haven’t noticed?’ said Disvan, pointing to the kitchen wall behind me.

  I turned and saw that the hands of the electric wall clock were running backwards. They seemed to be increasing in speed with every second that passed.

  ‘Time is reversing,’ said Mr Disvan, ‘back to the date of the child’s death. And, unless I’m very mistaken, when that time is reached, it will be born again in this world.’

  * * *

  ‘Right then,’ said Dorothy Constantine, grim faced, ‘there’s nothing else for it. Dorothy, go and plug the television in. It stays on till either we or the thing are gone.’

  The screen came to life but nothing untoward could be seen. The ten o’clock news had just started.

  ‘Should the Constantines be here?’ I asked. ‘I mean, if it’s them that the creature wants...’

  ‘It doesn’t make any difference,’ said Disvan absently, giving most of his attention to the television. ‘You can’t run from this sort of revenge.’

  ‘Do you think this will be of any use?’ said Esther Constantine, suddenly brandishing, to my utter, squeaking terror, an enormous automatic pistol.

  Mr Disvan glanced at it for a second and then returned to studying the screen.

  ‘No, I very much doubt it,’ he said calmly.

  ‘Mind where you’re waving that,’ I protested loudly as the weapon was pointed
carelessly in my direction. ‘Where the hell did you get it?’

  ‘We’re Spetsnaz reservists, Mr Oakley. Soviet special forces,’ said Esther in a matter of fact manner.

  ‘Well, even so, put it away. It’s disturbing Mr Oakley,’ said Disvan firmly, and Esther complied.

  ‘Now go and check that the telephone’s off the hook and that there are no other electrical devices on in the house. I want the creature’s presence to be totally concentrated in the television.’

  Dorothy went to do what was asked.

  I looked at the set, yet paid no attention to the broadcaster’s update on the coup in Chile.

  ‘It’s taking its time,’ I said, hoping that my voice sounded reasonably nonchalant.

  ‘Correction,’ said Mr Disvan; ‘it’s biding its time. There’s a world of difference.’

  From upstairs there came a scream. I made to get up and go to investigate but Dorothy Constantine thundered down the stairs and rejoined us before I could stir.

  ‘I’ve seen it,’ she said. ‘I went in the bathroom and when I looked in the mirror, the half finished face was staring out at me. It seemed like it was going to step out into the room.’

  ‘I wondered where it’d gone to,’ said Disvan. ‘The last five minutes it was watching us from that mirror at the back of this room, and then it suddenly vanished. Obviously it wants to herd us all into the same place.’

  The sisters and I hurriedly looked at the mirror in question and checked it was blank.

  ‘Why didn’t you say that we were being watched?’ I asked, a degree of irritation overcoming my fear.

  ‘I thought that you were frightened enough as it was. We’re all under observation every minute we’re in this house anyway.’

  ‘Well, I wish it would hurry up and come back,’ said Esther.

  ‘It has,’ replied Disvan. ‘Look closely at the screen. We’ve started.’

  I looked and at first could see nothing amiss. Then, I noticed that one of the figures pictured on the set was not entirely as it should be. The picture showed a group of South African soldiers walking through the ruins of some guerrilla camp they’d destroyed. One of the troopers did not have a human head. Atop the pale uniform was the ‘half finished face’ and the figure was watching us, assault rifle at the ready.

  The scene then changed to depict a meeting of the United Nations Security Council and again one of their number was the indistinct creature, although this time dressed in a smart, dark suit.

  By now, the Constantines had grasped what was going on as well and they gasped in amazement.

  ‘We wish to speak to you for one last time,’ said Mr Disvan, ‘before you are born.’

  All the sound from the television abruptly ceased.

  ‘And you die,’ said the distinctive inhuman voice of the ‘child’, now seen as a famous footballer.

  ‘That may be, but we still wish to talk.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘We need to know want you want.’

  ‘I want to live!’

  ‘But you must know that is forbidden; you’re dead.’

  ‘I’m going to come back. I’m nearly strong enough now.’

  ‘I said that you are dead, quite dead. Do you understand?’

  ‘They killed me when I was helpless and put me in the wall.’

  ‘Who did?’

  ‘Mummy and daddy.’

  The picture on the television changed. He was now a bishop at prayer.

  ‘What were their names?’

  ‘Mummy and daddy.’

  ‘What were their names?’

  Angrily: ‘None of your business. They’re dead and gone on anyway. They don’t live in this place anymore.’

  The Constantines, now justified, their innocence proven, gave me an ‘I told you so’ look.

  ‘Then why do you hate these people here?’

  ‘They’re warm. I’m not.’

  ‘But—‘

  ‘They didn’t let me out.’

  ‘How could they, when—‘

  ‘They’re in my house.’

  ‘But is it right to hate them?’

  ‘There is no right or wrong. They do not exist.’

  Mr Disvan shook his head, evidently despairing of his attempts to reason.

  ‘Would it please you if we took you out of the wall and buried you properly?’

  ‘Why bury me? I’m not dead. I’m not dead any more. I like it in the wall. Mummy and daddy put me there. I didn’t see them again. Why bury me? You want to kill me.’

  ‘No, we can’t kill you. You’re not alive.’

  ‘I am alive alive alive, I’m a grown up boy now.’ The creature was now seen as part of a UDR patrol in Belfast.

  ‘How is that?’

  ‘Your electricity warmed me, incubated me. I listened to all you had to say, I watched you through this screen and I learned. My mummy and daddy would be proud of me!’

  ‘But must you come now? Why not wait longer? It’s not a very nice world out here for a little orphan.’

  ‘Isn’t it?’

  ‘Oh no.’

  ‘But my friends will come too and look after me.’

  ‘What friends?’

  ‘There used to be a barrow here before my house and there’s a chieftain buried in it—and a dog once died here too. They’ve both got warm and I’m persuading them to come out with me. They will help me kill you.’

  ‘What will you do then?’

  ‘I will live.’

  ‘And..?’

  ‘Pull this house down, pull this village down, pull everything down till I find where my mummy and daddy are hiding. I’ll lurk in dark places and jump out and punish all the people who didn’t help me out of the wall.’ The voice giggled and laughed for a spell and then resumed. ‘In a little while, I’ll have all of me in this machine you’re watching and then I’ll come out and start by dealing with you.’

  The television picture returned to showing only what it should: a weatherman announcing that tomorrow would be stormy.

  ‘How right you are,’ said Disvan.

  ‘Quick, pull the plug out of the wall,’ I said, ‘before it can...’

  Mr Disvan shook his head and, with a wan smile, pointed out that the whole area by the plug was clearly live. Small arcs of blue light were emanating from the socket and singeing the nearby furnishings.

  ‘I’ll warrant the fuse-box is just the same,’ he said.

  ‘You’d better go, Mr Oakley,’ said Dorothy Constantine. ‘This isn’t your fight.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Just that,’ said Disvan, intervening. ‘My efforts have failed. The creature is going to be born again and we’ve got to face the consequences. You needn’t, however, so I suggest you go home and await developments.’

  ‘I don’t understand. What are you going to do?’

  ‘There’s very little time left, Mr Oakley, so I’ll say it briefly. The child is going to come out and we’ll be here to meet it halfway. It’ll take us into its world and we’ll continue the fight there—in the walls and cables of this house and wherever else it resides.’

  ‘But... you’ll be dead.’

  ‘As we understand it, yes. But, in the kind of pseudo-life the creature exists in, we’ll linger on—in its mind, so to speak.’

  ‘And what are your chances there?’

  ‘Slim, I should imagine.’

  ‘Then why bother?’

  ‘Because absorbing and fighting three people who are so aware of its nature will drain the creature. We’ll set it back years in its growth, even if we can’t destroy it from within.’

  ‘Then I’ll stay. Four is better than three.’

  ‘Why? said Disvan coolly. ‘You’re not a Binscomite and even if you were one...’

  Dorothy Constantine interrupted our argument by screaming once again.

  ‘It’s back!’ she yelled. ‘It’s really close and...’

  She was cut short and, as it turned out, silenced forever by a mon
strous hairless forearm made of pink electricity which emerged from the television screen. It reached into the room and grabbed her by the throat. She wrestled with it for the briefest of moments and drew blood with her nails, all the while being dragged remorselessly towards the set. With a final tug the arm drew her in and they somehow passed through the screen and out of our sight.

  Against my wishes, my eyes were drawn to the television. Horror mounted on horror as I saw that the view of the creature’s prairie had returned and that the broken and twisted body of Dorothy Constantine lay amidst its long waving grass. Overhead the black and scarlet sky raced on like a movie backdrop.

  ‘Me next,’ said Esther Constantine. ‘Cheerio.’

  As if in answer to this ‘request’, the arm flashed forth again and lay hold of Esther’s hair. She too began the journey to the screen and death.

  Mr Disvan, up to now lost in silent observation, all at once came to life again and leapt to the side of the room with surprising agility. He scooped up an object and pointed it at the television. Although I was, by now, in no frame of mind to make rational judgements, I assumed he had gone to fetch the Constantines’ gun in a rather forlorn attempt to kill something that had no life. However, instead of small arms fire, I heard only the slightest of clicks.

  Turning to see if Esther had left us yet, I saw that the forearm was frozen still in the act of dragging her along and then that, miraculous to relate, a slight effort on her part succeeded in freeing herself. She reeled away to the back of the living-room and the arm hung motionless in mid-air like some vile gallows. A few seconds later, the forearm withdrew, at vast speed, into the set. Normal transmission interference filled the screen.

  I started to realise that perhaps my life was not to end here after all, and with that came the recovery of speech—albeit not coherent speech.

  ‘What did you... I mean, is it...’

  Mr Disvan smiled broadly and by way of explanation held aloft the cause of our salvation. It was the television and video remote control device.

  ‘It occurred to me, Mr Oakley,’ he said, ‘that when the spirit was wholly in the television and on the video channel, it was at its most vulnerable. Don’t you see? I put the video on to play, froze the creature with the pause button and now I’ve rewound it onto a cassette. So long as I hold it on pause we’re safe.’