Defiled Earth and other tales Page 3

  “I know what repentance is. But, atonement? Isn’t that something to do with church, the communion or something?”

  Aunt Halliday pointed to a brass crucifix on a shelf above them. The figure of Jesus was fashioned in great detail, crowned with a ring of thorns in a tableau of resignation and sacrifice. “Atonement needs blood. It’s a payment. In the case of Christ it was his own blood, but other gods accept animals—goats, sheep and the like.” She paused and fixed him with her glazed eyes. “Whose blood are you willing to offer up Cormac Leary?”

  “I don’t know, to be sure,” he said. “But that’s not really why I came here. There’s a more pressing problem.” He told her of Grieve’s Bog, how he’d gotten rid of Jimmy and Bobby, their rising from the dead and the terrible scene with the virgin corpses outside the Pig and Whistle.

  When he’d finished, Aunt Halliday leaned back, lit another cigarette and exhaled a dense cloud of blue smoke. “Oh Lordy, you’ve really fucked things up haven’t you? Escape your doom? You’ve got more chance getting a blowjob off a nun.”

  The woman’s profanity shocked even Cormac. “What can I do? I’ve killed them once, but they just keep coming back. For all I know they could be waiting out there now.”

  “They won’t approach during daylight,” she said, matter of factly. “Sunlight and ghouls don’t mix.”

  “What, you mean like vampires?”

  “No. They don’t burn. It’s just that they can’t materialise, to appear in full form—at least that’s what I’ve read in the books.”

  “It’s like they fixate on me. Jimmy said he wanted me dead.”

  “Dark spirits are attracted to dark men, and they’ll sense the curse on you.”

  “Can’t you take away the curse, or at least tell me a way to put paid to them for good?”

  She took another draw from the Black Russian, all the time fixing him with her unseeing eyes. They were starting to creep him out.

  “There’s one other thing they don’t like, apart from sunlight that is. Salt.”

  “Like the stuff they grit the roads with?”

  “Any salt will do. It’s a cleanser, a purifier. But you’d need a hell of a lot of it. The bog would have to be laced with the stuff to do any good.”

  “But it would do the trick?”

  “Most likely. How you find that amount, and how you’d get it up there is beyond me though.”

  Cormac thought for a minute, then said “I just might have a way. There’s one or two friends owe me, and I think it’s time to call in those favours.”

  ~ ~ ~

  That night, bone-weary but content, Cormac acted as security at Augit’s night club. The place was really just a front for a brothel. A bit of cash-in-hand to the local filth ensured it was able to function without too much hassle.

  He’d been called in last minute, but he didn’t mind. After all, he’d taken care of business up at Grieve’s Bog that afternoon. The favours he called in were from two characters called Scoggie and Titch. The former was the boss of one of the last working salt mines in England at Boulby, situated on the North York moors. A few hundred was all he needed to cover the two and a half tonnes of rock salt, and the hire of a tractor and trailer.

  Titch was muscle, pure and simple. Cormac had taken the seven foot giant with him in the tractor knowing he would be glad of a cancelled gambling debt for one afternoon’s work.

  Titch hadn’t liked the smell of the bog, but he didn’t ask any questions about the salt job either as he shovelled one spadeful after another onto the bog surface. See no evil, hear no evil. That was Titch in a nutshell.

  The bog had a diameter of about ten metres, so to ensure that the centre was covered, Cormac had to find a way to access the middle. He’d brought two long ladders strapped to the sides of the trailer, to act as pontoons over the viscous liquid. But in the end he didn’t need them. He discovered a solid causeway of sorts, stretching from the outer edge to the central altar. Cormac figured this was how the witches reached it when carrying out their macabre practices.

  Throughout the afternoon, under the hot summer sun, Cormac periodically stopped and listened in the stillness. There were no phantom voices. Nothing but the annoying buzz of horseflies eating at the men’s flesh. The tractor had made easy work of the journey back down the fellside and Cormac’s spirits were lifted by degrees on the way home with every mile he put between them and Grieve’s Bog.

  They’d done a good job. The earth up there was impregnated with salt—enough to sterilise even that filth-ridden ground, and seal in whatever it tried to spew forth.

  There was still the matter of Jimmy, Bobby and their hag harim whittling away at the back of his mind, however. Where were they? Had they crawled back to the bog, or had they found a temporary lair in which to wait? No matter. Cormac had extra insurance. After he had returned the tractor and dropped Titch off, he opened a locker in the back of his pickup and took out an oil cloth. Wrapped in it was a 12 gauge pump action shotgun. He handled the weapon expertly, checking the loading mechanism and action. It was a Mossberg 590 A1. The perfect weapon for a firefight at close quarters with the living or the dead. He’d bought it off a rough shooter five years ago and cared for it like an adopted son ever since.

  Take care of your tools and they’ll take care of you.

  He placed the gun back in the locker alongside four boxes of cartridges. He secured it with a combination padlock and pulled a tarpaulin cover over the whole of the tailgate, effectively hiding the locker from prying eyes.

  Now, as Cormac stood outside the club, vetting the patrons and maintaining a presence, he felt secure for the first time in a week. He’d taken care of business and life could carry on as normal.

  ‘Normal’ for Cormac meant dealing with any punters who hassled the girls in Augit’s club, and ensuring that money changing hands was properly accounted for at the end of the night.

  It all ended just before three in the morning, after which Cormac walked out to the back car park lubricated by three vodkas. His pickup was the only vehicle left and it responded with flashing indicators as he pointed and pressed the blip key.

  He made to climb into the cab when something gripped him by the ankle. He froze, not able to muster the courage to look down. One second elapsed, two seconds. He allowed himself the temporary delusion that he didn’t feel anything, and if he didn’t look down, the sensation would pass. A sudden tightening of the hold banished any such optimism. Whatever lay beneath the pickup jerked his leg viciously, cracking his shin against the cab step.

  Panic took hold as he hyperventilated. By the light of the interior lamp he saw a mottled black claw peeking out of a grey sleeve below him.

  Jimmy Hodge.

  He shouted with a mixture of anger and terror, pulling his trapped leg backwards with a strength borne of fear. It pulled loose of the thing’s grip. Under the pickup, Jimmy-Thing hissed. Cormac threw himself into the cab and fumbled the key into the ignition. Through the still open door, he saw the cadaver, slowly crawling out, its head twisted at an impossible angle, putrid flesh hanging like old wallpaper from its face. Its smile was yellow-toothed evil.

  “Why don’t you just fuck off and die?” Cormac yelled.

  “Been there, done that, got the T-shirt,” Jimmy-Thing said.

  Cormac shuddered. He twisted the ignition, revved the engine and plunged the gear-lever into second. Dropping the clutch, he kangarooed the pickup forward, front wheels whipping up cinder as they span. The tailgate bounced high in the air as it rolled over Jimmy-Thing’s undead body. He heard a sickening yet satisfying crunch above the noise of the engine.

  “Come back from that one motherfucker,” he shouted.

  He accelerated toward the exit and span out onto the street, tyres squealing. But where to go? He could head home, but there was no guarantee that Moscrop, or the virgin crones wouldn’t follow him there. Hell, they might even be waiting for him.

  Why hadn
’t Old Aunt Halliday’s trick with the salt worked?

  Perhaps it had, but Jimmy-Thing had waited until nightfall in another hellish cess pit, then homed in on him.

  Impure Son.

  He railed at how cosmically unfair his predicament was. He hadn’t asked to be born a Leary, to carry a generational curse. But he knew this wouldn’t wash with whatever unbalanced, spiritual scales of justice existed. He’d chosen to live by the sword. If he was honest, he enjoyed wielding the power of life and death over any street rats or unfortunates who crossed his path. A man’s destiny is shaped by his decisions, but at this moment, a quick death at the end of a blade was something he’d favour over slow strangulation at the hands of the undead.

  A shattering of glass ripped his thoughts away from speculation. A skeletal claw had punched through the rear of the cab and it was reaching round to find him. He glanced in the rear-view mirror and moaned when he saw five hags mauling their way out from underneath the tarpaulin.

  Alarm took over from common sense as he veered across the road, narrowly missing a bollarded central reservation. In his wing mirror, he saw fortune throw a morsel his way as a hag was thrown over the side onto the empty street.

  This gave him an idea. He swerved the pickup from one side of the road to the other in an attempt to dislodge more of them. He lost one. The rest clung on like supernatural limpets.

  The nearest hag had pulled most of its torso through the rear screen and was spilling out onto the passenger seat. There was no flesh on this one at all. He saw its features, but his brain couldn’t process the information rationally. Instead, blind fear engulfed him.

  The blare of an approaching vehicle broke the spell and forced him to swerve instinctively back to the left side of the road. However, the manoeuvre threw the hag onto him and he felt its claws digging into his face, carving deep ravines.

  He growled in pain, blood pouring down his forehead, obscuring the sight in one eye as he tried to control the pickup.

  He sped down the main artery of the city. The train station flashed by and Cormac could see the traffic building up.

  This was stupid. He couldn’t drive the cab and fight off this monstrosity at the same time. A sliver of intelligence, or maybe honed survival instinct pierced the fog of horror that paralysed him, and he slammed on the brakes. Without anything to restrain it, the hag crashed against the windscreen, shattering it. A spider’s web of cracks radiated out from the point of impact.

  Cormac knew the thing wasn’t finished. He pushed open the door and it fell out onto the road.

  Two cars pulled up behind, avoiding a rear-end pile-up by inches.

  “Hey, what’re you playing at, arsehole?” The nearest driver stepped out of his car, shock etched on his face.

  “Don’t you see them?” Cormac said. He pointed as two of the hags jumped off the tailgate and shuffled towards him.

  “I don’t see nothing but a bozo off his tits on weed.”

  It had to be true. The man was staring right past the advancing skeletal duo. There was no time to explain. Cormac turned tail and ran towards a bar. It was obviously closing down for the evening. The proprietor was collapsing the street verandah using a long pole when Cormac snatched it from him and turned to face his pursuers.

  The pole was thick and heavy, with a steel hook at its end designed to snag the eye hooks on the verandah. He held it in front of him and swung it from side to side, testing its balance in his hands.

  The hags were moving faster now, all the time relentlessly hobbling towards him. He wiped the blood from his face with a sleeve and ignored the protests of the barman.

  The first hag launched itself. He thrust the pole forward and skewered the hag on its end. The thing’s rib cage splintered and he pulled the makeshift weapon back, twisting it expertly. In one fluid motion, he swung the pole round his head, haymaker-style and slammed it into the side of the hag’s skull. The blow cleaved it from the thing’s shoulders, catapulting it against the wall where it smashed into a hundred pieces.

  “Hey, numbnuts,” said the barman, who was as blind to the walking dead as the bewildered drivers across the road. “Why don’t you practice the ninja stuff on your own patch instead of wrecking my bar?”

  “Shut the fuck up,” Cormac replied. “I’m just taking care of business.”

  The barman disappeared back inside—to call the filth, no doubt. Cormac didn’t care. He had more pressing concerns.

  The two remaining hags pushed their tottering, headless sister to the ground and advanced on Cormac. He held the pole in front of him, twitching it from side to side, but they were wary and stayed just outside the perimeter of his reach. They separated to attack him from two sides.

  Intelligent fuckers.

  Had Jimmy-Thing been training them? He dismissed the question as absurd and lunged towards the one on his left. It sprang backwards, but collided with a table and chairs, tangling its bony limbs in the furniture. He would have found it comical if he hadn’t felt so scared.

  Hag number three took advantage of his back being turned and leapt on him, wrapping its arm around his neck. With the other hand it clawed at his face, the finger bones entering his nostrils and rending the cartilage.

  He roared with pain and attempted to shake it off, but its grip was tenacious.

  A small crowd of inebriated observers had gathered round to watch. To them it must have looked like an epileptic dancing crazily on the pavement, tangoing with an invisible partner. Some of them laughed and jeered while others held back, looking disconcerted as street furniture seemed to move of its own accord, flung apart by some unseen tornado.

  Cormac tried to think through the pain. Years of back street brawling and learning to fight dirty came to the fore. He pushed backwards, staggering to keep his balance, feet stepping on shards of skull bone. As he picked up momentum, the hag sensed a shift in the power struggle and loosed her grip—too late.

  He slammed into the wall. The full force of his two hundred and five pound body crushed the hag, leaving her in a heap of splintered bone.

  They’re strong, but they’re fragile.

  The thought injected him with confidence despite the taunting crowd, which was building up by the minute.

  Sirens could now be heard, wailing in the distance. He looked down at his blood-soaked shirt, and realised that he would stand out like a pig at a Jewish wedding when the police arrived.

  He observed the final hag extricate itself from the table and chairs. He knew he needed to leave. Making a judgement call, he dropped the pole and cantered in the direction of the pickup. His left leg, the one Jimmy-Thing had grasped, was slowing him down. He must have twisted it when he pulled free. At least he had gained a few seconds on the hag.

  Cars drove round the pickup, some of them honking their horns, none wanting to stop and argue the point with a blood-covered madman.

  The cab door was still open. He pulled the keys out of the ignition, raced to the tailgate and ripped the cover back. Behind him, he could hear the hag bearing down. He squinted through his good eye and fiddled a key into the padlock.

  Success. He flipped the lid open and pulled out the Mossberg a fraction of a second too late. The hag was upon him before he could bring it to bear. It grasped his neck with uncanny speed and threw him off balance, his back against the tailgate. His neck was on fire with pain and the vision of his good eye was going blurry as his oxygen-starved brain began to lose consciousness.

  By instinct he mustered a last injection of energy. He jerked the pump action of the Mossberg held tight against his chest, hearing the satisfying chock that signalled a loaded chamber. With a last conscious effort, he pushed the business end of the barrel up into the hag’s chest and fired. There was a blaze of pain in his groin from the discharge, but the hag was projected up into the air, landing on the tarmac several paces away, its chest and skull bust into a halo of fragments.

  It twitched momentarily and lay still.


  He looked round and saw blue lights approaching. The crowd dispersed, fear and confusion impelling them into the night.

  I can’t be here.

  Survival code galvanised him again. He chucked the Mossberg onto the passenger seat, then, realising the keys were still in the padlock, returned to the tailgate.

  This lost him vital seconds. After retrieving the keys he dove into the cab, not bothering to close the door. The engine fired first time and he pulled away, leaving scorched tyre marks on the road in his wake. He saw in the mirror that police cars had pulled up at the scene of the accident, but none as yet were following him.

  So far, his luck was holding but he needed to formulate a plan. His body was racked with pain and blood was still gushing from his forehead and nose. He couldn’t go to A and E. Too many questions would be asked, and he didn’t know any medics. Old man Augit didn’t have any on his payroll either. It dawned on him that there was only one place he could find a safe haven. He took a sharp right and headed north-west, through the city outskirts and towards a place he could find sanctuary, and, more importantly—answers.

  ~ ~ ~

  Aunt Halliday didn’t take kindly to being woken up at half past four in the morning, but Cormac’s insistent knocking couldn’t be ignored. Cormac saw the light come on and her shadow approach the outer door.

  “Who is it?” she asked through the closed door. Morning phlegm reduced her husky voice to a bubbling creak.

  “It’s Cormac. I need your help.”

  She opened the door. “Come in. If you’re breaking my door down at this hour, it must be serious business.”

  He followed her in and sank his body onto the nearest seat, grunting as he did so. Mrs Halliday remained standing.