Defiled Earth and other tales Page 6

  That’s it, you ponce, Mallinson thought. I’ll overlook the patronising comments as long as you’re fighting my corner.

  “I propose we push this through,” the secretary continued. “We’ve a lot of work pending to get the campaign up and running. I’ll second Deepak’s nomination. Can we do this by a show of hands, Marion?”

  “That’s the usual convention, Barry. But I’ve another question before we do.” She turned back to Mallinson and asked, “Any skeletons in the closet we should know about? Tax irregularities, past indiscretions, you know the sort of thing. We’d rather know now than be wiping egg off our faces later on.”

  Mallinson put on his best salesman grin. “Marion, I wouldn’t have put myself forward if I thought there was anything that would compromise my position, or that of the party. I can say without hesitation that I’m squeaky clean.”

  How easily the lies come, he thought.

  The president eyed him over her horn-rimmed glasses for a second. Then, seeming satisfied, said “We’ll ballot all members, of course.”

  “Naturally,” said the chairman. “Those in favour of Deepak’s nomination, raise their hands.”

  Two fresh-faced activists immediately responded, and then gradually, one by one, other wrinkled hands were lifted. To his surprise, when Mallinson looked round the table, every one of the panel had their hands in the air. It was a heartening endorsement, and pride swelled within him.

  On the way out of the town hall, the secretary accompanied Mallinson to his car.

  “I know it’s all got to go to the vote, Deepak. Really though, it’s a rubber stamp job. No one else has put themselves forward and I, for one, have every confidence in you.”

  “Thanks Barry, I appreciate it.”

  “Not at all. This may be a hotly contested seat, but I wouldn’t be surprised if it turns into a landslide victory for you. Barnham’s ready to put their weight behind someone who’s with them on the big subjects of immigration and this euro-nonsense. Who knows? Perhaps a cabinet position could be on the horizon soon.”

  Mallinson thanked the secretary again, shook his hand and climbed into a metallic-black BMW. As he drove back home through Barnham’s salt-blasted, terraced estates, he thought about the future. Yes. A position in the cabinet would do quite nicely. Brushing shoulders with the powerful in Westminster is right up my street.

  His wife, Estelle, was in the kitchen when he arrived home. He kissed her on the cheek and told her the good news.

  “That’s marvellous, Deepak, I knew you had it in you. This calls for a celebration. I’ll open a bottle of bubbly.”

  She popped the cork, poured the Bollinger into two flutes and handed one to him.

  “Here’s to you,” she said, “and a new career in the big smoke.”

  He took a sip of the sparkling liquid and held the glass up to the light, mesmerised by the bubbles floating upwards. He liked to think they foreshadowed his ascent to high office.

  A squabble announced the entry of his two children. Sasha, the eldest was holding their pet rabbit while Ben stroked and fussed over its ears.

  “Daddy, will you read us a story tonight?” Sasha asked.

  “Yes, the one about the children—in Narnia,” added Ben.

  Mallinson grimaced. “Ah darlings, I wish I could. But I’ve got to get back to the office and finish some paperwork.”

  “Are you sure?” said Estelle. “They missed out on their story last night, and it seems such a shame for you to have to work when we should be celebrating.”

  “Sign of things to come, dear,” he said, taking off his jacket. “I’m going to have my work cut out handing the business reins over to Mack. Then it’ll be all hands on deck for the campaign. I’m sorry.”

  She put her arms on his shoulders. “I know. It’s just that we see so little of you these days, and the children miss you. I do too.”

  “It won’t be forever,” he said. “Now, what’s for tea?”

  ~ ~ ~

  After the meal, Mallinson climbed the stairs to his bedroom, feet dragging with reluctance. Ostensibly, he was going to freshen up. In reality, there was an exchange that needed to take place. He’d tried to put it off for days, only he had run out of patience. Mallinson felt the draw now, as he had felt it through the long sleepless nights of the past week. Nights when he marked time by the slow ticking of the grandfather clock on the landing, wishing that dawn’s welcome rays would banish the darkness.

  He opened the door to the room and was hit with a familiar, yet unpleasant odour, emanating from the wardrobe. It was like rotting leaf mould, woodlouse and maggot-ridden; turned over from centuries of worm-burrowing and microbe-digestion. Estelle had been the first to notice it when they’d moved in just over a year ago. She’d pleaded with him to dump it at the rubbish tip, or burn it in the garden.

  He’d resisted all her entreaties.

  “I wish you hadn’t had it valued,” she’d said. “Then we’d be rid of it.”

  Yet the fact was he had—and it was worth a lot. A hell of a lot. Georgian Chippendale was highly sought after. It wasn’t the provenance that had swayed his hand, however.

  He tugged one of the ornate handles. It creaked open like the door of a crypt, fetid air leaking out in an overpowering draught. Even professional chemical treatment had failed to eradicate the smell.

  Estelle had taken to sleeping in the spare room, as she couldn’t stand it any longer. This should have been a signal to relinquish it. Instead, he held on like it was a fetish.

  He pulled aside some old coats on hangers to reveal a single plain mirror.

  Who puts a mirror at the back of a wardrobe? he had thought at first. Then, just like the first time, he gazed into it. His reflection showed a man looking twice his age, white at the temples and shadows under the eyes like purple crescents. Gradually, as he watched, the skin seemed to take on a dark, cancerous shade of grey. His eyes, naturally blue, became black like crude oil bubbling out of the pupils.

  He was here again.

  “I know what you’re thinking,” said the reflection, which wasn’t formed from any known laws of optics. “That somehow I might be appeased by your decision to meet again.”

  “I didn’t think any such thing,” he replied, a dreadful weariness sounding in his voice.

  “You forget that I know your every thought when you look upon me,” the thing said with a dead-leaf crackle. “So let us dispense with the lies. I understand you have news.”

  Mallinson could feel the Kobald (for that is what it was) pulling at his mind, more strongly than ever before.

  “Yes, it’s as you promised. My pathway to the corridors of power is assured.”

  “And with your eventual promotion will come my ascendency. Once again, I will be able to influence the decisions that provoke countries to lock horns; and cause nations to rise or fall in the tumult of war. The dead will be piled high in the ruins of Europe’s capitals.”

  The Kobald’s words, and the intent behind them were terrible in their import. At the same time, they were alluring in the extreme. God only knows how many depraved acts Mallinson had engaged in, all the while sharing in the Kobald’s ecstasy. Acts so sordid he tried, feebly, to suppress them—even now. Hoped that he had dreamt them. Hoped that he could wake up one morning soon, and experience with the cool balm of realisation, that his memories were but nightmares; and that he could consign them to his dream-world forever.

  Yet, with a deep self-loathing, he kept returning for another fix, like an addict to his pusher. Which was why he would allow it to possess his mortal frame again tonight; and why he knew his soul would be damned forever.

  “And so the time is upon us again, mortal. This night we will drink of inhuman delights, knowing they are but the hors d’œuvres to the banquet of depravity laid in store for us.”

  As he spoke, a green, ectoplasmic plume curled out of the mirror and entered his mouth and nose. Mallinson, his mind filled
with a paradoxical mixture of euphoria and dread, strode purposefully out of the room.

  He heard Estelle call as he stepped out the front door. “When can I expect you back?”

  “Don’t wait up,” he said. “I think I may be busy for some time.”

  ~ ~ ~

  Author’s note

  This story was written just before the UK General Election of 2015. As such, it might date quickly. But then again, history has a habit of repeating itself. The political party that Deepak Mallinson belongs to is thinly veiled, but they aren’t the only ones that have dark forces holding their marionette strings. Given the pronouncements of establishment politicians, it makes me wonder sometimes if those forces are not just economic or political.

  ~ ~ ~

  Possession at 3,000 perforations a minute

  Her birth certificate showed Deirdre was born on 13th November 1985. But she was spawned much earlier than that.

  A girl like Deirdre, who produced quality arm sleeves like the ones she tattooed onto the skins of the unwary, could just as likely rustle up a false birth certificate. I’d seen her work. It was good—in every respect. Dark mulberry skulls formed from the tangled branches of willows, vermillion dragons coiled themselves round thunder-cracked mountain-tops, and Jimi Hendrix lifted his guitar out of psychedelic whirls—reminding us not to dally on our journey to the next world.

  She’d evaded capture and execution for at least three hundred years. You don’t last that long through good luck charms and a leprechaun’s promise.

  Her trail led me to Moss side, Manchester and a tattoo parlour on Remthorne Street called ‘Dark Flesh’. In my hand I held a piece of screwed up paper, the name was scrawled there in 2B pencil. Looking down the cobbled alley I could see it written again in gothic print on a sandwich board. It’d been erected in front of the open doorway. This had to be the place.

  The guild had hired me. I try to make a habit of knowing more about my clients than they do of me—I’m a cautious kind of bloke. But the guild were as invisible as they were convincing. Half a million sterling was a high contract price, and I didn’t even have to negotiate.

  “It’s more than you’ll ever earn in a lifetime,” the man with the jaundiced skin had said. I didn’t learn his name. Ultimate deniability if the jaded ones caught up with me.

  “Half up front and the other half once you drop off her head at this address.” He wrote it on a pad, ripped off the note and gave it to me. He also gave me 12,500 blue ones, sporting the implacable face of Michael Faraday.

  I didn’t ask why they wanted her dead. A high-calibre liquidator didn’t need any other reason than the lucre he’d put in the rucksack. Besides, I’m not an amateur. That’s me; cautious and professional.

  I stopped a few yards from the entrance and looked up at the facade. The windows were blacked out, framed by splintered boardings held up more by wishful thinking than a joiner’s skill. Services offered were painted gaudily on the bright red hoardings. Piercings, massages and, of course, tattoos ranging from tribal to photo-realistic.

  A lone sap with a tree-trunk neck leaned against the door jamb, cigarette held in curled fingers and head looking like a billiard ball, save for the tiny lock of hair at the back tied in a genie twist. He could be trouble if he was staff. I was betting on him being a punter—he didn’t look the artisan type and the Motorhead Snaggletooth tattoo on his right bicep looked fresh.

  “Scuse me,” I said.

  He looked me up and down, then stepped to one side with a grunt.

  A wooden staircase extended to the first floor. If she was in there, and my source was adamant, then she’d hear me coming. There was nothing I could do about it so I ascended.

  I focused on what I was dealing with, my thoughts back-tracking to the trail I’d followed. After a bunch of dead-end leads I’d tracked down one of her victims to a mid-terraced ruin in Salford. The girl’s mother had to speak for her.

  “Psychologist says she’s catatonic.” the woman had said. She wore a grey buzz-cut that gave her a hard look. But the way she worried over her daughter shone a light on her devotion. “It’s usually caused by trauma they say, only I know she ain’t been hanging around with the gang lately.” Her ‘ng’ sounds didn’t coalesce. Thoroughbred Mancunian.

  She combed her daughter’s damp hair carefully, gently teasing out the knots.

  “Only place she’d been was that bloody tattoo parlour. Ever since that day, she’s not stopped shaking. It don’t matter how much I turn the heating up, or how many blankets I put round her, it don’t stop the shivering. None of us are getting any sleep. Soon as she drops off, she wakes up screaming.”

  I sat down next to the girl. Her eyes were fixed on some distant end-point beyond the wall of reason. “Can you make out any of her words when she cries out?” I said.

  “Yeah. She keeps telling us to save her from the shadow. That and whimpering about how cold she is. I tell you, I’m at me’ wits end. Husband and I don’t know how much more we can take. He’s thinkin’ of having her committed to an institution, he is. I know they’ll say we’re washing our hands of the problem. I say it’s no use us all ending up at the funny farm now is it?”

  I looked more closely at the girl’s upper arm. “Is this the tattoo she had done?”

  “That’s the one. Don’t know what goes through a girl’s head to want such a thing. But I’m sure it’s got something to do with her condition. I reckon she ‘ad a reaction to the ink, or maybe they didn’t use clean needles. Either way, summat’ needs to be done. They need closing down.”

  I shut out the woman’s prattle and looked more closely at the design. The symbology was dark, true enough. A heap of grey coloured skulls formed a pyramid rising from her elbow. At the top sat an overlord. It was signature work. It was her.

  Tattoo ink enters deep into the dermis of the skin. Held there in a permanent wrestling match with the body’s immune system, it gets locked in the cells, declaring its presence with hundreds of thousands of neighbours that form the artwork. Only the ink she used was even more insidious. It diffused into the bloodstream, spreading like a poisonous tincture until it pervaded her mind and every nerve ending. Once there, it acted as a conduit for her soul-absorbing power.

  There are names, both ancient and arcane, given to these entities. I just call them parasites.

  If I could find her and rid the world of her contagion, then the girl might survive. She looked pretty far gone though.

  I thanked the woman for talking to me and assured her my department would look into her complaint about the parlour.

  “What was your name again?” she asked.

  I told her, knowing it would evaporate from her memory the moment she tried to think of it again. Psychic sleight of hand. It’s one of my gifts.

  I fast-forwarded to the present. The door at the top of the stairs was ajar. Through a false pocket in my great-coat I locked a hand round the hilt of my weapon and knocked on the door with the other.

  “Come in,” said a husky voice.

  She was standing at a counter, sideways on. I could see her profile. I suppose she wasn’t so much beautiful as enticing. Straightened, ash-grey hair formed wisps around the lozenge of her face. Sable lips were punctured with silver snake-bite piercings, a chain ran along her forehead with three descending lines ending in a wolf’s tooth; all of which placed her as exotic. She’d changed a bit since Mr Hepatitis-B’s photograph of her was shot. Still, I had her pinned. She was applying oil to the tattoo gun with a practiced care, the painted nails on her fingers impossibly long for the task.

  “Dierdre?” I asked.

  She turned her head, the pupils dilating then constricting like a crocodile’s.

  She knew.

  “You’ve wrapped up warm for a summer evening,” she said, still holding the pneumatic tattoo machine.

  The mistake is to talk to them too much. They have a way with words, and damn, if she wasn’t such a st
unner, with that perfect skin and beguiling smile, the job would be so much easier. I pulled out my blade. Technically speaking, it’s called an analace. Well, if you’re going to kill, you might as well do it with style.

  I shut out the siren image and tried to see her for what she was—a soul sucker.

  She stood up, backing away from me like a cornered beast. It wasn’t enough. I lunged forward and saw the eighteen inch blade sink into her chest between the breasts. She looked down at it, gasping, then fixed me with those reptilian eyes.

  I heard the buzzing too late. She rammed the tattoo gun into my cheek with a numbing blow. Fireflies of pain shot across my vision as I recoiled involuntarily. She came back with me, holding me close in a two-step of death. The needles burrowed their way into my face and I screamed as I fell backwards.

  She landed on top of me, her face warped onto a devil’s smile. Then, like two stars imploding under their own weight, I saw the light in her eyes extinguish and I knew it was over.

  The tool fell out of her limp hand, my blood scattering across the polished floorboards in an arc. I rolled her off me and tugged the blade from her cursed form. The side of my face was gushing, the wound like hamburger meat to the touch.

  My eyes swept the studio until I found a towel. I pressed it to my cheek to stem the flow. It would have to do until I could get stitched up.

  There was one more act to perform. With a practiced downstroke I cleaved the head from her torso.

  Was it my imagination or was her blood black? As it soaked into the legs of my chinos and painted my shoes I thought to myself I’m not going to even try to wash it out. Half a mill’ would pay for a wardrobe full of the finest that Savile Row could offer. My clothes were destined for the bonfire.

  I lifted the head by its hair and looked into the centuries-old face one last time. She was no longer smiling. I bundled it into a heavy duty plastic sack, double-bagging it just to be sure. Did I tell you I was cautious?