New Title 1 (45 page)

After Jane, Ratty and
Izzy
corroborated her story, the police drove them back to the village. When they got close, thin wisps of fog drifted over the landscape, but there was no thick bank of fog. As they drove down the lane, they passed an area of dead grass. Chase guessed it was where the buildings should have been and they stopped the car and got out to look. But apart from large square areas of dead foliage and some holes where posts might have been, there was nothing to suggest buildings had been there. The four of them kept to their story and the police drove on with little enthusiasm.

When
Paradise
came in sight, Chase was struck by how beautiful it still looked. Only now she knew what horror lurked beneath the facade, the beauty was tainted, like biting into an apple to find it rotten inside.

They drove into the village and parked up outside the village shop. In the distance, the church bell was ringing and pigeons raced around the spire.

The bell jangled as the entered the shop and a slightly balding, middle-aged man appeared from out back.

“Can I help you?” He stared surprised and alarmed at the police cramming the aisles.

The first thing Chase noticed was the tins of food. They were all brand name produce. There were none of the white labelled tins on the shelves.

“Who are you?” Chase asked.

“I’ll ask the questions, if you don’t mind,” the police officer that had driven her said.

“Where’s Ms Woods,” Chase continued, ignoring the policeman.

“Ms who?” The man behind the counter shook his head.

“The owner, Ms Woods.”

The man laughed. “I’m afraid you must have made a mistake. I’m the owner. Bernard Jones the name.” He shook his head, looking bemused, and turned to the door to the back room. “Kath, Kath love, come here and listen to this will you.”

After a moment, a plain looking woman Bernard introduced as his wife, appeared in the shop, wiping her hands on an apron, her face slightly flushed. She listened to the story wearing a bemused grin like her husband.

Chase looked at Jane, Ratty and
Izzy
and they all tried to protest, claiming that they were telling the truth. But the police ushered them out of the shop, apologising to the owner for wasting his time.

It was the same everywhere they went. The residents of
Paradise
had been replaced and they all refuted the story Chase and her companions told. An elderly couple that nodded sympathetically and offered a panacea of tea to the weary policemen now inhabited High Top Cottage.

In a final last-ditch effort to find something to corroborate their story, Chase took them to the church. Inside she got quite a shock when she saw a vicar kneeling before the altar. From behind he looked just like the vicar who had been killed – she realised then that she hadn’t even known his name – but when he turned, it wasn’t him at all. He smiled and nodded in all the right places, produced documents to show how long he’d been there and even offered to give Chase and her companions’ spiritual guidance.

As they were about to walk out of the church, the vicar said, “Faith can move mountains, have faith in the Lord.” As an aside to Chase he whispered, “But Moon can move more.”

She knew that it was useless arguing further. Moon had told her that the people involved in the experiment were powerful, but only now did she begin to realise just how powerful. They had no proof – Drake had taken
Ratty’s
disc, and they had nothing else.

They kept to the story about
Ratty’s
granddad, even finding the grave. (It was the first Ratty knew of his death, and he was naturally distressed). But it didn’t prove anything. He was old. Death was inevitable and they weren’t about to exhume him to check for foul play. Chase never did find out, but she wondered whether Albert
Rathbone
had been killed just so that she could be moved into the village. It was one of many questions that went unanswered.

Chase and the others were tested for psychiatric disorders, and when, with the exception of the
Paradise
story, they were found to be rational and well adjusted, they were released.

The psychiatrists put the episode down to a form of mass hysteria; Ratty and
Izzy
were released back into the custody of their respective parents and Chase and Jane were released pending a court hearing on charges of abduction and wasting police time.

When Chase finally left the village and returned to her former home, she was in for another shock as there was a family living in it. They had the necessary deeds to prove their ownership, but Chase caused so much of a fuss that the police were called and she was arrested again.

She had a court order served on her, disallowing her from going within two miles of her previous house, so for a while she moved in with Jane. But after
Paradise
, their friendship felt strained. They had been through too much, and instead of drawing them closer, it pushed them apart and they withdrew into their own little worlds of pain. Also, Jane’s partner, Gina had not taken to Chase staying. She wanted Jane all to herself so she could help her recuperate, and Chase was the cuckoo in the nest that had taken her away in the first place.

And so Chase had moved into the
bedsit
; inhabiting one room in a house full of students that played music till late in the night. The sickly sweet smell of drugs also filled the air, and Chase often had to go for long walks to clear her head.

Even though she had wrapped the blanket around herself, Chase still shivered. Today was one of those days to go for a walk. It was often warmer outside than it was in as the room she occupied was North facing and cold as the
Arctic Circle
.

She pulled a coat over her flowery maternity dress and wandered out of the house. She was right, it was warmer outside and she ended up having to take the coat off. She waddled more than walked these days, every movement an effort. She had never bloomed during her pregnancy and the last four months had been miserable; she likened herself to Leonard
Rossiter
who played
Rigsby
in Rising Damp as she pushed her stomach out, supporting her lower back with her hands. She suffered stomach cramp, had to use the toilet a lot because of the pressure; she also leaked when she coughed, sneezed, or when she laughed (which wasn’t very often), her knees hurt, her back hurt, and although she had suffered from vivid nightmares about the condition of the unborn baby, she had been told time and again that it was healthy and that there were no problems for her to worry about. They said her fears were only natural. Everyone had them. Chase wasn’t convinced. Was paranoia part of pregnancy as well? Since leaving the village she was haunted by the feeling of being followed, but there was never anyone there. She looked at everyone with mistrust, not knowing how far the corruption had spread. She was slowly getting over it, and she knew that it would be a while before she was back to her usual self, but that didn’t help dispel the hair-prickling notion.

Even though she hadn’t been in
Paradise
for that long, it was strange to see traffic again. And although she now only had a small portable television, she wondered how people had coped before John
Logie
Baird invented the window on the world. It had spawned a planet of voyeurs who peered into the fishbowl lives of other people and communication had died beneath its spell.

She still read the newspapers, often second hand when the students had finished with them, as she couldn’t afford to buy one everyday. But there was never any mention of
Paradise
and the strange circumstances surrounding it, which didn’t really surprise her. Also, she now had a deep mistrust of letters and the postman. She had letters lying in her hallway that were three months old, but she daren’t even touch them to throw them away. Her one highlight of the day had become her one nightmare.

The only people to come out of this mess stronger were Ratty and
Izzy
who became inseparable. Although there was a restraining order on her, Chase still kept in contact with them by telephone.

At the end of the road, she suddenly had hunger pangs and she licked her lips. Noticing she was next to the mini-mart, she stepped inside the cool interior, the bright fluorescent strip lights stinging her eyes as she wandered along the aisles of produce. Since
Paradise
she only ate organic food. It was more expensive, and her Social Security cheque hardly covered the household bills, but she thought it was worth it for peace of mind.

She wandered past the tins of beans and spaghetti, and into the next aisle where the jars of baby food were stacked. She often gasped at the price of it, wondering how on earth she was going to afford to keep a baby, never mind feed it. Of course she could have had a termination, but then she would have been just as bad as Moon. She had told him that she couldn’t take a life, any life, and she’d meant it. She was worrying about nothing. Of course everything was going to be all right. Why shouldn’t it be?

A teenager sat on the ground further along, tearing open a cardboard box of items to put on the shelves.
 

As she approached the shelf-stacker, he looked up at her and smiled. Chase smiled back, but then she noticed what he had in his hand and a sudden chill raced down her spine: Baby food in white, nondescript cans and jars. Chase felt dizzy, the supermarket beginning to spin around her, the walls closing in, squeezing so tight that she couldn’t breathe. She clutched her swollen belly as the unborn baby gave her a painful kick.

“Are you okay?” the young man asked, his face showing concern.

Chase couldn’t reply. They were going to start with the babies, with the still developing children – catch them when they were young. That damned idiot, Moon was turning the whole country into a test lab.

She dropped to her knees, screaming as her waters broke; the baby was coming, but it was too early. The pain felt unbearable.

“Someone, help,” the young man shouted, looking alarmed as Chase crouched on the ground.

“It’s okay, I’m a doctor.”

“Thank god,” the young man said, moving aside.

Chase looked up. She recognised the voice straight away. It had haunted her for four long months.

Moon looked down, an anxious smile on his lips. Drake stood behind him, emotionless.

“You didn’t think I would just let you go, did you?” Moon scoffed, crouching down beside her. “Yours shall be the first; it shall not be the last. This is the dawning of a new age of evolution, and I had to know ...”

As Chase’s progeny clawed its way into the world, it screamed almost as much as its mother.

###

About the author:

Shaun Jeffrey was brought up in a house in a cemetery, so it was only natural for his prose to stray towards the dark side when he started writing. He has had three novels published, 'The
Kult
', 'Deadfall' and '
Evilution
', and one collection of short stories, 'Voyeurs of Death'. Among his other writing credits are short stories published in Cemetery Dance, Surreal Magazine, Dark Discoveries and Shadowed Realms. The
Kult
was optioned for film by
Gharial
Productions.

Visit the author's site at:
http://www.shaunjeffrey.com