Acolyte (The Wildermoor Apocalypse Book 1) (5 page)

But she had to admit that Truman’s attitude towards her plea for help had left her shaken, She felt she had woken up a sleeping beast that had lived deep within him for the last six months.  The memories, not to mention the humiliation, were still fresh in his mind and seeing the woman he had loved siding with the devil had been too much for him to bear.

Lorraine managed to prise her arms apart for long enough to reach into the half-empty packet of cigarettes, remove the first she laid a finger on and quickly rest it between her lips. She wrestled with the chilled air to ignite the lighter in her hand.  She welcomed the burst of warmth from the flame as she brought it to her mouth.

She inhaled deeply and felt her body sag as she relaxed; savouring each subsequent small drag she took.  The Institute was situated just on the corner of the main high street, at the point where the retail units ended and the housing estate began.  As a result of the close proximity of the centre to the houses there was very little in the way of through-traffic in this part of the village.

When she first moved to Wildermoor she had thought it odd that a village of this size warranted its own Psychiatric Centre.  But after a few short weeks, with the dozens of patients that had passed through her doors, she no longer questioned it.  Wildermoor was home to many characters, all with their own secrets, horrors and fears.  This place had a history and you only had to listen to the sounds of the lives that passed by to realise this.  The silence told the worst story of all.

A twig snapped somewhere behind her.

She was so lost in her own thoughts that the sudden sound made her jump.  Immediately embarrassed, she shyly looked away from the couple of practitioners walking towards the lobby from the rear courtyard entrance.

She then heard a soft, low dragging along the ground for a few seconds. Then nothing.

Surely an animal scurrying to find shelter in the boundary bushes around the grounds, she reasoned.

Just then a feeling overcame her that a pair of eyes was boring into her back.

She turned her head with a start and thought she saw a shadow dart through the bushes from the courtyard to the shaded rear entrance to the Institute building.

Chapter Eight

Thomas Laing woke with a start, his body stiffened and he drew in a short sharp breath.  When he fell into deep slumbers his breathing had a tendency to slow to such a point that he actually managed to skip breaths. A cold shiver coursed through him, so deeply that his chest felt as though it were taking in iced water.  He frantically strained his eyes to focus on the clock face on the centre of the dash as his blurred vision began to clear.

12:49pm. His body clock had woken him just in time.  He had exactly sixty seconds to rouse himself fully before starting the short walk back to the station.

He rubbed his eyes and pulled at his face to speed up the process.  He froze when he noticed the figure standing only a couple of feet away from his window.  A frozen stare and cold eyes penetrated the glass.  The dead eyes staring at Laing made him instantly feel uneasy, threatened.

The figure seemed to be suspended, lifeless and staring.  It’s mouth moving only slightly enough for Laing to determine that he was muttering something to himself.  His eyes never moving or flickering away from where he sat in his elderly Astra.

Laing began to turn the stiff handle to his right, the windows straining down within their frame. Laing was about to call out to the man unsure whether he was going to ask if he was okay or what his bloody problem was. The man remained seemingly lifeless, his shoulders sagged and his body hanging limply.  His face stared dumbly, suggesting nothing was going on in his mind.

Laing’s own breathing became shallow as he started to make out odd words from the man’s mutterings.

‘You…what…are…you?’  The strange man mumbled breathlessly, almost incoherently.

Just then his eyes flickered back to life as if an invisible force had reached behind him and turned his power back on.  His dead eyes whirred into life, darting quickly from side to side as his body turned and shuffled down the side street adjoining Exeter Street out of sight.

Laing was feeling more at ease until he noticed the object hanging from the figure’s right hand.  Any closer to the ground and it would have been dragged along the uneven concrete;  from his hand hung a foot-long, heavy-duty wrench.

As the figure disappeared around the corner, the wrench left behind a trail of blood that looked like a wet shadow.

Chapter Nine

‘Good morning, Mr Sheppard,’ April greeted the stout gentleman as he approached her desk making an audible shivering noise letting her know that he felt the chill outside.  She glanced up at the wall clock as she said it checking it was indeed still morning.  11:57am to be exact. She was satisfied she had not made a faux-pas.

‘Good morning to you, Miss Jones,’ he beamed back, ‘Lovely weather this time of year, isn’t it?’

She smiled and nodded in agreement.

Graham Sheppard could always lighten the dullest of mornings with his cheery smile and witty banter.  April had often wondered why he needed to see Dr. Thacker at all, given his perpetual good moods.  She had not been privy to that information, of course, due to doctor-patient confidentiality.  One of her earlier theories that she had since dismissed was that Thacker was dishing out an extra type of therapy to a lucky few.

‘Dr. Thacker has just popped out for a quick break, but please feel free to make yourself comfortable,’ she told him signalling the available comfy chairs arranged in the waiting area.  ‘The new copy of Caravanning Weekly arrived this morning,’ she said knowing that this was one of the perks Mr. Sheppard had been afforded for being Lorraine’s very first and longest-serving client.

He smiled warmly and eagerly made his way to the lounge, slipping off his green raincoat and hanging it on the coat stand in the corner.  He sank into a chair – the usual one on the furthest right, nearest Dr. Thacker’s office and picked up the magazine from the arrangement on the coffee table.

Such a pleasant man, April always thought.  No mention of a Mrs. Sheppard during any of their brief conversations. His contentment at small graces such as conversations about the weather, the latest cricket results and caravanning were refreshing.  He did not seem to have any problems that warranted the need for psychological counselling on a regular basis. But then again, she was beginning to learn that one never knew what went on below the surface.

When April next glanced at the surgery’s wall clock it was 12:06pm. Dr. Thacker had still not returned.  It was not unusual for her to get distracted whilst on a cigarette break. It would require her to bump into one of the resident nurses reporting for the next shift so April returned to her PC monitor and proceeded to carry on updating the current patient records, as was tradition at that time of day.

12:17pm came and still the Dr. had not breezed through Reception apologising for her tardiness in timekeeping.  April looked across at Mr Sheppard who, by now, had read the last few pages of his magazine.  She could sense he was getting a little tetchy as he glanced in her direction hoping for an update or explanation.

‘I’m awfully sorry for the wait, sir.  I can’t think what is keeping Dr. Thacker so long.’

‘It’s quite alright, Miss Jones,’ he replied too politely, trying to mask his annoyance, ‘I’m sure she won’t be long.’

April nodded but as her gaze returned to the spreadsheet on her screen she could not help glancing at the door.  She did not want to appear nervous or concerned in anyway, as some patients were liable to become anxious at the first sense of fear, but she was becoming deeply worried.  Lorraine was not one to keep her clients waiting without rescheduling appointments or getting a message to April.

‘I might just pop to the store room a second, if that is okay Mr Sheppard?  I seem to have run out of printer paper.’

Not waiting for his nod of acceptance, she left her desk and proceeded down the short hallway.  With Mr Sheppard’s attention on the magazine as he flicked through the pages for a second time, he did not see her turn right instead of left and head out of the door through the lobby.

Chapter Ten

He knew that the shivers would stop.  He had to keep telling himself that it was just the cold cutting through him causing him to shake.  It had not exactly gone to plan but he had no choice.  He had prepared himself mentally to expect one not two. 
That was her fault, not mine
.

Upon reaching the gate of the rear courtyard entrance to the Institute, Dexler had almost been caught by a couple of jovial nurses on their way to start their shift.  He managed to catch snippets of their inane conversation as they passed. When he slipped through the next gated entrance at the front of the clinic he saw her standing there.  He could only see the back of her head and the wisps of smoke lifting from above her but he knew it was Dr. Thacker.

One of the nurses caught the doctor’s attention so that Dexler had to quickly change his direction and dive around the nearest corner of the building, where the lobby jutted out from the menacing construction.  He followed the shadows until he came to a service door, a dead end.

He had to retrace his steps and retreat; he had already failed and hated himself for it. 

He would never be free from Him,
It
.

He managed to get within four feet of the end of the small alleyway down which he had descended before she appeared in front of him.  She stopped dead in her tracks then started talking but he could not hear or understand the sounds coming from her mouth.  God, why didn’t she talk properly?  Was she not schooled enough to separate words from becoming mere sounds? 
Academic my arse.  They’re all the same. They all think they’re better than me just for having an education.
 

She took a step closer to Dexler. Suddenly his arm flinched and rose above his head.  Her eyes traced the weapon he held high. Dumbfounded by what she was seeing, the doctor was unable to raise an alarm, signal for help or defend herself. It was probably for the best that she had no time to resist.  The blow would have shattered her wrist had she tried to block it.

Dexler had aimed perfectly and the first shot shattered her skull, damaging her brain so that it shut off on impact.  It dulled her senses to the other four blows that Dexler rained down, the wrench now coated in a film of blood that flowed freely from Lorraine Thacker’s head.

Her body twitched a few times more and then ceased.  Ceased to breathe, ceased to be.  The silence set in and suddenly Dexler could breathe easy again.  His senses were so keen he could even smell the flowers that grew nearby, that were growing freely, straining from under the chain-link fence that bordered the rear of the building to the courtyard beyond.  Daisies?  Tulips?  He was not sure and did not care.  Suddenly he felt free, as if some blockage in his sinuses and mind had suddenly been dislodged.

The Reaper had come to him through her.  His hulking shadowy form had appeared from around the corner with her.  That’s why the decision to strike them down had come so easily without remorse or panic.  Now he looked around and The Reaper was nowhere to be seen.  He could no longer feel him.  He could no longer smell the stench of his crisp flesh. At last he was free.

He had been unwise though and let his guard down for a moment. Suddenly another woman had appeared – he recognised her as the doctor’s receptionist - finding him standing in a growing pool of fresh blood and the limp, battered body of her employer at his feet.

She didn’t have time to scream out and summon the shadows to take him away, before he brought his trusted metal friend along her left cheek, smashing her jaw in a number of places.  A strangled groan escaped from her as she slumped to the floor, instinctively clutching the side of her face he had just ruined.  Her eyes met his and he could sense the pleading in her stare.  Her eyes grew wider as he brought the wrench down one last time across her temple.

*****

He fled the scene too quickly for his age and condition. The journey home seemed never-ending but once he had slowed his pace and controlled his breathing, he felt at peace.

Even in his ever-deepening madness, Colin Dexler knew that he could not run forever and that now they would come for him.  It had all happened so fast that he barely had time to conceal the bodies.  Once the alarm was raised they would soon find them.  The dead weight of Dr. Thacker, who he had seen to first, had sapped all of his strength. He lifted her up and folded her into the nearby empty recycling bin.  How often did they empty their bins anyway?  For all he knew she could be in there for a week before being found.

The second body might give him away. Dexler had been overcome with shortness of breath, dizziness, nausea and fatigue. He could only manage to drag the corpse to the rear of the building and heave it under the bordering hedge.  The low-hanging leaves would only conceal so much of her and he was unable to get her right leg to stay curled up in its position over the left enough to hold it in place.

Everything started to appear clear to him as he approached the turning for Exeter Street.  He had taken a detour to try and clear his head and just in case anyone had already picked up his trail.  He had forgotten to wipe down and dispose of the weapon he still carried and that left a dripping trail behind him.

In any event the sun was starting to break through, not enough to warm the air as his breath remained visible, but it was a start.  The street was quiet; most of the residents already at work or those who laboured their day away in front of the TV were still in bed.  Dexler could not abide the lazy.  His father had made him scared of having spare time for spare time was when the trouble usually started.

It was during those quiet moments that He would haunt him too.

But those days were gone now that Dr. Thacker had been taken care of.  Suddenly he felt a ton-weight had been lifted from his chest and shoulders, one he had carried around with him since he was seven years old.  That was until the moment that he approached the battered Vauxhall parked shy of the corner, feet away from where he turned to walk down the side street to where his own house stood.

As he drew closer, his chest felt heavier, pressured.  He struggled to breathe as he looked in through the window of the car. The smell was quickly rising through his nostrils so that he could taste the burnt, rotten meat at the back of his throat.  A retch rose from the pit of his stomach and, as he stared into the cab of the car, the shadow man appeared on the opposite side of the car and loomed menacingly over it, staring straight at the man inside.

For the first time the shadow man’s stare was not fixed on Dexler. Why then could Colin still not breathe?

*****

Dexler remained frozen to the spot as he watched The Reaper move around the side of the car trying to find a way in.  He seemed transfixed on the figure that lay asleep inside the vehicle. Dexler could tell that The Reaper
wanted
the sleeping man. His movements became more agitated.  His head turned frantically from left to right, as he adjusted his body to try and gain access to the car; one hand pressed on the passenger window the other was planted on the windscreen.

For years Dexler had kept the secret of The Reaper to himself. He could not face the ridicule of being haunted by a phantom.  And the few people to whom he had divulged this apparition, Dr. Thacker included, had been quick to pass it off as a symptom of psychiatric trauma; representing the abusive father in Dexler’s own twisted, terrifying world.  But for all of this time The Reaper had existed as flesh, blood and bone to him.  He had
felt
him.  He smelt his presence every time he appeared and the fear was overwhelming.

But now The Reaper looked strangely human, vulnerable, in his attempt to break through a structure he had not met before, his gesticulations illustrating his frustration.

It was the way The Reaper was wanting, lusting over the sleeping man that was so disturbing.  Colin had never seen The Reaper display any attributes or emotions like that around him.  What did the sleeping man have that Colin didn’t?

Instantly, Dexler hated the sleeping man.  He wanted to show The Reaper how to break into the car, how to physically break another person just as The Reaper had broken him after all these years.  Fear gave way to some form of masochistic jealousy.

The Reaper was to blame for everything – for the grisly death of his parents, the sickening procedures that Dexler had had to perform to break down their bodies and dispose of the flesh and then the bones, the unimaginable torture he had had to perform on the unwelcome visitors that turned up unexpectedly the day before Wildermoor’s finest had found Colin and taken him away.  But The Reaper had, in some way, made Dexler feel special, wanted, maybe even important to Him.  Dr Thacker was to blame for bringing The Reaper back to him, so therefore
it
was also responsible for her death and that of her receptionist.