Three Mile Drove, Chapter Twenty Three (standard:horror, 3081 words) [24/29] show all parts
Author: Brian Cross	Added: Dec 30 2007	Views/Reads: 2895/1976	Part vote: 0.00 (0 votes)
Continuation of a horror story set in the Fens. Darren Goldwater fears for his life in conditions he couldn't have dreamed existed.

CHAPTER TWENTY TWO 

Rain splattered through the barn roof, depositing its droplets onto
Darren's brow with all the consistency of a dripping tap. He tried to 
move his hands but found he couldn't, so tightly had they been bound 
behind his back. The dimly lit barn creaked with the strength of the 
wind, and from all around him came a cacophony of screams that 
threatened to shatter his ears. Shadowy figures circled him, their 
deformed shapes eerily illuminated by the weak glow of an oil lamp 
which drew dark, unnatural silhouettes onto the straw covered floor. 
One began to dance around him as if it were performing some kind of 
ritual, then stopping, peered over him so that he could feel the stink 
of its breath. 

So sickly was it that Darren recoiled, slamming his head against the
wooden column to which he was tied. He was only vaguely aware of the 
pain that passed through his head, the enormity of the face that leered 
at him held him spellbound. Out of all proportion to the body, a large 
flat forehead, so much like Tomblin's kids but this was more prominent, 
made even more so by staring eyes that sunk into their sockets, and 
this one he could only guess to be a teenager. The tiny bead like eyes 
closed in on him and the thin twisted mouth leered. Darren swung his 
head in disgust at the silvery slime that dripped from its mouth, the 
smell putrefying the already vile air. 

The atmosphere was so thick he could hardly breathe. Surely he was in
the middle of some nightmarish dream, like the one that plagued him the 
night he was swept along the dyke. Surely soon he would awaken and find 
himself back in Nottingham, back in his world of music, nights of 
drinking and drugs, sex and violent rows with Goldie. 

Even that would be preferable to this. 

But no dream could purvey the foul stench of this place; no dream could
create the smell, the sound of cries, and the rush of the wind through 
the beams and the feel of raindrops on his face. No dream on earth 
could produce this effect. 

‘Away Joseph, away!' a thick voice barked out, scything through the
screams and through the quivering light thrown by the oil lamps he saw 
Tomblin brush the figure aside. 

‘So you're not only a stranger who trespasses on my property fella, you
set fire to a house knowing there were kids inside!' Tomblin's dark 
eyes glaring in the waning light, he swung to the semi-circle of kids 
around him, Darren became aware of hands to large for arms, of crooked 
spines that spoke of age, even in adolescence. ‘What do you say we do 
with him eh? Make him suffer the same fate that would have befallen 
you?' He turned back to Darren, a smile suggesting hate rather than 
amusement as a renewed cacophony of screams filled the air. 

‘What the hell...' Darren struggled but the ropes only burned deeper
into his wrists, ‘I got them out, the house was on fire, I freed them, 
tell him!' Darren yelled at the figures that surrounded him but he saw 
only excitement on the pathetic faces. He shook his head at his own 
stupidity, not a single one could speak, let alone apprehend. 

‘I only tried to save them,' he shook his head then lifted his gaze to
meet Tomblin's glare head on, ‘What have you done with the girl?' 

‘Ain't for you to know.' 

Darren scowled at Tomblin's dismissive response, his temper reach new
limits in spite of his predicament, ‘And the young kid that went 
missing, you know about that too don't you...she's here...' 

‘Shut your big mouth up fella.' 

Darren flinched in the cavernous barn as Tomblin slapped his hands
together forcefully, the strike almost simultaneous with the thunder 
that rolled outside. 

Maybe it was Tomblin's loud clap, maybe it was the thunder itself, but
the deformities scurried away, howling their frenzied cries, to a 
corner of the barn that the flickering light barely reached. 


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