Dark Winter Tales: a collection of horror short stories. Paul Finch

Чтение книги онлайн.

СКАЧАТЬ the intermittent patches of moonlight – but very quickly it assumed those grotesque quasi-reptile proportions. Its faltering, lumbering gait was also unmistakable; as was the glint of steel in its clenched right hand.

      With more breathless shrieks, Sharon ran back into the park, veering right when she spied an open doorway. She had no idea what to expect beyond it, but immediately found herself in a complex network of passages, smoothly glazed walls encompassing her from every side. Phantom Sharon Joneses leapt and cavorted, bodies elongated, heads expanded; illusions rendered even more demonic by the refracting moonlight. Not that twists and turns were a problem for her pursuer. Somewhere close behind, mirrors exploded one by one as he put his shoulder to them. Billions of fragments rained ahead of his wild, bullocking charge. Sharon attempted the same, arms wrapped around her head. Despite her stab-jacket and the thick tunic beneath, flecks of glass wormed their way under her collar and cuffs, cutting, stinging. When she blundered through one already-broken frame, a hanging shard of glass drew a burning stripe across the top of her head, though in truth she barely felt this. She snatched the shard down; it was twelve inches long and shaped like a dagger – its edges sliced into her fingers, and yet she clung onto it.

      With hot blood dribbling into her eyes, she hobbled left, groping along a side-passage that seemed to lead to brighter moonlight, so desperate to reach this that even when another mirror disintegrated in front of her, and a brutal form blocked her path, she drove straight on.

      Perhaps McKellan was more surprised than she was. He had a weapon, but now so did Sharon – and she was the one who struck first, plunging the shard into the top right side of his chest, puncturing the rumpled costume and the human tissue beneath – the glass grating on bone as she drove it deep, to half its length at least, before lodging it fast. Her foe made no sound but reeled backwards, allowing her to shove past him and head on to the light, which, as she’d hoped, turned out to be a window. She kicked it until it fell to jangling pieces, and clambered through.

      After the hallucinogenics of the Mirror Maze, the moonlight outside brilliantly bathed another thoroughfare lying straight and open. She’d staggered fifty yards along it, mopping blood from her brow, before glancing back. McKellan had emerged behind her, but now was toppling sideways rather than following. Even as she watched, he fell heavily to the tarmac.

      She turned to run on, and slammed into a massive, iron-hard body.

      Sharon screamed and lashed out with her fists, before strong, gloved hands caught hold of her wrists. Through fresh trickles of blood, she gazed up into the saturnine features of Sergeant Pugh.

      “What the devil … PC Jones, what the …?”

      “McKellan,” she whispered. “It was Blair McKellan … he killed DS Slater …”

      “Slater … Blair McKellan?”

      “But I killed him!”

      “What …?” Pugh looked perplexed. “What are you talking … what happened?”

      Aware that she was ranting unintelligibly, she tried to explain, not even attempting to conceal the nature of her relationship with the late detective. Halfway through, Pugh – looking very alarmed – checked the gash on her scalp, and after mumbling something unsympathetic about it only being a flesh wound, strode back along the thoroughfare, ordering her to stay close.

      “No!” she yelped. “I’m not going back there!”

      “Pull yourself together, girl! You’re supposed to be a police officer!”

      She stammered out a few more semi-coherent objections, but the sight of Pugh, stern as ever, unimpressed by anything, seemed to restore a half-sense of normality. And in any case, McKellan was dead. He had to be.

      “How many other units are attending?” she whimpered, following from a distance.

      “None, as far as I’m aware.” Pugh’s features tautened as he spotted the shape lying on the tarmac ahead. “No-one even knows where you are. It’s pure good fortune I swung by North Shore and spotted your vehicle.” He hurried forward, speaking urgently into his radio. Though Sharon fancied she heard a fizzing of static, she didn’t hear anyone at Comms respond. He tried again as he knelt beside the casualty.

      She halted a few yards away and held her breath.

      Wasn’t there a lack of blood? She’d stabbed McKellan deeply, and yet there was no blood spattered across the footway. How much of what she’d penetrated was McKellan, and how much was monster suit?

       And where was the shard she’d used?

      That last question struck her like a mallet.

      She’d left it jutting from beneath the killer’s collarbone. Yet it wasn’t there now – because it was in his left hand.

      Sharon watched as, in seeming slow-motion, that long bayonet of glass plunged up and around, striking Sergeant Pugh in the left eye. By the time the steel blade appeared and sheared into the side of Pugh’s neck, she was already running again. She only looked back once – but this was sufficient to show her supervisor’s limp corpse being whirled around like a rag doll and launched into the Mirror Maze through its demolished window. It was also sufficient to distract her so that she blundered headlong into a low barrier, fell over it and landed upside down in a litter-filled concrete channel.

      The blow to her already-wounded cranium was dizzying, but her adrenalin kept flowing, pumping her full of energy. As awareness seeped quickly back into her head, she sighted the costumed horror approaching the other side of the barrier. She lurched to her feet and staggered along the channel, following it through an arched entrance into another indistinguishable building. She ran blindly again, hands out in front. A single backwards glance showed an ungainly silhouette coming relentlessly in pursuit.

      From the next corner, she spied a downward shaft of moonlight. She tottered towards it – only to be stopped short by a fearsome face apparently suspended about twelve feet in the air. Heart-pounding moments followed before she recognised it as the face of an Aztec god, and realised that she was in the River Caves. What was more, now that her eyes were attuning, she saw a framework of scaffolding standing alongside the statue. At the top of this, some kind of trapdoor hung open. Without thinking, she climbed. He would know where she’d gone – the hollow bars rang and echoed – but would he be able to follow her in his monster get-up?

      At the top, Sharon hauled herself through the aperture, which in fact was an old skylight, and found herself on a sloped roof greasy with moss. She slipped as she tried to turn around, landing heavily on her bruised side. As she lay winded, she peered down into the darkened interior. His twisted form was already ascending the scaffolding with no discernible difficulty. Just like he’d ridden the Crazy Train. Just like he’d survived a deep stab wound in the chest. It was impossible, it made no sense – but it was happening.

      Weeping at the unfairness of it, Sharon tried to scrabble down the roof on her buttocks and ankles, but gravity took over and she began to slide, rocketing over the edge and dropping a considerable distance before hitting another, lower roof. This one, apparently consisting of plywood and tar-paper, simply collapsed underneath her, jarring her left ankle and turning her upright again as she fell through it. Some seven feet below, her injured ankle blazed with even more pain as she hit a solid, cage-like frame, which possibly had once contained a motor or generator.

      The collision flung her sideways onto an old mattress made sodden with decay – at least, she thought it was due to decay.

      She СКАЧАТЬ