Horror Stories to Tell in the Dark Read online

  ANTHONY MASTERS

  HORROR STORIES

  to Tell in the Dark

  Contents

  1 The Death Tree

  2 InterCity 509

  3 Soul Sucker

  4 Rats

  5 A Deprived Child

  6 Voodoo

  7 The Day of the Dead

  8 Sunday Roast

  9 Baiting Mr Benson

  Note on the Author

  A light, scudding breeze blew over Long Heath Lake and the campfire flames flickered uneasily. Suppose a real gale gets up, thought Hannah. Suppose the fire goes out and the tents are blown away. If that happened, they would really have a survival course on their hands. Everything’s fine, she told herself. The night had been planned weeks ago, and all ten of them had been looking forward to getting away. They’d decided to sit round the fire telling horror stories tonight. Now Hannah was not so sure. Her eyes roved around the lake on the edge of Dartmoor and watched the water swirl and eddy as the little night breeze sharpened. She shuddered; suddenly she felt uneasy. In her mind’s eye, Hannah saw another stretch of water, but this time it was black and deadly calm, without even a ripple to spoil its oily, treacherous surface.

  ‘Are you ready?’ asked Jamie, looking up at his sister in expectation, his arms clasping his knees. Around the crackling wood he could see the others, their faces flushed by the flames, their eyes hopeful, anticipating.

  And now Hannah’s grim memory of the reservoir brought the whole story into focus.

  1

  The Death Tree

  Gwyn, my Welsh cousin, stared at Alun floating face down in the shallows. His body was almost completely still, one arm reaching out towards the muddy bank, fingers splayed as if he had drowned while making one last desperate attempt to reach safety. In fact, it looked as if he had almost succeeded, for there was dank grass between his fingers, and what Gwyn thought might be mangled clover.

  The others, Thomas and Danny, had drowned in separate incidents last year; despite the warning notices and thick barbed wire, they had somehow still managed to penetrate the barriers, apparently then to fall into the deadly cold water of the abandoned reservoir.

  But Gwyn knew better. The deaths were not accidental.

  Alun had gone missing yesterday. The police divers had begun their search late this afternoon only for it to be called off as darkness fell. Gwyn had been sure that his friend would be found in the reservoir eventually, and, sure enough, here he was, floating like a doll, the backs of his hands bloated grey-green in the cold moonlight. Three down. One to go. Gwyn was the only survivor.

  Of course, there had been rational explanations and several long newspaper articles. Now what were they going to think, wondered Gwyn. He could imagine the headlines – BLACKWATER CLAIMS THIRD VICTIM. ANOTHER RESERVOIR DROWNING. COUNCIL INSISTS REDUNDANT RESERVOIR FULLY SECURE – but who would be farsighted enough to realize that he might be next? No one, he supposed, for he daren’t tell Mum.

  Gwyn looked down again at Alun’s body and a sob rose in his throat. He was not exactly afraid, for although he had the deadening certainty that he, too, would eventually be floating there, he somehow felt it was not going to be yet. He was numb; all his emotions seemed to be on hold, and he continued to stare down at Alun as if he was a lump of driftwood.

  Thomas had drowned at the beginning of last year; Danny six months later and now Alun – how long was it? About eight months. There was no regular interval to the executions, for that was what they were. Gwyn didn’t have the slightest doubt about that.

  The two previous inquests had recorded ‘Death by Misadventure’, and the police attitude was that Thomas and Danny were truants and tearaways – the kind of kids who insisted on courting danger. Despite the wire, they had broken into the reservoir and had somehow drowned as a result of a stupid dare. Well, thought Gwyn, it’s true – we’ve all been tearaways: bunking off school, misbehaving, being irresponsible. The victims, as well as Gwyn, lived on Beamish, a rundown council estate where there was joyriding, breaking-in and general mayhem, but that was no excuse, their headteacher had recently told him and Alun. ‘You’ve got to pull yourselves together, lads. I know the conditions you’re living in aren’t ideal, but that’s no excuse to go on behaving like you are. Look what’s happened to your mates by breaking and entering. Isn’t that enough warning for you?’

  Mr Placton had continued talking for some time, but Gwyn hadn’t really been listening. He had simply gone on thinking about the drownings and how he couldn’t accuse Silas James because he had no evidence and he had told so many lies all the time he had been at school that no one would possibly believe anything he had said – particularly accusations of murder.

  He had accepted Thomas’s death as an accident, but Danny’s had made Alun and him suspicious, and the more they talked about it the more their sense of foreboding had increased. Gwyn remembered all too clearly a conversation they had had together behind the youth club, just after Danny had been found in the reservoir.

  ‘Do you think it’s him?’ Gwyn had asked.

  ‘Magog’s father? Don’t be daft,’ Alun had sneered, determined to deny it all, but Gwyn knew that he was just keeping the nightmare at bay.

  ‘They were close.’

  ‘Magog – it was an accident. He was running – and he went off the cliff.’

  ‘Running away from us,’ Gwyn reminded him.

  ‘It was a game.’

  ‘Was it? That’s not what his dad thought.’

  ‘He’s cranky.’

  ‘He was right – we were chasing him.’ Gwyn was determined to be realistic.

  ‘Look – that place is dangerous.’ Alun began to try and justify the situation, as he always did. ‘There was a petition – do you remember? But the Council said it would cost too much to drain the reservoir when it closed, so they put up the wire and kept Mr James on to look after the place.’

  ‘He’s so weird though, isn’t he?’

  ‘He says he can’t cope.’ Alun was insistent. ‘Not if kids keep busting in. The water’s deep right away – no use trying to paddle.’

  ‘Who was paddling?’ It was only then that Gwyn had seen the real fear in Alun’s eyes – the knowledge that he had been anxious all along. More than anxious.

  ‘Look, Gwyn – you know what Thomas and Danny were like. Always daring each other about the night swim.’

  ‘That’s what the police latched on to,’ pointed out Gwyn angrily. ‘It was an excuse, that’s all. A way of neatening it all up.’

  ‘But we were always daring each other. You had to swim to the island and bring back a branch of that weird tree – the one that doesn’t seem to grow anywhere else.’

  Gwyn nodded. He was sure it didn’t. They had called it the Death Tree; with its forked branches and withered, shrunken trunk, the tree had always reminded Gwyn of some plastic foliage that advertised the local Garden of Remembrance in the undertaker’s window. The sombre shop front, with the undertaker’s name in huge gold letters, was situated at the end of the small North Wales town they had all lived in throughout their short lives. Gwyn hated passing it on his way to school. It seemed to make the start of each weekday even more depressing.

  ‘That swim was never on though,’ retorted Gwyn. ‘Neither of them ever had the nerve to do it.’

  It was true − none of them had ever brought back a forked branch. The tree was the only living thing on the tiny island which was stacked with the rusty machinery that had once operated the old sluice gates which were now permanently closed, keeping in the stale, dark water that smelled of rotting weed and dead bodies. Dead bodies? Shock waves ran through Gwyn for the first time and the ghostly c
onversation with Alun faded away down the channels of time until it was just a faint echo, as withered and lifeless as the solitary tree. The Death Tree they had all dared each other to reach.

  Gwyn looked down again at Alun’s drowned figure, which moved slightly, pushed by some undetectable swell. There was no wind – so what could have done it? Could there be sluggish currents out there in the still water? Might there be some indefinable undertow? Gazing down at Alun it seemed impossible that he could ever have been alive; impossible to think of dead, drowned Alun moving, swimming. Gwyn’s head reeled. Could he have been trying to get to the island? To the Death Tree? Was there an ordinary explanation for all three of his friends’ deaths after all? Could it really have been just a stupid test of bravery? He knew that Thomas, Danny and Alun had all prided themselves on their courage, their guts, being macho. After all, they didn’t have much else going for them. They weren’t that bright, or that good at sport. And there wasn’t much at home for any of them. All they had in the way of excitement was a challenge.

  Suddenly, threateningly, Gwyn remembered the obsessive conversations they had all had about the Death Tree – even wimpish Magog.

  ‘I’ll get there one of these days,’ Thomas had promised.

  ‘I’ll bring back a branch,’ Danny had insisted.

  ‘I’ll manage somehow,’ said Alun, who was the weakest swimmer of them all. ‘I can float on my back.’

  ‘Why don’t we all do it together?’ Gwyn had suggested.

  But none of them would agree. ‘That would just be a laugh,’ Thomas had said. ‘We want a dare. You have to swim on your own in the dark – and bring back a branch of the Death Tree. That takes real guts.’

  Of course, the challenge had been much discussed by the police and also at school, and dire warnings against further attempts had repeatedly been made. Nevertheless, the reservoir had already claimed three lives – four if you counted Magog, who hadn’t been able to swim anyway. Maybe that’s why he drowned so quickly, thought Gwyn, yet he had always believed that even someone who couldn’t swim surfaced at least once. He shuddered at the memory: Magog had definitely gone straight down.

  Gwyn was loath to leave Alun, so he sat on the high ledge above him and contemplated the ultimate question. Had he been trying to reach the Death Tree, or had he been murdered by Silas James in revenge for his son’s death? If Silas had murdered all three of them was he therefore next on the list? It was impossible to say.

  Gwyn froze. He was sure that he had heard something move in the density of the trees. His whole body tensed and he began to feel slightly sick, but then he sharply told himself he was so scared that his imagination would leap to any conclusion.

  For the first time, the terror swamped him to such an extent that he could hardly breathe. He didn’t want to die like the others; he desperately wanted to live − yet he felt himself to be rooted to the spot, locked into his fear, unable to put one foot in front of the other. He wondered wildly if this was like being in a coma: so aware, so frightened inside, but unable to communicate with those outside.

  Gwyn was sure he could hear the step again. Now he was positive that he couldn’t be fooling himself, certain that someone was walking softly and purposefully towards him.

  ‘Who’s there?’ he whispered.

  Silence.

  ‘Who’s there?’

  ‘You’re next.’ The words shattered the still night.

  ‘What?’

  ‘You’re going to die – like the others.’

  ‘Who are you?’

  There was no reply, but Gwyn knew the voice belonged to Silas James, the reclusive caretaker of the reservoir, the father of poor, gawky, frightened Magog – the boy they had all bullied so unmercifully; the boy they had driven to his death.

  ‘Mr James?’

  There was no reply.

  ‘Mr James?’

  Again no response. The man was playing with him – just as they had teased and tormented his son.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ Gwyn pleaded into the void. ‘I’m really sorry. I didn’t know he’d run over the cliff—’

  ‘You’ll repent.’

  ‘Yes. You bet I will —’ Gwyn gabbled out, seizing any chance he could.

  ‘Your death will be the final atonement.’

  ‘No –’

  The man came out of the trees, tall and gaunt as the pines. Silas James.

  He was dressed in a jerkin and corduroy trousers tucked into Wellington boots. He had a long narrow face with large, troubled eyes. I can outrun him, thought Gwyn. I’ve got to. But when he looked at James more carefully he could see that he was more powerfully built than he had previously thought and was walking straight towards him. What was worse, Gwyn still felt completely frozen to the spot.

  ‘You killed Magog.’ He was very close now, and spoke softly, in a matter of fact way. There was no expression in his voice.

  ‘No.’

  ‘You killed him.’

  ‘He fell over the cliff – into the water. It was an accident. We couldn’t find him.’ Gwyn was gabbling now, the words tumbling over each other, but still he couldn’t move. Desperately he tried to will himself to run. He was fast on his feet. What was holding him? He looked into Silas James’s eyes as challengingly as he could, and saw they were a milky grey – like the soft sheen of moonlight.

  ‘You’ll swim for the tree.’

  ‘Me?’

  ‘You knew he couldn’t swim. That’s why he was so afraid of you. He used to say, “They’ll make me swim to the tree – and I’ll drown.”’

  ‘No –’

  Silas James walked a couple of steps closer until they were both almost touching.

  ‘So you’ll swim.’ His voice was slow and monotonous as if he was rehearsing well-worn words.

  ‘But I can’t. It’s too far. I’ll drown.’

  ‘Like the others?’

  ‘You made them swim?’

  ‘That’s what it was all about, wasn’t it? It won’t be easy. The water drags you down. It’s thick and syrupy. Dead.’

  ‘Dead? Water can’t be dead.’ Gwyn knew now that Silas James was crazy – his only hope was to keep him talking.

  ‘The water died when the reservoir closed. It’s never changed, never filtered, never fed.’ For the first time his monotonous voice rose to a higher pitch. ‘That’s why I can’t find him.’

  Find him?

  ‘They never recovered Magog’s body. It’s still down there.’

  Of course – Gwyn had almost forgotten that. However intensely the divers had searched, no one had been able to recover him. Maybe the water was too deep or murky.

  ‘So I want you to find my son.’

  ‘How could I? How could I find him?’ Fighting back his hysteria Gwyn tried to reason with Silas James, but he knew he didn’t stand a chance. The man was in the grip of obsession. Gwyn backed away a few paces, but his steps only brought him nearer to the ledge above the water.

  ‘You’ll bring him back.’ Silas’s voice was absurdly confident. ‘He’ll be by the tree.’

  ‘On the island?’ Gwyn was incredulous. ‘Why should Magog be there?’ He knew he couldn’t keep his persecutor talking much longer, but he had to try. ‘No one ever made it to the island. It’s too far.’

  ‘Magog got there. He was better than any of you. He’ll be there.’

  ‘How can you be so sure?’

  ‘I am sure. You’ve got to reach him.’ Without hesitation, Silas James grabbed Gwyn’s shoulders and forced him back. ‘Find me Magog,’ he demanded. ‘Find him.’ Effortlessly, he hurled Gwyn into the dark waters of the reservoir.

  Gwyn went under immediately, smelling something metallic, cleaving the heavy liquid which resembled molten lead. Silas James was right, he thought. The water has died and it was now like a clinging shroud. Somehow he clawed his way to the surface and hung on to a stunted bush that grew at the water’s edge. Gwyn looked up into the milky, determined eyes.

  ‘Please –’


  ‘Go to the island.’

  ‘I won’t make it.’

  ‘You must.’

  With the strength of the damned, Gwyn heaved himself up towards the ledge, clinging to an old tree root. Then he fell back with an agonized cry as Silas James stepped on his fingers, and went into the fetid water for the second time.

  Gwyn surfaced again, choking, for the evil stuff was clogging his mouth. It didn’t feel like water – more like slurry. He looked up at Silas James.

  ‘Swim,’ he said. ‘Get to the island. Find Magog.’

  Gwyn swam, knowing he was going to die. For a while he pulled himself through the leaden water, keeping his head well up, staring at the sky. Feeling quite detached, he noticed that the clouds seemed to be moving very quickly, flashing over the face of the pale moon. Then he looked ahead to the island, which seemed very small – a dot on this black ocean – and a long way off. A wave of fear surged inside him, but Gwyn continued to strike out, his arms already stiff and sore, occasionally looking back to the outcrop where Silas James stood, a silent, immovable, spectral figure watching his slow progress.

  Gwyn knew that if he could just get himself into some kind of rhythm and reach the island, at least he could stay until daylight. Surely someone would come eventually.

  A numbing pain had now seized his arms and legs, and every movement he made seemed impossibly painful. Out here, the water was colder, and the rank, rotting smell had become even more pungent. Occasionally, however stiffly he held his head up, the heavy water touched his lips, and once he swallowed some. It tasted acrid.

  Now it was being forced into his mouth, trickling down his throat, the stench of it in his nostrils, the taste making him want to vomit. But if he was sick, Gwyn knew that he would take in more water. And if he did that, he knew he would begin to drown.

  Miraculously, Gwyn became aware that the dark shape of the tiny island with its sentinel tree was now not so far off. He saw the branches were gnarled, crooked, almost grotesquely contorted; and dimly, very dimly, he could see limp-looking white flowers. He imagined touching them and finding them soft and rubbery in his hands, like dead moths.