XI - Henry
“That’s the old Langford
Works,” Henry said as the group continued to stare at the abandoned factory and
the narrow lane which ran alongside it, “my uncle used to work there back in
it’s heyday, checking the looms and fixing them up when they needed it. I always remember him telling me, ‘It was
good work, Henry, it was good work.’
The factory only closed down completely just a few years back.”
They stood in silence a moment
longer and Henry found himself thinking of days gone by. He felt so old. The events of that evening only seemed to prove that to him
further. He was either seriously ill or
losing his mind. Either way, he knew,
he shouldn’t be out in the streets late at night. There was one other possibility of course, but it was so much
nonsense that even considering it served as proof it was something else. He shook his head and sighed.
“Well,” Josh said from where he
stood as their vanguard, “we should make a move then, see if Charlie is right
and this does lead us into the city centre.”
“I’m sure it will,” the boy
piped up.
“Let’s just get this over
with,” Henry grumbled, “I must be mad to still be following you lot around.”
Paige gave him a pitying look,
then shook her head as she began to follow Josh and Charlie into the foggy
gloom. Henry followed just a few
moments later.
The alley was very narrow,
little more than a service lane for all the businesses lining the main road a
few hundred yards to their right. They
had already tried that route, of course and, just like all the others, it had
been blocked in that same grotesque fashion.
Henry tried not to think about it.
Paige’s words still echoed inside his head every time he did. If you’re hallucinating Henry, then we
all must be! Do you think I want to see
this?
The light from Josh’s torch
picked out odd little details ahead, like an old boarded up entrance which had
clearly been reopened many times by teenagers and students, or like the empty car
park of a small office complex on the other side, where a lone bicycle was
chained up. It also highlighted the
mysterious tags of graffiti artists.
One seemed just to be a repeated number in full word form, but with
another number used in the middle of it to replace a letter. Another was just the name Archangel written
over and over again. Then the torch
flashed over a third and Henry nearly had a heart attack.
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