XVII - Charlie
Charlie
led the way across the road and into the Kirkyard. Paige and Henry followed behind him, hesitant and uncertain, but
he knew that it was where they must go and that there it must all end. The anticipation of that, of the nightmare,
perhaps, being over, was almost enough to make him skip and he ran the last few
steps into the Kirkyard, barely restraining a whoop of excitement.
Once he
was surrounded by grass and cold granite headstones, however, he felt a change
in the atmosphere – something dark and oppressive. His excitement fled and he stopped, shivering, waiting for the
others to catch up. He almost expected
Paige to ask him what was wrong when she reached him standing there, all his
exuberance gone in an instant, but instead she rushed over to him and enveloped
him in a hug.
“It’s
going to be alright,” she said, though she was shivering now too, “everything’s
going to be fine.”
“This is
the place alright,” Henry said coming up beside them and repressing a shudder, “I
can feel it. Don’t ask me how I can,
but I can.”
“I can
feel it too,” Paige added.
Charlie
merely nodded, holding tight onto Paige.
“Well
then,” Henry continued, “I suppose we had better find a way inside.”
He took a
few steps forward, until his silhouette began to fade a little in the fog, then
he turned back, gazing at his companions a moment before continuing. Paige took Charlie’s hand and then they
followed.
Gravestones
loomed out of a steadily thickening fog all around them, rising up like
phantoms only to melt away as they were passed. The ground felt unusually solid under their feet and when they
stepped on a patch of grass it gave with an icy crunch. Everything seemed to grow colder and more
still.
The Kirk
itself was invisible to them now, though they knew it must be there, just a
little way ahead, hidden in mist and darkness.
On any normal night it would be floodlit and the gateway to the Kirkyard
from the high street side was lit too, though with an almost eerie glow created
by a set of lights filtered green. They
had always left Charlie feeling a little wary around them, as if they were the
glow from dead man’s candles, corpse light, but now he missed that glow, just
as he missed the flood lighting and the ambience of streetlights and cosy
apartment windows. It was hard to
believe that it had only been moments ago that he had been feeling hopeful, for
now it seemed that this night must never end.
A shadow
moved off to the right and Charlie’s eyes darted to catch what it might have
been, but no sooner had he looked one way than he had the impression of
movement in the opposite direction.
“What was
that?” Paige asked, sounding frightened.
“I don’t
know,” Henry replied in a voice that said that he had seen it too, “but keep
moving.”
Charlie
tried to obey, placing one foot steadily in front of the other when all he
really wanted to do was to run, or freeze.
His body couldn’t decide which.
And more shadows seemed to appear in the fog everywhere he looked. They were advancing towards them, slowly, but with a strange, fidgeting
sort of motion that sent an involuntary shiver down Charlie’s spine.
“Oh god,”
Paige said as one of them seemed to break through the wall of fog to appear
fully before them, all charred, sticky flesh, faceless and familiar, “it’s one
of them!”
She began
backing away when they felt a movement behind them. Charlie wriggled free of Paige’s grasp to spin and see what it
was, only to find more of the creatures advancing from behind.
They were
surrounded.
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