A Demon Risen: A Supernatural Thriller: The Risen World, #3

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ON THE NATURE OF FEAR

Fear isn’t the anticipation.

It’s not the unknown.

It’s the inevitable.

1

Jaimie

Mummy! the little girl cried. The crowd buffeted her and Jaimie Fletcher grabbed her daughter’s hand. A pair of kohl-eyed teenagers dressed in attitude and black lace sneered. She scowled back, pulling Jillian close. Her eldest’s fingers were perfect little things, swamped in the sweater her granny had knitted. The top had a glittery skull picked out in semi-circular scales with red hearts instead of eyes — beautiful but inappropriate for a kid. Society’s macabre fascination with bones was wrong for children. The teenagers — now ‘obvious-snogging’ in a crowd not paying them any attention — had bought into the skull-themed clothing idea, too. They were draped in them, from the bandanas on their heads to the stencils on their booted toes. Looks dumb to me, Jaimie whispered, don’t get it. But neither was she sure her kids’ woollen tops were the best thing to wear on a muggy day. It needed a storm to clear the air; a wind to wash the fairground clean of the smell of fried food and weed and people. Stay close, she said to her twins. I’ve told you already. There are too many people here for you to go wandering off.

There are only seven people, Mummy. Don’t be a silly billy.

Everything was seven with Jillian at the moment. There were only ever seven pieces of pasta on her plate, no matter how high she piled it. It was always seven o’clock. And she’d recently thrown one boot away so she owned exactly seven shoes. Jaimie assumed it was because she’d just turned that age and was so proud to be a ‘grown-up’ now. Jaimie had joked to her mother that when the girl discovered the Seven Sins she was going to be a generalist rather than a specialist. Her mother’s response had been the maternal holy trinity of tutting, a headshake and a sigh.

There are more than seven people here, Jilly, Jaimie said. Enough to make it hard to keep track of you and your sister. Stay within arm’s reach, please.

Yes, Mummy. But look. Mummy, look. Jillian pulled free and pointed as Jaimie felt behind her for her other daughter. There. Candyfloss, Mummy. By the bumper cars, Mummy. Can we? Please? Please, best mummy in the world?

No, Jillian. No more candyfloss. You’ve still got half the last one across your face. Pink and vile, tentacles of it clung to her hair. The ponytails Jaimie’s ex had attempted before he’d dropped the twins off this morning were long gone. Now their hair resembled that of a clown sucking a 9-volt battery.

But Ellie’s got some. Jillian could pout for Britain and she switched it on in a second.

Have not, Ellie retorted.

Have too.

Have not. Ellie hid the candyfloss behind her back. This early-onset diabetes stick was a sickly green. Strands of it stuck to her sweater. Hers had a glittery demon with blue hearts for eyes.

Liar, liar, pants on fire.

Where did you get that from, Ellie? Jaimie asked.

She found it on the floor, Jillian said, sticking her tongue out at her sister.

Great, Jaimie whispered. Why not shotgun dog turd while you’re at it? The kids, fortunately, didn’t hear.

You’re such a telltale. I hate you, Jillian. I wish you weren’t my sister.

Shut your mouth, you dumb fuck.

Ellie! Jaimie’s jaw dropped. Not in horror, in embarrassment. Jillian’s did, too — gleefully. Where did you hear that word?

Daddy. On the phone. He was very angry with a man.

I’m very angry with a man, too, Jaimie replied, ignoring the sniggers and glares from the all-too-perfect parents swilling around the fairground. The teenagers shot Jaimie a glare, annoyed that someone had stolen their attention. Your Dad shouldn’t use those words when you stay at his. Will he ever learn?

What does it mean? Ellie asked.

‘Fuck’, Jillian added helpfully. She wasn’t the leader. She wouldn’t have sworn first. Just like she wouldn’t do anything she knew was wrong first. She wasn’t a follower, either. Ever since she’d been tiny she’d always struck Jaimie as a person who’d build a gallows but not pull the lever. But now this four-lettered genie had been let out of its lamp, both kids were going to keep rubbing at it until they’d used up everyone’s wishes and all of Jaimie’s patience. As she found herself doing more and more, she took the path of least resistance.

It’s a bad word adults sometimes use when they’re annoyed, Jaimie said.

Like cunt? Ellie asked.

What? A couple of fathers who’d been watching burst out laughing.

Daddy said that, too, Jillian said. And he threw his phone on the floor. On purpose.

"He said that word?" At that moment, the faded band of skin on her wedding finger caught the watery sunlight. Over six months since the split, and it was no different to when she’d taken the ring off and pawned it. Sun beds and fake tan hadn’t touched it. It remained the same bone white colour that haunted her.

Think of it as a war wound. A battle scar to be proud of, a friend had said. I’ve got one, too. It’ll get better. Easier, Doctor Jane Akindele had added, before dashing off for another mad shift at the hospital.

Jaimie’s girls were waiting to see what Mummy’s reaction would be. The rubbernecking dads were, too. The first was shuffling a pram around with a sleeping kid in it. The guy was Jaimie’s sort of age. He had floppy black hair and a floral shirt. Despite being way too pale for her taste, he could have been cute, if he didn’t have the cadaverous look that came with young kids and Bank Holiday weekends.

The second man was bald and middle-aged with a gut large enough to gestate an elephant calf. Bet he thinks it’s a dad bod, Jaimie thought. He was wearing cargo shorts and a fishing waistcoat. A packet of crisps poked out of one pocket and a paperback out of another. That left several more which no doubt held any number of useful tools for any occasion. Anyone lost a pocket? Maybe this man can spare you one. The fat man with a book’s got the monopoly on pockets. His kid pulled on a lead covered with dog hair. It revealed lakes of sweat soaking the shirt under the guy’s armpit but didn’t disturb the other hand. With a skill that would shame many a circus performer, the fat man with a book was balancing a hotdog with a tower of fried onions that had been cemented together with red sauce.

His cadaverous friend had a haunted expression. It reminded her of herself. Hers, however, was hidden under more makeup than she’d worn in years; she was also fitter than she’d been since before the kids were born. Mainly because the gym had a baby corner and the high-intensity exercise was doing her anger issues the world of good. Screw yoga. Deadlifts and Thai boxing were Jaimie’s ticket to nirvana. Besides, now she was single again, the urge not to appear like she’d been welded into corn-flake encrusted pyjamas had reared up loud and proud. But decent clothes needed a decent figure. So life had come full circle and she was back hitting the gym where she’d first caught her ex checking her out. I ran miles on that treadmill behind you so I could watch, Gareth had admitted. It had been creepy, then cute, now it was creepy again.

The guy with the pram shuffled around like an extra from a zombie movie. Is he at the fairground alone, too? Is he enjoying it? She wanted to ask, to have a conversation that would get past three sentences without being interrupted by kids. But as he flashed her a tired smile across the ice cream-covered face of his sleeping toddler, a bell went off and the multicoloured chaos of the fair kicked up a gear.

Jaimie hated it. There were too many people. It was too noisy. A second clang rattled her ears as a Schwarzenegger-wannabe at the strongman striker hit brass twice in a row. His friends cheered, lagered up and leery. It cut through the piped music that assaulted her from every angle, a kaleidoscope of melodies and rhythms that jarred and cut. The crowd surged forwards, jostling her as a pack of screeching kids sprinted for one of the vomit-making rides that span you every which way but the right way.

Mummy! Ellie squealed, her pilfered candyfloss forgotten. Her unutterable language, too.

A helichopter, Jillian shrieked. It was the auditory equivalent of sucking on a piece of glass. A helichopter. I wanna go on it! It’s red. My favourite colour. She pointed to the red-heart skull eyes on her sweater to prove her point. Granny had done her homework.

A ‘helichopter’? Jaimie mumbled. Not a fucking helichopter? Or any of the other words my ex has been using around you when he should know better? The kids weren’t listening. She should be thankful to the chopper pilot for this temporary — and boy did she know this was only a brief respite — distraction.

The fat man with a book was staring up at the sky. His head tiny compared with the mass of flesh that was his gut. The other guy was watching, too. Hands rocking the buggy that held his sleeping child. Jaimie reached for her girls. One on either side, their shoulders just under her waistline. They must have grown again since the morning. Around her, the screams and hoots of the human zoo got more agitated. A frenzied mass of people hooked on noise. A forest of pointing hands and kids on shoulders gazing at the skies. So Jaimie looked, hoping to recapture some of the enthusiasm kids have for things adults take for granted. The sun edged out from behind a cloud. It was the one piece of direct sunlight they’d had all day and it fell on her face, blessedly warm. Jaimie raised her hands and squinted at the black dot of Jillian’s ‘helichopter’.

A rope appeared from the side door. Stuntman! someone shouted. A thrill of excitement ran through the cloud. Jaimie was jostled from behind. The inevitable happened and her life as she knew it ended.

Mummy! Ellie’s squeal was bitten off. Jaimie whirled to catch a glimpse of a man in jeans and a black T-shirt disappearing into the crowd. Then he was gone, her youngest daughter clutched to his chest. Jaimie screamed her name at the same time as the bronze clatter of a bell rang across the crowd again. Hoots of laughter and profanities competed with the thud, thud, thud of the chopper rotors.

Ellie, she yelled and was hit again. She fell into the sticky mess of sick-green candyfloss and realised that Jillian was gone, too. No. This can’t have happened. Please, God, no! She was on her feet in an instant. Screaming red-faced murder. Not sure which way to run. Left or right? You bastards. Help me. Someone help me. Please? She yanked her phone out of a pocket. It seemed to take an eternity, fingers slipping on the case, the case catching on jeans, jeans trapping fingers and on and on and on. Help me, she moaned, unheard and unseen in a crowd bewitched by the mayhem of a fairground. So many people and she had never felt so alone. She stumbled one way. After Ellie. Then stopped. Jillian? Jilly? Where are you? Which way to turn? Where to go? If she chased Ellie, would Jillian come back? She sank into a crouch, howling soundlessly at her phone. Fat feet in sandals and knee-high white socks appeared in front of her.

You OK? the obese guy asked. He’d lost his leaning tower of onions. There were tomato sauce stains on the corner of his lips.

No! No, I’m not, you fat bastard, someone has kidnapped my kids!

A flash of anger crossed his face. His hand tightened on the lead he had around his own child as he pulled the boy in tight. Kidnapped?

Yes, kidnapped! Do you think I’d joke about this? Ellie! Jaimie’s scream cut across the chaos.

Ellie! came the booming reply.

Jaimie lurched to her feet. You’ve seen her? she shouted as the pissed-up lads by the strongman machine yelled the name again. One held the hammer over his head.

Is Ellie an elephant? Did she pack her trunk? His friends laughed and joined in the kid’s song Jaimie had stopped singing to her twins. It had made Jillian feel left out because she didn’t have a song named after her.

No. Stop… A space was forming around her as she tramped the remains of her twins’ candyfloss in the dirt. Her shoe hit something hard. Something that gave a little, cracked a little. Her phone. She must have dropped it and now the screen had lines spidering across the glass. No… She was being watched. People. Parents. Kids. Whispering.

Crazy woman.

What’s her problem?

Drugs.

Please! She grabbed the man she’d called a fat bastard by the collars of his fishing waistcoat. Help me. I’m not lying.

Better not be. Drake, he yelled, problem, and pulled his phone out of one of his many pockets. Drake was the cadaverous guy. The one with the kid with chocolate ice cream pasted over his skin like camouflage. He ambled over, dragging the pram behind him with one hand.

My kids. Please help. Someone’s kidnapped my kids. My babies. Please. God, make it stop. I’m so sorry. Ellie. Jillian. They’ve got the twins. I’ve⁠—

Yeah. What do they look like? Drake asked.

Like little girls. My little girls. Skull and demon on their sweaters. She was sandwiched between two men that were holding their own children tighter than before, one on the phone to the police. Drake rocked his buggy and his flowery shirt spilled open. His chest was covered with silvery burn marks that flickered in the sunlight. He saw her looking and shrugged, as if to say ‘shit happens’.

They led Jaimie through a crowd that seethed with merriment. It was the devil-may-care fun that had propelled her through more nights than she could remember. Didn’t these people understand? Their route wound behind the attractions, across cables that lay on the grass like dead snakes. They stamped through seas of empty drink cans and drifts of popcorn boxes, and into the shadow of a horned storm cloud that reared up over the fair.

On their way, Drake said, shivering as he glanced at the sky. The police, that is. Promised to get here quickly, but…

You told them, right? Told them what happened to my kids? Ellie and Jillian are their names. Fletcher. Surname’s Fletcher. They’re seven. They’re wearing⁠—

Sweaters their granny knitted with a skull and a demon on the front. Got it. Drake’s smile seemed awkward, uncomfortable. Even in Jaimie’s distraught state it put her in mind of Frankenstein’s Monster. Except the stitches holding this creation together were on the inside. He and the fat man directed her to a bench that was spattered with bird shit. It was quieter here in the spreading green shade of a huge tree. The raucous air of people having fun was not as oppressive. The fat guy with the book who had pockets for his pockets, said he was going to check in with security and waddled off, towing his kid behind him.

Hurry, you bastard, Jaimie hissed under her breath. You might lose some weight.

Drake must have heard. He’ll get there. Never one to rush much, is Gino. Savours everything. He shivered and perched on the opposite end of the bench, his sleeping son facing the mess of noise and light of the fairground. The distant clang of a bell rang out across the air. The kid didn’t react, just like Jaimie’s two never did when they were properly asleep.

Call them again, she said.

Who?

The police. Tell them what happened. Are you sure they’re coming? How will they find us?

Told them ‘bout the big oak. He nodded at the gnarled trunk behind them. It’ll work out OK, you know?

No. I don’t know. How would I? Would you? How would you feel if it happened to you?

Hell. Drake stared at his hands. It’s hell.

No! Jaimie wrenched his head round to his sleeping toddler. Kidnap! My kids have been taken from me. You’ve got yours! You telling me you’ve been through this already?

Drake reached out to his boy. His hand hovered over the kid’s chocolate-covered cheek, as if unsure what to do. He brushed back a lock of hair from the child’s pale forehead. No. Not exactly.

Jaimie buried her face in her hands. Tears leaked past the band of skin where the wedding ring had once weighed her down like an anchor. My kids are gone. This shouldn’t be happening.

The guy she had thought vaguely cute was weird and melancholy. Most people in the fairground had ignored her. Stuntmen rappelling out of a ‘helichopter’ had been more interesting. So had the dodgems. The strongman striker. The vertical vomit drops and all the other rides. Even the obvious-snogging teenagers. A few people had checked in and checked out as soon as they saw that Drake and Gino were taking care of Jaimie, people who had given their consciences a reassuring pat by making vague enquires about the problem and moving on with their lives. Some had left advice in their wake to ‘post it on the internet’ or ‘keep a better eye on them in the future.’ And one woman, made of tattoos and piercings, had left her shaven-headed brats in their mismatched football kits alone for long enough to tell Jaimie that ‘if the police didn’t find the kids quick, there was no chance of getting them back unless they were in boxes’.

What do I do? Jaimie whispered. Tell my ex? But she’d stepped on her phone and lost it in the crush. Should I wait for the police? How long will they take to get here? When will Gino get back with security? Questions. Too many questions. Too much silence and not even an awkward pat on the shoulder from her new companion. With a gulping breath, she dropped her hands and sat up straight. The bench was empty. Drake?

The answer was the wind hissing through the leaves of the oak. Even the riot of noise from the fairground was subdued. She called again. The buggy with his kid was still there. No Drake. Not even a shadow disappearing into the distance.

Drake! Forceful and irate.

No one behind the tree. Nothing. He couldn’t have gone without his kid, could he? There were little legs sticking out of the buggy, scuffed shoes resting on the plastic foot strap.

Drake? Quiet now. Scared.

A muggy wind swept out of nowhere. It tasted of rot and carried the mocking taunts of the lagered-up lads from the fair. The strongman’s bell no longer clanking but tolled. In the claustrophobic air of a midsummers afternoon, Jaimie crept to the front of the buggy, a terror gnawing at her panic.

Drake’s kid was still asleep, pale under the chocolate ice cream. Hey, little buddy. Where’s your dad?

No response.

She tiptoed closer. Hope he’s a better dad than my kids’ dad. He’s not nice. He left me. Left me for a… The words died in her mouth. She knelt in front of a child whose hands were clawed into fists. She reached out uncertainly, as Drake had, and brushed a lock of hair back from a forehead that was as cold as ice.

2

Mike

Mike clipped the kid into the car seat and sank into his place in the gang’s van. The vehicle had a smell to it that he felt in the pit of his stomach. The stench was worse for not being able to place it. Nothing about the Corvus Alliance was right. This van, for example. The reek wasn’t the worst thing. It was the markings on all the surfaces. Lines and fragments of what could be numbers. Scratchings that could be symbols, tight swirls of black. It was almost as if they were spreading, growing. Anything the group owned seemed to develop them, to the point that they appeared to be devouring whatever they marked. Did that include people? He checked his hands. No marks apart from the scars gleaming silver in his palms. Their permanent itch was building. Where would it end today? In the past the itch had reached levels where he’d stopped using his fingernails and reached for a hairbrush and then a fork to deal with the sensation. Pack it in, he said, sitting on his hands. Gino’s been in this group longer than you and he’s not developed any odd marks. Leastways not where you can see them. Maybe they were growing in his brain like splinters, right where his sense of right and wrong should be.

Mike had confided in Drake that Gino was the kind of guy who you’d want working for you but wouldn’t want to work next to. Gino had a zealousness to him, a permanent sweatiness brought on by his weight and the determination to do a good job. It was the complete opposite to Drake, who was — as far as Mike could make out — a sloth in a human suit. But Gino? It wasn’t only his officious pedantry, a meticulous attention to detail, which smacked of insecurity rather than confidence, it was his opinions. He had several on each and every topic. And like any fragile male, a lack of knowledge was no barrier to him airing views that ranged from the ridiculous to the bizarre. Today’s selection had already included:

"Soup — not food, not drink, not worth it.

‘Loving your body as it is’ — feel-good nonsense to excuse physical and mental laziness. He’d slapped the jiggling flesh of his stomach at that point and laughed. Mike had made a guess at what that laugh was supposed to mean but Gino had already jumped onto another tangent.

"Socialism — a hop, skip and a purge away from communism.

Quiet coaches on trains — quiet’s relative. Someone can have their phone on quiet without headphones and call it ‘quiet’. And you heard how loud some old folk eat crisps? That’s why trains need ‘deathly silent coaches’. That’s unambiguous right there. While they’re at it, they should have a ‘no egg sandwiches’ rule, too. Have you ever come across a more antisocial food?

No, Mike had agreed, I haven’t. But Gino had veered onto another idea on his endless free-fall through associations and ideas.

Quantum Physics — the study of infinite universities and possibilities by a bunch of deodorant-averse, bespectacled geeks in the hope they can find one they can get laid in. He’d laughed and muttered. Load of crap. Almost as bad as⁠—

Homeopathy? Mike had asked as they’d arrived at the fairground. (It had come up before in Gino’s rants.)

You’d have more chance of getting pissed on water than those sugar pills working. And water’s only good for washing in and drowning people. Said so casually Mike had thought he’d misheard him.

Not swimming? Mike had asked, attempting to put some normal back in a conversation with a bunch of people who took mutilation as a daily part of their job.

Forget it. We’d have gills if we were supposed to be flopping around in water. Evolution got rid of those things in humans for a reason.

It didn’t stop there. As Gino and Drake had organised their stuff to help trick the Fletcher woman — One pram. Two boys: one hyperactive, one dead. — Gino had spied a man in the distance in a muscle vest and pronounced that: Glute training is the ‘belfie’ generation’s answer to the bicep curl.

Which, in Gino’s head, lead to:

Martial arts — a dangerous form of self-empowerment likely to get most practitioners a proper kicking in a real street fight.

And, finally, — Mike hoped — as Gino and Drake had set off: Never trust someone who doesn’t read fiction. That was one of Gino’s favourites. Mike had heard it several times already.

As the girl