Authors: Max China
"Of course I do…What's on your mind?"
"Well, nothing particularly, it's just that I've since found out that you originally came from that neck of the woods, and I wondered if you ever heard…"
"Any rumours about the place? Of course I did, all us kids from around there heard them. I knew the place as Devils Pond, or Witches Pond as they called it sometimes. Apparently, there was an accident in the mines nearby, in the 1850's, and they lost a number of miners in a flash flood or something. They didn't recover all the bodies, about twenty or so were washed away underground." The older man was quiet for a moment as he allowed his memories to come back to him. "As far as I know, that's where the extra bodies came from that they found in the pond while looking for your friends."
"Yes I heard that, I'm not sure they ever conclusively proved who they were. What about the other four bodies, did you hear anymore about them?"
"Not really, the press had a field day though, I do remember that. The bodies were wrapped in boiler suits, and weighted down with stones, weren't they? What was it they called them…" he snapped his fingers as he tried to recall. "The Boiler Man Killings . . ."
"I wonder who it was . . . I don't think they ever found him."
"The police are useless," Kirk said absently as he yawned. "Might be a good first case for you to investigate…"
Miller caught the yawn from him. "Maybe one day, but for now I still have too many bad memories."
"Try to discover to whom the unidentified remains belonged; they never did find out who they all were."
"I think I'd like to look for
living
missing people, though, not dead ones. I don't think I could do that. I don't feel anything if someone is dead. That's why I never looked for Josie when she went missing. I
knew
she wasn't with us anymore . . ." he sighed. "If I'm going to look for missing people, they'll have to be still alive."
"Well, I wish you luck with whatever you choose to do… Two roads diverged in a wood, and I . . . I took the one less travelled by, do you remember that poem?"
"I do," he said solemnly. An irresistible tiredness washed over him, and he yawned again.
Kirk reached over and took Miller's hand quite unexpectedly and shaking it, said, "Good night, Milowski, I hope you get on okay. Keep yourself out of trouble." He pronounced the name perfectly.
"You can say my name?" he said in amazement. "I always thought you suffered from word blindness when it came to saying my name."
"That's right," he said with a glint of humour in his eyes. "I always
could
say it . . ."
Sometimes, you see a painter on the beach, or in the fields, dabbing his brush at the canvas then standing back, coming forward again, executing the finishing touches, before finally standing back once more with a smile, satisfied at last with his work.
Kirk was a teacher, but as Miller left the car and glanced back in at him, he had a satisfied smile and look of a painter about his face.
"Goodnight, sir."
Miller ran up to his front door through the sheets of rain, when he turned back to wave; the car was almost invisible, Kirk had let the brakes off, and the car began rolling forwards, down the hill silently. It disappeared into the mists, sputtering to life as he jump-started the engine. The red tail lights illuminated briefly, and then they vanished too.
He wondered, as he closed the door, shutting out the driving rain:
Does it rain on Armageddon?
Chapter 26
The following night, in his dreams, Kirk instructed him in unarmed combat, Korean style. "Taekkyon," he explained. "Is actually a forerunner of Tae kwon do, I learned it during my national service in
Malaysia." Moving like a shadow, he said, "Copy me." And Miller did.
Unable to wake fully, he surfaced briefly, blinked his eyes and then drifted back into the depths, into Kirk's jungle. Behind him, the relentless sounds of pursuit as faceless enemies crashed through the undergrowth, preceded by their urgent voices, bugle calls and the barking of dogs. They were on his trail. There was no going in any other direction than forwards. He ran.
The pale light of dawn breaking through the trees marked the edge of the forest.
Tired of running, weak-kneed, every breathed ragged and hot, driven by an indomitable spirit, he pushed on, across the exposed open ground. Low vegetation snagged at his heels, almost tripping him as he made his way up the slope, where the line of darkness at the top met the brightening sky.
The light at the edge of the world . . .
Moments later, a mass of shadowy figures swarmed out of the tree line, their shouts took on a new urgency. They had seen him. The dogs, unleashed, raced forwards, closing the gap on him. Shots rang out. A bullet snatched at his shorts as it tore through. Another ricocheted off the rocks next to him; he stumbled over the crest, and teetered on the edge of a sheer rock cliff, hundreds of feet above the water, the sea. If he didn't jump, he knew he'd die and if he did, it was unlikely he'd survive the fall. And if that didn't kill him, he would drown in the sea. Already leaping as these things crossed his mind, he dropped through the air that tugged at his clothes, making him cold. The dark waters below approaching faster still, he saw the white foam tips of the waves crashing, heard their hollow roar. Praying he wouldn't hit the rocks; he braced himself for impact . . .
His bed seemed to bounce in the instant before he awoke.
For a few moments, he didn't stir, replaying what he remembered of the dream. The beginning was lost in a haze, but he had an overwhelming feeling he'd gained another chance, a new path to follow. Throwing back the bedclothes, he got out of bed.
In the library half an hour later, he sat down with a book and read about the Korean War, the role of the Gloucester's and how rumours had spread among the men during captivity, that the Chinese had singled out their Colonel for special treatment: brainwashing.
Returning the book to the shelves, he sought out books on brainwashing and mind control. Finding them, he flicked through the pages at speed . . . T
hought to be among techniques used by religious cults . . .
He stopped dead and leafed back through perhaps twenty pages before he found the words again and then studied the relevant text with a deep frown of concentration on his brow.
Cults?
When he'd finished in the library, he made his way to a cafe; he'd not yet eaten that morning. Taking a newspaper from the courtesy read rack, he experienced a strange lingering sense, a calling almost, a definite sense of something . . . like rain in the air before a storm. He couldn't quite finger it, but he knew it was coming. A half-enlightened moment followed, and as he unfolded the paper, he realised, he'd known what he would see all along.
Heiress Disappears in Mysterious Circumstances
.
The article was a lengthy one, and he read it twice. Unable to explain the feeling, he knew somehow, that she was still alive
.
On his way home, he purchased every single daily newspaper he could find, and spread them out all over his lounge floor. His thoughts nagged at him. He was no longer reading about the heiress; he was looking for something else, but what?
Rolling over on the carpet and propping himself up with his elbows on top of the Times, his fingers absently turned the pages, and then frowning, he stopped. Two-thirds of the way down the page was a short piece on the emergence of a particular cult operating in every major city in Europe, but particularly the popular tourist spots.
The following day, he had a hunch, and he travelled to
Piccadilly Circus, hoping to witness the cult recruiting at first hand. In the shadow of the winged statue of Eros, he found them.
The rain before the storm still threatened, the feeling it was coming persisted. Thinking about the two roads Kirk had spoken of, he knew that this was the right one.
The heiress's name was Olga Kale, and he began to investigate the case in an unofficial capacity. Earlier reports suggested that Olga had left London to visit Amsterdam, passing through Belgium, France, Spain and Italy. She had then inexplicably returned to Holland's capital. He was thinking.
She would have gone east. Why would she go back to Amsterdam?
That night he decamped into his bedroom and followed the half-remembered advice his grandfather had given him about solving problems overnight, whilst asleep.
Take the problem to bed with you, think about it, write it down, take books, photographs everything to help you focus, and then sleep
.
He slept in his bed using the newspapers as sheets. Every time he moved, they rustled dryly. Imagining pages turning over, read, images sharpened in his mind.
When he woke up in the morning, he'd worked it out. She'd been in Rome, where a convention attended by two thousand people had taken place. She had to have met someone who'd convinced her to go back with them to Holland, where the cult's headquarters were. It couldn't be a coincidence.
He drew out the last of the inheritance his grandfather had left him, flying out to
Amsterdam the following day.
Chapter 27
Three weeks later Miller found himself sitting opposite a man he'd met for the first time only a few minutes earlier. The office was clearly that of a very wealthy man.
"I thought it was important to meet you," Donovan Kale said, "and to hear your account of things, first hand." He ran his hand through his thick dark hair, revealing a few strands of grey. Thin faced with a single deep vertical crease on each cheek, his deep brown eyes narrowed as he focused them on the young man before him.
Miller was still jittery, the nervous energy draining rapidly from him as exhaustion took over.
The older man steepled his hands together. "Go on, in your own time."
Never particularly good at explaining things, he took a deep breath and just started talking. "It wasn't long after Josie disappeared, and I didn't care about what happened to me anymore, but then I met an old teacher of mine . . ." He caught the look of confusion on the other man's face and paused. "Am I making sense? I don't make sense at the best of times. I'm tired…"
Kale nodded and said, "Go on . . . it's okay."
Suddenly keen to get the whole thing off his chest, he continued, "And the other thing was I think . . . I wanted her out of there; because I knew what it was like to have someone go missing. It became an obsession to find Olga, I don't know if you can understand that. I just had to do it." He looked for a reaction from Kale, who rolled his hand over, gesturing for him to continue.
"I got myself recruited, I couldn't believe how many people they'd squeezed onto that bus. For a moment as we were driving, I thought, what if they have more than one commune that they can take them to . . . I needn't have worried.
"They'd taken over a former school and its entire grounds. The place was enormous, and once inside, there must have been six hundred lost souls, in various states of delusion. They made us all feel extraordinarily welcome, bombarded us with love and affection, lots of touchy-feely contact. If it wasn't for the fact that I could switch off - dissociate myself - they'd have had me. They nearly did anyway.
"They kept the new ones separated at first, singled out for special treatment. It was three days before I saw her; she had this beatific smile on her face, and she was
gone
. . . brainwashed already, but I saw where they kept her at night. The place had four separate accommodation wings, which they locked down at lights out. They allowed a limited amount of association, supervised by trusties, or
premies
; I think that's what they called themselves.
"To get over to her wing, I had to cross a central hub, which was the main surveillance area. Security patrolled outside, so going that way was out of the question. The chances of getting to her undetected were virtually zero. I was lying in my bunk, when it came to me. I'd cross over using the underground heating ducts. When we'd first arrived, I noticed that the distance between the ventilation bricks and the underside of the windowsills, probably meant there was an under floor void at least four feet high. I waited until everyone else was asleep, and then lifted a panel in the corridor floor.
"Once below, I carefully replaced it, and started towards the centre, holding the pipes as navigation, I've never been in such a dark place in all my life. It took me forever to reach it. I could hear the guards pacing the floor above. I lost count of the number of times I banged my head where lines of different pipes crossed over.
"My back hurt from bending forwards at the waist, the actual depth of the walkway must have been about four and a half feet, decreasing as I neared the central hub, so I had to half crawl. To my advantage, the pipes were noisy. Security wasn't expecting anyone to do what I was doing, so any noise I did make went unnoticed. When I finally got to the middle, the darkness and confined space had left me so disorientated, I lost all sense of direction.