Forgotten Souls Read online

  Forgotten Souls

  Rooster Smith

  First published in Great Britain in 2019 by

  The Book Guild Ltd

  9 Priory Business Park

  Wistow Road, Kibworth

  Leicestershire, LE8 0RX

  Freephone: 0800 999 2982

  www.bookguild.co.uk

  Email: [email protected]

  Twitter: @bookguild

  Copyright © 2019 Rooster Smith

  The right of Rooster Smith to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Design and Patents Act 1988.

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, transmitted, or stored in a retrieval system, in any form or by any means, without permission in writing from the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

  This work is entirely fictitious and bears no resemblance to any persons living or dead.

  ISBN 9781912881512

  British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data.

  A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

  This book is dedicated to anyone who reads it.

  I wanted to shock and to scare, and I hope that I did a good job. This is for you all…

  Thank you.

  Those souls asleep will return to reap…

  Contents

  The Dawning

  Apprehension

  Roller

  At the Bank

  Quartered

  Blister

  Deadly Pillow

  Randoms

  Booth

  Midway

  Grimes

  The Circle

  Dust to Dust

  Blind

  Night Shift

  The Museum

  The Thirteenth

  Waterloo

  About the Author

  Acknowledgements

  The Dawning

  A deathly screech was heard in the distance as an owl let out its cry in the night. An eerie mist began to roll across the field in this cold, evil place where the darkness seemed to creep up and enshroud you like death’s blanket. A church bell rang thirteen times, then slowly, from out of the mist, the ghostly shapes of unholy children of differing ages started to form and with each passing second, they appeared more solid than before. They were all a sickly shade of grey with scruffy hair and rags for clothes. Every one of them had a stone-cold stare and a feeling of demonic evil all around them, and it was obvious that they were all wicked supernatural souls.

  Walking behind these wretched urchins loomed the tall figure of a man. He was dressed in a black top hat, black trousers, and a long double-tailed coat. His polished shoes glistened as the moonlight struck them, and around the brim of his hat there was a purple silk band which had the King of Clubs playing card neatly slotted into it.

  This sinister-looking man was also holding a silver-topped cane and his appearance seemed un-naturally out of time and he cared for the degenerates all around him like a father would to his own children. A thin, evil smile ran across his face as he watched more of his depraved offspring appear and it seemed that all was going to plan.

  The field itself was nothing special and was just outside of the small seaside town of Mablethorpe. The field was inland from the sea, but it was still near enough to hear the waves breaking on the cold, windy beach. There were trees and bushes along two sides of the field and a small wire fence bordered the other edge separating it from the meadow next door. The field faced onto a narrow lane which was the main coastal road and it was the type of field you could have driven past many times without even noticing it. Apart from the ghostly people, the only other thing in the field was a circle of old, partly buried stones in the far corner. Were these to become more important in the future?

  With an evil laugh, the tall man took off his top hat and revealed a shaved head. With the hat in one hand and his cane in the other, he held his arms out wide while standing behind his evil family and bellowed, “I, the Entertainer, now give you the life you were once denied. Go on, my children, go out and entertain!”

  This pleased the young ones, and they all laughed and giggled as they ran off in different directions and faded away into the shadows of the night, departing the field to begin their mischief.

  The evil-looking man who was obviously proud and protective of his offspring slowly walked back into the field towards the stone circle and vanished as a loud crash of thunder roared high above him and rain started to fall. The thunder woke up a woman, and quickly she sat up in her bed. She felt a chill in the air and the night seemed tenser than usual. She glanced at her clock; it was five past midnight.

  The woman was Maggie Sykes, the local psychic who some of the town’s teenagers thought was quite mad. For most of the year she lived in a chalet in Mablethorpe and this is where she was at present. It was the usual type of Chalet Park with a small store next to a chip shop and cafe, and there was also a tavern and play areas for the children.

  Maggie was restless, so she got out of bed, put on her dressing gown and went into the kitchen to make a much-needed coffee. She then took her mug and opened the chalet door to savour the night air and drink her coffee in the moonlight. She had a feeling of impending doom and evil but she just couldn’t put her finger on what the cause might be. Part of her hoped it was just a silly feeling, but she knew that this strange feeling was due to some impending peril.

  Finishing her coffee, she put on her slippers and coat and went for a walk around the holiday park. She quietly walked between the caravans and chalets, not wanting to disturb their sleeping residents or scare the rabbits that were hopping about in the dark. After about three minutes she stopped and looked up into the eerie sky. The moon lit up a strange cloud, which looked like three small circular clouds formed into one with a stalk-like tail underneath it.

  Maggie chuckled to herself. “That looks like a club.”

  She shivered in the breeze, so turned and walked back to her chalet. She quickly locked the door behind her and jumped back into her bed as the storm grew more intense.

  Apprehension

  The storm also woke up Louise, who was in the next town along the coast. She thought she heard a noise downstairs, so she tried to turn on the bedside lamp but nothing happened.

  “Damn it – a power cut,” she whispered to herself.

  Not wanting to wake her husband, she slowly got out of bed, put on her dressing gown and reached for her cigarettes, lighter and mobile phone, intending to use the phone as a light as she goes downstairs.

  As she walked down the stairs she began to make out the forms of her house. She couldn’t see the stairs in front of her clearly, so she carefully felt for the next step by shuffling her feet. Suddenly, the form of a young child darted across the landing which made Louise shriek and stand rigid. After a few seconds she composed herself and shook her head – did she really see something or was it a trick of the dark?

  She took a deep breath and continued her slow walk down the stairs as the ghostly face of a young girl appeared in the shadows behind her.

  The banisters and walls flickered in the dull light and a sliver of moonlight escaped from under her son’s bedroom door. In the gloom, a picture hanging on the wall looked like a man standing on the landing in front of her, and she reached out her hand to feel her way as she walked along. Her phone suddenly turned itself off, which made Louise jump in panic and she quickly turned it back on a
gain. The house looked so different and evil in the blackness of the night.

  Louise had the sense that she was being watched, but she knew that the rest of her family were all asleep and safe in their warm beds. After what seemed like a lifetime of walking through the gloom, she reached the bottom step and was in the hallway. She opened the cupboard in front of her and fumbled for the fuse box to check it. The fuses all seemed fine, so she went into the kitchen, raised the blind, and looked out of the window. No other lights were on in the street, including the lamp posts. Louise let out a long sigh as she realised that there was indeed a power cut – nothing to worry about. How wrong could she be?

  Once more, her mobile turned itself off, but this time Louise couldn’t turn it back on again.

  “Bloody battery!” she exclaimed.

  She opened a drawer and took out a candle, which she lit with the lighter from the pocket of her dressing gown. Turning slowly and shielding the flame with her hand, she started to walk back upstairs.

  The flickering flame made the walk back up even more frightening than her walk down. All of the pictures seemed to come alive and dance on the walls, and every step was a cautious one. Halfway up the stairs she was startled by what sounded like a quiet but evil child’s laugh. She spun around and looked down the stairs, which seemed like a long passageway disappearing into the darkness. There was nothing there. With another long sigh, she turned and continued her anxious journey back up to her bed, but didn’t see the face of the ungodly brat slowly appear in a hanging picture she had walked past many times before.

  After a few more nervous paces she reached the top step, and was just about to step up onto it when from out of nowhere the ghostly, evil girl appeared and pointed at Louise. With its deathly white finger raised in front of Louise’s face, it uttered the word, “Mummy.”

  Before Louise could even scream, the child grabbed both of her shoulders and pushed her backwards and Louise fell down the stairs. She staggered to her feet, dazed on the landing halfway down, and then the girl appeared again and pushed her down the rest of the stairs. She went banging and rolling down the stairs to the horrible cracking and breaking of her bones, and then came to an abrupt and painful stop in the hallway.

  She was covered in cuts and blood was coming out of her ears and nose. The frightened woman sat up, and the numbness from the fall quickly wore off. She cried out in pain when she saw that her leg was horribly twisted and obviously broken; her wrist was also twisted badly. She then realised what had just happened and that the child could still be there so she held her hand tightly over her mouth so no noise would come from her lips. In her panic she didn’t even think about shouting out for her husband. The darkness seemed to close in on her as she painfully fumbled around for the candle and found it against the nearby wall. Slowly, and with another muffled cry of pain, she got her lighter from out of her pocket and lit the candle. The reflection of the flame danced and flickered on the walls as Louise slowly turned her head and looked around the hallway for the demonic creature. All seemed quiet, but she was breathing faster and faster in anticipation of what might happen next. Her fear was unbearable.

  Suddenly the ghostly child appeared in front of Louise with an evil smile on her face. The child again pointed at Louise and again whispered, “Mummy.”

  Louise was more scared than she had ever been in her entire life, but she found her strength and replied, “I don’t understand; I’m not your mother.”

  “No, you’re not,” the phantom moaned as she pointed her bony finger at her, “but you should’ve been.”

  Then with a strange supernatural power which all of the Entertainer’s children had, the girl blew onto the flame of the candle which instantly became a raging fire that quickly engulfed Louise. The frightful screams of her agony rang throughout the house as the fire quickly covered her and burnt away her hair. There was the awful stench of cooking flesh as the heat blistered her soft white skin, which peeled off and melted away and fell to the carpet as she slowly burnt to death, fused onto the hallway floor by the fierce heat. Her skinless, bony hands tried to extinguish the flames and her white teeth could be seen flashing in the fire as her lips dissolved in the inferno.

  Her husband, hearing the commotion, came running down the stairs, but the heat was too great and he couldn’t reach his wife as the fire raged more violently but somehow the inferno was centred on Louise and didn’t spread too much from her.

  “Louise!” he screamed.

  And as he looked on helplessly at the truly gruesome sight before his pained eyes, in a strained, weak voice Louise groaned, “Child.”

  Her head fell lifelessly onto her shoulder as her husband tried frantically to put out the flames with his bare and bleeding hands. As his palms danced around in the fire, he didn’t notice the King of Clubs playing card which was immune to the flames float down by his wife’s side and more disturbing was that he didn’t see the ghostly child fade away either.

  ***

  Steve Carlton, the town’s main detective, was asleep in his bed when he was suddenly woken up by the ringing of the telephone. Stretching out his hand and without looking, he reached for the phone and held it to his ear while still deep under the blankets.

  “Hello,” he muttered with a dry mouth. “What’s wrong?”

  He knew that there must be some kind of trouble as he was used to late-night police calls.

  Steve suddenly sat bolt upright, and with a serious look on his face said, “I’m on my way.” It was clear to him from the call that something terrible had happened.

  About half an hour later he arrived at the gruesome scene at Louise’s house. He walked up the path to the front door, and from out of the house a young policewoman burst past him and was sick on the grass. Steve took a deep breath.

  “Damn, it must be a good ’un,” he whispered.

  He walked into the house to a hive of activity. Police photographers were busy clicking their cameras all around the hallway and stairs and the forensic team were walking about in their white overalls. Steve walked up to a forensic officer.

  “What’s happened, Gary?”

  Gary, who loved gruesome and ghastly crime scenes, smiled and led Steve the few short steps to where Louise was sitting on the floor. With an out-of-place happy grin he said to his boss, “That’s what happened.”

  Steve looked down at the burnt body fused to the carpet by the vicious heat it had been subjected to earlier, and his eyes widened with shock.

  “My God, the heat must have been horrendous.”

  “It was,” Gary commented, “but it didn’t burn the carpet or the walls, so it’s a strange one.”

  Steve turned and looked into the kitchen where he saw a man who was obviously the heartbroken husband sitting on a chair, sobbing. He beckoned a policewoman from out of the kitchen and questioned her.

  “Has he said what happened yet?”

  The policewoman nodded and replied, “Yes, he’s Jon Bond, the husband, and he said he was woken by screams and there was a power cut. He ran down the stairs and saw Louise already on fire and there was nothing he could do but watch her burn to death.”

  Steve glanced at Jon and then back to the officer. “Could he have done this himself?”

  She shook her head. “I don’t think so he’s devastated and his hands are all burnt up because he tried to put out the fire. There is something else though.”

  Steve knew that a strange revelation was about to come his way as he sighed, “OK, what is it?”

  “Well, Jon said that she muttered the word ‘child’ as she burned,” the woman proclaimed. “It’s an odd thing to say for your last word, isn’t it?”

  Steve agreed. “Yes, but she could have meant for Jon to look after their child because she knew she was doomed? People can say odd things when faced with death.”

  The policewoman shook her head. “They have two c
hildren, sir, not one.”

  They looked at each other, both sensing that there was something more sinister about all of this.

  Gary called Steve over to the charred body. “Here, Steve, take a look at this.”

  Steve knelt down beside Gary and saw the King of Clubs playing card on the carpet. Gary took a pair of tweezers out of his jacket pocket and carefully picked up the card. He turned it round and looked at the back, and saw a picture of a silver-topped cane running diagonally from top left to bottom right. On the top right-hand side above the angled cane was a top hat with a purple ribbon around its brim.

  Steve and Gary stared at each other as they both realised that this was some kind of calling card left by the murderer, and in cases like this there were usually more to come.

  Steve got back onto his feet. “Keep me up to date with things, Gary; I’ll see you in the morning. There’s nothing I can do here but question the husband as this card didn’t burn in the fire and I want to know why.”

  He left the house, got into his car, and drove away with his mind racing, thinking about what might be coming next.

  Roller

  Later that morning in Mablethorpe, Josh Adamson, an author of the strange and supernatural, woke up to the sun shining through his bedroom window. He could hear his wife Rosie downstairs in the kitchen, clattering the cups together as she made a morning coffee. Josh rubbed his eyes, yawned, and went downstairs. As he reached the bottom of the staircase Rosie came out of the kitchen holding two cups of coffee.

  She smiled. “Morning, dear,” she said as she kissed Josh on his cheek.

  She then went straight into the living room before Josh could kiss her back. He followed and kissed Rosie as she sat on the sofa. There were some rounds of toast on a plate on the coffee table, and Rosie was scoffing them down as she had to get to work. She was a teacher at the local primary school and she was running a bit late that morning.