Ex chapter 24 we had been kept in the dark for so long that darkness was all we knew - part 2

It took Chas more than a minute to open his eyes again and when he did so he realised that Daniel's grandmother Bernice had caught him and deposited him on the floor of another desecrated crypt beside Ferris and Dorsal. Viewing himself for a moment through her wicked eyes, Chas could see that to her, the three of them were of no more importance than butterflies pinned behind a sheet of dusty glass.

"I was just climbing back up the ladder from the supermarket with my shopping, when I saw you clowns and decided I had intervene before you drew any more attention to my little eagles nest."

"Yes that's how I got up here" said Ferris, "I wondered why you three didn't use it."

"You knew there was a fucking ladder and you let us climb up without telling us, right that's it, I am going to actually rip your leg off and stick it up your arsehole." Dorsal lurched towards Ferris but was prevented from reaching him because the slightly built 60 year old woman who had plucked him out of the air with Ferris still attached to his ears, appeared to have him in a half nelson. He thought he might be falling in love.

"What about Daniel?" Ferris enquired reluctantly.

"Oh I grabbed that and took it upstairs about 10 minutes ago. It appeared to be relatively intact."

----

Up in the shed, space was at a premium. Bernice had sectioned off a reception room, a bedroom and a bathroom/ kitchen/conservatory/abattoir and every wall, every item of furniture, every square inch of flooring was decorated with dried and drying human blood and assorted detritus. It was the scene of singular, retched desolation - much like Macdonalds in Finsbury Park but without the plastic straws.

"I love what you've done with the place" murmured Chas searching forlornly for somewhere to sit which would not stain him permanently."

"Excuse me for such a second boys, I just have to pop next door and polish off a little unfinished business."

There was a scrotum shrivelling howl before Daniel's grandmother re-emerged with the dripping severed head of the actor who until very recently had played Dr Who.

"This is just another example of the way in which TV lies to you boys, look and learn. They tell you these time lords regenerate after they die but I've beheaded three of the fuckers and they all stay as dead as this one."

Daniel's grandmother waited with disappointment for a response but since her guests all appeared to be rigamortised with horror she felt obliged to fill the conversational void.

"So what brings you to see your nana Daniel? Forgotten the recipe for chicken soup?"

"My father wants to kill me - I love him but he just sees me as prey."

"Love - well you certainly didn't inherit that from our side of the family. Anyway despising you seems reasonable enough. On the day you were born there was a game of pass the parcel and you and your brother had to fight for the last seat. Selfish of you, don't you think - leaving your brother to die. You are clearly unfamiliar with the words of one Mr Rolf Harris in his seminal 1969 Christmas number 1 - ‘ Two little boys’."

"How can I be blamed - I wasn't even born on the day he died?"

"Seems a little bit weak as excuses go."

"I've come all this way, don't you have any advice for me?"

"You need to man up."

"I'm 8 and my 36 stone police sergeant father is trying to off me and that's all you have to say?"

"You're lucky to get that sunshine. Any grandson of mine should be able to look after himself. These three however, I can help" she put down the severed head on the occasional table in front of them, went next door, popped back to turn the head round to face them and then back again with a large, gore soaked wooden chest.

"This is for you six eyes" she handed Ferris a huge sword / axe type weapon with two vicious spikes at either end. "This is for you elephant boy" she gave Dorsal a large rectangular green metal box with 'property of US Army' written down the side. "It’s a rocket propelled grenade launcher."

She walked over to Chas, took him by the hand and led him outside the shed, closing the door behind her. She pressed a small silk drawstring bag into his hand.

"This contains everything you are going to need - 6 coins - one each for the of the boys eyes and a slip of paper on which I have written the Roman prayer for the dead. 'Ego sum dea, mortua non sum' ."

"What about the weapons you gave them?"

"You could pitch up at 33 Bulstrode Avenue in the star ship fucking Enterprise, empty its entire array of photonic torpedo's through the letterbox and it wouldn't even slow him down."

Chas stared at her with measured disgust. This woman was a different kind of evil...

"My son and I are not the bad guys."

“That's like telling me to ignore the sinking Titanic and have sympathy for the iceberg.”

"My husband told me I needed a hobby - I tried needlepoint and yoga but they didn’t appeal, he was too busy knocking seventy shades of shite out of myself and our kids to understand the landscape he was painting .I know we may seem like monsters to you but that isn’t even half the story"

"If something looks like a vulture, smells like a vulture and acts like a vulture then it might as well be a vulture."

"We were the victims, my children and I. Somewhere in the space between the punches and the degrading abuse we were......set adrift."

"And that justifies what you have done, the depths you have sunk to, it is somehow licence for that little boy's father to lay in wait, in his home, to end his life? You cannot abrogate all responsibility for the Gomorrah you have built."

She took his right hand and placed it between her breasts - she was standing on the edge of the mountain. She held his left hand in hers. This was not tenderness, but it was all she had to offer.

"Can you please stop me? Stop me and perhaps, just perhaps you can stop him."

He felt her heart race.

"I cannot harm you, I am not equipped. It is not in my vocabulary."

"If you could have put a stop to the carnage all those years ago, to the plunder of your family and friends, wouldn't you have done so, no matter how?"

He had often wondered.

He moved his right hand, it was no more than the tiniest of gestures but it was enough. She flew backwards and down and then she was gone.

From an early age, death had surrounded him like a forest fire, leaving him with no-where to hide, taking everyone and everything he cherished until love itself perished in the flames. Now he knew, finally, it was time to stop running and make a stand. If death wanted to take these three children it was going to have to get past him first.