The Dark Rider

CHAPTER Eleven



The children sat on the rocks throwing stones at a plastic bottle that was drifting along on the swell a few meters away. Neil had scored the most hits and was now out of ammunition. He jumped up and went searching for more pebbles. Vicky was getting bored and had stopped throwing. She couldn’t stop thinking about the key and the voices, or ignore the growing feeling that they should be doing something. Neil came back with a handful of pebbles and sat down. He picked up the biggest and readied himself to throw it but then saw that the bottle had drifted too far away.

“Damn,” he muttered looking around. “We need another target.”

“I’m bored,” said Vicky.

“We could go back and get the tennis stuff,” said Neil.

“I’m not going all the way back home to come back here again,” said Vicky. “It will take too long.”

“Hmm,” said Neil at a loss what to suggest next.

“Grrr,” said Vicky. “I just want to find out what that man is up to. How dare he chase us off and scare us like that?”

“How does it feel now?” asked Neil.

Vicky reached gingerly down the neck of her t-shirt and pulled out the key holding it between her hands.

“Nothing, it’s just like normal.” She sounded almost disappointed.

A sudden cough made them turn in surprise. Standing a few meters away on a large flat rock was the boy. He was quite tall, thin and wiry. His clothes were clearly old, trousers with a few rips in them and a t-shirt with frayed sleeves. His eyes were bright and full of apprehension. Vicky quickly let the key drop back down under her t-shirt.

“What was that?” he asked in a thick local accent.

“None of your business,” said Neil quickly.

“My uncle,” said the boy. “It’s his dog.” He shrugged, looking away.

“What do you want?” asked Vicky after a pause, her voice guarded.

“He said I have to follow you, find out why you were snooping around the wood, how you got there. Said I have to make sure you don’t go back.” The boy looked suddenly fearful, glancing nervously over his shoulder. “He’d kill me if he found me talking to you.”

Neil glanced at his sister.

“What’s your name?” asked Vicky.

“Rob,” replied the boy. “He calls me Robert.”

“But you prefer Rob?” said Vicky. The boy nodded furtively.

“I’m Vicky, and this is my brother Neil.” The boy looked from one to the other, his face unreadable.

“Why don’t you come and sit down with us and tell us about your uncle?” said Vicky, desperately hoping that they might get some answers.

The boy took one step forward towards them and then hesitated. He looked over his shoulder again and seemed to see something in the distance. He shivered visibly.

“What’s the matter?” asked Vicky suddenly feeling sorry for this boy who obviously had a pretty hard life.

“That thing round your neck,” he said his voice rising in pitch. “I’ve seen it in his book.”

Vicky felt her hand involuntarily rise to touch the fabric of her t-shirt.

“What do you mean? What book?” she asked earnestly.

“I’ve said too much,” said the boy almost crying. “He’ll beat me for sure.”

“Rob, calm down and tell us, we can help you,” said Vicky jumping up. The boy turned to regard her fearfully, flinching from her sudden movement.

“Stay away,” he hissed at her. “Don’t go back.”

Neil jumped up too.

“Hey, watch it you,” he said.

“You don’t know anything,” said the boy as he began to back away. “He’ll find you, he will, you’ll regret it then.”

“Regret what? What are you talking about?” asked Vicky.

He took one last look at them, his eyes wide with fear, then he turned and jumped across the rocks. Neil jumped up and chased after him.

“No,” cried Vicky. “Let him go.”

Neil ignored her and ran after the boy who was skipping across the rocks with ease. Reaching the beginning of the path, the boy pulled away before disappearing through a gap in a stone wall. Neil followed and as he ran through the gap he felt a sharp thud in the side of his head, realizing too late that the boy had waited for him. He lost his balance and sprawled to the ground grazing his knees.

“I told you,” the boy shouted in manic glee before running off again.

Gingerly, Neil pushed himself up into a sitting position, his head spinning. He was examining the cuts and grazes on his hands and knees just as Vicky appeared at the gap in the wall. Seeing her brother she knelt down beside him.

“Are you ok?” she asked.

“Yeah, just a little shocked,” he replied slowly getting to his feet and using his sister as support. “Should’ve known better.”

“What now?” asked Vicky.

He looked at her and grimaced.

“I think we go back home. I’ve had enough adventures for today.”

“I guess you’re right,” said Vicky. “Come on then mister injured warrior, let’s go back.”

With that the children began the hike back up the hill towards the cottage and home.


*****


Nicola and Paul had dinner in the alcove of a small bay window tucked away in a quiet corner of the hotel dining room. They ordered a bottle of wine and then, with the dinner finished and the plates cleared away, they sat finishing their glasses in the half-light of the evening. Outside the sun was setting, filling the dining room with blazing shafts of light and columns of deep shadow.

“So, revision time,” said Paul. “What are you going to do as soon as you get home?”

“Resign from banking, move back home with my parents, volunteer for Greenpeace and then have a paid job with them within six months,” said Nicola defiantly.

“And what are you not going to do?” he asked sternly.

“Get back with my boyfriend and carry on working in the bank while waiting for someone else to come along and change my life for me because I am the only person who can do this,” she said.

“Well done,” he said laughing. “You’ve passed the exam. One gold star for Nicola.”

She grimaced. “If only it was that easy.”

He leaned forward taking her hand in his.

“That’s the trick you must remember,” he said. “It is that easy, once you’ve made the decision.”

She smiled at him gratefully. “I wish I had your confidence.”

“Anyone can be confident once they believe in themselves. Besides,” he paused. “I’m not that confident.”

“But you are,” she replied. “At least in my eyes.”

He looked around himself. The evening was drawing in and this time would soon be ending. He turned to her, needing to confide in her, to hang on to this as long as he could.

“Nicola,” he said softly. “Do you believe in good and evil?”

“I guess so,” she replied. “I think there is good and evil in everyone.”

“There is another world Nicola,” he said, his eyes a dull gleam in the shadow light. “Where good and evil are,” he paused. “More defined.”

Nicola stared, his soft words transfixing her.

“There are places where the worlds come together. That is how my aunt came here. She told me of a place where Light and Dark do battle.” He paused as the last rays of the dying sun began to fall from the walls.

“The Dark is winning, Nicola,” he said.

She felt the world falling away to leave just the two of them sitting together at this one table, this one void.

“You can see it in everything that is happening in the world. Global warming, extinctions, overcrowding, selfishness, arrogance, despair, inequality, suffering. Like a tumor it grows, imperceptible at first, yet slowly and inevitably poisoning the body that carries it. By the time it is recognized for what it is, it is too late.”

He leaned forward, his eyes seeking hers, wanting to see the truth of belief in her as he spoke.

“There are races, people who still fight,” he said. “My aunt was one of them. She told me I am one of them. She told me I will replace her as the bridge that links her world and ours, that this would happen on the seventh day after she died. She called it an awakening. Can you believe this, Nicola?”

She nodded, unable to look away from him, to think for herself. Only to listen.

“Because I don’t know if I can anymore,” he said. “And it torments me.” He dropped his head, running his hands through his hair as he did so. He looked up to see endless flights of gulls drifting across the horizon outside. He drew a deep breath before continuing. “She said there was a prophecy. That there would be one who came and united the old races and defeated evil forever. She said that person was me. In all the years I knew her she was teaching me, preparing me for this moment.” He looked back at Nicola, his blue eyes burning.

“That day is today. It has nearly ended and I have felt nothing Nicola, nothing. I don’t know if I believe her anymore. I don’t know if she was just some crazy old woman. But if she was right then why do I feel nothing? What am I doing wrong?”

He stopped, unable to continue, his head falling forwards. Nicola’s heart filled with emotion for this young man sitting opposite her, so troubled, his story so wild that she almost believed him. She wanted to believe him, to know that there was another force acting in the world, that there was still hope for the wild spirits of life, the mysteries and magic that once inhabited the very fabric of the land, and which had now been driven to the very edges of our consciousness, buried under industry and economics, money and power, the seeping dislocation and decay of anything that is good in the world. Most of all she wanted to comfort him, to heal his wounds so raw and open. She wanted to lose herself with him, with this moment, with this spirit from another land, another life.

She reached forward, taking his hand in hers. The physical connection electrified her and she shivered. She had never before wanted someone so completely and, as the moon began to rise and detach itself from the sea, she released herself to desire.

“Come up with me,” she said quietly. He looked into her eyes, their souls communing with each other, knowing what was to come, what must be. Rising from his chair, he followed her up the stairs to her room.

With trembling hands Nicola unlocked and opened the door and went inside into the deepening shadows. She pulled her t-shirt over her head and slipped off her jeans and underwear and turned naked to face him. He stood aloof from her, the teenager in shock, the other consciousness remembering her slender body, remembering the touch of her smooth skin in his hands. He began to undress and they moved to the bed and lay together in the darkness, skin against skin.

They kissed urgently, hands gripping, exploring, their beings joining in a union and, as she lay there, the room seemed to melt around her until they were in their dream. Her mind jumped as memories and knowing unlocked from hidden depths and tumbled and flashed through her consciousness, hitting her like a huge adrenaline rush until she felt herself drowning under the weight of another life.

As memories and knowledge hit her something else seemed to be spreading under the surface of her visions. As the moments passed it grew and grew until it was roaring through her, filling her veins, her muscles, her skin. It flooded out from her, shooting across the world and touching all life in a great rush of wild force, and after it had touched everything, had reached the far limits of the wild world, it came back, roaring and searing like electricity through her, carrying all the goodness and wildness of life and tainted with all the evils and darkness, and she saw faces and visions that flashed with recognition, anger and malevolence. For a moment she could not control it, and her mind tumbled and spun in a whirlpool of chaos until she thought it would burst, but a voice called to her in the roaring void and began to pull her back.

“Nicola.”

That one voice that she could hear, that she could lock herself onto.

“Nicola.”

The roaring began to subside, to lessen.

“Nicola.”

Slowly she opened her eyes.

Senses, feelings, minds, desires. Millions of consciousnesses trying to get into her mind, a constant noise that surrounded her, and she fought to see.

“It’s you.”

She heard a voice full of disbelief.

“All the time she said it would be me, but it’s you.”

She struggled to bring her ragged mind back to a reality. She blinked, but it was too dark in the room to see properly.

“Nicola.”

A face came into her vision. It was Paul.

“It was supposed to be me,” he said. “But she was wrong.”

Nicola closed her eyes again. The noise returned, screaming at her, roaring against her mind.

“But something has happened,” he said. “And where is she now to help me?”

Nicola focused on the voice again, making one last effort to push herself up. She hugged her knees, feeling her nakedness. “Hold me,” she said, reaching out to him.

He pulled away, grief and disbelief making him recoil from her.

“This is why I’ve felt nothing. There was nothing to feel.”

Reaching for his clothes, he began to pull them on.

“I have to get dressed, get my things,” he said. It was too much for him. Too many questions poured into his mind.

“Paul, don’t do this to me,” she pleaded. “I don’t know what is happening to me, to us.”

He strode forward thrusting his face close to hers.

“You have stolen something from me. What do you want me to feel?”

She shrunk away from him.

“This is not how it was supposed to be,” he said, fear and loss filling him, directing his actions, his speech. He did not know what to do. Everything that Gwen had taught him, had said to him, was wrong. The certainty she had placed in him since he was a young boy was shattered.

“I don’t know what I have done,” she said fighting back tears.

“You have betrayed me as she did,” he raved at her. “I was supposed to be awakened, not you.”

She grabbed at his arm with her hand in desperation. “Paul, I don’t understand.”

“Understand this,” he said. “We are out of control, out in the deep. This morning I knew everything and now all I know is nothing. I don’t know who I am or who you are. I don’t know what has happened to my life, because its meaning has just been taken from me, by you. All I know is that I have to run right now because something bad is going to happen and you cannot stop me.” He moved closer, pulling himself towards her through her grip on his arm. “I was prepared to be awakened. I learned its meaning. I was ready. You are not.”

He felt it now, the presence of the rider within him. Stronger it had become as the night approached, and now its urgency pulled desperately at his mind. Unable to cope he pulled away from her and strode to the door twisting the handle and pulling it open. Light from the corridor flooded into the darkened room. He looked back at her on the bed, her hand held up to shield her eyes from the light, her outstretched arm rigid. In that moment he knew he had lost her, and he turned away walking quickly down the corridor, the image of her burning in his vision.

He heard her call out behind him, one desperate cry that he forced himself to shut out from his memory. He ran down the stairs to the hotel lobby and then he was free, through the front door and out into the cool of the night where he called out to a darkness heavy with rain clouds. He moved quickly across the land, desperation and confusion scrambling his mind. At the edge of his consciousness the presence of the rider was strong. As he neared Aunt Gwen’s house he began to run.