Halloween Special: Legacy

Legacy

There are places where the forests once held sway, where hidden glades once lay deep in darkest woodland, where secret paths once criss-crossed the land, linking places of ritual and sacrifice. Now these paths are gone, obliterated by the Roman, furrowed by the Saxon, fortressed by the Norman and built over by generations since. But, in some places, the mystery lingers and the dead still tread upon the paths they have ever walked.

Once, in the Anglo Saxon chronicles, there was a farm by a wood, near the ancient Bernwood Forest. By the time of the Domesday Book, this village had become Oldtone, and the oaken hulls of medieval fleets had claimed the woodland. But the town of Wotton Underwood remained, on the fringes of the Chilterns, and had crept back into a semblance of forested isolation since the closure of the railways and the construction of the motorway which avoided the ancient byways of pilgrimage and commerce. Perhaps this is why towns like Wotton Underwood were sought after by those seeking solitude and retreat from celebrity. The tree-shaded croquet lawns and swimming pools of rock stars and actors nestle behind high walls, red brick and flintstone contrasting with the steel gates that slide smoothly open upon electronic command, watched over by television eyes.

In the gatehouse, on Sunday night, the Special Branch officer lounged in his chair. He kept one eye on the flickering CCTV display, and another eye on the television. Halloween 3: Season of the Witch. Exploding dummies and worm-eyed robots. He knew it well. He sat, cleaning his spare pistol, the brush and rod sliding up and down the rifled barrel, picking into the recesses of the firing chamber. Satisfied with his efforts, he slid in the bolt and clicked the two halves of the weapon together. He worked the slide, which snapped forward as it should, checked the safety catch, pulled the trigger with a dry click and inserted an empty magazine. Then, something caught his eye.

Something flickered on the CCTV monitor, outside the gate. Then it was gone.

He spoke into his radio handset.

‘Base, this is outpost, over.’ The only response was the hiss of static. ‘Base, this is outpost, over.’ He picked up the phone, but the dialling tone was dead.

‘Fuck.’ He was in a dilemma, with a potential threat outside and his backup unresponsive. Priority had to be the safety of the Principal. He would need to check the external threat, before working out what was wrong with the communications.

So he heaved himself out of his chair and slid on an armoured vest and waterproof jacket, unlatching the door and stepping into the breezy October night. The tang of woodsmoke on the wind always reminded him of burnt urine, not that he had ever smelled it. There was something underneath it though, a scorched odour that was familiar. His mind groped for the label in vain, before he returned to reality.

‘Better check it out.’ He felt for the pistol in the shoulder holster and withdrew it, checking the safety catch as always. Then he remembered that his spare handgun was still on the desk in the gatehouse. ‘Fuck.’ It was a potential disciplinary offence to leave it unsecured, but he forced himself to relax. It was unloaded, locked in the gatehouse, and all his ammunition was in a belt-pouch in the small of his back, two spare magazines in total.

He sneaked towards the front gate, staying on the damp verge instead of crunching on the gravel. The gate was constructed of solid steel bars, hydraulically powered and proof against vehicles and explosive devices, certified by an army of risk assessors and security experts. But it could be climbed over easily enough, as could the wall. No intruder alarms had been triggered, at least to his knowledge given the communication glitch, but it was prudent to check. He peered through the railings, both hands clasping the pistol in a downwards grip.

There was something out there, a fleeting figure, in fact more than one. Then, the wind whipped up around his ankles and something invisible rushed at him, between the railings. And all went black.

***

‘Base to outpost, over!’ The officer sat in the mansion’s tapestry-lined hall, staring through the peephole of the blastproofed door. He clicked the transmit button on the radio once more. ‘Base to outpost, over.’ There was no response.

The Principal fidgeted behind him. ‘What do you think it is?’

The officer always found it strange hearing that voice, familiar over so many years from the television and radio news reports, but now stripped of its inflections and stage-mannerisms.

‘Not sure, Sir. But I’d better take a look. Outpost isn’t responding and the other two officers are off-site.’

‘Can it wait until they get back? My wife shouldn’t be long, perhaps just another hour.’ The permanently-tanned brow furrowed in irritation.

The officer had thought the Principal might be informal, given his well-known sofa-manners, but he was usually dismissive, as if continually pre-occupied.

‘I’d better check it out, Sir, just in case. I’ll call this in to headquarters as well. You should stay close to the Bolthole, just as a precaution.’

The Bolthole was a steel-walled and lead-lined ‘panic room’ which was proofed against high explosive, poison gas and radioactivity, with an internal air supply for two weeks. But it was not the done thing to call it a ‘panic room’ so it was known as the Bolthole.

‘Okay then,’ sighed the Principal as he walked up the central staircase towards the Bolthole, opposite the bedroom on the first floor balcony. The inside was rather claustrophobic, so he sat on a red leather chaise-longue, gazing idly at the paintings and tapestries that lined the wood-panelled walls of the grand hall. His wife had taken down all the weapons, or rather had told someone else to. Might send the wrong message, she had said, and they’re still going on about that ridiculous war. Not that he cared. He had his own worries. He took out his Blackberry and switched it on, listening to the door click shut as the bodyguard stepped outside.

Five minutes, then ten minutes, and twenty minutes passed. The Principal sat on the couch, shifting his backside as pins and needles plagued him, flicking through the newswires through longstanding habit. Then his patience snapped. ‘For fuck’s sake, where is he?’ He stood up and stretched, walking towards the Bolthole. Then, he stopped, muttering to himself.

‘She’ll be back soon. What’ll she say if I’m cowering in here? What if something’s happened, and the media find out. What will they say?’

He descended the staircase, hairs prickling on the back of his neck. He was mostly frightened, but felt a slight thrill of excitement. I could be a hero, he thought. Grab the bodyguard’s gun, shoot a terrorist. The fantasy sent a shiver of pleasure down his spine. What would they say then, eh? They won’t be talking about wars and inquiries and whitewashes and deaths anymore! He smiled, a familiar grin spreading across his face. Might even be a new chapter for my memoirs, for the paperback version.

The Principal gently pulled the heavy door open, unused to the mechanism and more accustomed to doors being opened for him. He looked back over his shoulder before stepping outside. There was a flicker, in the mirror which hung on the wall by the staircase. Again. A spasm seized the side of his face. Maybe I’m going mad. He had taken most of the other mirrors down, anxious at the shapes which had flickered on the edge of his vision, but unable to confide in anyone. He wrenched his gaze away and stepped out into the cool night outside, closing the door behind him.

The bodyguards lay on the ground at the end of the driveway. He turned, to run back into the Bolthole. Fuck! He realised with a surge of terror that the door had locked behind him. Panic seized him, rooting him to the ground. Then an idea flashed in his mind. The gatehouse! He ran towards the gatehouse, feet crunching on the gravel. Then, halfway down the driveway, he saw them at the gate, felt the blast of icy air that preceded them.

Shimmering shapes of white and grey, hanging on the wind, black holes for mouths and eyes. Some crawled, some walked and some were incomplete, missing arms or legs or even both. Some were tall, some were small and some were babes in arms. The boy with the shell of a skull, hollowed by a cannon-shell. Limbless soldiers in scraps of uniform. Women, children, forever crawling away from the wreckage of car bombs. Ethereal wisps without any form to relate to, aviators once strewn amongst wreckage, soldiers atomised by high explosives. Bubbling skin, mist-tendrils still scorched by napalm and phosphorus. Suicides with broken heads, and the shapes of children yet unborn, never to be born, poisoned by depleted uranium. The ghostly evidence of mass destruction, still walking in the night after all these years, their numbers swelling even now.

The odours of war filled his nostrils, scorched flesh and decay, gunsmoke, kerosene, sweat and blood. He retched once, twice, emptying his stomach.

He sprinted for the gatehouse door and pulled at the handle, praying for it to open. And mercifully it did. He slammed the door shut behind him, and the lock clicked shut. Pain fluttered in his chest. He glanced around, saw the telephone and the pistol, and seized the phone receiver.

There was no dialling tone, just a hiss which grew in volume, a hundred thousand distant wails of agony. Getting closer and closer, like the faces pushing at the windows, white shapes contorted in pain and the agony of betrayal. He recognised them as the flashes which had fleetingly leered at him from mirrors and reflections, glimpsed from the corner of his eye over the last few years.

‘No…’ His cry of desperation grew in his chest. They would never leave him alone, never stop hounding him, even after the beasts of the media and the feral anti-war troublemakers had finished picking over the carcase of his legacy. And these were worst of all, the ghosts of his suppressed conscience made real.

He grabbed the pistol and the smell of gun oil reassured him. He pointed it at the writing shapes, pulling back the slide in the same way he had seen his bodyguards rehearse emergency drills, but his hand was shaking wildly.

‘Leave….me….ALONE!’

But he knew they never would. So he pointed the gun at his temple, squeezed his eyes shut at the same time he squeezed the trigger.

The gunshot echoed throughout the gatehouse and across the landscaped grounds outside.

***

Blue lights flashed across the flintstone walls of the mansion, but were lost in the depths of the woods. The Principal’s corpse had been zipped up in a body bag, like those of so many others under his watch and in the aftermath of his legacy.

No less a figure than the Deputy Chief Constable stood at the scene, and the only reason the Chief himself was not there was his absence on leave in the Caribbean. He stood, hands deep in the pockets of his fluorescent incident jacket, which covered the civilian clothes he had been wearing when called from home.

Helicopters roared in the distance, the noise getting steadily closer.

‘The top brass from the Home Office and the Met will be here any minute,’ said the Deputy, to the incident commander. ‘Do we have any idea what happened?’

‘Looks like he shot himself, Sir.’ The Chief Superintendent stroked his chin. ‘The two Special Branch officers say that there was some sort of disturbance outside, and they went to check. They don’t really remember anything else.’

‘What about CCTV?’

‘We’ve quickly checked the tapes. Most of them are fuzzy, and the tech guys will analyse them. Apparently there’s been electrical disturbances locally. But the gatehouse camera has clear footage.’

‘Does that show what happened?’

‘Pretty much. The officer call-signed ‘Outpost’ is cleaning his backup firearm, then he goes outside. Nothing much happens until the Principal enters the gatehouse in a state of panic, picks up the phone, then the pistol, before blowing his brains out.’

‘Looks like the Special Branch guys can say goodbye to their careers then. They shouldn’t have left the Principal and should not have left a loaded weapon lying around.’

The Chief Superintendent sighed. ‘Well, Sir, the officer claims he left it unloaded in accordance with the standard drills. You would think he had left a round in the chamber by mistake when he unloaded it, but the camera shows him firing off the action before loading the magazine.’

The helicopters touched down on the croquet lawn in a whirlwind of light and noise.

The Deputy Chief leaned closer to the Chief Superintendent to make himself heard over the noise. ‘Get ready for the media shit-storm tomorrow,’ he said. ‘But at least we’re in the clear.’

The rotors whirled, blowing up dust and gravel, slicing away the vague traces of mist which hung on the All Hallow’s Eve air. In the darkness of the woods, in the shadows, unseen figures slid away, except for one which lingered, wandering lost before eventually dissipating like the last wisps of smoke from a gun barrel or funeral pyre.

This story may seem to have a familiar protagonist and subject. I resigned from the Royal Air Force after the revelations of the Hutton Inquiry. If life ever chooses to imitate art.....Happy Halloween!