DOCTOR SHOCK AND THE DARK BRETHREN
by
Patrick Regan
This second book in the Doctor Shock Trilogy will soon join its twin in the Amazon. Until then, here’s the first chapter.
SPITTING PROHIBITED
As we passed the dead miners’ estate of Coalham and headed out of Stump and into open country, the driver switched off the lights inside the bus and floored the pedal. It was the same routine every night. We thundered through the countryside in the dark, no streetlights, no gas lamps, no flickering torches on either side to shed some glimmer on our way. The road was not lined with houses, nor cottages, nor any isolated dwelling of cultivating man, so no clues there as to our whereabouts. We sat on the bus and looked out of the windows at the sides and saw nothing; looked out of the window at the back and saw nothing. So we turned our eyes to the front and fixed on the twin beams of the headlights carving out a route through the night, showing us the next few yards of the road. We were at the mercy of the driver, our lives were in his hands. He could keep to the road or he could veer to the side and take us bounding over the fields, or smack us dead into a tree or bury us in a ditch or throw us up some bank and into the sky, to turn about and roll us over and bring us crashing down to earth. Which he never did, of course. I had ridden the bus all week and never once did the driver deviate from his fixed course. He kept to the road. He switched off the lights inside and he increased his speed but that was the limit of his madness. It was enough for him to give us all a nightmare ride, he wanted no more than that, he wished us no harm, he just wanted to give us a little thrill. People paid money for this in Blackpool. Ask him why he did it and that is what he would say andso we never asked why he did it. We sat back and enjoyed the ride. We held on to the cold metal rail atop the seat in front and we let our bodies bounce up and down and side to side and we held on tight when we took a corner and relaxed our grip a little on the straight. After a week of this I could tell when the corners were coming, could feel the driver ease his foot on the pedal, could feel the world begin to tilt. Like all good rides in Blackpool the best places to sit were the front and the back. I tried the front the first night out, close to the driver, near the lights which picked out the road. I felt he might engage me in conversation, that he might hand over some useful piece of information that I could turn to my advantage, but he kept his eyes on the road ahead and never said a word. Once past the Coalham stop he switched off the lights inside and pressed the pedals and turned the wheel and shifted the gear-lever and followed the pool of light. I sat in the side-seat, next to the door, and held onto the metal pole that ran from floor to roof. I watched the light we chased and occasionally I tore my eyes away and tried to see his face in the penumbra and I could tell he was smiling. The rest of the week I rode at the back. I bumped up and down on the seat and by Thursday was letting go the rail and enjoying the ride to the full. I let the bus toss me hither and yon, all the length of the big back seat. The bus was never full and what crowd there was thinned out at Coalham. But yet it was never empty, never just me and the driver. There were always other odd passengers, bouncing around here and there. And the last of these never left until the final stop, the one outside the garage at Biddleton where the bus lived. He wore a white mac and an Ahab beard of the worrying kind and there was a too precise tilt to his trilby which marked him as a haunted man. So I would get off with him, give my legs a moment to get used to solid ground then walk off down a lane to where Ginger was waiting with the car. Monday, I tried it alone. Left the car at Biddleton, in sight of the clock-tower and nothing else, caught a bus into Longbottom, then spent the day mooching around. At first it was pleasant wandering the streets of my youth but after a while I longed to walk through the green velvet curtains of the Alhambra again and I missed the blacksmith and the twilit shops. When I found myself strolling past potbanks with my eyes searching the windows at pavement level, trying to see into the basements beyond and catch the eye of some old-timer so that he would stop his work and hold up some white unpainted, unglazed figures of horses and dogs to the window for my approval, then I knew I’d mooched too much and I’d better find a pub and pretend I was thirsty until it was time to catch the last bus. So that was Monday. Tuesday I recruited Ginger. I had wanted to avoid that, had wanted to do the job swift and silent, there was no money in it, no reason to involve others, it was just something I had to do, unfinished business, that’s all. Ginger dropped me off in Longbottom in time to catch the bus then set off to Biddleton to wait for me. He got there a few minutes before the bus. He didn’t know the road, had been taking things at a careful pace till he’d seen the bus bearing down in his mirror. The road was too narrow for the bus to pass and it showed no signs of slowing down, so Ginger hit the accelerator and drove like the devil with the Archangel Michael on his tail. I’d been bouncing at the back so I hadn’t noticed Ginger’s plight but on the way home he went over his journey in great detail. Twice. Wednesday, he dropped me off in Longbottom earlier. Thursday, Algy points out the dangers of establishing a routine, just as old Algy used to do. Friday, I engage the trilbied Ahab in chat as we wait for the bus to arrive. He tells me he works in a Hideyho in Longbottom but lives out Biddleton way, t’other side the owd loony-bin and chuckles as though he had a lucky escape from the inky knife. No, he dunner work Satdees, nor Sundees neither for that is a day of rest as prescribed by the Lord Jesus. I resist the urge to ask him where he left his moustache and instead tell him the story about Christ being buried under the rock in Longbottom Park so that he lets me go and sit on the back seat of the bus and doesn’t join me; our brief friendship now at an end. As I bounce around and think of the morrow I realize I could have saved myself a week of this if I had spoken to my religious acquaintance sooner but then I console myself with the thought that people pay good money for rides like these in Blackpool.
So, Saturday comes and I do the deed. There is no one else on the bus when we arrive at Biddleton. At the door, I lean across and cut the driver’s throat. As he gurgles and slobbers and a mixture of blood and saliva froths out of his mouth, I remember the buses of my youth, especially the double-deckers with their smoke-filled tops and I recall the signs that mentioned ten shilling fines should anyone be so uncouth as to expectorate.
(“Doctor Shock and the Dark Brethren” was first published by the Inverted Tree Press in 2003. Copyright: Patrick Regan 2003.)
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