Shadow Waltz: Soul Masque Parts 1 and 2

By Terry Grimwood

SHADOW WALTZ
There is a war that never ends, a war that stretches beyond the walls of this world and grinds its foot soldiers to dust. Meg Roberts, traitor to a cause she never really understood, believed that she had escaped the conflict. But when a young girl comes to her for help, she finds herself wrenched back into the that nightmare dance of souls. Monstrous forces are stirring and each side demands her allegiance.

SHADOW WALTZ
There is no distance between the past and the present
There is no end to the war of wars
There is no escape, even in death

• Language: English
• Publisher: Lulu.com
• Release date: Jan 8, 2018
• ISBN: 9780244658670

Terry Grimwood

Suffolk born and proud of it, Terry Grimwood is the author of a handful of novels and novellas, including Deadside Revolution, the science fiction-flavoured political thriller Bloody War, and Joe which was inspired by true events. His short stories have appeared in numerous magazines and anthologies and have been gathered into three collections, The Exaggerated Man, There Is A Way To Live Forever and Affairs of a Cardio-Vascular Nature. Terry has also written and Directed three plays as well as co-written engineering textbooks for Pearson Educational Press. He loves music and plays harmonica, and growls songs into a microphone with The Ripsaw Blues Band. Happily semi-retired, he nonetheless continues to teach electrical installation at a further education college. He is married to Debra, the love of his life.

Book preview

Shadow Waltz: Soul Masque Parts 1 and 2

Shadow Waltz: Soul Masque Parts 1 and 2

Shadow Waltz: Soul Masque Parts 1 and 2

Terry Grimwood

The right of Terry Grimwood to be identified as its author has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Design and Patents act 1988

All rights reserved

ISBN: 978-0-244-65867-0

No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form by any means without the prior written permission of the publisher, not 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.

All characters in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental

Published by theEXAGGERATEDpress UK

http://exaggeratedpress.weebly.com/

PART I: SOUL MASQUE

Epilogue

When he sang, he sang at midnight.

Who is he? a new punter asked Sian, the Castrato Club’s owner.

All new punters asked that question and Sian was tired of hearing it. How the fuck should I know? she lied.

Give me a regular spot, the Singer had said on their first encounter, washing the blood from his chubby hands. I am an evangelist and I am a crooner in search of a microphone, and your club is an orchard ripe with needy souls.

Sian could be rude to the customers here. Some of them even liked it. Some of them provoked her until she threw beer in their faces, or slapped them. Slapping was a special treat, received with gratitude and given with pleasure.

The Singer was a plump, tall man, bald, with a cherub-round face and clear-white skin. His lips were red enough to have been painted, but who knew, or cared. There were plenty of men who wore lipstick and rouge in the Castrato Club, and plenty whose women led them around on leashes and kept them in chains and dressed them in plastic and leather.

There was a stir. The mindless dance-thud was cut. Light shone on the stage as, resplendent in cream evening suit, the Singer smiled at his audience and began his performance. The song was glass clear and ice hard.

He sings like an angel, someone said in hushed tones. It was a woman and she was tall and her hair was suspiciously black, as was her makeup and the leather she wore. She held a leash which terminated at a spiked collar that embraced the neck of a second, willowy woman dressed in a diaphanous white dress. Willow Woman’s hands were cuffed behind her back. Her Dominatrix lifted a wine glass to her lips so she could drink.

Sian, herself poured into a sheath of bright pink PVC, the uniform of Castrato staff, chuckled nervously. Oh yeah, he was an angel alright. And he only sang when there was something to sing about, good or bad.

The voice sailed, unaccompanied and ghost sweet, through the hushed confines of the club. The fetish-uniformed revellers, the Doms and their Subs, those bound to the frames that lined the walls of the club and those confined in cages, all turned to watch.

Some cried.

Some always cried.

The voice was a piercing sigh. It was choir boy, it was spirit.

It faltered.

The Singer shook his head. He looked frightened. Sian had never seen fear in his face before. Instinctively she backed away from the stage, tried to remember where the fire exits were -

Something slammed into the building. The Castrato Club shuddered, its walls twisted momentarily out of shape, bottles clattered from their shelves.

Then the dance floor erupted into a chaos of screaming and writhing as everyone surged towards the exit. The bound and the caged shrieked out their despair and the temperature crashed towards freezing as the first of the horde exploded through the doors.

It was skeletal thin and cadaver-white. Its head was all mouth and needle-fangs, its eyes night-empty and terrible as it ploughed into the screeching mass of humanity trapped in the club. 

Chapter One: White Powder

The Reverend John Johnson wasn’t at the usual pick-up point.

Meg panicked. John had a job to do, the address and details passed to her, as always, by a phone call from Sian. John’s payment was in the glove compartment of Meg’s car, stolen, with God-given impunity, from the drug rehabilitation clinic where she worked.

Plan B then.

She drove to John’s house and saw that the curtains were drawn. His sensible saloon stood unused and rusting. The once neat garden had returned to jungle. Meg pounded the peeling front door. No answer. Round to the back. The patio door was unlocked. She went inside, into a house she has never visited before. It was cold, dirty and stank of rotten food.

John was foetus-curled and shaking on the lounge floor.

John, get up you have a job.

Cuh…cuh…can’t.

You have to. Christ John, you can’t say no. No one could say no to Sian and those she represented. No one. Meg got him up into a sitting position.

Need it…

You know the rules, no white ash, no white powder.

Fuck the ash.

Meg hugged him but that didn’t stop the shaking. Only one thing would stop that.

Please Meg…

For Christ sake shut up! I can’t give you stuff before the job so stop asking me.

But she knew she would, because the job had to be done at all costs.

…It hadn’t always been like this. John once told Meg it was because of the way his wife died, cancer-riddled and in agony, cursing and railing against the God they had both served so faithfully. God offered no apologies and Anna Johnson’s life ended badly.

Her dying blasphemies racketed around John’s skull like a never-ending symphony of despair. He thought there was a guaranteed way to make them stop and broke into a derelict block of flats one night to make it happen. At about the fifteenth floor, he found what he was looking for; a room with no window. He was wrong about the voices. The fall didn’t kill him. The voices became even louder.

They gave him morphine in the hospital, and took it away once his broken bones were healed. You can confiscate the cure, but you can’t take away the Need…

Tourniquet, needle, Meg was an expert. The light was fading by the time she got John into the car. She drove fast, racing the dusk towards Enfield, where there were derelict warehouses, and a nest of vermin for the Reverend John Johnson to destroy.

Meg founds the industrial estate thirty minutes later. The instructions promised a gap in its barbed wire fence. They were right. Meg located the target building quickly. It was a hulking mass of moss-slimed brickwork fronted by a big, rusty sliding door. The warehouse blotted out the setting sun, and cast a deep shadow over its grass-tufted concrete apron.

Meg turned to John.

Who was slumped in the gloom beside her, a dark, almost shapeless, speechless thing.

Dark.

He shouldn’t be dark. There should be yellow light pulsing from under his skin. The Glory should be upon him, hallelujah

Meg shook him. "Move, move you stupid bastard -"

Glory…No Glory…

It’ll come. It works on faith, remember? Please John. Meg pushed him. He groaned in protest, but at last, as day took another plunge towards night, Meg heard the door handle click.

Still no sign of the Glory. A few steps and John was swallowed by the shadow. It wasn’t going to work. You had to be weak to be strong. You had to be an empty vessel, not a stoned wreck fortified with poppy juice. That should always come after the job.

No white ash, no white powder, wasn’t that the rule? A rule they had broken today.

Oh shit, oh Jesus -

The warehouse door ground open.

Meg screamed his name and slammed the car into gear as the first of them erupted from its hiding place. She couldn’t see much detail, only a pair of spindly legs and arms that might have been tentacles, all silhouetted against the blue-white glare from inside the building. It bounded towards John, who seemed frozen. Meg wrenched the car into a tight arc, the creature swung into view, filled the world.

The impact sounded like sticks breaking, ichor streaked the windscreen, then she was clear and there was John.

Get in, Meg yelled. GET IN!

Behind them, the demon was dragging its scattered parts together. It took more than a road traffic accident to stop one of Satan’s little helpers. Only an empty vessel filled with Glory could do that.

Meg leant across, fumbled open the passenger door and saw other things emerge from the warehouse.

John turned to stare at her, so fucking slowly. Meg screamed his name again and this time he seemed to snap out of his trance and scrambled onto the seat.

Afterwards, John insisted that Meg take him home, he would not be persuaded otherwise. Get away from London, he told Meg. Forget about me. I’ll be alright because no one from the Congregation, not even Sian, would dare punish a Vessel of the Glory.

Alone and terrified Meg bumped the car onto a kerb somewhere near Wembley and phoned Rennie. Rennie was okay. He was one of the Congregation yes, but he was a good friend. He’d know what to do.

I can’t, he muttered. I’m sorry. I can’t help you Meg. His voice, though phone-metallic, was sodden with fear.

Chapter Two: Angel

Sian had a customer. He towered over her in the open doorway of her flat and smiled his lush-lipped smile. As he entered he touched her face. His hand was ice. Purity required no heat.

The Singer was wearing a dark, full-length, dress coat. His shaved head rose like a pallid dome from above the upturned collar.

I wish I could say that it is nice to see you again Sian, he said in that high-pitched, girlish voice of his. But this is always unpleasant.

We’d best get on with it then, Sian said. Her own voice sounded thick and forced. She was unprepared, wrapped in a tatty dressing gown because it was her night off. The Singer shrugged.

Make yourself comfortable, Sian offered. Help yourself to the wine. There was a half-drank bottle of red by the sofa.

The Singer turned to look at her. His face was smooth, the skin stretched taut. His tiny eyes glistened.

Hurry up. I want this over with. The child-voice did little to soften his impatience.

The flat had two bedrooms, Sian’s own, and her workplace. That room was soft-lit, its walls dressed in rich, red fabric wallpaper. There was a single wardrobe which contained Sian’s working clothes and the tools of her trade. The equipment was arranged for display, so that the doors could be opened with a dramatic flourish to show the customer what was in store. For the Singer, however, it would not be rubber, PVC or leather, it would be naked flesh. And the gloves. Sian retrieved them from their corner of the wardrobe and laid them on the bedside table among the clutter of pot pourri and carefully strewn pornographic magazines.

She dropped the dressing gown to the floor, turned and started. The Singer was standing directly behind her. He too was naked, his white, hairless flesh hung in folds under his arms and over his belly. He brushed past her and lay prone on the bed, a vast smear of white on the shiny scarlet sheet.

Get on with it, he grated.

Fear swamping any sexual arousal, Sian picked up the gloves. They were black rubber with leather-strengthened fingers from which scalpel-sharp blades protruded. She steadied herself, took a deep, tremulous breath, then bent over to push the blades into the Singer’s flesh.

All this, she mused bitterly, because of a magazine…

…It lay, discarded, on the double bed in the hotel where Sian supplemented her student grant by working as a cleaner. Thinking it was some lonely businessman’s girlie porn, Sian snatched it up and made to throw it into the black bin liner hanging from her trolley.

The title snagged her attention.

Slaves and Prisoners.

Sian unfolded the dog-eared publication and saw that its cover was decorated with a full colour photograph of a naked woman chained to some unseen ceiling. Her arms were cruelly stretched, her jaws forced apart by an enormous red ball, strapped in place behind her head.

Yet the expression on the victim’s face wasn’t pain or fear, it was ecstasy.

There was more inside; strapped, roped and cuffed flesh, male and female, their captors feigning threat, whips in hand, leashes gathered in black-gloved fists.

Sian cried with relief then fell back onto the bed to stroke the pleasure out of herself. God, it was true then, she was not the only freak in the world who dreamed of abducting and tying ever-so-tightly.

Better still, the magazine not only featured a list of practitioners, but more importantly, contact details for those in need of pain.

Word travelled fast. That new girl, Sian, she’s good. I mean, as fucking cruel as you like. Suddenly in demand, Sian found that people were prepared to pay for what she enjoyed giving. She quit the hotel job and abandoned University because who needs a degree when you’re earning enough to set up home and shop in a flat near Primrose Hill and open her very own bondage club?

Two years later she was visited by an undernourished-looking wretch who told her that his name was Tom. He trembled, had dark eyes and when he undressed, revealed white, maggot skin covered in scars and bruises.

Cut me, he whimpered into Sian’s pillow. Make me bleed.

Sian gagged him with a bright red ball then cut him and there was blood. She kissed it and tasted its saltiness, a lethal luxury because 21st Century blood was dangerous wasn’t it? Tom groaned and gasped.

Sian ran the blade down each side of the narrow ridge of his spine, carried on over his scrawny buttocks and legs. Flesh parted, blood rushed in to hide the under-skin’s nakedness. Breathing hard, her own flesh on fire, Sian gloried in the intricate tattoos she carved.

Until Tom stopped groaning. 

It took a few moments for Sian to understand his sudden silence.

She packed her suitcase and took a taxi to Heathrow, some vague plan of escape slithering through her fear-whitened mind. That’s where he found her. He was a barged body, a crowded-place accident in an airport terminal. They bounced apart, Sian made to pass by. He grabbed her arm.

Police…Sian spun round, ready with justification, pleas for mercy. The words snagged in her