A Midwinter Night Scream

By R. A. Kay

What do you do when everyone you ever loved is dead? Neil's answer is to drown the pain in drink. When even that doesn't work, he decides to end it all and join his loved ones. But on his way home he stumbles and falls. He is picked up by a Greeter, who leads him into the Underside, a place where the dead appear to live before they Fall and complete the eternal cycle. The Greeter is Deirdre, a tall, dark, beautiful woman with a secret. She leads him to the Mothers, the guardians of the Underside, who tell Neil he must search the Underside to find his own lost soul. He encounters friends and foes who are neither one or the other, and Revenants, dead people who want to live again, and Necromancers, who want to stay dead forever. He sees a familiar face, and another face that is also familiar, though he has never seen it before. And he begins to see that the only way he will find his soul is through his loved ones. But they are only in the Underside because of him...

• Language: English
• Publisher: R. A. Kay
• Release date: Dec 1, 2021
• ISBN: 9781005860554

R. A. Kay

I have been many things. I have been and done things that I choose to forget. I have now chosen none of these. I choose to write.What I write is often odd. I enjoy writing unsettling stories. Not pure horror, not gore, just stories that linger in the mind. These stories are published under the name R. A. Kay. Under the name Ricky A. Kay I write stories set in and around the place I live – Sheffield, England. These pieces are usually about ordinary people in ordinary circumstances and how they behave in extraordinary situations. Just to confuse things, some of my unsettling work is set in Sheffield. And some of the extraordinary situations can be quite unsettling.So that’s me. I’m starting this adventure later than I’d planned, but I still feel excited about it. Come with me. I hope you will feel the same.

Book preview

PROLOGUE

IT BEGAN WITH a drink. He died because of a drink.

He was almost sure of that. But the others, the other dead people, he didn't know how they came to be there. Not all of them, anyway.

He wasn't even sure where there was.

And the ones that didn't want to be dead, and the ones that wanted to be dead forever, and the ones that looked after the dead, the ones that greeted them and mothered them, he wasn't sure about them at all.

He was sure about some things, though.

He was sure that two people had died because of him.

And he was sure he couldn't live without them.

A CAROL

SHE DIDN'T LIKE to be called Mum. That's not my name, she said. She wasn't being obtuse. It was just that she thought that being a mother was what she did, not what she was. So he called his mother Carol, because that was her name, and a Carol could be anything.

They lived in an old house on the edge of a village in Yorkshire, a double fronted Georgian place with big windows and echoes and lots of books and no television. It was her parents' house. Neil never knew his grandfather, though Carol had given her son his name. She was a freelance book illustrator and could work anywhere, so she set up her studio in a back room of the house and worked there at night while her mother slept. Carol had come home to nurse her mother through her unknowing and miserable final years. She was already pregnant when she returned, though she didn't know it at the time. Neil was born at home in the spring, and his grandmother died at home in the autumn of that year.

Who's my dad, Carol? he asked her on one of his birthdays.

Why do you want to know? she said. We're enough, aren't we?

Neil shrugged. He didn't know why he'd asked.

Well, then, she said, smiling.

He did well at school and college and got a place at a good university on a creative writing course, where he enjoyed having his ego stroked by his tutors. He wrote demanding contemporary fiction, the too-clever kind that critics love and the reading public hate. He was always going to be a writer, but never a rich one.

He'd only been at University a year when Carol died. It was a stroke, the same thing that had killed her father. Neil decided it was better than what had killed her mother. After the funeral, he went back and finished his degree. He didn't know what else to do.

THE BELL TOLLS

THE FACE REFLECTED in the mirror behind the rows of bottles was his own. It didn't seem familiar, though. He didn't like what he saw, either. Dark, short hair, cut badly, with an untameable calf-lick; brown cow eyes; lips pursed like a cat's arse; a stranger's nose. Neil tried to remember if there had ever been a time when he'd been even vaguely handsome, but couldn't.

Ugly fucker, aren't you? he said.

On the bar stool beside him, a big man swivelled in his direction.

You talking to me? he said.

He hadn't been. He'd just been thinking to himself. He didn't even realise until now that he'd given voice to his thoughts. He was just here, drowning in drink, killing time. Dying too slowly. But now, he'd said it out loud, what he'd been thinking. He couldn't take it back. It was out of him.

Neil had been doing this for a while. Sometimes, in the morning, he'd wake to the sound of his own voice, mumbling something or nothing, making no sense even to himself. The voice was vehement and often loud and angry. He'd occasionally scare himself awake, his limbs flailing, wondering who was shouting at him. Once, he'd woken in this state with his arms deadened and useless from somehow sleeping on both of them, and he hadn't been able to stop himself rolling out of bed and landing on his face on the littered bedroom carpet. It was like that again now. He couldn't stop himself.

D'you see any other ugly fuckers around here? he said to the big man.

Neil turned to look around the room. It was late in the evening and there were only a handful of others in the pub. They were all looking at him now. One old boy looked away and shook his head. But still he couldn't stop.

Sorry, he said, turning back to his drink. Stand corrected. Loads of ugly fuckers 'round here.

The big man looked at him for what seemed like a very long time. He lowered his gaze for a moment, resting his lips on the knuckles of one hand, clearly considering something, and when he raised his eyes again, a faint sadness lit them. He leaned forward. His forearm, when it moved, travelled only the shortest of distances, no more than a few inches. It was a big forearm, though, and heavy, with a big, heavy fist on the end of it, and it travelled that small space very quickly. The fist connected with the side of Neil's face and it seemed as though the stool he was sitting on, the whole bar and everything in it, was shunted to one side, leaving him hanging in the air for a few surprised seconds. When gravity won, he fell to the floor, landing hard on his arse beside the tall wooden stool that he'd been sitting on. In his right hand remained an unspilt glass of whisky.

The big man looked down on him, as did all the other people in the pub. Neil sat there, breathing heavily, looking hard at the skirting board a few feet away from him. A few beats later, the big man turned away and resumed the conversation he'd been having, and the cadence of pub chatter rose and fell again.

Behind the bar stood a bespectacled man with untidy ginger hair, an elbow planted on the polished wood of the bar top, his chin resting in one hand. He looked bored. He watched as Neil tried to get up from the floor, an exercise made more difficult by his unwillingness to release the tumbler of whisky.

Gi's a hand, Dave, said Neil.

Get stuffed, Neil, said Dave.

Bastard, said Neil.

He managed to turn on to all fours, which in this case was three as one hand would still not relinquish the tumbler. On his knees, he reversed up to the skirting board and then, uprighting his body so that it rested on his haunches, he slithered his back up the wall until he was on his feet. Holding on to the bar top with his free hand, with the glass in the other, he pulled himself along to the stool where he had been sitting a few minutes ago and sat back down.

Large whisky, please, landlord, said Neil.

Dave didn't move. His chin remained in his hand, and his pink-rimmed blue eyes remained on Neil. When Neil opened his mouth to repeat his request, Dave spoke.

You have to sort yourself out, Neil, he said. You can't carry on like this any more. You're ruining trade, for a start. People have complained.

Who? said Neil. Who's complained? Name one person who's complained.

All of them, thank you very much. I mean, they all understand, they're all sympathetic or whatever, but you can be a right arsehole when you're like this, and it just gets a bit wearing, y'know? After so long. People can only put up with so much. I'm surprised Big John hasn't belted you before now. Could have been any one of them, though. Every bloody one of them has had a moan about you.

Neil tried to rise from his stool.

We'll see about that, he said.

Sit down, Neil, said Dave.

Sit down yourself, said Neil, sitting down. I'm not having it. What're they moaning about, anyway? Can't a man have a few drinks when he wants?

A few drinks? said Dave. You've been in here almost every day, morning, noon and night, ever since you got here. You've been rude and insulting and obnoxious to everybody, sometimes before you've even had a drink. And I bet you've got no work done.

Neil said nothing. He lifted his glass and threw the contents into his mouth. He tried to dismount. The stool wobbled and he clutched at the edge of the bar top and tried not to dismount.

You haven't, have you? said Dave. You haven't written a thing.

Neil shrugged. Writer's block, he said. It'll come.

You've been saying that for a year, now.

It's a big block.

It's the bloody drink, you tosser, said Dave. He looked at his watch and reached up and shook the twined silk pull of an old brass bell. The hum of the ring hung in the air. It was a token gesture, and nobody moved.

Last orders, please.

Neil picked up his glass. Large whisky, please, landlord.

Not for you. You're barred. As of right now.

You said that yesterday.

I know.

And the day before.

I know.

And...

I know. But I mean it now. No more drink in this pub for you. Not until you show me a first draft.

But we're family, Dave!

We were once, Neil, he said. Until you fucked it all up.

A frown settled on Neil's face. Dave's face flushed with colour, a reddening so deep it was noticeable even here, in the dim, golden light of the pub.

Sorry, said Dave. I shouldn’t have said that…

Neil slowly shook his head and held up his hands, palms outward, warding off the awkwardness of his brother-in-law.

It's okay, Dave, he said. "It was only the truth. And it's all true, isn't it, what you said? I am a tosser. I am annoying. I'm so annoying I annoy myself sometimes, never mind your customers. And no, I haven't written a thing in ages. Not a bloody word."

Neil looked down at the empty glass that he still held in his hand. He straightened up on the bar stool, catching sight of his reflection again as he did so.

I am, aren't I? he said, staring at his own unloved image. An absolute wanker. And what makes it worse is that I've only just realised that. Just now, after your kind words. He snorted, as Dave sniffed. We never really see ourselves, though, do we? We never step back and look, objectively, without prejudice, at what we are. Not until we see ourselves through the eyes of others, people who know us. That's when we see. And even then we don't see clearly. He raised the glass up and looked through it at the mirror behind the bar. He saw a fisheye image of himself at the bottom of the glass. A distorted view of a cockeyed man. Just darkly, he said, with a hiccup.

He placed the glass upside down on the bar mat in front of him and stepped carefully down from the stool.

Neil... said Dave.

Neil waved him away. He turned and, with slow and deliberate paces, made his way across the rustic stone floor towards the great oak door of the pub. In the middle of the floor he stopped for a moment.

See you tomorrow, John? he said, still facing the door.

The big man turned round on his stool. He shook his head behind Neil's back.

Yeah, sure, Neil, he said. Mind how you go. Bit slippery out there tonight.

Neil stood on the path outside the pub door and watched the brume of his breath dissipate into the cloudless night. Above the church spire a big moon hung full and bright in the black sky, the crystal stars sparkling all around it. There was no wind to move the barren branches of the trees but there was frost in the air, pinching his ears and his cheeks and the end of his nose. Snow would soon be here. He could taste it in the air. He could smell burning wood from the fires of the houses and bungalows and cottages that surrounded the pub, their curtained windows glowing blue and green and gold and red. He inhaled deeply. Oak smoke, the smell of a memory.

His jaw hurt. It had had been hurt before.

Neil had moved back up to Yorkshire from the remains of a home in London in an effort to get some writing done, but he'd found it just as easy to avoid work up here as it had been down there. And now he was struck by a sense of otherness, as if the village where he had been born had become somewhere he didn't know. He looked around at the stone walls and the mossed roofs and the yellow glare cast by the streetlights and he felt suddenly lost. He wondered what it was, what had caused this untethered feeling, this drifting sensation. It was as if he was no longer standing on the ground but floating in the air, waiting to be pulled or pushed, this way or that way, by whatever currents were circulating around him. He was overcome by tiredness, by a weakness that drained all the strength out of him and in to the cold earth beneath his feet. He needed to rest, to lie down and sleep.

In the small courtyard at the front of the pub were some wooden tables and chairs, their surfaces twinkling with a rime of frost. He sat in the nearest chair and the cold immediately burned through his jeans and swept away the weariness. In that moment it came to him, the cause, the reason for this strange feeling.

He didn't belong here.

He didn't belong anywhere.

He began to wonder why he had chosen to come here, to hide in this place, in a bottle, in a cottage-shaped cave. He knew why, though. Just didn't want to admit it. Didn't want to face up to it.

You okay, Neil?

Big John loomed over him, his head haloed by the moon. He was tall and broad and bearded and, with his bush of unkempt, untended hair, he looked like an old testament prophet. His eyes were blue and filled with concern.

Neil nodded. Think so, he said. My head's a mess, that's all.

Sorry, said Big John. Don't know my own strength, sometimes.

Neil shook his head. No, it's nothing you've done, John. He tapped his head with his knuckles. The mess in there's all my own making.

John turned to look at the moon and they were quiet for a moment. An owl hooted somewhere in the distance.

I shouldn't have done it, I suppose, said Big John, but you can be a right twat sometimes, you know that, don't you? And you can't just stand by, can you? You have to let people know when they're being twats, don't you?

Neil nodded, and then laughed softly.

What? said Big John.

I think I just felt grateful. To you. For hitting me.

Big John smiled. He ruffled Neil's hair with a hand that was an agricultural implement.

Somewhere in there's a good bloke, he said, patting Neil's head. A nice, kind, thoughtful, caring bloke. I know there is. I've met him. And he's always been there. I bet you don't remember this but, back when you were a boy, when you and your mum lived around here, we had a family party for my old granny up at the farm. Hundred years of age, she was, so we organised this shindig for her. Big family I got, as you know, and it was a family do anyway so we didn't invite any others from the village. Your mother, though, she hears about it and just turns up anyway, with you in tow. Wanted to pay her respects to my old Nan, she did. Never did bother about niceties, your mother. Just did what she thought was the right thing. If it weren't for havin' you, I bet she'd have...

John paused and thought for a moment, and then thought better of it.

"Game old girl, your mum. Yes, she was. Anyway, all our kids are rioting in the barn when you two turn up and she says to you to go out and play with them, an' so off you trot. She stays and has a chat to Nan and a few drinks with us and then, after a while, someone says, it's quiet, isn't it? So we all stop and listen and there's not a sound to be heard from the barn. It's been like the Battle of Bosworth up to you two arrivin' and now it's as silent as the grave out there. So we all creep out to see what's happenin' and there you are. You've got all the kids to arrange bales of hay around you and they're all sat on them, listenin' to you. And you're tellin' 'em such a tale! Somethin' about the little lambs, was it? Somethin' like that. Anyway, they're all absolutely hooked. You'd be,