Chapter 2

Tuesday 27th April 2010

00:43

David Oswald does not wear a big badge telling the world what he does for a living.  But he doesn’t have to.  The grey suit that he wears has come to symbolise something amongst the… enemies that he fights that seems to strike more fear than similar suits of different colours.

He is sipping on a glass of water that he has just taken from the main office water cooler when he turns round and sees a man wearing one of these different coloured suits – a black one – staring at him.

There is a look of recognition on David’s face and he smiles, putting the glass down on a desk.  This is a much warmer smile than the one he used to greet his previous visitor with.

Still his question is a strange one.  Not “How are you, old friend”, but, instead, “What do you want?”

The man puts on a good show of faking shock.  “Is that any way to talk to an old friend?”

“Would you like a glass of water?”

The newcomer finds this amusing for some reason.  “You’re funny do you know that?”

David picks up his glass and took a sip.  “You didn’t answer my question.”

“You don’t trust Kevin is going to let this lie are you?”  The man asks.

Now it is David’s turn to fake shock.  “You were listening into my conversation?”

“Naturally.  Things are slow right now and it is always entertaining hanging around here.”

“You haven’t been around for a while.  Things been busy?”

“It’s been so-so!” 

He walks round David’s office; as if this is the first time he has taken the tour.  He pays particular interest to the painting.  The man in it has an identical black suit to the one the visitor is wearing.

“It is a fantastic likeness of him.”

He turns round and raises his arm, sticking a thumb at the picture behind him.

“I’m very surprised that Kevin doesn’t bring him up in your conversations.  Surely that would sway you?”

“No it wouldn’t and he wouldn’t dare.”

“Anyway, I was just calling to warn you that I’ll have business around here soon.  A lot of it.”

David’s smile disappears at the implication.  “Is it anyone I know?”

The man shrugs.  “You know I can’t tell you that.”

Just then, the phone starts to ring.  The man turns to walk out of the room.  

“You really should get that.  It’s important.”

And then he is gone.

2.

Tuesday 27th April 2010

00:45

For some strange reason, Alice Cuthbert wakes up with the smell of bacon in her nostrils.  Maybe it is from a dream that she was having.  She can think of no other rational explanation.  Whatever her dream was, it is gone now and she will never remember it.  They occasionally come back to her through the course of the day when there is some sort of memory brought on by a sight or a sound… or a smell.

She has not been asleep for long.  It has been another late night at work so maybe she hadn’t even gone deep enough to dream yet.  She had read somewhere that the average person takes four hours to go into deep sleep but that sounds wrong.  She cannot remember the last time she even slept for four hours straight but the memories she has of dreams that do return to her prove the theory wrong.  Now she is even wondering if it was four hours…  She will have to check that out.

She has become so used to the phone ringing in the dead of the night that she is usually running out of the room to answer it before she is even fully awake.

This thoroughly annoys her boyfriend.  He cannot understand why she has such devotion to work.  When the phone rings it is always work related.

Alice, like Gary, has never told her partner about what kind of work she is involved in.  There is just no easy way to do it.

She was the first person to join David’s group.  This has caused her to be one of his more trusted employees.  She is almost the second in command (although she would never claim such a thing).  Everyone reckons that she knows what David is thinking, but the fact of the matter is that she has just about as much clue as everyone else.

Not that she doesn’t fake it sometimes and pretends that she knows what is going to happen.

Right now David has a plan that involves her and they are going to make the move very soon.  She is very nervous about it but does not let it show.  This is the first time she has ever had to infiltrate a group.  There is a company that she and David have been investigating for sometime now and they need someone on the inside.

She is pretty sure that this is what the phone call is about.  She just knows that David needs her to do something tonight.  Can she not just have a break for just one night?

  She had met David for the first time a few years before when he had come to her University to do a talk.  He had started Progression Software and worked for himself and had managed to make it a hit success.  She had always wanted to be a computer programmer and this was her last year in Uni.  She was sure that the jobs would come thick and fast as soon as she left.

There had been a Q and A session and she had asked him lots of questions.  David seemed to take careful note of what she was saying and asked her some questions in return.  At one point it almost became as if there was nobody else in the room and one of her friends later on asked if she was interested in him.

“Of course not!”  She had said.

But who wouldn’t be?  He was intelligent and very attractive.  He just had to loosen up a little more.  Those clothes, for instance.  He could do a lot better.

But they seemed to be as much a part of David Oswald as anything else.

He had been waiting for her outside the hall after her final exam.  She had been surprised to see him, having expected to never see him again.  He asked her flat out if she wanted a job.

“I thought you enjoyed working alone!”  She said.

He shrugged.  “Things change.  I have a massive workload on right now and I need some help with it.”

“I don’t know if I’ve passed or not.”

“Oh, you’ve passed.”  He said.

“How do you know?”

“I only want the best working for me!”

And she had passed but she had accepted the job offer long before she got her results.  She had the best mark in her class and that had hardly surprised David.  He had done a lot of research on her.  Alice wondered if he knew her better than she knew herself sometimes.

David soon introduced her to his “extra workload!”

Out of all of David’s employees she was the most enthusiastic about the work.  She had taken to it like a duck to water.  She had hardly seemed surprised when she was faced with the creature in the basement of the dead couple’s flat that they visited that first night.  It was guarded; they always were before they reached full strength in this world.

Alice had beaten David to the punch in killing it.  The… things demise ruined her clothes but she had to admit that she had a really good time doing it.

And, like a drug, she had become addicted – just like everyone else, with the possible exception of Edward, who still seems to be wary of the whole thing.  He is not scared by any stretch of the imagination but he is always slightly on edge about things.

She is only half listening to what David is telling her on the phone.  She tells him that she will get to the office as quickly as she can.  It is only while she is getting dressed that it dawns on her what has been said in the phone conversation and she tries to speed up.

Christopher Harris watches, as his girlfriend gets dressed for work in the early hours of the morning.  He does not like the power that David Oswald holds over her.  His friends have told him that this will soon change but he does not believe it.  Alice looks more besotted with this man than she was with him.  That isn’t right; it isn’t right at all.

“What can be so important that you have to go into the office at…?” He looks at the clock and sees the time, “Fuck’s sake you’ve only been in for an hour?”

Alice shrugs.  “We have an important job on right now and we have to jump to attention whenever another programmer comes up with a solution.”

The lie sounds implausible in Alice’s head as she says it.

“Are you having an affair with your Boss?”  Christopher asks, in a joking manner to try and cover the fact that Alice is lying to him.

He knows that she isn’t having an affair and, truth be told, also knows more about her job than he lets on.

Alice laughs at this and nods.  “Yes, but we have to have group sex so the whole workforce is coming in.”

“Is Gary Ingalls going to be there?  I bet you’d have an affair with him.”

Christopher has only met Gary briefly but took an instant dislike to him.

Alice’s demeanour changes immediately.  She hopes that Christopher will not take that the wrong way – after all, Gary is the reason she is being called into the office at this time.

“No I wouldn’t.  Anyway he’s got a girlfriend.  You met her.”

“Yes, so I did… Isabelle wasn’t it?”

Alice nods and kisses him lightly on the lips before running out of the door.  “Don’t wait up.”

Christopher smiles and lies down in bed.  “Isabelle Simons.  She was nice.  I don’t know what she saw in that prick.”

He flicks the side lamp off and falls back to sleep almost right away.

3.

Tuesday 27th April 2010

01:03

Belinda has not bothered trying to look her best, something that she could be accused of quite often, and, since she actually lives nearest to the Progression Software building, she reaches David relatively quickly after his phone call.

  There is still one member of the group David cannot get through to and that is Robert Alloway.  She is trying to call him at this moment.

  After a few tries, she slams the phone down with great annoyance and makes an incomprehensible noise to back her feelings up.

David sees her frustration and decides to try and calm her down a little.  He walks over to her, knowing the smile on his face is full of concern but unable to do anything about it.

  “Still no luck?”

Belinda is renowned for her sarcasm and so many replies come into her head.  But she manages to resist the urge to say any of them and merely shakes her head.

She forgets about her own frustration for a moment when she sees Gary walk into the office, a glazed look in his eyes.  He appears to be completely numbed by the shock of the whole situation.

She wants to go over and tell him that she is sure that everything is okay, that Isabelle will probably turn up any moment and that they have worried about nothing.

She wants to tell him all this but she cannot.  She would be lying to him if she does.  Something about this situation doesn’t feel right at all and Belinda’s personality dictates that she has to take the anger and frustration that she is feeling out on someone else.

“Robert’s probably out at a nightclub or somewhere.  He’s nothing but a kid.  He’s not reliable David.  You really have to have a word with him.

David frowns at her argument.  “He has to have a life outside the office.”

Belinda gets angrier, if that is possible.  “Why?  I don’t have a life.  I know you don’t have a life.  What makes Robert so special.”

 “Look, it doesn’t matter”, Gary finally says.  “Thanks for coming to help.  But we don’t need everyone here.”

Belinda wants to say something but doesn’t.  They all wait for the others to arrive.

She does not like to think much about the situation that has led her to be David’s second employee.  The only people who know the story are David and Alice, and, truth be told, she would rather that it was only David.  Sometimes she still cries herself to sleep.

It is the not knowing that is the worst.  She knows exactly how Gary feels right now but can’t voice this.  Maybe one day she can tell them… but not now.

David seems to sense what she is thinking and puts a hand on her shoulder.  He wants to grab her and hug her, pull Gary over too.  Hug them both.

Tell them it is going to be okay.

But he can tell them that no more than Belinda could tell Gary that Isabelle was going to be okay.

Not counting the AWOL Robert Alloway, Edward Davis is the last member of staff of Progression Software to get there.  They have no idea that the youngest employee is, as Belinda has stated, enjoying himself in a nightclub.

Edward apologises to everyone for being late but, like everyone else, he has managed to get here in the record time that they all manage now.  Everyone in the room has had their fair share of being woken up in the dead of night by the telephone.

Like all the others, Edward has been briefed on the phone of the situation – Gary’s girlfriend was missing and nobody has any idea where she might be.  David reiterates to them all again that they are here that it might be nothing.  But now the phrase hangs in the air like nobody actually believes that this is a possibility any more.

David decides to give everyone tasks to aid the search for Isabelle.

“Belinda, Edward, I want you two to check out the local haunts to see if there’s any clues about a kidnapping for ritual purposes.”

Belinda, Edward and Alice are all very surprised that David has made that decision.

“Alice, you come with me.  I have a couple of ideas I want to play around with.”

There is no surprise there.  Alice and David were virtually inseparable when it came to things like this.

“Gary, I want you to go back home and wait to see if Isabelle appears.  You can get us on our mobile phones if she does.”

The first group to leave is Edward and Belinda.  He is secretly glad that the two of them are doing this together, despite the fact that he still feels uncomfortable visiting the haunts.  He enjoys working with Belinda and feels that she is maybe the only person in the office that he really gets on with.

He has worked out the evening before that it has been on the tip of his tongue just under a dozen times to ask her out for a drink.  The reason he never asks is because he is certain that she will say no and that it might spoil the friendship they have.  He also reckons that is one of the reasons why he likes her.  Insane as it sounds, there is safety in a woman who will refuse you.

He also knows that she has faced some kind of personal tragedy in her life and that is why she is working with David, but he has no idea what it is and he has never felt there was a right time to ask.  Maybe one day he would find out but it now definitely isn’t that right time – not when you are looking for the missing girlfriend of one of your co-workers.

Their mission is to head for one of the local haunts.  The haunts are places where, for want of a better way of describing it is where people less than human hang out.  Both of them have been to these haunts through the course of their time together with David, and in fact Edward’s first night on the job in Progression had taken him to one of these unholy places.  They didn’t hold the same fear for the two of them that they once had.

They get there relatively quickly by car, the nearest haunt not being too far away from Progression Software.  Edward wonders why they don’t move somewhere else.  This is always the first place that David comes to hassle people.  But tonight it is just the two of them.  This is the bar where he had first fought the Brethren.

When they walk in to the place there is complete silence.  It is as if some of the people in this really seedy looking dive have been expecting them to walk through the door all night.

The place looks like your average bar, except there are bloodstains on the wall and none of the people look like normal patrons of the drinking scene.  Edward scans around the place in distaste.

“I don’t like this!”  He says to Belinda, who smiles sweetly and walks to the bar.

“I don’t like this one little bit!”  He feels the need to finish, despite the fact that Belinda can’t even hear him any more.