Homecoming Page 6

  They were two young people looking for a way out and they found each other at just the right time. They both got part time work at the local McDonald's and within a few months (with a little help from Dave’s' mother who was very keen for him to move on), they had enough money to put a deposit down on a small bedsit a few minutes’ walk from the College. They both finished their studies; moved to a bigger flat; got better paid jobs; moved to an even bigger flat; got married; bought a house and just got on with a normal life.

  As the years went by, life got busier and visits to his parents became less frequent. He had no need to cross over to an imaginary world to escape. He was safe now. Jenny had rescued him and as twenty turned into twenty five which turned into thirty which turned into their first baby which turned into thirty five, the strange world he used to use to escape his father became a distant memory. Not entirely forgotten, but then again not entirely real. It was simply something he didn't need anymore. He never told Jenny about his secret world and hadn't felt the need to cross over here since he was about nineteen, and so it was quite a surprise to find himself crossing over now as he lay bleeding on the floor of his old garage.

  All the times he had crossed over before, he had physically made himself do it, but this time (probably more to do with passing out than anything), whatever part of his mind made the passing between the worlds possible had automatically clicked in and sent him over. And this time when he crossed over, he wasn't alone. This time Dex crossed over with him

  Chapter 10

  Dex’s tale (part 1)

  To be honest Dex isn't his real name, and to be even more honest he is only a 'he' because he chooses to be. In reality he is nameless; sexless; formless and pretty much ageless.

  To make it easier for us to understand we shall continue to call him a 'he', but we need to also understand that Dex doesn't really exist, at least not in the way we humans judge the concept of existence. As is clear, he has a conscience but he has no physical form to speak of. He lives as a parasite on the human hosts he chooses to inhabit.

  We may ask if he is a demon. But this term seems too generic, too whimsical to describe Dex. It's true to say that Dex is a nasty piece of work without a care for the path of destruction he leaves in his wake, so if it makes it easier for us, a demon he shall be.

  We could say that Dex is one of a kind and more recently this would be true. But Dex can remember a time when there were many just like him; latching on to human hosts at will. He can remember a time when all of his kind were in darkness; existing in a void deep underground. He remembers the ground shaking and quaking and he, along with his (brothers? sisters?) being fearful in sheer panic thinking their world had come to an end.

  Then just as suddenly the earth was still and there was light; they were free. They all rushed towards that light through a crack in the earth and came upon a vast ancient city. They rushed towards the city and those out first quickly found human hosts, but those at the back had further to go to find an unoccupied human and many perished in their search. The void where they had existed for hundreds of years had kept them sustained, but they all soon realised that outside in the real world they could not survive for more than a few minutes.

  Hundreds like Dex perished that day when their spirits were set free from the underground void by the earthquake, but equally the first two or three hundred to escape survived and like a plague settled on the city. For weeks the city fell under a spell of violence and murder the likes of which the world had never seen. Thousands and thousands of people died as the spirits worked their way through the city and gorged on the humans within.

  Like a frenzy the Dex spirits tore the city apart, but as they realised the human numbers were dwindling the brightest among them (and Dex himself was one of the brightest by far), latched on to families fleeing the violence and spread themselves far and wide across the region. Then as they went further, by ship or by travelling bands of Nomads they spread further. Within a year they had covered half the globe. Many had perished in the desolation of the city and many had perished since, but Dex believed there were still many of his kind left. Every time he heard stories of multiple murders or horrific tales of violence and depravity he would smile to himself, safe in the knowledge that somewhere out there one of his brothers or sisters was still at work.

  Like most conscious beings Dex can sense time passing, but he has no clear memory of his creation; just memories of his early existence in the void. To ask his age would also be foolish for his age would not be counted in decades but in centuries.

  Most creatures exist for a reason, but Dex purely exists. Stretching back for years too many to remember, Dex has plied his trade from inside his human hosts. From a Napoleonic soldier taking his time in massacring an entire family in Austria to a French soldier raping and murdering a nun during the First World War. Dex has had his way. From beggars to whores to sailors to aristocrats, from old to young and from rich to poor. Dex has had his way.

  You see, Dex feeds off the pain and misery he makes his subjects inflict on their nearest and dearest. The more violent and shocking the bigger the feast. But more recently, Dex has had to learn to adapt. Making a French farmer batter his wife and two children to death would be a crime passing unnoticed three hundred years ago, but in more recent times his host would soon be caught and being trapped inside a host being executed for multiple murders would mean the end for Dex. Sure, he could jump hosts before the execution took place, but jumping took a lot of energy and was only really feasible after a good feast. On one occasion, whilst his host was caught in the act and dragged off by a lynch mob, he barely had time to register what was happening before he had to use all his energy to jump into the nearest bystander which, as it turned out, happened to be the local clergyman who had far more skeletons in his closet than a simple lynch mob. This emergency jump had kept him out of action and terribly weak for months.

  No, as the world became more and more advanced Dex had had to adapt his techniques. For if a host died before he jumped, he would die too. Like a seasoned binge eater on a strict calorie controlled diet, Dex had learned that little and often was much more digestible for the humans, easier to hide and way better than nothing to eat at all. So he reigned it in. He stayed with a single host for longer and longer and cut out the really nasty stuff. Don't get me wrong, when the opportunity arose and the chances of being caught were slim, Dex would still divulge in some terrible deeds. But he was always careful to cover his tracks.

  He also found he could only survive inside male hosts. He had tried to jump into women a number of times, but on each occasion he was met with such resistance he instantly jumped back. He had no idea why this should be the case, but all he knew was that women were a complete no go.

  For the last sixty or seventy years (when you've existed for over a five hundred years the odd decade was neither here nor there) he had pretty much stuck to the same family. After a lucky escape in Northern France in September 1917, when the aforementioned French Soldier was dying from a shrapnel injury, Dex had used his last remaining energy to jump to an English field surgeon way behind the front line at the battle of Ypres. He stayed with the surgeon for a number of months slowly building his energy - the odd slip of a scalpel here; the odd disappearing farmer’s daughter there - until he had the strength to jump host again.

  Even though he lived off pain and misery, the whole war thing was far too depressing even for a chap like Dex and he wanted to get away to where the destruction was more of his own doing. He jumped into a thuggish cart driver ferrying bodies back from the front and a week later, in a much weakened state he jumped into a cook on a hospital ship bound for England.

  Two days later he disembarked at Portsmouth, and amid the confusion of a port city during wartime, for five days, Dex let his hair down. He started bar fights; assaulted a well-dressed gentleman early one morning; left a disgusting prostitute almost for dead above a seedy bar and generally caused mayhem. There were police of sorts aroun
d the city, but because of the sheer number of soldiers and sailors around the bars during the night, the antics of an overweight ship's cook went largely unnoticed. That was when Dex learnt something new; never take a host's physical appearance for granted.

  On the sixth morning of what can only be called a binge, Dex inside his cook host woke up in a back alley behind a row of cheap hotels on the Portsmouth seafront. The night before had been a complete mess. He’d picked a fight with two British sailors about midnight in an Irish bar. He remembered taking great pleasure in smashing a beer glass in one of their faces, and he clearly remembered the sensation of warm blood pouring down his arm from a nasty wound above the sailor’s right eye. The second sailor having already been rendered unconscious after Dex had smashed his head against some railings. After this very one sided fight (when Dex had fed well - and there had been some very good feeding this week - his hosts strength could easily triple), Dex had stolen two large bottles of brandy and had decided to toast his extremely good fortune.

  He had made it back to a more civil environment and because of the amount of people around he had pretty much been able to run amok. After the very slim pickings of the front line, Dex had never had it so good and neither, it would seem had his host.

  As the daylight began to seep through the cooks eyelids, Dex immediately knew something was wrong. Where before he could move a host at will, the cook wouldn't budge. He couldn't open his eyes to see where he was and even more worryingly, he didn't think the cook was breathing. This could be a serious problem for Dex. Even though he fed well from the pain the hosts inflicted, Dex himself had no feelings. Now you might say that a creature going out of his way to inflict terrible pain on people quite obviously has no feelings - and you would be absolutely right. But Dex did not have the ability to feel. He had no idea what had happened to the cook. It could have been a heart attack or a stroke, or considering the amount of brandy he had made him consume the night before, he could quite easily have choked to death on his own vomit.

  The fact of the matter was that Dex was trapped in this body with only minutes of life left in it. Because the cooks eyelids were locked firmly shut, he had no idea where he was and no way of telling if any other possible hosts were nearby.

  For the first time since fleeing from the void hundreds of years before; Dex started to panic. Sure he’d had near misses in the past, but nothing like this. He knew how long he could exist outside a human host and if he was correct it was still very early in the morning with not a soul around and very few options left.

  There was always an element of risk when jumping between hosts and not just in being on the outside. Simply put, not all humans could handle it. There had been a time when he’d jumped into a schizophrenic boy and he’d had a whole lot of trouble trying to take control as the 'other' inside the boy put up a dreadful fight and Dex had to exit the premises post haste. Sometimes he simply couldn't get the host to do anything for him. Sometimes the host would notice his presence and on a couple of occasions the host he jumped into was simply too frail to cope. On all of these occasions Dex had been able to quickly jump to another body, but this was the first time he would be jumping 'blind'. The one thing in his favour was that he was well fed and was ready to jump; he just didn't know where.

  So metaphorically speaking Dex took a deep breath and hoping lady luck was on his side, he jumped. Now as luck would have it when Dex jumped he jumped up. Any other direction and Dex would have had trouble finding a human host to jump into. It was 5am in the morning and the seafront was deserted. If he had gone North or East he would have run into walls (he did have the ability to travel through solid objects, but this took time and time was something he didn't have). If he had gone West or South he would have headed out into the open ocean. Any of these directions would have spelled the end for Dex, but up was his salvation.

  Two storeys above the alleyway in room twelve of the Royal Beach Hotel, Portsmouth, lay Madeleine Hunt and George Faulkner. Madeleine (Maddy to her friends) was eighteen years old and a Nurse at the Queen Alexandra Military Hospital in the city and George, an artilleryman on leave from the front line, was a year older.

  They had met the night before and after a lot of drinks had inevitably ended up renting this room for the night. Well, one thing led to another, which led to another which led to them both asleep and badly hung-over and totally unaware as Dex, blindly jumping from the alley below, entered poor old George.

  Maddy (already pregnant from the previous night’s excursions) would go on to regret this one night stand for the rest of her life. She came from a strict catholic upbringing and as such she and George were forced to marry at the end of the war. She was a heavily pregnant wife and two weeks after the wedding gave birth to their one and only child; Albert George Faulkner.

  When Albert was only five, Maddy hung herself in the family bathroom when home alone with the boy. Albert sat outside the locked bathroom crying until his father came home from work some four hours later. There was no suicide note, but the crude post mortem revealed many bruises, fractures and cigarette burns going back five years to the start of their doomed marriage.

  You see Dex had moved on. He didn't want a repeat of the drama with the cook and used more subtle (but equally devastating) tactics to get his nourishment. Rather than risk being noticed and pushing George too far, Dex had sat back and subtly pushed the right buttons to put poor old Maddy Hunt through five years of hell until she simply couldn't take any more.

  Dex was initially happy to bide his time, but losing Maddy so soon had been unfortunate. She just reached breaking point way sooner than Dex had expected and ultimately left him without a regular source of food. When it was clear George could no longer cope bringing up a child on his own, Albert was shipped off to boarding school. Dex was then faced with the very real possibility of going without regular food for quite some time. So Dex did what Dex does best, he jumped host into six year old Albert.

  Dex had a lovely time ruling the roost at boarding school, always charming to the school masters and downright nasty to the other children especially after lights out.

  Dex grew very attached to young Albert, the boy’s sweet demeanour hid a thousand untold horrors. Dex stayed with him through puberty; through young adulthood; through courtships with many young ladies that never ended particularly well. Dex stayed with Albert when, just like his father, he joined the army in 1938. He stayed with Albert during the first offensive of the Second World War and his nasty injury during the evacuation of Dunkirk, and he stayed with Albert when he met and married the lovely Doris.

  Doris and Albert 'Pop' Faulkner were married in the summer of 1943 and Dex was there the whole time. When their three daughters Andrea, Lilly and Sally were born each two years apart, Dex was glad he had stuck with good old Albert. Albert who had seen him through some pretty good times and had very gratifyingly gifted Dex with a perfect family to torment for years to come.

  Only the family that Dex had happened upon and in some horrible way helped create, wasn't his usual bunch of helpless humans. No, this lot had a way of keeping Dex and all his terrible history in check.

  Chapter 11

  It took Dave a few minutes to realise where he was and then it all came crashing home. The waves; the gulls; the sea breeze all bombarded him and he was back as an eleven year old boy experiencing this strange new world for the first time.

  The beach was exactly how he remembered it. The pebbles were just ever so slightly too steep. No cars were moving on the causeway and the beach went on for miles in either direction. Also, just like all the times he crossed over before; the Isle of Portland wasn't there. Just the sea, the beach and Dave. And it was beautiful - just as he remembered it.

  It’s been too long, he thought.

  If coming back to the family home was strange, then crossing over to his imaginary childhood world was way stranger. Dave got to his feet and noticed he was barefoot. Also, his shirt and tie were gone, replaced by an open collar w
hite flannel shirt and some thin canvas slacks. Not the sort of thing he would usually wear, but it felt cool, and soft. It felt right. But it also felt wrong.

  On every other trip, he had crossed over wearing the same clothes he was wearing back in the real world. There had never been any changes whatsoever. He had bought torches, knives and food over with him; but this was new. He had experimented with slipping pebbles or twigs into his pockets; seeing if things travelled the opposite direction and usually they did. But actually having your clothes changed on crossing over.

  Never.

  He thought back to the events leading up to his crossing. He had been injured in three separate places and the one in his chest was quite serious. Someone had also been there with him in the garage.

  But had there? Really? He thought.

  He couldn't recall actually seeing anyone. Sure it was dark, and sure he didn't exactly have full control of his faculties. But was there actually anyone there?

  No, he thought as rational Dave kicked in. I was injured, losing blood and short of breath. I must have been delirious.

  But that voice. That almost familiar hysterical voice. Did he imagine that too? Dave, ever the Mulder to his wife’s Skully on this occasion wasn't convinced. Something had been there with him whilst he lay on the garage floor and no matter how much he told himself that wasn't the case, one thing was certain; for the first time ever he had crossed over to his other world totally unaware he was doing it. Both this and the strange voice at the same time?