The Dark Masters Trilogy by Stephen Volk & Stephen Volk

Author:Stephen Volk & Stephen Volk
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Horror
Publisher: PS Publishing
Published: 2022-07-22T00:00:00+00:00

NETHERWOOD

In memory of Graham Joyce—a wizard in writer’s clothing

‘Tis magic, magic that hath ravished me

— Doctor Faustus

THE VIEW BEYOND the window was monochrome. A blighted land. Not green and pleasant, but ashen, a charcoal sketch. A thick layer of dirt separated him from the world, inhibiting his gaze as if ashamed of what lay beyond. Home and hearth despoiled. The very coach he was riding in, filthy, tired, dispossessed. Too weary, like the many millions of souls shivering by their firesides, to be a disgrace.

He remembered the poster he’d stood next to on the platform at Southampton. ‘SHABBY? YES! IT WILL TAKE TIME TO REPAIR OUR 800 SOUTHERN RAILWAY STATIONS— BUT IT WILL BE DONE AS SOON AS WE GET THE MATERIALS!’ A war-devastated company slow to recover after it had ended, like so many. The line had suffered all the more because of its closeness to the Channel ports—vital to the war effort—its routes commandeered for troops and military supplies, not least for Normandy, and Overlord, resulting in its malachite green carriages and sunshine yellow livery running the gauntlet along the south coast and getting a real pasting.

He tried to create a clean oval with his fingertip, and failed. The grime was on the outside. Nevertheless he could see enough of what he didn’t want to. Fields pitted by bomb craters. The landscape ravaged. Recovering, perhaps, like a crippled Tommy, but unbowed? Or was that a brave face it was putting on, still wracked with pain from its visible and invisible wounds? He felt it in deep his own body, too, as clearly as he felt the jostling of the track underneath him.

The Blighted Land.

A potential title? He took out his notebook and jotted it down, immediately capping his fountain pen self-consciously.

A young couple occupied the same compartment. Sweethearts, he guessed, from their whispered endearments, and the fact that they clasped hands so tightly. The man’s uniform that of a lance corporal, the three feathers in his cap badge indicating the Royal Regiment of Wales. Clean shaven. Not that there was much to shave. Forehead wide, chin small, he reminded him of Chad, the graffito character chalked on every wall for the last several years with variations of the same cri de coeur: ‘Wot, no sausages?’ ‘Wot, no girls?’—or, in this case, possibly: ‘Wot, no war?’

Not wanting his lack of conversation construed as sullenness, he spoke.

“Glad to see you got through unscathed.”

“Not exactly,” the young man said. “Lost one of my balls at Zeeuws-Vlaanderen.”

Dennis raised one eyebrow.

“You and Hitler both, then. If the song is to be believed.”

The lad laughed, heartily.

Dennis reached out his right hand to shake the other chap’s. The lance corporal reached out his left. Dennis quickly swapped to his left and clutched it vigorously.

“Right-handed before I left.” The soldier still laughed. “Now I have to learn all sorts with my left hand. Quite fun doing so, to be fair.”

The girl blushed and nudged him in the ribs with her elbow. He pretended it hurt more than it did, then snatched a mischievous kiss on her cheek.

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