Fic: The Sound of Nightmares
Jailbait Tom Felton says: I WROTE U A FIC BUT I ATED IT. But, luckily for you, Sir nixwilliams-pants, here is one I prepared earlier...
Title: The Sound of Nightmares
Fandom: Midsomer Murders
Pairing/s: Aha, now that would be telling!
Rating: PG-13
Word Count: 3774
Disclaimer: Not mine, no profit made, etc. Any similarity to people alive or dead is purely coincidental *shifty eyes*
Author’s Notes: Happy birthday nixwilliams! Thanks to sweet metal-dog for the encouragement and beta-reading. Comments/feedback, as always, much appreciated.
Summary: It’s not that Barnaby wanted a murder. Who wants a murder? And surely he’d had enough of them, he didn’t like to wonder how many exactly. Just something more than this. Just something to turn his energy towards.
There had been no murders for more than a month. The air was crisp and cool, the grass a rich green colour and slightly crunchy underfoot. Everything was in its right place, the sun about to rise, the white mist clinging to the trees, the night falling away. It was the moment before everything stirred from rest, the in-between time before England put on its mask. Tom Barnaby was striding across the village green, heading towards the open country, the fields and the woods; seeking out short cuts along country lanes. The rest of the village was asleep. A birdsong rang out shrill and bright into the frosty air, then stopped, leaving a hanging silence, as though waiting for something - a reply that never came.
Barnaby had left Joyce asleep in bed. Her grey-blonde hair had fallen over her face during sleep and he’d pushed it back, smoothing it gently away from her face. She hadn’t stirred. He’d dressed as quietly as he could and left a note on the kitchen bench. Gone for a walk. There were other words he thought about writing - couldn’t sleep and don’t wait for me for breakfast - but he held the pen too long in the air, thinking. He signed a small x, then pulled the door silently behind him.
He was restless. He couldn’t explain it. There was still work to do. There was always some petty crime, some reason to bring out his stern, telling-off-the-children voice and reprimand someone for fighting in the pub, or for driving across the church lawn, or for stealing their neighbours’ prize pumpkin. But there was nothing in it. It was petty and trivial and it slid past him, not touching him. He could do it in his sleep. He did it in his sleep and woke, frustrated, from boring dreams. And there was always paper work, always paper work. It was a bad state of affairs when he had to resort to doing it himself, instead of shoving it onto Sergeant Troy as he usually did. There was really nothing to do when you were faced with the paper work for a case involving a stolen golf buggy that had turned up in the creek that ran along the back of the O’Flattery farm, with Dave O’Flattery, the youngest son of Paul, soaking wet and sleeping off a hangover in the barn. Open and shut, and people tsking around the village about Irish newcomers, even though the O’Flatterys had been there for three generations. Open and shut.
It’s not that he wanted a murder. Who wants a murder? And surely he’d had enough of them, he didn’t like to wonder how many exactly. Just something more than this. Just something to turn his energy towards. He thought about the previous night when he’d touched Joyce’s soft, silky-paper skin and she’d kissed him on the mouth, direct and anything but coy. And yet, it seemed to him that she kept some secrets in her mouth, and for all the kissing and pushing and pulling, he couldn’t extract them. It didn’t feel like a release and she’d fallen asleep, one arm wrapped around his shoulder, while he lay awake, wondering.
He’d made it to the edge of the woods by then, skirting around the edge of them until he reached the path that led, in one direction, back into the village and in the other, into the woods. He paused and looked back, catching sight of the first rays of sunshine creeping over the brown rooftops of the village. He looked at his watch, then turned and stared into the woods, dark and green and inviting. As he walked forward, he felt the air close around him, cool and damp, as though the dark trees were hugging him close.
He wandered for a while, keeping a vague sense of direction, the village behind and to the east of him, probably waking up by now, kettles boiling, toast being burnt, gossip being generated. He didn’t exactly want to go back, but he held that thought at bay. At one point, he paused and listened. There was a soft humming noise, like the murmur of something half-mechanical, half-organic, a whirring sound that slowly rose and fell. He couldn’t put his finger on what might be producing it and when he walked towards the direction he thought it was coming from, it faded away like the wind. And then the silence seemed eerie, and he wasn’t sure if it was actual silence or if there was a low beating sound, just below his level of perception. And suddenly he was jumpy - in the way that Detective Chief Inspector Tom Barnaby is never jumpy - at least, never shows it. He strode through the woods, back in the direction of the village, keeping his eyes open to anything untoward. Of course, there was nothing. By the time he was back in his own kitchen, he wondered again what the sound was that had made him feel so uneasy. He couldn’t even put his finger on the memory of it. Perhaps he had just imagined it, he thought.
“Nice walk?” Joyce asked, as she handed him a cup of tea.
Barnaby murmured something vague and looked at her smiling face over his teacup. “I’d better be off,” he said. “Sergeant Troy gets anxious if I’m late.”
“Anxious?”
“Well, he misses me,” Barnaby said lightly. He was an expert at keeping his tone light.
“Aah,” said Joyce. “Will you have some toast?” She was holding a piece that had popped straight from the toaster. Barnaby wondered how it wasn’t burning her fingers.
“No,” he said. “I’ll grab something at the cafeteria. But thanks anyway.” He leant forward to peck her on the cheek.
Detective Sergeant Gavin Troy was bored too, which Barnaby found was a far worse and unmanageable thing than his own boredom. There were a couple of hours still to go before they could legitimately knock off work and already Troy had suggested they go down to the local comprehensive school and tell off some kids for smoking and writing graffiti, or ride into Causton and put some heavy moves on ‘the punks there’ just for being ‘punks’.
“Have there been any reports, Troy?” asked Barnaby. “Have we been called to a scene? Is our presence urgently required?”
“No,” said Troy defiantly. “But sometimes you just have to show your authority. Let these people know that we’re watching them.”
“The kids and the punks?”
“Yes, the kids and the punks and the hippies and the carneys and the queers. We know what they’re up to.”
“We do, Troy?” asked Barnaby lightly.
“Yes!” said Troy, sticking out his chin. “Of course, sir. Intimately, sir.”
“We know intimately what the carneys and the queers are up to?”
“Yes sir!” said Troy forcefully, then realising what he had admitted to, he blushed scarlet.
Barnaby chuckled. “I think we should get out of this office. I think there’s a fish and chip shop menu we need to investigate.”
“Very good, sir.”
Barnaby sent Troy home with a greasy mouth and a stir-crazy look in his eye. Troy was raving about a Nicholas Cage film he’d got out from the video store. He’d watched it once on the weekend and was going to watch it again that evening. “The plot!” he was saying. “The plot is amazing.”
There was only so much of that kind of talk that Barnaby could take.
The next morning, Barnaby went for another walk in the woods. At one point, he thought he heard a scream, a desperate cry and running steps. But there was no-one, nothing. He regarded the woods with new suspicion, wary and curious at the same time.
At the station, he discovered Sergeant Troy was worse than the previous day. He seemed to have stayed up all night, drinking coffee and watching that film, over and over again. He kept pausing in the hallways to yell “I’m Castor Troy!” and when Barnaby turned to regard him with a level stare, Troy changed his cry to “I’m Gavin Troy!” Barnaby sighed and tried to ignore him.
At around lunchtime, a rambler came into the station to report a missing person and talk of it quickly circulated throughout the station. There had been two of them, one Australian, one Brit, on a six day cross-country walk, and that morning, the third day into their walk, had began from a B&B in Midsomer Deverell, with plans to walk along a path through the woods, across common land, to get to Badgers Drift by nightfall. But they had never made it further than the woods before one of them, the Australian, had vanished. The Brit, an anxious, beardy man in his thirties, had made a statement saying his partner had been walking behind him and they’d been talking, when suddenly he was no longer there. The Brit had searched around the woods for quite some time, falling over and acquiring various bits of plant matter about his person. But he’d found no trace of his partner and, panicked, had stumbled to the road and hitched a ride to the police station in town.
“It’s unnatural, isn’t it?” said Troy, listlessly stirring his coffee. “Two men walking around the country together.”
“Why is that unnatural, Troy?” asked Barnaby.
“Well,” said Troy, somewhat huffily. “You don’t know what they’re doing. And why aren’t there any women with them?”
Barnaby raised his eyebrows but decided not to humour Troy any further. “I think we should investigate it,” he said.
“Why?” said Troy. “He’s probably just wandered off for a smoke somewhere and decided to chat up one of our lovely local women. There are some very tempting beauties around that area, as you should well know yourself, sir.”
“Troy,” said Barnaby in a warning tone.
“Or maybe,” continued Troy, oblivious. “Maybe he’s fallen down a hole. Send the plods out there to take a squiz around, they’ll soon find him and send those two on their way.”
“Get the car keys, Troy,” said Barnaby. “We’re going.”
Walking across the pastures towards the woods, Troy stopped, looked at the sky and let out a loud cry: “I’m Castor Troy!”
“A Detective Sergeant is what you are,” said Barnaby to the wind. “At least, that’s what you’re meant to be.” He was pretty sure Troy didn’t hear him.
At the woods, there was a single uniform officer poking around, giving a half-hearted search, while the rambler himself stood anxiously to one side, tugging on his beard. Barnaby approached him.
“I’m Detective Chief Inspector Barnaby,” he said, offering his hand for the rambler to shake. The rambler looked alarmed, but, after a moment’s hesitation, he shook Barnaby’s hand. Eventually he relaxed enough so that Barnaby could convince him to walk him through the events of that morning, along the path they took through the woods. It was surprisingly close to where Barnaby himself had been walking, at more or less the same time too. The rambler was becoming upset again, so he sent for the uniform officer to take him back to the B&B where he’d been staying. Barnaby continued searching the woods, though dusk was falling and the light was fading. He didn’t know what he was searching for exactly, but he felt compelled to keep moving, as though the woods themselves were the mystery and the disappearance just a symptom.
Troy was trailing behind him, muttering something and making jerky hand gestures. “Face - off. Face - off,” he said, then drawling in a put-on American accent, “I’m Castor Troy.”
“Troy,” said Barnaby, turning slowly to gaze at him.
“Er,” said Troy and froze with his hand in the air somewhere near his face. “Yes sir?”
“Go home.”
“Sir?”
“You’re no help. In fact, quite the opposite. Go home.”
Troy stared at him for a moment, then slumped and began to stomp away through the undergrowth.
“Troy,” called Barnaby.
Troy turned to glare at him.
“The car’s that way,” said Barnaby, pointing in the opposite direction to the way Troy had been walking. “And don’t worry about me. I can walk home from here.”
Troy muttered some inaudible, then headed off in the direction of the car.
Barnaby lingered in the woods as night gathered in around him. He knew the woods heightened the effect. It wouldn’t seem quite so dark out of the tall trees and in the streets of the village. He thought about Joyce at home preparing dinner. Or was tonight the night she was at the dramatic society? He couldn’t remember.
There was a low creaking noise. He spun around. He was sure he’d heard it. But the sound was gone and there was nothing there. And then, from somewhere behind him, another sound, a scraping and under it, a shuffling. It was close, but not loud; distinct, but he couldn’t identify it. He searched wildly for what could be causing it. Then there was the creepiest sound of all, a scurrying sound, like invisible, giant insects crawling over a nearby surface. The volume changed, giving the effect of the things advancing and retreating, of moving all around him. In it, he thought he heard a scream or a voice, a sound that was human or almost human.
He took a deep breath. He thought about the flashlights back in the car, Troy at the wheel of the car, the car being driven away, the car already gone. It was far too dark to continue searching, especially without flashlights.
For a moment, he’d lost his sense of direction. But then he found himself and made his way back onto the path in the direction of home. Out of the woods, he took a few deep breaths and braced himself. His ears were still ringing.
That night, his dreams were haunted by strange sounds, the sounds produced by things he couldn’t imagine and didn’t want to imagine. They were crimes that were twisted and horrible, just beyond his field of vision, hinting at scenes far more ghastly than anything he’d witnessed before. And he’d seen a lot in his working life. He’d seen a lot and this - this not knowing - this was worse.
Barnaby woke late, fighting off the sluggish hands of sleep and feeling anything but rested. He burnt his mouth on a few sips of tea, while Joyce gazed on, her face wearing an expression something like concern, though Barnaby couldn’t place why it wasn’t exactly concern. He made his way into the office, feeling the dark pull of the woods as he drove past.
“Where’s Troy?”
Troy’s desk was empty.
“Where’s Troy?” he asked again.
Someone looked up. “He came in, but he looked like shit. He said something about sorting it out for you.”
“Sorting what out?” Barnaby asked.
The officer shrugged. “Don’t know. Then he left.”
“Right.”
Barnaby checked at the front desk whether there’d been any new information about the missing rambler (there hadn’t) and whether Sergeant Troy had taken the unmarked police car they often drove (he had). Barnaby took his own car and drove back the way he’d come. He found the car where they’d parked it the previous day, by the edge of the woods.
“Troy!” he called. He headed into the woods, taking his flashlight with him this time and calling Troy’s name as he went.
He searched for most of the day, finding nothing but vague and eerie sounds that slid away into air when he went to investigate their source. Periodically, he went back to the car to radio the station to see if Troy had turned up there or if Troy himself had radioed in. The reply was always in the negative. He even got someone to call into Troy’s flat in Causton and check he wasn’t there, passed out on the couch, while the car he’d driven was inexplicably elsewhere. But that also proved fruitless.
Barnaby leant on the bonnet of his car, gazing into the woods. He couldn’t bring himself to go back into them and keep looking. It was late afternoon and he could feeling the haunting noises creeping out towards him, looking to penetrate his brain and unnerve him all over again. He wouldn’t allow that to happen again. He needed to keep his head about him. This was a case, just another case that he could most definitely solve. Just because it now involved the disappearance of Detective Sergeant Troy changed nothing. He turned on his flashlight and directed the beam of light into the woods, as though warding off the strange sounds that were now tugging at the edge of his hearing.
Back home, he poured himself a glass of his favourite Scotch and sat in his favourite seat, bracing his nerves. Even Joyce seemed to be on edge, gazing at him and saying nothing. Though perhaps she said things and he didn’t hear them, didn’t respond. It seemed like that was possible too. At one point, he found himself on the phone to his daughter Cully, listening to her ramble happily about her latest project, and he had no idea how he’d got there or what had been the last thing he’d said.
Sergeant Troy had been gone for 24 hours, and a more thorough search was organised, the woods being the main focus. Barnaby joined the line of police combing the woods, then broke away to double back. He thought he’d heard something.
There was a trapdoor, hidden behind overgrown ivy and stinging nettle. It obviously hadn’t been opened in quite some time, but Barnaby was able to prise it open, his hands and arms scratched and stung by the plants protecting it. Inside was a tunnel, opening into the ground. He heard something from deep within, or at least, he thought he did. He was considering making an appointment to get his hearing checked.
He turned on his flashlight and stepped into the tunnel, illuminating his step so that he didn’t trip on the uneven ground and ducking his head to avoid the low overhang above him.
As he crept forward, the noises became louder and more certain. There were voices too, talking, and the sounds stopping and starting up again, sudden and jerky. He reached the opening of some sort of chamber and paused, wondering if he should call for back-up or proceed ahead. But then he heard Troy’s voice. He peeped around the corner.
Half a dozen people were buzzing around a room, adjusting knobs and dials on a central console made up of complicated-looking equipment. There was a chamber beyond, with a large glass window and behind it, Troy - restrained around the head and crying out. His voice was sometimes audible, sometimes not, sometimes distorted, pitch higher or lower, the speed of it slower or faster, always changing. It was hard to understand what he was saying. Barnaby stopped and stared, for once, without words or moral compass. The floor was falling away and all was sound, terrifying and everywhere, filling Barnaby’s head, his skull swimming in it and his brain overwhelmed.
And then, after a moment of staring, Barnaby felt his body return to him and he realised that Troy wasn’t restrained and wasn’t distressed. He was animated, he was talking into a microphone, sometimes singing, sometimes laughing. For some reason, he was wearing a black turtleneck jersey. And after a moment, Barnaby realised that everyone else in the room was wearing a black turtleneck jersey. His powers of detection amazed even himself sometimes. He cleared his throat.
“Oh hello,” said the person nearest to him, a scruffy-looking man who looked like he could do with a wash and a shave. He put his fingers to his lips and let out a loud whistle. All the sounds died away as the people scrambled to adjust dials and flick switches. Barnaby felt the pressure in his brain lift away.
Barnaby cleared his throat again. “Er, hello,” he said. “I’m here for my friend.” He pointed at Troy. “And if there’s an Australian rambler amongst you?” One of the black turtleneck jersey-people raised a hand. “Yes, you,” said Barnaby, nodding at him. “I’ll take you with me too. And then we’ll want statements from the rest of you. I’m the police.”
“Aah,” said one of them. “I see.”
“Yes,” said Barnaby. There wasn’t much more to it, as far as he was concerned.
“I’m afraid that can’t happen,” said someone else.
“You see,” said another. “We’re sound designers. And once you join our project, you cannot leave.”
“You have to see it through.”
“It’s art.”
“It’s art.”
“It’s sound.”
They spoke over the top of each other, nodding and agreeing, Troy and the Australian rambler among them, adding to the chorus. Barnaby tried to call out to quieten them, but failed. He walked towards what he realised was a studio, opened the door - which to his surprise, wasn’t even locked - took Troy by the hand and led him back through the room. As he passed the Australian, he grabbed him by the arm too. At one point, one of the sound designers flailed at them, protesting in beat-poetry into his face, but he was able to push past him and drag the three of them through into the passage beyond. Troy and the Australian were still rabbiting on about ‘art’ and ‘the project’ and wouldn’t stop, no matter what he said. As a last resort, he grabbed Troy’s face and pushed his mouth against Troy’s, moving his lips and muffling the sound, thinking he’d bite if he had to. But Troy fell quiet and when they broke apart, the Australian was silent too, just staring at them with wide blue eyes.
“Alright,” said Barnaby. “Let’s go.”
He lead them back along the passage, into the silence of the woods beyond.
Barnaby took it on himself to look after Troy following his traumatic ordeal with the rogue sound designers. He pulled the black turtleneck jersey off over his head and stared into the face that emerged from beneath it. Troy’s eyes were large and serious, something in his expression a mix between fearful and fresh and clean, as though newborn and innocent. Barnaby had intended to camp on Troy’s couch to be there through the night in case Troy woke distressed. But there was Troy’s mouth and in it, no secrets. And Barnaby found that he wanted to know again what it felt like against his own. He wanted to tell Troy how much he’d missed him when he was gone. He wanted to tell him with something other than words, something more solid than mere sound.