Inside Evil

Chapter 15 - Part III

*Inside Evil and its sequels are available on Amazon, Kobo, B&N, Smashwords and iBooks* 

Karl's car rumbled slowly along the single road heading back to Mornington once again. The path ahead of him was clear and the only sparse traffic on the road were those few residents who had had to leave Ridgewood for some reason and were scurrying home before the December night came about them. Tendrils of frost were already settling on the roadside, and Karl knew that before the night truly set in, the entire road would be covered in ice, cutting the tiny town off as if it were on an island and the incoming tide flooded over a causeway.

Karl liked working alone, but he'd found that trying to slot back into his old life was like trying to push a square plug into a round hole. Life had moved on here in Ridgewood, and his absence from the town had all but cast him adrift from the fold that he'd found himself in years ago. Though Martha and Susan had shown him the cellar and eventually sat down to discuss the deaths with him, he knew that both women were still holding back in the information that they shared with him. They didn't trust him and if he were honest with himself and looked at the foolish ways in which he'd acted since returning to the town, he couldn't blame them. So, for the past few days he'd sat in his freezing car outside Roberta Arlington's home. It wasn't the best use of his time, but having typed and retyped Harrow's set of numbers into Google, he'd come up with nothing. At the very least, long hours hunched behind the wheel of his car gave him time to think.

Everything outside of Roberta Arlington's had been unsettlingly quiet in the past few days. He saw Sam Carter come and go several times, and on one night before he'd set off back to Mornington, he'd seen an elderly woman arrive. She hadn't gone into the house but had lingered on the doorstep, obviously agitated and keen to leave. He was sure that she'd spotted him, and as she'd wobbled away he'd tried to follow discretely only to lose her into thin air. After that night he hadn't seen Roberta's face again.

Karl had also tried fresh attempts to gain trust with Martha and Susan Lingly, but for the past few days the bookshop had been closed up and unwelcoming. He'd even once slowly driven by Martha's house, but there had been no indication that she was home.

So now he was left on his own with the numbers 55312434 drifting around his head.

Karl's first instincts were that it was a phone number with some of the digits missing. The piece of paper had been very fragile when Barry had first given it to him, and Karl believed that the dialling codes could have easily been torn from the front edge where the paper was jagged. However, he'd tried adding a variation of alternate codes, three of which had simply given him a flat ring tone. Another had given him hope until he was passed to the voicemail of a double glazing salesman who, on a later call back, lived in Devon and had never known anyone by the name of James Harrow.

If he simply put the numbers in a search engine, Karl got over 5,000 results which were less than useful. Not that he'd expected any particular entry to leap off the page, but the list of random forum posts and genealogy data couldn't be further than the answer he was looking for. With his time in Ridgewood coming to a close lest he face wrath from his superiors for not appearing after his allocated leave, Karl was left to let the numbers stew in his head whilst he wiled away the days staking out Ridgewood residents.

With the darkness closing in around him, Karl turned on the radio and attempted to get a signal. Ridgewood had been infamous when Karl had lived there for having little in the way of mobile phone, television or radio signal, and what little radio communication with the outside world there had been was stuttering at best. Now, upon turning the radio in his car on, he found that times hadn't changed much and the only station which slipped in and out of grey fuzz was a Scottish news channel. It hummed in the background and gave Karl some hope that there was life out there, other than his sole vehicle on this dark road in the middle of nowhere.

Karl passed the turn off to the cottage where he'd been only days before, breaking in and adding yet another idiotic endeavour to his rap sheet. In the distance he could make out the very vague sliver of light indicating that someone was home. He hoped that they'd not been overly upset when finding the smashed window pane. Given that he'd not taken anything other than the hidden envelope and had left cash on the counter, he expected that his cottage's new residents were probably more confused about the break-in than anything else.

Turning his attention back to the road ahead, Karl heard the radio crackle back into connection, the news announcer reporting on a mountaineering accident.

"Mountain rescue was today called to action after a group of hikers got lost in CairngormNational Park. The group were scaling the hills near Braemar when members of the team realised that their coordinates had sent them off advised trails. With the local area renowned for its harsh weather conditions at this time of year, the Mountain Rescue service was instantly alerted to the possibility of lost individuals within the locality."

As the reporter continued the news piece, Karl had a sudden rousing suspicion. Pulling into the side of the road as close to the dry stone wall as he could, he pushed on his hazard lights and pulled out his smartphone. Pushing the icon for his 'Maps' app, Karl waited with anticipation until realising that the poor radio signal indicated that there was no mobile 3G network at all and his GPS location was not going to work. The image on the screen simply showed his location back at Mornington when he'd initially been looking for somewhere to stay; he hadn't needed to use the app again since.

Stowing his phone back into his pocket, Karl put his foot down and drove back to his tiny guest room as quickly as possible. His suspicion was gnawing away at his brain, and if he were correct, he'd not only be overjoyed but intensely aggravated that he hadn't realised it before.

Nodding to the receptionist in the small lakeside hotel, Karl shot up the stairs, locked his bedroom door behind him and pulled his phone out once again. His 'Maps' app worked perfectly this time, now that he was back in the relative modern world of Mornington where 3G and WiFi were resources taken for granted. Pressing on his phone, the screen revealed his current address and location, but not the information he was looking for. Reaching over to where his very old laptop lay, Karl wasted no time in whirring the machine into life and before long had his browser opened at the maps search page. He typed the numbers very carefully, 55.31, 24.34. It had been the news report which had alerted Karl to this sudden possibility that the numbers on James Harrow's piece of paper did not reveal a phone number or some ambiguous forum entry, but could very well be coordinates. Of even more importance was the fact that Harrow had been an experienced walker and hiker, well aware of the systems used to find geographical locations.

With quiet anticipation, Karl pressed return. He saw to his dismay that the search returned a pin which was dropped into the middle of sprawling agriculture in Lithuania. He was even more disappointed when his search for 5.531, 2.434 dropped a pin somewhere off the coast of Lagos.

Reaching into his bag, Karl rummaged for the envelope which held within it the numbers so carefully hidden throughout the years. He drew the piece of paper out carefully, not wanting to damage it in any way. Though the snow had distorted some of the numbers, Karl realised that what he had mistaken for paper blemishes before, could have actually been decimal places. He looked back to the computer screen and tapped in 55.31, 4.243, holding his breath as he did so. This time his pin dropped in the middle of the North Sea.

"Come on, come on," Karl muttered with growing agitation under his breath. He looked back to the piece of paper clutched in his hand again. He had been so sure in the moment that these numbers were coordinates, but once again it seemed that he was wrong and had landed back to square one. As he folded the piece of paper up to place it back into the envelope, Karl saw the smallest and slightest of lines hidden within the crease. He had missed it before, like the decimal points, believing that the mark was simply a result of age and exposure.

Breathing in deeply and willing his final attempt to crack the number to be correct, Karl carefully tapped in the set of numbers. 55.31, -2.434. With slight hesitation and an inhale of breath, Karl pressed return. The pin that was returned dropped almost directly into the middle of Ridgewood forest.

*I will be posting one or two scenes a week as the story builds. However, if you can't wait that long, Inside Evil is available on Amazon, Kobo, B&N, Smashwords and iBooks.

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