Face

by Tim Lebbon

  At last he found an excuse to run, because as he neared the house he saw that the outside lights were on, and Megan was slumped on the doorstep. He had never seen a dead person outside a hospital. He was sure he recognized one now.

  “Oh honey,” she said, “I’ve been sick.”

  “You’re a mess.”

  Megan almost found it possible to laugh. How could Dan call her a mess when he looked like he’d run a marathon? He was sweating in the cold, face red from exertion, eyes driven wide. His trousers were wet to the thighs from running through the field. There were scratches on his neck and face.

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  “What have you been up to?” she asked. Any hint of amusement dropped when she saw the baseball bat. “Dan … ?”

  “Dog,” he said, because it was the first thing he thought of. He’d been running and his mind had been racing with him. Now confusion settled like a mist as blood slowed in his veins. “Dog. A big dog was sniffing around when I got home, and I thought of the Wilkinson’s rabbits and chicken, so I… followed it across the fields. Chased it.” Chased? Followed? He should make up his mind.

  “With the baseball bat?” Megan considered what she could have done today, had she been in possession of a baseball bat. Beaten Brand away? Really?

  “It was a big dog,” Dan said, as if that explained it all. An unexpected flashback hit him then: feet raining down on him and the warm wet tickle of blood running down behind his ears, the ditch water soaking into his clothes where he lay, the grinning, faceless faces above him mouthing obscenities simply because they could, because he was an easy victim. And then the woods just now, dark and frightening without reason.

  Dan stopped breathing, just for an instant. He wondered what precisely he would have done had he really found Brand in there, sleeping beneath a rough shelter or sitting inside a ragged tent eating food cold from a can. Would he really have struck him with the bat?

  And how many times?

  “I feel poorly,” Megan said. And she did. Being sick had purged nothing. The fears were still there, the suspicions taking on gnarled

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  uncertainties as her mind tossed them around, way down deep where even she could barely reach.

  “Let’s get you inside.” Dan dropped the bat and torch and helped Megan to stand. “Please tell me you didn’t walk home in this state?”

  “Got a taxi. Charlotte cleaned me up the best she could, but I think these clothes are ruined.”

  “You smell like the morning after,” he said, trying to sound flippant.

  “Feel like it.”

  “Why didn’t you go inside?”

  “Left my bag in work with my keys. I opened the garage and saw the car, and I guessed you’d gone for a walk or something. So I thought I’d wait.”

  Dan unlocked the front door, turned on the lights and stood aside to let Megan enter. Christ, she was a mess. Her clothes were spattered with tea-colored patches, she exuded the sweet aroma of vomit and her face looked pale and tired.

  “Want me to run you a bath?” he asked.

  Megan nodded. “First, I need a drink.”

  “I don’t think-“

  “Tea, I was thinking. Don’t worry. I won’t hit the bottle until at least seven o’clock.” She smiled, but it seemed that flippant was something neither of them could master this evening.

  Dan started upstairs and Megan went into the kitchen. There were used dishes in the sink and half a cup of coffee on the worktop. The familiar signs of family pleased her, injected some form of calm into the places inside where her thoughts were still raging, where ideas and fears were

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  swirling around each other like sperm and egg, just waiting to conjoin and form something else. Something new. A certainty she could not bear but must face. “My sweet Jesus,” she muttered, “help me here and now, be with me, help me do whatever it is I have to do.” She looked around for spiders but there were none. The window, offering a wide view of the garden during the day, was now a reflection of the lit kitchen. She looked very small. There could be anything out there watching her, and even if it stood only a few steps from the window, it would still be in the dark. She drew the blind, enjoying the rattle of its drum because it was something else familiar.

  “Dan?” she called. He answered faintly from upstairs. “Why did you follow the dog into the woods, precisely?”

  He didn’t respond for a while. She heard the taps go off and footsteps moving out onto the landing. Even then the answer took a few seconds, and she knew he was leaning against the landing balustrade, looking down at the hall floor and thinking what was best to say.

  “It looked wild,” he said. “A dog like that can be dangerous.”

  Megan nodded to herself, not replying. She filled the kettle, watching the chaotic swirl of water. Devil’s dog, she thought, and she dropped the kettle into the sink. Her breath caught in her throat, stalled by the sudden realization. The dog… the bird starting to follow her in the street… and that damned spider. Literally damned.

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  Brand had been watching her all the time.

  “Oh my God,” she gasped, falling to her knees and clasping her hands under her chin, resting her forehead against the kitchen unit to stop herself slumping to the floor. She started praying but kept her eyes open, glancing around, making sure she wasn’t being watched. By anything.

  Dan stirred the bath. Bubbles caught on the hairs of his arms, the hot water tingled the stretched skin of his bruised hand and wrist, he closed his eyes and enjoyed the sweet aroma of pine forests in the summer. The dark, that’s all he had been afraid of, and though he was angry with himself for fleeing, the fact that he had ventured into the woods in the first place was a small victory. Now he had Megan to look after. And Nikki would be home soon.

  He would lock the doors and smile a small, satisfied smile, because his family would be around him.

  Nikki and Jazz had spent that afternoon in his parents’ house.

  When they arrived Nikki had been scared but invigorated, the strange experience behind The Hall having dislodged something in her mind, shoved aside certainty and normality to allow in other, more exciting stuff. Nikki loved the unusual, the bizarre and the plain weird, and she loved even more anything that caused deviation from the norm. She knew what normality did to people because she knew her parents. Love them she did, but sometimes they could barely find the

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  time to speak to each other, let alone interact and share and love. She just didn’t want to get like that. She could see it in her father’s eyes as he sat watching TV in the evenings, a dull blankness that reflected the dancing colors of the screen without taking them, giving his eyes a sad colorless hue. And her mother, when she started spouting about God and being saved and Jesus and His sacrifice, Nikki wondered whether it was only she who saw the desperation in her mother’s expression, the signs of wanting to be known and loved and understood.

  She guessed not.

  She guessed that was why her Dad watched too much TV with those sad, dying eyes.

  Brand had scared her but she was excited, and although she’d wanted to be with Jazz-his company more than his actual presence had given her some comfort-still her thoughts were of Brand. Several miles away from The Hall, his apparent disappearing act in the bushes behind the tatty old building seemed less important, less impossible. He was a big man, totally in control, confident of his abilities and his looks, and he made her feel like a little girl again. Maybe that was why she was so interested. Around Jazz she felt like a woman, because she was in control and he was falling over his feet for her. With Brand, she was the youngster. He was the one with power.

  Jazz had wanted to make love but Nikki had shrugged him off. They had lain on his bed kissing and cuddling, and although she knew just how worked up he was-she could feel it down there, pressed against her hip-she felt no

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  inclination to do anything about it. Even if she imagined Bran
d lying there next to her instead of Jazz it did not work, because his actions were all wrong. Jazz pawed at her, scratching her breast as he pulled her bra down, biting her nipple instead of kissing, panting instead of breathing heavily, licking her ears and making disgusting slurping sounds as he tried to force is hand down the front of her jeans. Brand would be … experienced. Not gentle, but strong. So Nikki closed her eyes and let Jazz feel and pant and gurgle, because in a way she was glad he was there. She thought of branches scratching her face as Jazz bit her neck, tried recalling what Brand’s breath smelled like as Jazz struggled to take off his jeans.

  She had asked him to take her home. It was almost tea time, and for no apparent reason she suddenly wanted to see her mum and dad, have tea with them, chat, look for a spark of life in her father’s eyes, a glint of normality in her mother’s. She almost laughed at the unfairness of it all, imagining just what Jazz was thinking of her-he stood from the bed with his cock sticking out and his face flushed and hangdog-but she really hadn’t done it to spite him. She watched him push it back inside his jeans, cursing as he zipped his fly, trying not to hate her as he shoved by and shrugged on his jacket.

  She’d apologized and he had accepted with a shrug and a kiss. “I’m not being a bitch, Jazz,” she had said. “I just need to get home. I need to talk to Mum and Dad.”

  He had driven her home on his bike, taking

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  corners slightly too fast, pushing it to its limits and just beyond, as if purging his sexual frustration and confusion through speed and danger.

  Yes, she needed to talk to her mum and dad. But as they pulled up in front of the house, she knew that there was one thing she could not mention: Brand. And although her dad must know about him (your father and I have a bit of business to discuss) Nikki certainly didn’t want them to know that she’d seen him again. Just in case. Just in case she was destined to see him one more time.

  Nikki kissed Jazz goodbye and promised to call him later for a chat. She apologized once more, said she wasn’t a teasing bitch, she just didn’t feel like it. “School tomorrow,” she said. “I’ll see you there.”

  “Love you,” Jazz said.

  Nikki kissed him again, smiled and went inside. She smelled cooking. The TV was rattling on about politics and flag-waving in the living room. She was home, and she was glad.

  “The wanderer returns!” her mum said as she entered the kitchen.

  “Hi Mum.” Nikki kissed her on the cheek, then stared at her for just too long. She smelled of pine forests.

  “What’s up, honey?”

  “Nothing.”

  “I was sick in work today, that’s why I look a bit peaky. Okay now, though. And starving! I’m doing us a stir-fry.”

  “Lovely,” Nikki said. Sick in work … peaky … she looked ill, not just peaky, and ill beyond

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  sick. Her mother’s eyes flitted from side to side, never quite alighting on her face, as if constantly looking for something over her daughter’s shoulder. She turned back to the cooker and stirred the onions, mushrooms and peppers in the wok, always glancing up at the wall, the windowsill, the junction of wall and ceiling, the corners of the room, the window. And her smile, though quite natural looking, looked as fragile as a crystal spider-web, ready to shatter at the slightest provocation.

  “How was band practice today?”

  “Disturbed,” Nikki said without thinking. She cringed, but her mother was looking elsewhere.

  “Most of your songs are, from what I understand.”

  A joke or misunderstanding? Either way, Nikki was off the hook on that one. She felt the need to give her mum another peck on the cheek, which brought a genuine grin to her mother’s face.

  “Blimey, I am honored this evening,” she said.

  “I’m going to say hi to Dad, then I’ll go get changed. Give me a shout when dinner’s ready, slave-woman.”

  “Okay honey.” No response to the joke. No real display that she’d even heard it. Nikki frowned, shook her head and went into the living room.

  Her dad was sprawled in the armchair watching the TV with the usual, not-quite-watching-this expression on his face. He seemed distracted, when he was usually simply spiritless.

  “Hi Dad.”

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  “Nikki! You grace us with your presence.”

  “Had that from Mum. She okay? She looks weird.”

  Her dad flicked channels from one mindless soap to another, grimaced, found a quiz show and seemed content. “She’s a bit poorly,” he said, leaning forward in his chair. “She was sick in work today.”

  “Did she go to church lunchtime?” Nikki wasn’t sure why she asked, but it seemed important.

  Her dad shrugged. “Don’t know. Didn’t think to ask. You know, I… I’m not really concerned whether she did or didn’t.”

  “I wanted to come home so we could all have tea together,” Nikki spurted, “I thought it would be nice and we don’t do it much, I know it’s usually because I’m out but I thought it would be nice.”

  Her dad smiled and Nikki was pleased. It made his face younger. “It will be,” he said. “Good thinking!” He stretched back in the chair then and flicked over the channels a few more times. Nikki felt dismissed.

  Askew. That’s the best word she could think of as she walked upstairs. Today, there were things going on beneath the surface. She thought of the lake across the other side of the woods, how local legend had it that it was bottomless. Yeah, right, but she’d often stood staring at its calm, mirrored surface, wondering just what was happening way down there on its bed, what creatures stirred, lived, died. Same here, same now. A surface reflecting relative normality, with

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  depths … perhaps bottomless … where a million unknown things crawled. Squirmed. Slithered.

  For some reason, those slimy words felt just right.

  Dinner was tense. For three people who knew each other so well, the lies and deceptions came thick and fast. Megan, Dan and Nikki all went to the table knowing that there would be talk about their day, all intending to miss out the portions concerning Brand, because none of the others knew. Only Nikki had seen Brand, only Megan had met him again, only Dan had beaten him at Bar None and pursued his memory into the woods earlier that evening. They all lied to the ones they loved, and although lying by omission had been their intentions, the untruths spread and grew like wet rot, until they all knew that they were lies but could no longer prevent them.

  As they left the table, each blamed themselves.

  That night, Nikki dreamed of Brand. She rarely recalled her dreams, but as she woke sweating in the dark-maybe she cried out, maybe not-it was still there in her mind, fresh and wet and violent.

  She meets him behind The Hall, but this time he goes for her, hauling down her jeans and touching her roughly, bending her over to enter, growling as he does so, his legs longer than they should be, he’s tall, too tall, and his white scar is blazing red.

  Even as Jazz and her father push through the bushes and see what is going on she cries out,

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  because she loves every thrust, every scratch, every animal second of it.

  He’s a waste of space, Brand grunts behind her in his real voice, a voice she hasn’t heard yet. And as she smiles up at her father and Jazz, she wonders just who her lover is referring to.

  Dan dreamed of Brand as well.

  They are in Bar None again, but this time the pool cue slips from his grip and hits Brady on the shoulder. It pierces him there and arterial blood sprays out across the room, giving fake cadavers new blood. Brand grins at him and grasps his throat, lifting him until his head touches the ceiling, shoving him up so that his skull cracks against a timber beam, again and again, and all the while the others in the bar-Brady gushing blood, Justin smiling in the corner, Norris the barman-are willing Brand on. He’s violent, he’s always so violent, they say of Dan, but as he goes to protest Brand’s fingers close into his throat and
his fingertips meet inside Dan’s flesh.

  He woke fighting Brand off, and in their dark bedroom in the middle of the night he was being punched and hit.

  Because Megan had been dreaming of spiders and birds and serpents, and when she jerked awake there were a dozen of them using the holes in her body, or making new ones.

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  The Book of Lies

  Sweet dreams are made of these. … Life and death and sex and love and hate and spunk and blood and puke and shit and food and wine and tears and spit and mud. Dreams are life, real life, not simply reflections. Dreams are honest.

  No morals in dreams. No deceptions in there because honesty provides their landscape, candor their atmosphere, and when you breathe in dreams you exhale all the lies you’ve ever felt or lived or said as dead things, shells, to be blown away on the breeze. There must be a hill somewhere, a dream hill, against which the carcasses of all lies are drifted by the wind. It can’t be a very nice place. It must smell of decay and rot and evil, because lies generally are. Generally.

  I don’t want to ever go there. No one should ever have to go there, because it’s not a place for

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  souls. Lies are soulless. How to mix the two?

  Make love in a dream and you come while you’re asleep. No faking. No effort. You come because you’re enjoying it, because there are no lies in your dream like yes, I like that, do it like that, even though you don’t and you’re only agreeing because you don’t want to hurt your lover’s feelings. In your dream you say no and suddenly it isn’t happening anymore, you’re doing it as you like it, as you’ve always liked it … or perhaps how you want it, and as you’ve always wanted it. So you come in your sleep. And the worst thing you can do when you wake up is to feel ashamed, because it’s an honest orgasm, the best little death.