A Step Into The Dark

by Vince Vogel

  “Did he catch you?”

  “Nah. I woke up before he did. I was hidin’.”

  Jack gazed across the car at him.

  “Look, it won’t be that bad, Ty. Honest. He’s much better now. You’ll see once you start your visits with him.”

  “Mum used to shake when she talked about him. Grownups think kids don’t notice stuff like that, but I did. She used to cross herself when she said his name too.”

  “It was nothin’, Ty. I cross myself when West Ham play in the cup. Maybe your mum was simply wishing him luck.”

  “Nah. I ain’t dumb. She always crosses herself when somethin’ bad happens.”

  Jack felt a sad helplessness. All he could do was pray that Renton Williams treated the boy with decency. That his temper didn’t encroach on Tyler. Because anger always does. Whether a child feels it directly or indirectly, it is often no different. A slamming door and someone else’s screams and shouts can be just as damaging coming from the same house as it does from the same room. Their screams as bad as your own. The tension thickening the air. A dark cloud over a house is a terrible thing to have to grow up underneath.

  “I promise you, Ty,” Jack said, repeating his oath of last night, “I won’t let anything bad happen to you.”

  “But how will you know if you’re not there?”

  “I’ll know.” Jack widened his eyes, gave the boy his best serious face; a face that vowed to look out for him always.

  “Okay.” Tyler nodded.

  “Then forget about all this crap and enjoy the plane museum.”

  “Yeah.”

  Tyler leaned forward and the two hugged for almost a minute. Jack then watched the boy join his friends. He turned and waved to his granddad and the latter smiled and waved back. Inside, he was hurting. He sensed that something terrible was going to happen to the boy and he would lose him forever.

  102

  Only one choice. He had to see sense. He had to understand what was best for Tyler.

  Jack pulled up outside the tenement block, walked up the stone steps, a blade of sunlight slashing across their middle, and rang the bell. Nothing happened, so he rang again. A window above his head creaked open and an angered face glared down at him.

  “What do you want?” Renton called down in irritation.

  “We need to talk.”

  “No, we don’t.”

  The sleepy, angry face retracted back inside like a tortoise in a shell. The next, Jack was watching the blurred image of Renton as he came sauntering down the stairs on the other side of the door.

  “This is harassment, mate,” he said in belligerent fashion as he emerged, his fat belly hanging out of his underwear.

  “Don’t be silly,” Jack said, stepping back down the steps a little. The last thing he wanted was the red mist to compel him to violence again. “You do remember I’m a cop, don’t you?”

  “Is that a threat?”

  Jack groaned and rolled his eyes.

  “No,” he said. “All I meant was that I know the law.”

  “What do you want?”

  “We told Tyler last night. It didn’t go down well. He’s upset.”

  “I suppose ’cos you been sayin’ shit about me. Turnin’ the kid’s head against me. It’s what his mum’s been doin’ his whole life.”

  “You’d be surprised to find that she hasn’t. That he knows about your violent tendencies at all only comes from overhearing adult conversations. No. The reason he’s so upset is because, frankly, he doesn’t know you from Adam.”

  “But he will.”

  “Yes, he will. He’ll know who his dad is. However, wouldn’t it be easier on the kid if he got to know you slowly and then was given the decision himself who he wants to live with?”

  “You don’t seem to get it, mate.” His bulky frame was stalking down the steps, forcing Jack to back up even more. “I told you last time, I ain’t makin’ any compromise. I want my boy.”

  “But this is damaging for him. He’s under a lot of stress from it. Wouldn’t it be better for the boy if we did this a little slower?”

  “He’ll get used to me soon enough. I’m his dad.”

  Jack couldn’t believe how rigid the other man was being. He sensed that Renton saw him as some kind of competition. As if the whole world were in competition; a first to the top, survival of the fittest attitude. Jack always wondered when the eventual winner would be announced. Maybe at the end of the world, when mankind has torn itself apart.

  “Look, you’ll speak with the boy soon,” Jack said. “You’ll see that he’s nervous. You’ll see that he needs time. I want him to have that with you and I want you to have that with him: every father deserves a chance. But please think of Tyler. Think what this is all gonna do to him. He’s only just come to terms with his mum being away. Now he’s gonna be moved again.”

  The whole time Jack spoke, Renton Williams gazed down with a vacant look. It was obvious he didn’t care. He’d made his mind up and no lousy pig was gonna change it. He wanted Tyler back and away from Carrie’s family as quickly as possible. He saw the boy as his. Who were they to tell him otherwise? While Jack attempted to supplicate the dumb animal, Renton merely gave the impression of one.

  “We’ll do things the way the courts decide,” Renton said like a man who knew he had the law behind him.

  Just then, the door of the apartment opened at the top of the stairs that Renton stood in front of and someone came down. The face of Bonny gazed at Jack from behind Renton and the detective’s eyes narrowed.

  “What’s that?” he cried, pointing over Renton’s shoulder.

  When the big man turned, he immediately scowled at the sight of his girlfriend. Below her right eye was bruising and her bottom lip was swollen and protruding.

  “Bonny, get back inside,” Renton bellowed at her.

  “Did he do that?” Jack wanted to know, an angered expression flooding his face.

  She gave a sheepish look and then turned, disappearing quickly up the stairs. Renton scuttled after her and slammed the door in Jack’s face.

  Jack ran to the top of the stone steps and hammered on the door. What reason? Anger, essentially. An anger that wanted to drag the girlfriend to the police, force her to tell them what that beast of a man had done to her, save his grandson. But as he hammered away, he realized that experience knew better, that it would be impossible to make her press charges. That Renton would always win her around to his way of thinking. He’d promise to be better. Tell her that once he was a father, he’d be calmer, never hit her again. He’d speak of shame and redemption. He might even cry. And she’d forgive him. For the dream of a family was far stronger in Bonny than the reality of what this man really was: an angry bully.

  So Jack let go his banging. Let go his thoughts of calling the police. What good would it do? She’d tell them some story. They’d make a note of it and then leave. It was Carrie all over again.

  When Jack was at the bottom of the stone steps, he observed the curtains twitching in the window of the basement flat. He turned through a little gate and down another set of steps to a door with a hanging basket of violets over the top.

  He knocked and it was almost immediately answered by a small, hunched man with a large pair of glasses making up the majority of his face.

  “I’m sorry,” he said in a nasal voice whilst gazing down at Jack’s feet.

  “For what?”

  “For being nosy.”

  “Not a problem. Being a concerned neighbor is good for a community. Can I come in?”

  “Why?”

  “I want to talk about upstairs.”

  “But I don’t know anything.”

  Jack got out his police ID. He didn’t want to, but he felt he’d spent too long on the front porch already.

  “Oh,” the man exclaimed softly before inviting Jack inside.

  The guy was a real science fiction and fantasy nut. Every wall was lined with posters of superheroes and wizards. Every surface had
a piece of merchandise on it: dolls, models, props. There was a mounted wizard’s wand on the wall of the hallway. Jack initially thought it was a piece of driftwood saved from the beach until he read the plaque. Essentially, the place was a kid’s paradise, though the man guiding Jack through his cluttered flat was at least forty.

  They sat in a cramped room watched by innumerable sets of plastic eyes. At first, neither man spoke and instead listened to the shouting and murmuring coming from the flat above their heads.

  “They often like this?” Jack asked.

  “Not every day, but regularly. Especially when he gets off work.”

  “You know much about them?”

  “She’s nice. Always smiles at me, asks me how I am.”

  “What about him?”

  The man made a face. “He’s not so nice. Just grunts. We got a letter from the borough recently about the bins. He wasn’t separating his plastics, but because we have communal bins, we both got the warning. I went to see him about it and he basically told me to piss off.”

  He went red when he swore. It was like he expected his mother to appear from a corner and scold him for it.

  “Does he hit her?”

  “I think. When I saw her yesterday evening, she had a bruised face. I don’t think he does it all the time, but it’s an angry house.”

  That’s all Jack needed to know. He thanked the man for his time and left. Determined that he would do everything in his power to prevent Tyler from going to that house.

  103

  Carrie always looked half there, half gone. Only the one foot in sentience. It wasn’t just the drugs they gave her, either. It was as if it were a choice she’d made. Like she was waiting for the day the other foot followed and she was completely gone, like Carolyn Burke.

  Jack was on the other side of a table as she sat with her feet up on the chair, holding her knees, two gray holes for eyes peeking out over the top.

  “I don’t know what to do,” he admitted.

  “About what?” she drawled, twisting her fingers in a long patch of disjointed hair.

  Jack clenched his eyelids shut and breathed out slowly through his nose.

  “About Renton taking Tyler,” he seethed.

  “Let him. If he wants the boy.”

  “But he’s not a good person, Carrie. He’s still the same bad man you knew.”

  “Then maybe he’ll teach Ty how to be a man like him. I mean, he’s too nice at the moment. Maybe he needs his dad to toughen him up.”

  “Are you hearing yourself? Listen to what you’re saying? If this is all a joke to you, then please, let me know, I’ll leave.”

  A note of anger traversed her face, making it twitch.

  “What do you expect me to do from in here, huh?” she said.

  “Get better,” he put back bluntly. “Do all you can. Be the boy’s mother by getting better.”

  “An’ you don’t think I’m tryin’?”

  “No, I don’t. I think you’ve been so apathetic and self-pitying for so long that you’re willing to watch your life slip away by sitting in this shit hole for the rest of it because you’re too scared to be a human being.”

  “What else is there for me?”

  “Is that it? You believe you have no worth? Well, you do. Not only to me and to Tyler, but to yourself. You’re just weak, Carrie. Scared and too weak to fight. I don’t believe there’s anything wrong with you. You’re not like these poor cows in here. You’re doing no more than playing a character at the moment. The sad, depressed, angry, poor little girl. But while you’re playing that, I’ve got to watch my grandson be handed over to the care of a brute. To have him drowned in anger and rage until he resembles all the other angry, young men clogging up this city.”

  She was shaking her head at him, wagging her finger, trying to shake off his words.

  “You don’t know shit, mate,” she said in someone else’s voice.

  “That’s them,” Jack retorted. “Where’s you? Where’s Tyler’s mum?”

  “Lost,” she replied, and for the first time he could see that she was at least being honest.

  They gazed at each other across the dim, dusty air. A woman’s murmur could be heard in the background, a nurse’s whisper there, too. Those women were so fragile, ready to break any moment. The one sitting opposite Jack now was like that, too. Ready to snap in a second.

  “Look,” he said, “you need to make a decision, Carrie. You need to look at the rest of your life and think: am I going to be a person and live? Or am I going to simply exist in here? If it’s the second, then you need to understand that I can’t keep coming here and visiting you. And I can’t expect your son to, either. If you want to drown in this place, then I’m sorry, I can’t watch.”

  He didn’t wait for a response. Didn’t expect one. He got up from the chair and made his way out of the room. Carrie watched him with tears falling from her eyes. Her world was sinking around her, crumbling and falling, and all she could do was stand by and watch it.

  104

  They’d all cheered as the minibus left the edge of the city and entered the bright countryside of Epping. All except Tyler, who’d merely given a crooked smile.

  “Are you okay, Ty?” asked Liz, a mother who was helping out their coach, Pete.

  She had a kindly face and gazed at the boy with benevolent eyes.

  Tyler nodded and tried to smile. But only half of it came out and it made him look ill.

  “You don’t feel car sick?”

  “No,” he mumbled. “Just don’t feel like talkin’, is all.”

  She left him alone after that and he went back to leaning on the window, gazing at the passing fields, which sparkled under the sunshine. A slight wind was working its way across the vales, rocking a row of tall spruce trees that bordered the top of a hill. In the distance, dark clouds could be seen, itching with threads of lightning.

  It wasn’t long before they entered a wall of rain, the metal roof of the van sounding as though it were being struck by stones, the sun blotted out and it feeling as though someone had dimmed all the lights. The boys didn’t play so much now, instead gazing out the windows, which looked like they were wrapped in thick cellophane. Thunder burst in their ears, shaking the minibus and making everyone feel tiny and insignificant under the storm. Everything lit up and the boys exclaimed when a purple bolt struck the field about two hundred meters further on, leaving a trail of sparkling light in the air.

  Suddenly, the minibus jolted and Tyler got the idea it had been hit by lightning. They swerved a little on the wet road, several of the boys falling from their seats, and came to a halt on a grass verge by a hedgerow.

  “Everyone alright?” Pete called into the back once they’d stopped.

  “Yeah,” came back from several of them, Liz helping the boys back to their seats.

  “What’s up, Pete?” she called to the front.

  “A puncture, I think.”

  He grabbed a rain jacket from the glove box, threw it over himself and then left the minibus. The boys had to press their faces to the steamed-up windows to see his hazy image crouching by the front wheel.

  Outside, Pete groaned as he gazed at the flat. Ducking his head back inside the minibus, he said to Liz, “Can you give me a hand for a minute? We’ve got a flat. There’s a spare and a jack in the back there.”

  He advised her to remove a lid from the floor. Underneath in a recess was the aforementioned jack and a spare wheel. The boys helped her carry the wheel to Pete at the front and went back to the windows, where they watched their soccer coach and Liz battle the rain while jacking the front of the minibus up, the boys exclaiming excitedly as it lifted.

  Ten minutes after stopping, Pete was tightening the last of the locking nuts in place and Liz had returned to the back of the bus with the boys. At last, the soccer coach stood up, holding the socket in his hand, and gazed across the rainswept field. He was about to get back inside when he saw something peculiar in the field. A man was wa
lking towards them through the rain. He lifted something to his shoulder and Pete frowned.

  The bang made them all jump in the minibus and they thought it was more thunder, though this one had been sharp and quick like a dog’s bark. Not at all like the lingering thump of a thunderclap. Those gazing out the windows were astonished to see Pete suddenly leap back and hit the side of the minibus before sinking to the floor, where he sat holding his chest.

  Frowning, Liz came out of the minibus. Pete was gazing forward with bulging eyes. She spotted the blood pouring through his fingers and washing down him. She followed the glaring eyes. A figure. A rifle. Another sudden bang and Pete was dead, the next bullet traveling straight through his head and finishing him off. Liz was trembling immediately. The man in the field was only a few meters away, stepping over the barbed wire fence. She was standing with her back to the minibus, her whole body frozen. He placed the rifle back over his shoulder, took a handgun from his pocket and shot her in the face. The boys, who’d all gathered at the windows on that side, screamed loudly as the man entered the minibus.

  “Sit down!” Brian Parkes roared at them.

  With frightened eyes, they did as he said. Liz’s son was shaking uncontrollably.

  “Mum?” he called out as Brian Parkes started the engine. “MUM!?” he screamed, dashing to the front.

  Brian Parkes leaned over and hit him with the barrel of the magnum, the boy falling in a clump by the passenger footwell.

  “Drag him back there,” he boomed. “Any more and I’ll fuckin’ shoot the lot of you.”

  Tyler and another boy leaned into the front, took hold of the unconscious boy and carried him back with the others, many of them sobbing and shivering as Parkes drove them into nowhere.

  “My granddad’s a cop, mate,” Tyler called out, the others giving him looks, trying to stop him.

  “Your granddad’s Jack Sheridan,” Parkes replied into the back.