‘From suspicion,’ says Lance. ‘This is how I kept people in the basement until police came. Or until I figured out how to punish them.’
‘Well, that’s not sinister,’ says Summer.
‘It makes sense,’ says Simon. ‘Then we’re also definitely safe from Justine. Not that I’m saying it’s definitely her—’
‘Shut up, Si, you’re still my number one, fucker. It’s just good to narrow things down.’
‘I do not want to be narrowed down,’ says Justine.
Roberto steps in front of her. Lance takes a step closer and finds a smile from somewhere. ‘Come on, fella, you know it makes sense.’
‘It doesn’t, mate. I may not be a strategist, but even I know she’s in more danger tied-up.’
‘Come on big man, out the way.’
‘That’s not gonna happen.’
‘And why’s that?’ he says, stepping in so their foreheads are almost touching.
‘Because… I’m a man of peace,’ says Roberto.
A snigger leaks from Lance like oil. ‘I like this new side to you. Very holier than thou. Unfortunately for you, you’re no reverend. And I’m not a man of peace. So get out the way, will you?’
‘Sorry, mate. I can’t let you do it.’
‘You won’t let me do anything, Robbo. If I want to do it, I’ll do it.’
Roberto looks deep into Lance’s eyes. ‘That’s the flex, is it?’
And the others spot the fear tingle in the Welshman.
Two men with emotional problems and no ability to process consequences stand in front of each other. The paranoia in the room has reached fever pitch. The heat has turned to sweat. Their sinews aren’t just for show.
Lance moves first, a kick to the groin leaving no one in any doubt that Lance is used to fighting as dirty as the situation dictates. He grapples Rob into a headlock as the others back to corners of the room. Roberto, who looks in serious trouble, flings his leg forward and then back, finding a kick that crunches into Lance’s shin, who holds his grip as they fall to the ground. Roberto kicks around desperately until a laugh spurts from Lance. This is just the pitch at which he’s comfortable. But Lance laughs strangely too. As if it’s a half joke, but they’re still unable to still their aggression. They look up at the faces watching them, aware what they look like. Children imitating wrestlers.
‘Leave her alone and we’ll end this now,’ says Roberto. But the noise from the constriction of his voice box draws a snigger from Lance. And it doesn’t feel like the beginning of a negotiation.
He slaps Roberto on the back of the neck. Both to patronise and let him know how in control he is.
‘I’ll let you go, if you stop mugging me off and let us restrain the girl. It’s the sensible thing to do.’
He looks to the rest of the group as Roberto goes purple.
‘Am I right?’ Lance bellows.
But the group are caught between his logic and the one that says the man in front of them, slowly revealing the beast within, doesn’t feel like the best person to elect as their leader.
‘Well, am I?’ Lance screams.
Roberto manages to elbow Lance in the head, who shakes it off as if he lives for that kind of pain. So Roberto gets another two hits in.
‘Stop now, Rob. Say mercy. Or I’ll end you. You know I will,’ Lance says, with a ghoulish calm. Squeezing as he does and easing him into a position, one hand gripping his forehead, the other his shoulder, that is sickening to look at.’
‘Don’t, don’t do it,’ Zack says.
Lance has spoken about how easy it is to break a neck. That little crack.
‘No mercy,’ says Roberto. ‘Ever.’
‘Ah, fuck this,’ says Lance, slackening off suddenly. ‘You chose this Rob, remember that wherever you’re headed next.’ Then he ripples with intent again.
Lance sticks a knee in his back, gripping Roberto’s left ear with his right hand, and his right shoulder with his left, bracing himself to twist until everything in between snaps.
This time Roberto’s elbow reaches Lance’s eye and in that tiny moment of weakness Roberto turns the hold around, finding himself behind Lance, looking Justine in the eye. Then averting his gaze, out of some strange etiquette, he pulls hard, drawing thunder from Lance’s body, which immediately falls limp and hits the tiles like exactly what he now is, a dead weight.
Justine goes to Roberto immediately, holding his head and looking into his eyes. While the others’ looks go to Zack, who raises the shotgun at the killers in front of him.
Finger curved over the trigger, in a way that reveals he has used a gun before, the other heads all note. But what none of them can see, is the moment when, over Roberto’s right shoulder, Zack sees Tommy coming down the corridor.
02.10 a.m.
What happens next is a series of minor events, each echoing from one to the next in the smallest division of time we have, as if time itself had finally slowed so that fate could reorder itself into something like reality…
Zack falls to his knees as he did when he first saw Tommy’s head, this time observing the whole of Tommy, intact, which is the cause of his brain thickening, his hands softening and the shotgun falling from it. The Wagner music from the other house playing like an earworm inside his head.
And as the gun falls, Simon dives to catch it before it hits the ground, lest the ancient thing fire and do more damage to the residents of the villa than has already been done.
And as it falls, Roberto pulls Justine towards the wall, lurching for the small, rectangular mirror that slides out to release the door, behind which are the stairs that lead down to Simon’s quarters.
And as it falls, Summer pulls Liv onto the ground anticipating the gun going off, their bodies turning together in mid-air, like a slow dance, as they free fall towards the hard tiles.
And as it falls, Tabs trips on a tangle of legs as Liv and Summer desert her, slipping to the ground in the direction of Lance’s limp and sinuous body.
And when she falls, Tabs gracelessly thumps into Lance’s recently vacated body, rolling over him and instinctively using his bulk to shield her from whatever comes next.
And Liv’s spine lands hard on the ground, Summer falling on top of her, cushioning Liv’s head from a hard crack of a landing with her hand, then pulling her into her chest, narrowing the potential target. Summer binds herself around Liv, her lips to her neck, until they become one beautiful flesh with two backs.
And as the mirror slides out, Justine pulls at the wall to reveal the door to their escape, Roberto turning to see the shotgun land.
And it’s in Simon’s two hands it lands, as his elbows hit the ground, holding the weapon a few inches off it like it’s a newborn.
And Zack falls too, the music dipping and rising in his tired mind, the whites of his eyes depicting a man quite faint, as he topples towards the ground, chin leading the way, catching himself at the last second, hands slapping onto the tiles to break his fall and preserve the architecture of his excellent face.
As he looks up through the gauze of smoke, the thickness of which has crept up on them incrementally, and the music reaches crescendo, he sees Tommy is nowhere to be seen.
‘Where is he?’ screams Zack, getting up like a man possessed and heading into the corridor.
The side door slams and Simon bangs on it hard, Roberto and Justine having managed to put a partition wall between themselves and everyone else for now.
‘Where is he?’ Zack repeats from hallway, accusing everyone in the living room by insinuation of some grand scheme.
‘Who?’ says Tabs, one hand on the stomach of the dead man below her.
Zack comes back inside, ogling each of them in the abstract silence. ‘Tommy? Where did he go?’
On the other side of the wall, Roberto and Justine stand apart when the bangs start. Threatening thuds that send them reeling back towards the eggshell wall behind them.
‘Makes sense for us to seek sanctuary together,’ he
says. ‘You, a sinner. Me, a man of the lord.’
And when she sees no irony in his look, her concern deepens.
The door shakes but holds firm and is strong enough to repel any onslaught a man might make with his bare hands. But is it thick enough to withstand a bullet? Justine thinks, as she watches Roberto approach the wall and yell.
‘We’re staying here! It’s not safe out there. Just let us be.’
‘We have to stick together,’ comes Simon’s voice through the wall.
‘Well, that hasn’t worked out that well so far, has it, loves?’ he calls back.
He makes to take Justine’s hand but she’s not so keen. He had thought killing a man in her honour might be seen as the ultimate form of commitment, but it seems to have soured things. She glances at his arms, as she rejects his grasp again, re-evaluating exactly what she’s got herself into with this man.
‘We’re safer in here, Si,’ says Roberto, hands to waist, the adrenaline wearing off and his emotions and fatigue getting to him. ‘Than out there with some murderer.’
‘You’re the ones who’ve killed,’ says Simon.
Roberto turns back, scoffing, to find Justine’s stare there waiting for him.
‘We didn’t do this,’ Roberto says, a wetness in the back of his throat.
‘I don’t think you did,’ says Tabs, Roberto smiling a look back to Justine at this show of support. ‘Not together. But one of you may have. What makes you so sure it’s not the other?’
Justine bites down hard on the flesh between thumb and first finger, a loose sound escaping from her, as she takes another step further away from Roberto.
‘He was right there,’ gasps Zack. ‘You didn’t see him?’
‘Tommy’s dead,’ says Liv. ‘That’s the one thing we know.’
‘And yet you didn’t see the body? I did. I just saw his body. Walking around. He smiled.’
‘We saw the head,’ says Summer.
‘Up close?’ he says.
‘Close enough,’ says Summer.
Liv rests a hand on Zack’s as he holds his own head in his hands, watching Tabs and Simon talk through the door at Roberto and Justine, trying to coax them out of their hiding place like cats in a wall.
‘I had a dream when I was flat out,’ says Zack. ‘I didn’t have a body. I was just a head. A head in a box, I think. And there were flashing lights, and there was… you, Liv. I looked up at the box opposite mine, and I could see your eyes.’
She grips his hand and strokes his head to soothe him. And as he pictures the smile on Tommy’s face, he considers where he is now, considers how easy it was for him to pick them off when they thought he was dead, considers who made that prosthetic head, and how to explain all this in any normal way to the others, now he has muddied the waters by blurting out some nonsense about his dreams. Yet, it did mean something, he feels. There was a hint of destiny in it. Perhaps he and Liv are the ones who will survive. Perhaps they are the ones who are meant to be.
‘I could see your head. Staring back at me, Liv.’
When Zack looks up, Simon is standing over him.
‘What did you say?’ he says.
Zack just looks up at him.
‘He had a dream,’ says Summer.
‘About what?’
‘What does it matter?’
‘It matters!’ shouts Simon, shot through with the same kind of rage he had for the fisherman earlier in the night.
Zack just stares at him.
‘Severed bloody heads,’ Liv says. ‘But forgive us if none of us want to come out as having psychotic thoughts when the next thing that tends to happen is being tied to a chair, or suffocated, or broken in two.’
Simon looks at the gun, which Zack has kept just within his reach, leaning against the coffee table.
‘And stop taking notes with your eyes,’ says Liv. ‘The analysis is over, doctor. The rest is just the consequences.’
Then Tommy leans his head against the patio doors and smiles. Summer sees him clearly and meets his return with a scream. Not the greeting for a lover returned, but for a ghost. The others go to Summer, but she goes to Tommy. Tapping his head against the glass so gently. Summer sees it all.
‘Summer?’ Liv says. ‘Are you okay?’
‘Let him in,’ Summer says. And the others watch her, a woman entranced, drawn towards the glass. But they can’t let her go out there. It’s not safe.
‘He’s back. Let him in,’ Summer says. And soon Zack is at her side staring out there too.
‘Summer,’ says Zack. ‘You see him?’
She turns to Zack. ‘Of course. He’s back.’
The fire crackles away next to them, the others watching on in horror.
‘But there’s nothing there,’ Zack says.
Summer laughs, then turns back and goes quiet. ‘Where did he go?’
Zack rubs his temples with his middle fingers. Tabs and Liv crowd around her in comfort but she backs away towards the fire.
‘No. No, you’ll squeeze me, hurt me,’ says Summer.
The women approach tenderly. ‘No, it wasn’t us. Or if it was it didn’t last long, before you reminded us of the coven.’
Summer softens for a second, then her resolve stiffens. ‘But you don’t want that. You never do. Women never like me.’
‘We do. We love you,’ Tabs says, reaching for her. ‘It was Lance that hurt you. He dug his knee into your back. He did all of this, but he’s gone now. I really think it’s over. All we have to do is wait for that boat. We can leave Roberto and Justine where they are. The rest of us can be here. It’s over. I think. I think it’s over.’
Summer looks up, her hair dangling in her eyes, her voice sounding more guttural than normal. ‘It’s not over.’
She grabs for the shotgun and gets there before Zack or Simon can, raising it up.
‘This is for the coven. Believe me. Now, you stay back. Back!’ Summer says. And she may not have fired one before like Zack has. She may not have won a clay pigeon shooting competition. But the mechanism is pretty basic. They’re made for beginners.
‘Careful now,’ says Simon.
‘Shut. Up. You melt.’
Her eyes water, her finger shakes on the trigger. She coughs.
‘I won’t come closer. Just hear me out,’ says Simon, taking a step away from the others and back towards the door so Roberto and Justine can hear too. ‘I think I know what’s going on here. There was a case in the Victorian era, a haunting, a family that went mad overnight. They talked of seeing apparitions. When they were found in the morning, they were all dead. Nobody could explain it at first. Then they checked the house. The chimneys were blocked, they’d been slowly gassing everyone, sending them mad. We’ve never used these chimneys before. Never thought we’d have to. That must be it. Stress, plus the gas, equals the hallucinations. Because, Summer, Tommy isn’t here. He’s gone.’
‘No, he’s not,’ she says. ‘He’s stuck out there. Trying to get in.’
Liv, coughing now too, reaches for Zack’s hand for comfort.
‘Let him in,’ says Summer.
‘It could be dangerous,’ says Zack.
‘Let him in.’
Liv grips Zack’s hand tighter. The whole room coughing now, glancing at the fire behind Summer.
‘Please,’ Liv says, ‘Let’s put out the—’
Then Simon breaks away from rest. ‘Fine,’ he says, his throat sounding tight. ‘I’ll go out there, Summer, to prove to you he isn’t there.’
And before anyone can disagree, he has opened the door just wide enough for his slender body and slipped out at the edge of it, allowing the cold to rush in.
‘It’s okay,’ shouts Simon, beyond the glass. ‘It’s good to let the smoke out anyway.’ He backs into the garden and boldly looks around. ‘We’ll put the fire out, then everything will be okay.’
‘He’s not there?’ Summer says, tears falling from her.
Simon stops. ‘Tommy is dead. We’ve all been po
isoning ourselves. If anything has seemed odd, anything at all, we know what it was. We’ll drink some water, let the smoke out. And everything’s going to be fine.’
Summer smiles, then the look fades.
‘No it won’t,’ she says, staring beyond Simon. ‘There he is.’
Summer sees a smile forming on Tommy’s face. And knows he means no good.
‘No!’ Zack says, as Summer takes aim at Tommy, creeping up behind Simon. And she fires.
The glass shatters, the gun still in good working condition, the bullet smashing through the glass, leaving droplets like rain that sprinkle down as the discharge finds its way into the open air of the garden. The sound of the gun deafening cannon, the shatter like some enormous orchestra symbol, and the shards fall like every diamond in a jeweller’s store has been released to the sodden ground.
She drops the gun. As the garden reveals itself, the breeze blows out the fire and Liv and Zack rush out into frigid air, feet crunching on the glass below, to assess this mess they’ve made.
Which consists of nothing at all. No Simon. No Tommy. Just Simon’s tortoiseshell glasses. Next to two curled, blood-red fingers, open to the bone.
02.52 a.m.
When the bullet sounded, Justine had no choice but to head down the stairs with the large man she had started to ponder if she ever really knew at all.
Sure, they had a fistful of complicated conversations. They had used nearly all the confrontational and passionate words available to them, but spared precious little time to enjoy each other’s company within the uncomfortable nervous clamour that stood in for their relationship. She had, at that time, imagined that once the tears fall away what you are left with is a better alliance. A purer, more sculpted version of the previous thing. Michelangelo’s David was just a stone until they took away everything that wasn’t him. Yet, what if, she thinks as she avoids the offer of his hand once more as they reach the office door, what if once all the high emotion of the shouting is over, what if all you are left with is a massacred shadow that once was affection.
‘In we go, love,’ Roberto says, as he pulls the door handle.
It’s us inside forever, she thinks. This is it. Last chance to make a run for it.
Beach Bodies, Part 3 Page 6