Count to Ten

by Mark Ayre

  Behind the bar, a sturdy woman leaned against the wall and watched Amira take her seat. In her fifties, the landlady had to be the youngest person in town by two decades. One cold winter separated her from complete isolation.

  If she had never seen an outsider, which was likely, it didn’t show.

  “What can you I get you?”

  Unlike the loo roll and chocolate in the shop, there were no recognisable brands stencilled into the taps. Over the bar, Amira spied several fridges. Glass fronts displayed obscure white wines and ciders. Higher up, Amira recognised vodka, whiskey and gin, none of which bore labels.

  Taking another look at the old men’s dirty glasses, she said, “Do you sell Kit Kats?”

  “We do nuts.”

  “Not the same. A cider. Anything I can drink from the bottle.”

  This didn’t please the landlady. Amira drinking from the bottle would bring the tone down. Luckily, she’d graduated from a service school where the customer is always right was still the motto.

  Amira had her drink.

  Before the landlady could leave, Amira said, “I’m looking for some information.”

  Turning back, the fifty-something woman raised an eyebrow. She did not return to Amira. Nor did she depart.

  “I’m trying to locate a Richard Unwin.”

  Amira had approached this request from several angles. As none had bore fruit, she went for simple, straight forward.

  Across the room, a glass came down like an auctioneer’s mallet. Sold. One of the old men choked on his beer and dirt. The landlady took a step towards Amira.

  “I think you’d better be drinking your drink,” she said. “Leave the questions for another day, another place.”

  “That’s no good for me.”

  “It might have to be.”

  “It’s not.” Amira sighed. “I get that around here you’re not too fond of Richard Unwin.”

  The mallet smacked wood again. Sold. Amira turned. The octogenarians glared.

  One said, “We do not speak his name.”

  “Isn’t that Voldemort?”

  The reference was lost on the older gentleman. The landlady showed no reaction, but Amira thought she’d understood. Sipping from her cider, Amira decided to focus on the one person in town who wasn’t old enough to have attended school with Arthur Conan Doyle.

  “You’re not the first people I’ve spoken with,” said Amira. “It’s obvious none of you wish to talk about this… man. You want me to leave, and that’s fine. Honestly, I wish I could. But I can’t.”

  “You can,” said the landlady.

  “Except I can’t. This isn’t some stupid interest project; I don’t want to wind anyone up. I’m not a journalist… right now. My friend’s life is in danger. Only if I find this Richard Unwin can I save her. It’s taken me long enough to track him here. I don’t know where to go next.”

  Before speaking, the bartender filled two more dirty pint glasses from a tap with no name.

  “He can’t help your friend.”

  “Except he can. Given how much you all seem to fear him, I guess you know he’s not ordinary.

  Glasses full, the landlady delivered them to the old men’s table. One took her wrist. Both whispered before allowing her to return with their empties.

  “Know what that was about?” the landlady said, upon returning.

  “I assume they demanded your nightly topless dance. Fine, but can you wait until I’ve left? Nothing personal but you’re not my type.”

  “You know what that was about,” the landlady said, unphased by Amira’s stupid jokes. “They don’t want me to talk to you. Every man, woman and child in town has promised never to talk of Richard Unwin. It’s our vow.”

  “Are there children?” Amira asked, “or is that what they call you?”

  “You should leave.”

  “Why do you fear him? Has he threatened to disrupt the annual turnip festival? Does he use a fork to eat soup or,” she pretended to muse, “is it what happened in the fifties?”

  The landlady’s eyes widened, but she recovered well.

  “You did your research.”

  “I always do my research.”

  The cider wasn’t bad. Dry, as Amira liked it. Surprisingly cold. It had all the marks of a drink you might find in a proper pub, in a proper town or city.

  “You’re conflicted,” said Amira, after a while. “As a good person, you want to help. Also, I’ll pay—did I mention I’d pay?—and who doesn’t like money? But you don’t want to betray your town, which I get.” Amira sipped again, considered. “We have to find a way to get past this. I’m not joking, the life of my friend depends on me finding Unwin. I’m not leaving until I have my information.”

  “You might not get a choice.”

  Amira rolled her eyes. “Will the community come together and murder me? We’re in the middle of nowhere. I doubt you want to be a horror movie cliché.”

  From across the room, Amira could feel the gaze of the old men. She wanted to make a pervert quip but was getting somewhere with the landlady. Didn’t want to slip off track.

  “Please, help me.”

  “Unwin is dangerous.”

  “Then he’ll kill me, and it won’t matter that you surrendered your big secret.”

  “It’ll matter to my conscience. I’ll worry.”

  Amira smiled, finished her drink. Slid it across the bar and waved away the offer of another.

  “You’re a good person,” Amira said. “Tell you what, when I survive, I’ll come back, let you know I’m okay. Come on, help me save my friend. Be a hero.”

  Still, the landlady was conflicted. There was nothing more Amira could do.

  After some time, the server leaned over the bar.

  “Okay.”

  Across the room, chair legs scraped on wood boards. Amira turned to see one of the men standing. The other gripped a beer. The glass trembled in his grasp, as though it were trying to get away or massage his palm.

  “We do not speak of him,” said the standing man.

  “No one’s asking you to,” said Amira. “But I won’t let your fear kill my friend. Understand?”

  Looking at the landlady, the standing man said, “that thing killed my sister and best friend. Killed Johnny’s wife and daughter. Killed your mother.”

  Johnny, the man with the shaking glass, appeared to be crying. At the standing man’s words, the landlady hung her head.

  Despite her attitude, Amira wished no one harm. Not physical and especially not emotional. When she stood and faced the old man across the room, her eyes were lit with not the passion of a fight, but the compassion of reason.

  “You must miss your sister and friend terribly,” she said. “Johnny, I’m sorry to hear about your family. I know many people were lost over those few days. I know how it must have destroyed the heart of this town.”

  She wondered if someone might interrupt her, to tell her to leave. When they didn’t, she went on.

  “I can’t possibly understand your pain. Wouldn’t dream of trying. I’ve been blessed. I’ve yet to lose a loved one.”

  Johnny had stopped crying. The other two patrons and the landlady watched Amira intently as she spoke.

  “A similar plague to the one visited upon your town in the fifties came to my village less than a month ago. The friend I’m trying to help lost her mother and boyfriend. We were lucky not to lose more, but it isn’t over. My friend is in terrible danger. If I can’t help her soon, she will die, and she won’t be the last. You fear and despise this man, and I wish I could spare you the pain of speaking of him, but I can’t. Please think back, remember the lengths to which you would have gone to save your loved ones. Do that, and I know you’ll understand why I need to push you for answers about Richard Unwin.”

  As though the speech had exhausted her, she felt back into her stool. It creaked but did not collapse.

  “You may hate it,” she finished. “But until I have my answers, I’m not going a
nywhere.”

  Eleven

  On her approach to Richard Unwin’s residence, Amira recalled her best friend’s love of gothic horror literature.

  Mercury had hundreds and would consume them repeatedly. She read little else. Amira wasn’t so enamoured but had at least read the genre’s most famous examples.

  Frankenstein, Dracula, Jekyll and Hyde, The Picture of Dorian Grey.

  As an angry mob had stormed the route she drove, intending to destroy Unwin, the beast who had murdered their loved ones, Amira might have recalled Frankenstein. As she had read Frankenstein but not seen the movie, she instead remembered Dracula.

  Though the latter stages of that book clouded in her memory, the early pages were clear. Jonathan Harker arrives in a foreign land to learn the villagers fear the man he has come to meet: Count Dracula. They will take him only so far towards the Count’s abode and won’t wait with Jonathan for the arrival of the Count’s man.

  Even 65 years after the massacre in the nearby town, its inhabitants were terrified of Unwin. They had been loath to provide even an indication of his whereabouts.

  An average age of 65 helped keep the fear alive. Unwin’s horrors were not enough generations removed to become diluted.

  Amira’s impassioned speech had softened the men and woman of the bar into telling her where Unwin resided. They begged her not to go; sure there must be another way to save her friend.

  Amira wished this was so. She had little desire to be so far North. To be in this empty, desolate place with more fields than coffee shops.

  The idea of meeting Unwin did not frighten her. Long ago, he had ceased to be a monster. He was also eighty. Amira’s biggest fear was that Richard would have died before she arrived. Hated and feared by all in the vicinity, it had been many years since anyone had seen him.

  There was every chance she could happen upon a corpse.

  Over the hump of another hill, Unwin’s abode appeared.

  This was not the ancient, towering castle of Transylvania, home of Count Dracula. This was nothing more than a farmhouse mired in what appeared to be an eternity of rolling fields.

  Old; built from stone with a moss strewn tiled roof, the farmhouse was large. Perhaps five bedrooms. A chimney spat smoke into the sky which Amira considered to be a good sign. Dead men rarely started fires.

  Gravel covered the lead up to the house. Amira’s was the only car, though there was room for six. There might have been a vehicle in one of the barns, but Amira doubted it. There were livestock and crops. The whole place was probably self-sufficient, although she couldn’t imagine how a man so old could tend to so many animals and plants.

  The front door was plain black wood, the knocker brass. When she rapped it against the holder a satisfying BANG, BANG, BANG reverberated throughout the house. There was no bell, but if anyone was home, and assuming they were alive, there was no way they’d miss the sound.

  No one answered.

  Despite her belief that the sound could not have gone unheard by any inhabitants, she knocked again. The banging rang not only through the building but into the surrounding fields, bounding in all directions like a rabbit.

  No one answered.

  After several minutes Amira tried the door because you never know. In the middle of nowhere, why bother to lock up? Especially if people were too afraid to get within a distance where they might make use of that unlocked door to rob you or worse.

  The door was locked.

  Given the expanse of land that surrounded the property, most of which undoubtedly belonged to Unwin, he might have been anywhere. Stepping from the front of the property, she followed the front wall to a corner.

  Fields. She saw cows and horses and sheep, but no signs of human life. Returning along the building, past the front door, to the other corner she saw, unsurprisingly, more fields. Many of these crop fields. There were also three huge barns, all closed.

  Halfway down this side of the stone home were a set of double swing doors built into the floor. These would lead into a cellar, and from there probably into the house. With nothing better to do, Amira walked along the building’s side until she reached them.

  A vast, brass padlock prevented her from going any further. She rattled the chain, but the doors were locked tight.

  Along this, the east side of the building, all the windows had been closed, most the curtains drawn. In the day’s light, she could see easily through the uncovered windows. Stone floors with no carpets or rugs to protect the feet from goosebumps. One room, a living room, was fitted with ancient wooden furniture. She saw no family photographs. Nor a telly.

  When she turned from that window, she found a farmer standing a few feet away.

  Though he startled her, though she had no idea he had approached so silently (if he’d been levitating, he was now on the ground), she still managed to repress a jump.

  “Can I help you, miss?”

  He wore thick boots, brown trousers and a checked shirt partly covered by a gilet. His hands were rough and calloused, and his hair was wild without being overlong. His eyes were a deep green, and his smile was warm. He was in his mid-thirties. Probably only a couple of years older than Amira and just her type. If you could ignore the thick accent. Which she couldn’t.

  “I’m looking for Richard Unwin.”

  “You’ve found one,” he said. “But we are many. My family’s littered with them. Unimaginative bunch as we are.”

  “This Richard Unwin was born in 1940.”

  “Yeah, I figured it might be him.” Glancing over her shoulder, he pointed at the cellar doors. “He’s not in there, although he is below ground.”

  “In a box?”

  “Precisely.”

  “How long?”

  “Six months. Give or take.”

  “I meant in feet.”

  He chuckled.

  Amira considered. The young Richard Unwin’s hands were by his side. He seemed harmless. Dangerous people often did.

  “The residents of the nearest town will be relieved to hear it,” she said. “As it stands, they’re living in a perpetual state of fear for no reason.”

  “My grandfather had that effect on people.”

  “So it would seem. Don’t suppose I could ask you some questions?”

  Young Unwin seemed to have been expecting this. He was not only happy but eager to speak.

  Back around the corner of the building a key so large it looked almost comical was produced and slid into the lock.

  Once she was in, it would be harder to escape. Not that she had any reason to believe Richard was particularly dangerous. She had become more suspicious, as a rule, since a quiet boy she’d schooled with had come into her flat and shot her. Even before that, she’d never been a people person.

  Despite her worries, her need for information powered her on. Richard stepped through and stepped back to let her enter. When she had, he smiled and closed the door. Some comfort was that he left it unlocked.

  “This way.”

  The entrance room was small and square, full of coats and boots. From it led two doors, both closed. Unwin opened the closest and led her into a stone corridor. Paintings of flowers and ancient battles lined the walls, clashing. The floor was chipped and in need of care. The lights in the ceiling were unshaded, aggressive.

  Closed doors led off either side of the corridor. Unwin led them through the third on the left, into the room she had spied from the exterior. More stone floors, white walls with paintings of bloodshed and topiary. Over a grand fireplace, A beautiful tulip sat beside a knight on horseback skewering a peasant with a lance.

  “Did you know the term freelance comes from knights who had no lord or master and were free to sell their lance to any who had need?” Amira asked.

  “I didn’t,” said Unwin. “That’s interesting.”

  He was lying. Amira smiled as though she believed him and was pleased he had enjoyed her fact.

  “Can I get you a drink?” he asked.

&
nbsp; “No, thank you. Last time I took a drink from a man I’d only just met I woke the next day, naked in the gutter, aching in places I should not have been.”

  This wasn’t true, and Amira was less afraid of date rape than she was arsenic. The statement was suitably shocking to make him accept her rejection.

  “You’re more than welcome to get yourself something,” she said. “I can wait.”

  “That’s alright. Let’s sit.”

  A white padded sofa with wooden frame backed against the window and faced the door. Amira took this before Unwin could, enjoying the way the sunlight streamed over her shoulders and her unobstructed view of the exit.

  Opposite her, Unwin took a seat that was the same, but dirtier. If he enjoyed sitting back and watching the world go by through the window, this would be his favourite.

  Glancing around, she asked, “Where’s your telly?”

  “I don’t have one.”

  “Bizarre. How do you keep up with current affairs and the Kardashian’s?”

  “I don’t know what that is.”

  “Events of political or social interest going on in the world at present.”

  “Amusing. I suppose, as I don’t have a TV and will never be able to keep up with these car… whatever, I shouldn’t worry about whether I’ve heard of them.”

  “I wouldn’t.”

  “So, instead, shall we address what you came here to address?”

  This was ideal. Amira had no desire to pursue chitchat before getting down to the matter at hand but had expected Unwin to want to. He had that look about him. Perhaps she was a poor judge of character. Maybe good character judges didn’t let men with guns and the desire to use them into their homes.

  As a demonic force had infected Ian, she let herself off.

  “How much do you know about your grandfather’s life?” she asked. “And I don’t mean how good he was at filing his taxes.”

  “My grandfather was a talker,” said Richard. “I know it all. Even the taxes.”