They Did Bad Things

by Lauren A. Forry

  As she hopped out of the car, the clasp on her bracelet gave and slipped from her wrist. When she reached down to retrieve it, a hole in the punctured tire gaped at her like an open wound. The back tire was the same. And the two on the passenger side. All four destroyed beyond repair. She looked at the other three cars. All of them sat lower than they should. All of them bore flattened tires. All of them were useless.

  Somehow, she made it back to the house. She didn’t know how or for how long she’d been standing in the foyer, her wet clothes dripping on the floor. When she heard sounds coming from the dining room, she went in to find Lorna there. In her mind, she calmly explained what she had discovered outside, but when she opened her mouth the words tumbled out.

  Before hearing Lorna’s reaction, Ellie escaped to the kitchen. Tea, she’d mentioned. Tea sounded like an excellent idea. She took her time choosing a mug from a rack by the sink and a tea bag from a glass canister. She filled a kettle with water, placed it on the stove, and waited for the water to boil.

  She wouldn’t be leaving. She was trapped. With them. For at least the weekend. Possibly longer. Trapped. When she hadn’t even wanted to come here at all.

  She slammed her fist into the wall. Bits of white plaster dusted her knuckles. She watched her hand bleed, waited for it to sting, and, when it finally did, felt somewhat calmer.

  “It will all be fine,” she whispered and ran cool water over her hand, rinsing away the blood and plaster. “You’ve done nothing wrong.”

  The floor creaked behind her. Ellie turned, but there was no one there.

  “Hello?”

  She listened.

  The kettle whistled.

  Once her tea was done, Ellie took one last glance around the kitchen, then returned to the dining room. Just in time to see Oliver kick a chair.

  “That fucking son of a bitch!”

  She wanted to cover her ears but couldn’t bear to put the warm mug down even as the heat from it burned her palms.

  “We don’t know it was Caskie,” said Lorna.

  “Of course it was! Must have done it before he left, which is why he scarpered out of here as fast as he did. Should’ve chased his car down last night instead of watching him drive off. Bet he knows all about our blackmail-happy little friend.”

  “Then we should let Hollis snoop around,” Lorna said. “See if he can find a way to track Caskie down.”

  Oliver snorted.

  “He is the detective . . .”

  The door clicked open.

  “Speak of the devil,” said Oliver, but it was Maeve, looking like she’d rolled out of bed and all the way down the stairs. “Morning, sleeping beauty. Where the fuck have you been?”

  Ellie’s eyes flashed at Oliver. He caught her glance and rubbed a hand over his head.

  “Sorry,” he muttered. “Rough morning.”

  “No, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to sleep in.” Maeve rubbed her eyes. “I thought I set an alarm. Where’s the coffee?”

  “Hollis up yet?” Oliver asked. “Seems we have a little job for him.”

  “I thought Hollis was down here,” Maeve said.

  “Sleeps in later than you.” He fished a cigarette out of a pack.

  “If he’s sleeping, it’s not in his room. Is there a pot of coffee or is it a make your own sort of thing?”

  “How do you know he’s not in his room?” Lorna asked.

  “’Cause the door’s open and he’s not inside. What about breakfast?” She shuffled halfway into the room, then finally noticed something was bothering them. “What is it? Did you find more notes or something?”

  Lorna explained what happened to the cars. Maeve shrieked and ran to the windows.

  “You can’t be serious! I just paid it off.”

  Oliver laughed around the end of his cigarette.

  “It’s not funny! Maybe you can afford a new car every other year, but it took me ages to save for the down payment.”

  “I wasn’t laughing at you,” he said. “I was laughing at the situation.”

  “What on earth is funny about this?” Lorna asked. “Please explain.”

  “He wasn’t saying it was funny. He was only laughing,” Maeve said. “It’s a normal reaction for some in times of stress.”

  That was enough to stir up another argument. Their three-way squabbling scratched at Ellie’s brain, this out-of-tune symphony playing like a repeat of a long-forgotten record. When she closed her eyes, she could remember a similar argument from years ago—Oliver standing in a kitchen doorway, Lorna across from him, shouting, Maeve cowering by the closet under the stairs, Callum silent on the old sofa . . .

  “That’s it!” Ellie silenced them. “No more shouting. No more arguing. We are adults now. Yes? So we will handle this like adults instead of little children. Is that clear?”

  She breathed in the scent of her Earl Grey tea, keeping her eyes fixed on Oliver. From the corner of her eye, she saw Lorna fold her arms. Maeve mumbled a sarcastic, “Yes, Mum.”

  Oliver broke their gaze first and stomped into the foyer to shout for Hollis. Lorna and Maeve followed, leaving Ellie alone in the dining room. She watched them from a distance as someone entered the room behind her. The presence was so tangible, she thought it was Hollis and turned to say hello. But there was no one there.

  She scanned the dining room, seeking out the corners and curtains, anywhere someone could hide, and saw no one. No longer willing to be alone, she abandoned the mug on a table and joined the others in the foyer.

  “We think Hollis went for a walk,” Lorna told her. “Maeve said his jacket’s not in his room.”

  “What were you doing snooping around his room?” Ellie asked.

  “For the love of—I wasn’t snooping! The door was wide open. And it’s not like it’s a big room. It was easy to see his jacket wasn’t in there. It’s bright yellow, for god’s sake.”

  Ellie remembered then what she had found last night and retrieved it from her pocket. “Does Hollis have a child? I found this in the study.”

  Lorna took the little card that read Congrats, Dad!

  “I saw him in there last night,” Lorna said. “We both had a drink. It was late, sometime after midnight. He must’ve dropped it then.” Lorna paused and tilted her head to the side, examining the corner of the tag, and tensed. “That’s blood.”

  “Are you sure?” Oliver asked.

  She handed over the card. He grimaced and passed it to Maeve, who pinched it between her forefinger and thumb. No one said anything until Maeve handed the card back to Ellie. Ellie didn’t need to read it again. Instead, she watched Maeve, who was staring at the fireplace.

  “Do you think it was Hollis who relit the fire?” Maeve asked.

  No one answered.

  “Did any of you do it?”

  No one answered.

  Oliver

  A small key rested in the lock of the door beside the main entrance. The rest of their search had turned up nothing. This was the last place he and Lorna had left to check. Oliver twisted the key and, expecting a closet, grimaced as he looked down the wooden steps.

  “Of course. A cellar,” he sighed. “I don’t see a reason to go down there, do you?”

  He ran his fingers through his thinning hair, hoping Lorna wouldn’t notice how anxious he was. It used to be so easy to cover what he was really feeling. But the years had made it harder for him to hide behind his bluster.

  “We’ve already checked the dining room, the kitchen, and the study,” Lorna said. “Nothing. Ellie and Maeve obviously haven’t found anything upstairs yet. Let’s just finish the job. There’s a light switch right here.” A single bulb sprang to life. “See? Not even a flicker. You’re not scared, are you?”

  “When have you ever known me to be scared?” But he could think of at least one time. By the look on Lorna’s face, so could she. He motioned to the stairs.

  “Ladies first.”

  “If you push me, I’ll murder you.”

  H
e held up both hands.

  The steps creaked under their weight. Oliver plodded along behind. True to his word, he let her go unmolested all the way down the stairs. He hesitated on the middle step.

  “Well?”

  “Oh yeah,” she called up. “It’s a total nightmare. You might want to stay where you are. Could hurt yourself on an errant bath towel.”

  The steps groaned as Oliver joined her below. “You know, Lorna, you’re just as funny as you were at school.”

  “By that you mean not at all?”

  “Glad to know some people don’t change.”

  They stood side by side listening to the rain outside. A small cracked window at the top of the wall opposite revealed weeds driven sideways by the wind. The only cellar he knew was his grandfather’s, filled with vegetables and jars of pickled foods and jams, and an old bomb shelter Grandad refused to get rid of in preparation for “the next big one.” This cellar was as unremarkable as Lorna had implied. A few metal racks held a hodgepodge of items—old sheets and towels, extra wastepaper bins, mini-bottles of shampoo—but stacks upon stacks of cardboard boxes took up the majority of the space. Instead of dirt and onions and a broken jar of strawberry jam, this cellar smelled of wet cardboard, sawdust, and petrol. It reminded him of the junk room in Caldwell Street, the one stuffed with random bits of broken furniture and kitchen equipment, previous tenants’ junk mail, the bag of dirty laundry. He and Callum had tried to sort through it once early on and managed to pull out enough scraps to jerry-rig Callum a desk. Oliver had even sanded it down and restained it for him, and Callum had bought him several rounds at the Byeways in return. They spent the night being miserable at darts.

  The memory put him on edge. As Lorna headed for a pile of disused furniture in the corner, he followed like a toddler dragged through a store by his mum. Yesterday, he couldn’t wait to reach the house after abandoning his hired car. Now, he calculated how long it would take him to walk back there, and if he could change the tire once he did.

  “Jesus, look at this.” Lorna picked up a green Koosh ball and bounced it on her finger. “Callum had one of these on his desk. He used to throw it against the wall whenever he was studying. Drove me so mad I hid it from him once. He got so sad when he couldn’t find it, I didn’t have the heart to keep it from him.” She looked at it for another second, then placed it back into a box and continued farther into the cellar.

  “What do you remember about him?” she asked.

  “Not much.” Oliver nudged a box of wood blocks with his toe. “I mean, he was quiet, wasn’t he? Didn’t get in the way much. Not until . . .”

  He crossed his arms and glanced at an empty bird feeder.

  “But haven’t you been thinking about him? All of us here, that horrible sofa, hasn’t that brought anything back?”

  “Nothing to bring back. We weren’t mates. Barely said hello to each other.”

  “You know that’s not true. Maybe he didn’t go to your parties, but you two hung out now and then. And he got you that ticket for George Michael at Wembley.”

  “If you tell anyone I went to a George Michael concert, I’ll cut your balls off.”

  “So you do remember.”

  Oliver pushed past her to a deeper corner of the cellar. Of course he remembered. Each minute he spent in her company brought back another memory of Caldwell Street. They were collecting like drips from a leaky faucet. No matter how much he twisted the taps, they kept getting in. He even remembered that stupid Koosh ball, except Callum’s hadn’t been green but pink. He remembered because he’d made a gay joke about it that made Callum wince so badly Oliver had wondered if he was gay, despite the hard-on he’d had for Maeve. He wasn’t going to tell that to Lorna, though. Let her guess what he did or didn’t remember. What had he done with the tire iron?

  He kicked aimlessly at a stack of crates. A black cardboard box fell into his path.

  “Hello there. Hey, Lorna . . .”

  But she was staring up at the ceiling.

  “Where are we?” she asked. “What’s above us?”

  “I don’t know. The dining room? Son of a bitch. Lorna, look at this.” He turned the box over in his hands. “Lorna? Oi. Big tits.”

  She snapped out of it and wiped a hand across her forehead.

  “Knew that would get your attention. Here.” He shoved the box into her hands. “Know what that is?”

  “A box.”

  “Don’t be thick. What’s it a box for?”

  Lorna tipped it toward the light. “JF100 Wall Mounted 2G, 3G, 4G, Wi-Fi Jammer. Are you fucking joking?”

  “One of these babies can block all cellular and Wi-Fi signals for over a hundred meters.”

  “I know what ‘jammer’ means, Oliver. How do you even get one of these?”

  “Easy. Amazon. Where else?”

  “Why do you know so much about them?”

  He snatched the box back. “Don’t be suspicious of me, love. Out of all of us, I give the least shit about any of you.”

  “So you keep saying.” She looked again at the ceiling. This time Oliver followed her gaze.

  “Why do you keep looking up there?”

  “I thought I heard something.”

  “Well I haven’t heard a thing.”

  A thump, like something falling, rattled the ceiling.

  “Except that.” Oliver ran up the stairs, box in hand.

  When he reached the foyer, he stopped, Lorna bumping into him from behind. The door to the dining room stood open. Lorna looked at him, waiting for him to do something. Of course he needed to make the move. That’s what he did. That’s who he was. The guy who made the decisions. At least, that was who he used to be. He could fall back into that role if they needed him to. He cleared his throat and approached the door.

  “Hollis?”

  No answer.

  Lorna nudged him. “Go.”

  “I’m going!”

  But when he got to the door, there was nothing to see. He ushered Lorna over.

  “We did hear something, didn’t we?” she asked.

  Oliver left the empty box on the nearest table and walked to the windows.

  “Did someone come through the window?” she asked.

  He tugged at the sashes. “These are shut up tight.”

  “Maybe the kitchen?”

  They both looked across the room. Was his mind playing tricks or had the door just moved, like it had fallen back into place after being pushed? He blinked. The door was still. At least now. Oliver approached the kitchen. Nothing. No movement of shadow between the door and the floor.

  “Hollis, is that you?” he called. Again, no answer.

  He felt someone watching him and turned, but it was only Lorna, keeping near the door to the foyer. She nodded, urging him on.

  Oliver curled his hand into a fist and pushed in the kitchen door.

  Maeve

  Maeve dragged her hand over the bumps in the wallpaper as she and Ellie walked deeper down the hallway that housed their guest rooms. The same pattern repeated everywhere, on each floor, like they weren’t really moving at all. Like she and Ellie kept returning to the same place. She thought of her nephew’s gerbil and the little plastic tubes attached to its cage. Hours it would run, keeping her up at night, never moving an inch from the place it started.

  “Do you really think we’ll find anything up here?” Maeve asked, glancing over her shoulder at the staircase they had just left behind. The higher they climbed within the house, the more disconnected she felt, like the air was somehow thinner up here. Or maybe it was the result of being stuck with Ellie.

  Ellie opened a door, took a perfunctory glance, and shut it again. “It’s better than sitting around waiting for something to happen.”

  “What do you think will happen?” Maeve asked.

  “I don’t know. Hollis? Are you in there?”

  They stood in front of his open door. His room had the same old furniture as Maeve’s, the same grandmotherly bedsprea
d. Maeve tried to spot anything special about it, anything that could give away where he had gone. Ellie giggled.

  “Remember how our floor always smelled of fried chicken?” Ellie asked. “He ate it almost every night. It was like living in a Chicken Cottage.”

  “Why is that funny?”

  Ellie frowned as if she realized she’d been laughing at a funeral.

  “I suppose it’s not. I was just . . . just remembering.”

  “Yeah well, I’m not in a mood to reminisce.” Maeve stepped into the room to get away from her, but no matter how far apart she got, it was like she was tied to Ellie with an invisible string. She felt the tug as she searched through Hollis’s bag. Clothes neatly folded: shirts, socks, trousers, trainers. A paperback novel, its bookmark a folded newspaper clipping. Something about a kidnapping.

  “Maybe we’re overreacting,” Ellie said. “Maybe Hollis did go for a walk.”

  “Like you?”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “Lorna told me you went out this morning.”

  “When did she tell you that?”

  “When we were downstairs. God, do you get this defensive with David?”

  Maeve returned to the hall, feeling Ellie’s eyes on her, the giggles gone.

  “How do you know my husband’s name?”

  “Because you told us about him.” With every step she took, Ellie took two, like a trailing yo-yo, until Ellie was close enough to grab her arm. Maeve yanked it free.

  “It’s just I can’t remember saying anything about David since you’ve been here.”

  “Well, you did. There’s nothing up here. Let’s go.” The lights in the hall were giving her a headache. Maeve wished she could unscrew each bulb and crush it against the floor.

  “You may not think so, but I pay attention to every word I say.”

  “Because you’re totally obsessive-compulsive that way.” Maeve pinched the bridge of her nose, hoping to keep the migraine at bay. “We came up here to look for Hollis. We can’t find him. Let’s go downstairs. Who cares about your stupid balding husband anyway?”