by Adam Millard
And yet Tom did feel guilty. As if he had abandoned Ryan out there on that rain-soaked road; as if there was something more he could have done. “I feel like a piece of shit most days,” Tom finally managed. “And not a day goes by that I don’t think of Ryan Fielding trying to put some distance between himself and that fucking truck.” The way his back-fat wobbled as he ran. Faster, Pugsley, faster! Of course, Tom kept that part to himself.
Kurian nodded along, as if he understood, but how could he? How could anyone? “And how long afterwards was it until they discovered the body? The police, I mean?”
Tom was taken somewhat aback. Had he failed to include that most important segment in his confession (and it was a confession, no matter which way you looked at it). “They never found a body,” Tom said. “Ryan just disappeared, as if he’d never existed to begin with.”
Kurian frowned, and Tom knew exactly what the psychiatrist was thinking. He was thinking People don’t just vanish. They have to go somewhere. They have to exist, and continue to exist, in some form. But that was where Kurian was wrong. Ryan disappeared that night in ’88 leaving nothing at all behind but an empty bedroom and a grieving mother.
“But if he was run over,” Kurian said, “then surely there was some sort of evidence. If not a body, then the remains—”
“The police didn’t find a damn thing, and still haven’t to this day,” Tom explained. “When Ryan’s mom died just a couple of months later, she was fat too, you see, I think the police stopped looking at all. Can you believe that? It was as if they had been given permission to brush the whole thing under the rug and pretend none of it had happened. I’m still convinced that prick Wood didn’t believe our account of what transpired there that night. A runaway ice cream truck in the middle of October? I mean, that’s just fucking crazy, right?”
Kurian shook his head. “Nothing surprises me these days.”
“Yeah, but this was thirty years ago. Kids were safe on the streets back then. At least, we thought we were.” You could leave your doors unlocked, Tom thought. Back then there weren’t paedophiles; there were just perverts. Perverts and maniac ice cream demons.
Demon.
That’s what it was. Tom had made the mistake, in the beginning, of believing the thing responsible for Ryan’s abduction was a man. But it wasn’t a man. It was something else, something much darker, much eviller than any man could ever be.
“Tom. You don’t mind if I call you Tom, do you?”
Tom shook his head; it was his name, after all. He wasn’t one for formalities.
“Am I right in assuming this childhood trauma has followed you into adulthood? Always there, niggling at the back of your mind like a sore tooth?”
“I’d say that’s a good assumption,” Tom said. He really needed a drink. Something strong, something to numb every ounce of him. “Danielle thinks this is going to help, but I have to be honest with you, doc, I don’t think anything is going to make a blind bit of difference.” No negativity, Danielle had warned him just before leaving the house with a suitcase trailing behind her on squeaky castors and a taxi idling on the driveway. But it was hard not to feel anything but pessimistic. His wife was leaving him for an indeterminate amount of time, and he was about to embark on a course of treatment he neither believed in nor wanted. It was purely placatory, a way of getting Danielle to come home sooner rather than later.
Kurian didn’t seem discouraged by Tom’s candour; if anything, his smile grew wider. “You would be surprised how many times I’ve heard that in this office, Tom. Most people are sceptical about what we do here. I guarantee, maybe not now but after a couple of sessions, you’ll start to feel better. It’s a long process, and some people never do get to the bottom of their problems. But you already have a head-start. You know what your problem is, what made you feel this way. And that can only work in your favour.”
“Lucky me,” Tom murmured.
“Our time today is coming to an end,” Kurian said, glancing up toward the clock for a final time, “but I would like for you to make a follow-up appointment on your way out. And try to stay positive, okay? You can’t allow your childhood demons to dictate what happens to you in your adult life. You must stay—”
Just then, there came a muted tinkling. A mobile phone ringing. Doctor Kurian, seemingly embarrassed, began fumbling for it in his trouser pocket.
Fear froze Tom, paralysed him to the point that he couldn’t breathe, couldn’t swallow.
Kurian’s ringtone…
Half a pound of tuppeny rice.
Half a pound of treacle.
It was some kind of sick joke. Someone had got to Kurian first—Danielle?—and told him all about the silly fucker who feared an old Nursery Rhyme. And Kurian must have set his ringtone accordingly. Maybe he had even arranged for this call to happen now, while Tom sat before him, spilling his guts. To what end? What was he playing at?
Maybe that was Danielle on the other end of the line, waiting for Kurian to answer so they could have a jolly good laugh about it. You should see his fucking face! Kurian would say. Oh! It’s amazing. He looks like he’s going to cry!
Tom tried to speak, but nothing came out. He could only watch as Kurian answered the phone, only it wasn’t Kurian now. It was him.
The Ice Cream Man.
Where Kurian had sat only a moment ago, the Ice Cream Man now perched, feet up on the chair, knees tucked into his chest, like a bird-of-prey about to swoop. A pair of crimson eyes watched Tom as he squirmed in his chair, wriggling this way and that and moaning deep within. The rest of the Ice Cream Man was impossibly black. Vantablack, scientists would call it. The darkest black known to man, and liable to send you crazy if you stared at it for too long. His crimson eyes, set into an otherwise featureless face, didn’t blink. His fingers and toes were long, spiderlike, possessed of razor-sharp nails.
This isn’t happening, Tom told himself. Then what? Had he fallen asleep talking to Kurian? Was this a nightmare, or one of those terrors people talked about. Not quite asleep, not quite awake, but something in-between, where the brain—sick sonofabitch—could play tricks on you.
When the Ice Cream Man spoke, Tom prayed he would wake up before he died there in that chair, a coronary whilst sleeping. “It won’t help.” Deep, sonorous, something between a hiss and a grunt. “None of this will help you.”
Tom had never felt so helpless in his life. At least back in ’88 he had had an entire road to run along. Here, pinned to the chair and without a voice, he was vulnerable.
The Ice Cream Man rapidly twitched as he repositioned himself on Kurian’s chair, his claws tearing into the black leather. “I remember you,” he said. “And you will never forget me.” That last part wasn’t a question. “No matter how hard you try I will always be there. I’m always there. I’m coming back, Tom Craven. I’m coming back for more.”
Tom screamed. He didn’t think anything would come out, but it did. Finally. “You’re not real!” he yelled, the movement returning to his limbs, to his shoulders and neck. Slowly, as if learning what each muscle does for the first time, it was all coming back. “No, no, no, no, no! Not real! Not real! Not—”
“Tom!”
“—real! Not! Real!”
Tom stared wide-eyed at the man sitting across from him, Kurian, and for the longest time he drew a blank. It was as if his brain had completely shut down, couldn’t comprehend what had just happened, if anything.
The mobile phone in Kurian’s hand was now silent. Had he answered it? Was there someone there on the other end of the line, listening to his crazed outburst?
The Ice Cream Man was gone, if he had ever been there to begin with. Now there was just Kurian, whose countenance was one of absolute bewilderment. “What just happened, Tom?”
Shaking his head, Tom tried to explain. “He was here!” he said. “Your… your phone… what’s your ringtone?”
Kurian frowned. “My ringtone?”
“Your fucking ringtone, doc!”
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“I don’t know,” he said. “It came with the phone. I haven’t got around to changing it just yet. Hate technology. Wouldn’t know where to start.”
“It was Pop Goes the Weasel!” Tom said.
“No,” said Kurian. “It wasn’t.” He seemed so sure of it, too.
Taking out his own phone, Tom said, “What’s your number?” He was determined to prove it.
Kurian reluctantly recited his personal number, then held his phone up in the air, waiting for it to start ringing, the lines in his forehead growing deeper.
Tom finished dialling the number. “Now we’ll see,” he said. Could it be that Kurian’s ringtone was something else entirely, a tune reminiscent of that haunting Nursery Rhyme—The Ice Cream Man’s entrance music?
When the phone in Kurian’s hand started ringing a second later, Tom’s question was answered. The sound emitted was an automaton chime, a near-perfect rendition of Greensleeves, and it sounded nothing like Pop Goes the Weasel.
“Catchy,” said Kurian, allowing the ringtone to play on as if to satisfy Tom’s craving for self-humiliation. “But as you can see, it’s not what you thought it was.” After a few more seconds, Kurian cancelled the call and slipped the phone back into his trouser pocket.
Pushing himself to his feet—his backside was drenched with sweat, and his legs felt sore, as if he had just finished a long run—Tom apologised to the doctor and made his way toward the door.
He didn’t stop, even when Kurian’s concerned mollifications became a bellow. He didn’t stop when the receptionists stopped discussing the previous night’s soap operas and clambered to their feet to see what all the fuss was about. He didn’t stop when the boy—little Simon, who would probably go on to massacre his entire family with a hatchet—began to weep, overwhelmed by the whole thing.
He didn’t stop until he was half a mile away, and then he doubled over and vomited, splashing his recently polished shoes with upchuck.
I’m coming back, the Ice Cream Man had said.
Wiping stinking drool from his chin, Tom found himself making the sign of the cross, despite not setting foot in a church for over twenty-nine years.
SIX
October 24th, 2016
Redbridge, London
The house was cold when Tom returned. Was Danielle’s absence having a strange effect on the thermostat? Tom didn’t know, but he shivered as he entered the living-room and dropped his keys on the coffee-table with a loud clunk.
The refrigerator held a fresh six-pack of beers, and Tom downed the first one as if it were water. He set a second down on a coaster next to his car keys and took out his phone.
Would Danielle be pleased to hear from him? Probably not, but since today had been her idea it seemed only right to fill her in on what had happened. He would keep the Ice Cream Man’s sudden reappearance to himself, though. That wasn’t what she wanted to hear. Something like that would keep her away even longer, and that simply wouldn’t do. He was scarcely surviving as it was.
After three rings, Danielle answered, not with a ‘hello’ but with her usual, “Tom?” It was how she answered the phone to everyone, by speaking the caller’s name as a question, as if they were about to divulge some terrible news and this would somehow move things along a little more swiftly.
“Hey, babe,” Tom said, trying to sound upbeat. “How’s your day been so far?” She liked it when he talked about her; she liked it even more when she talked about her.
“Oh, not awful,” she sighed. “Jayden took a pretty nasty knock to the head at school, and so we spent most of the morning at the hospital.”
Jayden was Rebecca Lebbon’s oldest, and Aunty Danielle’s favourite—even though she wouldn’t admit that to her sister. “Shit, is he okay?” Tom hoped he sounded sincere; he couldn’t care less about the boy, who was always getting into scrapes. All he cared about was getting his wife back so they could draw a line underneath all this and move on. Together.
“Three stitches, but he’ll be okay. Don’t think there’s any breaking that boy.”
I’d like to prove you wrong about that, Tom thought but didn’t say. “Yeah, tough as nails, that one,” he said, taking the easy option.
“How did it go?” She was referring to his meeting with Doctor Kurian, but she might as well have been asking him what he’d had for breakfast, such was her coldness.
“It went well,” he said. Lies had never been a problem for him. “He’s a nice guy. Looks a lot like Mark Ruffalo.” He picked up his beer can, took a long swig before placing it back down on the coaster. He wasn’t really enjoying it. Something more burning was required to soothe his anxiety.
“Did you tell him everything?” In the background, a whole menagerie of children was bickering. Tom could hear them cursing at one another in language you’d expect to hear on a football field.
“I told him a lot,” he said, which was the truth. Kurian had managed to extract more from him than even his wife, which might have had something to do with the fact he was being paid to do so. Danielle often nodded along, but deep down she wasn’t taking it in. “I’ve got another session in a fortnight, and Kurian thinks we’ve laid some good foundations.” His words, not mine, Tom thought. If it were up to Tom, he would never set foot in that office again. He still hadn’t decided whether he was going to make the follow-up appointment. Not after what had happened there today.
“That’s good,” Danielle said. Tom could tell she wasn’t really listening. She was probably too busy watching Jayden, Joel, Justice and Oscar tearing seven shades of shit out of one another. Tom would be surprised if those four kids made it to twenty without at least a stint in the slammer.
“So, when are you coming home?” He wanted to add something about the house being so terribly cold without her, but he didn’t get a chance. Danielle’s reply was swift and severe.
“Not for a while.”
Brutal.
Tom’s heart sank. Was she not missing him the way he was missing her? She couldn’t be, otherwise she would do everything in her power to see him again. “Well that sucks,” Tom said, trying not to sound too dejected and failing miserably. “I went to the doctor, just like you wanted me to, and—”
“You’ve had one session, Tom,” Danielle interjected. “These things take time, and we’re lucky we have that going for us. The last thing we want to do is rush this. If I come home now, nothing will be different. You’ll still be drinking every night, waking up in pools of your own sweat, terrified of something that happened thirty years ago.”
“Twenty-eight years ago,” Tom corrected, although it wasn’t important. It felt as if it were just yesterday. “So, you’re saying this silliness is going to continue? You’re staying away indefinitely?”
“It’s not silliness, Tom,” Danielle said. For the first time since their conversation began, Tom knew he had her full attention. “This is how our marriage is going to survive. You need some sort of… some sort of closure, and I’m hoping your psychiatrist will figure out way of giving it to you.” She paused, and for a few seconds Tom could only listen as the sound of four boys fighting reached a crescendo. Rebecca—seemingly at the end of her tether—reproached them with a barrage of foul language, which explained where the boys had picked it up from.
And you want one of those little fuckers, Tom thought, remembering how much Danielle liked to go on about being a mother. She couldn’t even cope with him, had run away at the first opportunity, how was she going to fare with a petulant little human? At least Tom could wipe his own arse.
“Look, Tom, I’ve got to go.” She sounded distracted once again. “If you want me to come to your next appointment with you, just let me know. I’m here to support you, despite what you think of me. We’re going to get through this, Tom. I know we are. We have to.”
Tom sighed. He didn’t want Danielle with him the next time he visited Kurian and he told her as much.
“Well, if you change your mind you just have to say. I’ll
call you in a couple of days, make sure you haven’t burned the house down.”
There would be no burning down of houses, for that suggested Tom would at least attempt to cook something, and the last thing he wanted right now was hot food, or any food for that matter.
When she hung up less than thirty seconds later, Tom sat with the phone in his lap, staring down at the screensaver. It was a selfie picture of them sitting on a boat in the middle of a lake; Tom had taken it when they’d camped at Brecon Beacons last year. In the picture, Danielle was smiling, but Tom was not. Had it always been that way? Was his wife right, that he needed to get help to save their marriage? That picture had been taken during one of the happiest moments of Tom’s summer, and yet he looked as if he might cry spontaneously at any given moment.
The picture eventually faded, and then there was only a black screen.
Story of my life, Tom thought.
SEVEN
October 24th, 2016
Birmingham, West Midlands
Tired, battered, and breathless, Marcus Berry moved sluggishly around the ring. He could no longer hear the crowd—chanting his name, or at least his moniker ‘The Banger’ as loudly as they could—but he knew they were growing restless. This fight should have been over three rounds ago, and yet his opponent was still up, still fighting, and looking a lot better than Marcus felt.
Maybe his father had been right; forty was too old to come out of retirement.
Dodging a barrage of body-shots, Marcus unleashed a powerful right jab which snapped Samuels Jr.’s head back but did nothing to take the wind out of his sails. The sonofabitch had an iron jaw, and no matter how many times Marcus connected sweetly, it was never the coup de grâce.
The bell put an end to the ninth, and Marcus listlessly made his way over to his corner, where his father stood waiting, a water-bottle in one hand and a towel in the other.
“You hear that?” Clive Berry said as Marcus slumped onto his stool. “They’re booing. They came to see a champ, and they got a chump instead. I told you this was a stupid move, son, but you wouldn’t listen—”