by Adam Millard
The pencil suddenly became impossible to control; the dark figure’s maw fell open to reveal several rows of impossibly sharp teeth. A grin. The pencil moved across the page, scribbling out the sketch Marcus had drawn, replacing it with thick, dark lines. Marcus gasped, fought for control of the pencil, but it was as if an invisible hand was holding it in place, making Marcus draw what it wanted.
And still Marcus couldn’t scream for help; his voice was stifled before any noise came out.
Downstairs his father cackled obliviously away.
BEH—
Marcus watched as the letters formed on the page beneath his now-censored image, drawn by his own hand and yet not.
—IND
The temperature in the room had dropped substantially in the last minute; Marcus shivered. His breath crystalized in front of his face.
—YOU
Suddenly the pencil flew from his hand and shot across the room, so quickly that it pierced the poster there—a large cinematic print of Will Smith as Ali—and penetrated the wall beneath.
BEHIND YOU…
Marcus, the paralysis which had rendered him unable to move for the past few minutes suddenly removed, turned around, and standing there, in the darkness at the corner of his room, was the Ice Cream Man. His incorporeal form seemed to writhe and squirm as he stepped from the shadows; thin tendrils of black lapped at the air, obsidian flames that were cold instead of hot. His eyes were burning orbs of rage, and yet the grin stretching across his face, revealing a thick black tongue and those razor-sharp fangs, was so wide it might very well have met at the back of his head.
Before Marcus could scream, before he could stamp on the floor so that his father might hear and come to his rescue, the Ice Cream Man’s perpetually altering hand snapped out and latched onto his arm.
And then they were outside. Wind and rain pelted Marcus’s cheeks as the Ice Cream Man dragged him unceremoniously across the ground toward the truck parked at the kerb. Digging his heels into the muddy grass, Marcus struggled to break free of the Ice Cream Man, whose grip was vice-like and staunch.
Managing a guttural appeal for help, Marcus hoped someone had heard him. He could see, through the living-room window of his quickly fading house, a figure moving around, and then his father’s face appeared between the curtains.
Marcus yelled again.
Shock washed over his father’s face, and then he was no longer peering through the living-room curtains. He was rushing down the path—a black knight ready to fuck the Ice Cream Man up—and calling Marcus’s name.
Almost at the truck now, Marcus glanced up at the thing dragging him through the street, tried to peel the tarry fingers from his arm with his free hand.
“Marcus!”
His father was going to reach him in time; there was no way the Ice Cream Man would make it to the truck, load Marcus in, make his way around to the driving seat, and drive that thing out of there before Clive Berry got to him.
“Marcus!”
It was at that point that Marcus realised he was no longer being dragged through mud and puddles. He was lying on his back, staring up toward the darkness and the rain falling from seemingly nowhere. The ice-cold hand was no longer wrapped around his forearm; a slight stinging sensation was the only intimation that it had been there at all. Then he was being pulled up by his sodden pyjamas into a sitting position.
“What the fuck are you playing at, boy?” His father looked angry. He shook Marcus violently, punctuating each word with a shake of its own.
Grabbing onto his father, he pulled him in for a tight embrace. It had been so long since he had hugged his father—at least a year—and although it felt foreign, it also felt good, for he was safe now. Safe from the Ice Cream Man.
“Did you see him, Dad!” Marcus said, peeling away from his father and turning to the road. But there was no ice cream truck sitting there; no dark, ethereal man-thing making a run for it. There was only a car-lined street, tarmac peppered here and there with ever-increasing puddles, and the houses of their neighbours. “I don’t… I don’t understand—”
“I don’t know what the hell is going on, Marcus, but I’m getting sick of your silly games—”
“You had to have seen him, Dad!” Marcus said, incredulous. “He was dragging me toward the truck!”
“What truck?”
“The ice cream truck!” Of course, now that there was no ice cream truck it was almost impossible to convince his father that there ever had been.
“Boy, I’m getting sick of all this talk about some phantom ice cream truck.” His father pulled him to his feet and began marching him back to the house. Now Marcus knew how those guys on Death Row felt.
* * *
October 24th, 2016,
Birmingham, England
Marcus came to on the table in his dressing-room. Standing over him, a concerned expression deepening the myriad lines in his face, was his father. He looked older, somehow, as if Marcus’s comeback fight, and subsequent loss, had aged him considerably. Behind those worried eyes was the same man, though. The man who had dragged him back to their house back in ’88; the man who hadn’t believed his story about the shape in his bedroom, about how he had been standing there one moment—upstairs, shivering and terrified—and then how he was outside, being yanked toward the idling ice cream truck at the kerb.
“Feeling better about yourself now, champ?” His father sounded annoyed; the question was rhetorical.
Marcus pushed himself up into a sitting position, his legs dangling over the end of the table. “What happened out there?” He couldn’t remember, and although the last thing he wanted was Clive Berry’s ‘I told you so’, he had to know how he had ended up on a table back in his dressing-room.
His father cleared his throat and began to limp slowly around the table as he spoke. “You got your ass handed to you, that’s what happened.” He shook his head. “You thought it would be a great idea to come out of retirement, fight without the proper training, and then step into the ring with Samuels Jr., a man who might well have been able to beat you when you were in your prime, let alone in your forties.”
Marcus pawed at the bruising on the left side of his face; his right eye was almost entirely closed up, swollen. “He knocked me out?” It was a stupid question. Of course, Samuels Jr. had knocked him out.
“You weren’t even defending, Marcus,” his father said. “Just standing there like a wet fish. You might as well have painted a target on your damn face—”
“I saw something, Dad,” Marcus said, for he had, hadn’t he? He had seen that demon from all those years ago; the bastard who took Ryan.
I’m coming back…
“Did it look like a big-ass fist?” said his father, still pacing angrily around the table. “I’ll bet it looked just like a big-ass fist, ‘cos that’s the only thing—”
“Shut up, old man!” It came out of nowhere, but it did what it was intended to; it shut the old man up. His father stood there, mouth opening and shutting like a beached fish, and it would have been comical if Marcus wasn’t sore and bruised and terrified about what had just happened out there in that ring. “The fight doesn’t matter. I’m… something bad is about to happen…”
His father smacked his mouth shut. After a few seconds he said, “I don’t know what’s got into you, Marcus—”
“You remember the night Ryan Fielding went missing?” Marcus cut his father’s diatribe off before it even got started.
“I remember you boys came a-screaming into the house on Halloween,” his father said. “Almost broke down the door. I remember your dumb friend, Craven, inviting a boatload of cops over.”
“Do you remember what happened after that?” Marcus asked. “Later that night?”
Clive Berry nodded; his lips began to curl up, as if remembering the events of that night were humorous to him. “I remember whipping you good with my belt,” he said, “after you tried to crawl out the house after lights-out.”
&n
bsp; Marcus remembered that, too. He hadn’t been able to walk properly for a week. His father’s mastery of ‘the belt’ was endless.
“You were babbling on and on about some bogeyman. Even as I whooped you, you kept insisting there was some… some evil shadow trying to get you.” His faint smile dissipated. “I came so close to hauling you to the doc’s, get your head tested. Losing that friend of yours, that Fielding boy, really fucked with your brain, you know?”
“We didn’t just lose him, Dad,” Marcus said angrily. “He was taken. Whoever was driving that truck took him, and…”
And what?
And now he’s coming back for me? For Tom Craven, for Luke Davis, and for me?
The ones that got away.
The October Boys.
“Well, I hate to be the bearer of bad news, son,” his father said, “but that friend of yours, the one that went missing? He’s been dead for nearly thirty years by now. Probably died the same night you and your friends came barrelling through our front door. And the guy that did it? He’s probably dead, too. And if he’s not, then he’s just an old man now, a helpless old man, still sick and twisted, but can’t do anything about it.”
Marcus knew that his father was wrong. That sonofabitch was no man; it was evil incarnate, an infinite malevolence that would simply exist until the end of time, or until it was stopped.
Pop goes the weasel…
“He was there tonight, Dad,” Marcus said. “In the ring… that bogeyman I told you about all those years ago was in the ring with me tonight. That’s why I froze up. It was like I was paralysed, and no matter how hard I tried I couldn’t shake free…”
“You got knocked out by Samuels Jr.,” his father interjected. “That’s all that happened tonight, son. Ain’t no such thing as bogeymen, or ghosts, or phantom ice cream trucks, and if you keep talking like that, I’m gonna have no choice but to drag you to the nearest asylum, you hear me?”
Marcus was half-tempted to tell his father that asylums were no longer as prevalent as they once were but thought better of it. He was wasting his time here, having this discussion with the man who hadn’t believed him back then—when it was going on all around—and so was it such a surprise he still didn’t believe him now, almost thirty years after the incident.
Stepping down off the table, Marcus walked slowly across to the corner, to where his clothes lay in an untidy pile. As he began to dress, his father continued to speak. Something about being too old for the ring, something else about coaching someone different for a while, Marcus wasn’t really paying attention.
What he had seen tonight was real, of that he was certain. But why now? After all these years, why was the sonofabitch coming back?
Marcus knew what he had to do. He would be prepared this time, for things were different now. He was older, stronger, wiser.
This time he would fight back.
EIGHT
October 25th, 2016,
Luton, Bedfordshire
"Daddy! Daddy!” The quilt peeled back from Luke’s face to reveal his daughter, Lydia, standing there with teddy in hand. Blinking the sleep from his eyes, Luke sighed deeply and pushed himself up into a sitting position. Beside him, Karen slept on, oblivious.
“Hey, sugar,” Luke said. It was three a.m. according to the digital clock on his bedside table. Another day, another dollar. “What’s the matter?”
“I keep hearing noises,” Lydia said through a yawn. She was struggling to keep her eyes open. Luke wondered whether she even knew what she was doing. She had been known to sleepwalk on occasion.
Luke stood, picked up his daughter, and slowly made his way across the room. The floorboards creaked beneath their weight, but Karen didn’t wake. Luke was grateful for that; she had a huge day tomorrow, the culmination of a big case that had been going on for the better part of two years, and she had worked tirelessly to make sure everything went accordingly. A rough night’s sleep, however, would throw a spanner in the works, or at least take the shine off what would most likely be a successful outcome.
“What kind of noises, sugar?” They were on the landing now, and Luke knew to be careful out here. This was where his daughter liked to play before bedtime, where she set her toys out—like traps—to trip intruders or midnight toilet-visitors. But Luke had a technique. Skating. So long as you didn’t lift your foot from the carpet, you were okay. Toys were easily brushed aside. Sure, it was noisy, but not nearly as noisy as a pained scream, followed by several curse-words, and the sound of Barbie’s stable hitting the wall.
“I don’t know,” Lydia said. “Like a tinkling.”
Into his daughter’s bedroom they went, Lydia wrapped around him like a reverse backpack. “You don’t know, huh?” Luke laughed quietly. “Well, if you don’t know, how am I supposed to track the noise down?”
He eased her down onto her bed, peeling her arms from his shoulders, and pulled the duvet up to her chest. He sat there next to her. It was light in here; across the room, Lydia’s nightlight—perpetually on—pumped out just slightly less light than the moon. One half of his daughter’s face was illuminated, while the other half remained in the shadows. It gave her an ominous mien, which was ridiculous as she was the cutest thing he had ever seen in his life.
“Daddy?”
“Yes, sugar?” Running a hand gently across the light side of her face, he realised he was no longer tired. How long would it be—how long would he lie there, staring into the darkness and listening to Karen’s nasally snore—before he drifted back off? Part of him knew it was best to go downstairs, put the TV on, and hope for the best. Sleep did not come as easily as it once had, but it was amazing how quickly he sank into the dark depths of unconsciousness if one of those awful late-night gambling shows played in the background.
“Do you hear it?” Her eyes were shut now; Luke was almost positive she was sleepwalking, or sleeptalking, or something…
Tilting his head just a little, he said, “I don’t hear anything, sweetie.” He was whispering now, hoping there would be no follow-up questions, that his daughter would forget he was even there.
Almost thirty seconds later, when Luke was about to stand and creep toward the door like some Universal monster in an attempt to make it to the landing without waking her, Lydia said something which chilled him to his core.
“Pop goes the weasel.”
Luke froze, could only watch his daughter’s face as a tiny smile crept onto it.
Just a coincidence, he tried to assure himself. There was no way Lydia could know about that song, about what had happened to Daddy when he was a child. It was just one of those random things that come back to bite you when you least expect them. Like a song playing on the radio reigniting memories, feelings, of an old lover, or something olfactory—a passing perfume-drenched neck or a late-night campfire—returning to haunt you. Those things happened all the time, and—
“He’s coming back for you,” Lydia said, only now it wasn’t Lydia. Where one side of her face had been illuminated just a moment ago, and one dark, there was now only shadow, and from within that shadow, two burning red orbs flickered and smoked like burnt-out bulbs.
Luke tried to blink the vision away, for that’s all it was, all it could be. He must have been tired after all. But when he reopened his eyes, he was shocked to find the nightmare visualisation remained.
He tried to call out for Karen—to hell with her sleep! He needed help—but only a weak whimper trickled from his mouth. And on the bed, the thing that once was his daughter began to rise up, dark oily tendrils dancing through the air as she—it—shook free of the duvet and continued to rise, up and up, and…
Half a pound of tuppeny rice.
Half a pound of treacle.
That’s the way the money goes.
Pop goes the weasel.
Up and up she went, and Luke shrank down, and down, watching as his daughter became something ancient and evil and ethereal. Something he never thought he would see again.
&
nbsp; The thing that took Ryan.
* * *
October 31st, 1988,
Havering, London
Luke sat on the sofa in his dimly lit living-room, unable to make eye contact with either of his parents, whose eyes were boring into him like lasers. But why? He hadn’t done anything wrong. Would they have preferred it if he’d laid down in the road, allowing the wheels of the ice cream truck to go over him? It wasn’t his fault there was a maniac on the loose, his weapon a two-tonne van. All he and his friends had done was run from it, and yet his mother and father were looking at him as if he was somehow responsible. What did you expect, Luke? You go out after dark on Halloween, it’s only a matter of time before someone tries to crush you in a Mister Whippy van…
“I’ve just got off the phone to Mrs Fielding,” Anne Davis said, lighting a cigarette and exhaling a plume of blue-grey smoke into the room. Luke’s father, Jack, coughed uncomfortably, the way he always did when his wife lit up a cigarette, or as he liked to call them: cancer sticks. “She says Ryan still hasn’t come home. The police are over there right now taking statements, and they’re going to want to talk to you again, you and your friends.”
“That’s fine,” Luke said, but it wasn’t fine. Nothing about this was fine. Ryan was gone, had either been squashed by that murderous prick or… or what?
Taken?
The latter didn’t bear thinking about. Why would anyone want to kidnap a twelve-year-old boy, other than to fulfil some deviant urge? Twisted images of Ryan Fielding, strapped to a gurney in the back of that ice cream truck, ran through Luke’s mind like one of his View-Master reels. Here, Ryan screamed as some faceless sicko joyfully removed his teeth; there, Ryan howled as the sonofabitch drove nine-inch-nails into his kneecaps with a mallet. The bile rose in Luke’s throat, and he forced the grotesque thoughts from his mind.
“It’s not fine, Lucas,” said his mother, and Luke knew how angry she was, for she had used the name printed upon his birth certificate, rather than the hypocorism. “That could have been you. It could have been us” —she motioned to herself and then Jack— “sitting here, waiting to hear from the police that you’ve been found… that it’s not good news.” She paused there, the soft light of the table-lamp across the room reflecting in her teary eyes. Jack ran a comforting hand the length of her arm, and she composed herself before continuing. “We’re just glad you’re okay. You’re grounded, of course—”