by Adam Millard
That cut to the bone. How could she believe him? He was talking about something beyond the realms of science, a metaphysical being—a fucking monster! She wasn’t wrong for finding it a little difficult to swallow.
“I only called to make sure you were okay, Tom,” Danielle said, trying to compose herself. “Clearly you’re not, but at least you’re not dead. Do me a favour, will you?”
A grunt.
“If I call you, please answer the phone, okay? We’re still married, you’re still my husband, and I care about you.” More than you’ll ever know.
“I’ll answer,” Tom said. Two words which, quite frankly, Danielle didn’t think sounded sincere.
When the call ended a minute later, Rebecca was right there, shaking her head in disbelief. How much had she heard? You didn’t have to be a genius to fill in the gaps. “Is he—”
“Losing his mind? Going bat-shit crazy?” Danielle felt bad for talking about Tom like that to her sister, but what did he expect?
Rebecca filled both their glasses, even though Danielle hadn’t touched her drink. “On the bright side,” she said, “we get to take the kids to the Sealife Centre this weekend.”
Danielle smiled.
On the bright side…
FOURTEEN
October 27th, 2016
Havering, London
Luke pulled the car over to the kerb and sat, for a moment, looking at the house he used to live in. It was so different to how he remembered it. There were no net-curtains, for starters, and the windows had been leaded; a criss-cross lattice which made the house look far more extravagant than it actually was.
The small front garden was meticulous. Even though an early morning frost covered the grass, it was clear that the present owners took great care of it. The row of firs which Luke, Tom, Marcus and Ryan had once constructed a den in were now gone, replaced by a pair of fruit trees Luke thought were apple. Where there had once been a tyre-swing, there was now a wooden trellis with some unknown—to Luke, at least—species of flower snaking up it.
It was only right that Luke should visit the house first. It had been such a huge part of his life, even after that thing took Ryan. Though Luke could not remember much happiness taking place there after ’88, or even before. His parents’ constant arguments, his father’s propensity to leave for days on end, his mother’s loud music as she sobbed into her cheap wine, it was no wonder the house caused him to shudder at the mere sight of it.
And yet he was home.
He had returned and, sitting there in the car while the engine idled and staring at the house of bad memories, he felt right, and it was as if nothing had changed.
Nothing and everything.
He turned off the engine and stepped out of the car. Just a few feet away was the space upon which that thing had stood pretending to be Ryan. Pissy-Pants Davis! Pissy-Pants Davis! Luke remembered it as if it were just yesterday.
The messages appearing on the computer screen—WINDOW, MINE, HELP—and the bickering between his mother and father as he’d stared down from his bedroom window at the thing wearing the skin of his friend.
The thing that wasn’t Ryan.
Luke walked slowly over to the spot, unsure why, or what he was expecting to achieve from it. Was it merely a macho thing? A gesture to prove he wasn’t chicken, to prove he wasn’t Pissy-Pants Davis?
He stared up at the bedroom window, the one through which he’d looked as a child from the other side. A dog-walker on the other side of the road watched him suspiciously as she went by, and Luke waited until she was out of earshot before muttering a few choice words about ‘nosey old cunts’.
Now what? Luke thought.
He had come all this way, had spent last night in one of the most squalid hotels he had ever had the displeasure of staying in on the outskirts of the city, and now he was here he was at a loss.
It was as if he’d been pulled toward Havering by an unseen force. He had felt it last night at the hotel, growing stronger with each passing hour, a tugging at his stomach he had mistakenly assumed to be a case of too much vending-machine food. Driving into Havering had been a strange moment, for the sensation—the pull—had grown even stronger.
I’m fucking here! Luke thought. Now what?
As much as he wanted to, it was far too early to knock the door, to speak to the new owners of the house he used to live in, to ask them if it was okay for him to take a little look around the place, you know? For old time’s sake? Was there ever a good time to do that, though? When was that ever acceptable? Not since the turn of the century, Luke imagined. People didn’t like letting strangers into their house nowadays, especially if they were going to get all teary-eyed. There was, of course, always the possibility that he wasn’t telling the truth, that he had never lived there and was only casing the place for some future burglary.
The new owners would probably call the police, just on general principle, and things were bad enough without getting arrested on account that he wanted to take a little looksee at his old bedroom.
So, what then? Luke thought. Why had he come all this way? Apart from the strange pull in his stomach? That irrepressible feeling that he had unfinished business in Havering. But what was it? He was one man, and he was clueless.
There was no way he could walk up to the house and knock the door. Not a chance in Hell; he felt like some sort of voyeur just by looking at the place.
He had one more stop to make, though even that now seemed like a bad idea.
He walked back to the car, terrified to look back at the house over his shoulder in case someone was peering through the curtain, phone in hand, waiting for the police to arrive.
The drive to his parents’ house, just a few short miles from where he was now parked, would hopefully help him clear his head.
But then he started thinking about how they were with one another, how much water had passed under the metaphorical bridge that was their marriage, how they had almost disowned him in the weeks and months following Ryan’s disappearance, and by the time he arrived twelve minutes later, he was even more wound up.
His parents’ house was a large white affair in a much better neighbourhood than the one he had been brought up in. All of the houses here, including his parents’, were detached, and with more than enough land surrounding them to make neighbourly disputes a thing of the past.
Luke pulled into the driveway, crunching gravel under his wheels, and stopped just short of the red TR7 in front of the house.
“Fucking hell, Dad,” Luke said, shaking his head as he tried to figure out what had possessed his father to buy such a ridiculously impractical car, but then it all made sense. The car was just about big enough for his father, therefore he wouldn’t have to take his mother out in it, because there was not a cat in Hell’s chance she would stuff herself into such a tight space, not unless it was worth her while.
Luke climbed out of his own car and eased the door shut. He didn’t slam it, and the only reason he could think why was that it was still not too late to change his mind. His parents probably hadn’t heard him pull up—it wasn’t as if he was driving a clapped-out TR7, after all—and he was well within his right to turn around and head back to Luton without popping in to say, ‘Hey, folks! I’m all grown up and mentally unstable. Thanks for that.”
By the time he reached the front door—they even had one of those tawdry bells hanging there as if to prove their gaudiness—Luke was ready for it, surprisingly. He had no idea how they would react when they saw him, for it had been a long time since his last visit.
Lydia’s first birthday, in fact, over seven years ago. It was during that visit that things got a little testy—his father had instigated an argument with his mother, Lydia had become upset, his father had shouted at Lydia for crying “like a fucking baby”, Karen had dropped one of his mother’s favourite crystal glasses—and Luke had parted on bad terms. Luke remembered the drive home on that eventful afternoon; Karen was livid and swore never to le
t them see Lydia again.
And that was that.
Now here he was, the prodigal son returning, his own family in disarray while he was on the verge of madness.
He rang the bell and waited.
An aeroplane thundered across the sky overhead; a cat appeared through the hedgerow to Luke’s left, mewled once or twice, then buggered off again; it started to rain yet again, which Luke only noticed because of the noise it made as it rattled a million skeletal fingers on the aluminium bins sitting outside his parents’ garage. All these things seemed to happen at once, and then…
The door opened a crack, just as far as the chain on the inside would allow it, and there, filling the tiny opening, was the face of a man.
A man who wasn’t his father.
“Not interested, mate,” said the man, whose reddened cheeks suggested he’d recently been exerting himself.
On your mom, Luke thought as the rage inside him grew.
“Who the fuck are you?” Luke said, unable to control himself. The man was lucky he hadn’t already had a hammer-fist to the temple.
The man’s eyebrows knitted together, forming an angry V. It would have been comical under different circumstances. “Hang on a minute, you cheeky prick,” he said. “You knocked my door. Who the fuck are you?” He didn’t wait for a response; instead the door shut, and then there came the sound of the chain being slid across, before the door flew wide open and the bullish gimp stepped forward. Even though he was twenty years older than Luke, he was stockier, and had huge hands, Luke noticed, which were peppered with blue and green tattoos.
Prison tats, Luke thought.
Despite the man’s size, Luke wasn’t in the mood for this. He had been expecting to see his father, his mother, but for some reason this fool had answered the door. “Anne Davis,” he said, holding the big guy back with one hand. But the big guy, whoever he fucking was, had obviously been looking after himself, and he twisted Luke’s arm as if it were made of spaghetti.
Luke dropped to his knees—he’d had no choice; the sonofabitch was one step away from breaking his wrist—as the man called back into the house, “Anne? Anne? Someone here to see you, love.”
“Let go of my fucking arm!” Luke said. His knees were now soaked through with rain, and it was all he could do not to scream out in agony.
Just then a woman’s voice came from back in the house. “Who is it, Dave?” it said. And then there she was. His mother, looking as if she’d been made up by some French whore teaching her the ropes. Her skin was old and leathery, and golden. Far too golden for a human. She looked like a gangster’s moll, or whatever the 21st century equivalent was. When she saw Luke, down on his knees, his right hand reaching for a terracotta plant-pot he planned to use as a weapon against the brute, she gasped. “Luke! What are you doing here?”
The big man—Dave, apparently—eased up on Luke’s arm. “You know this prick?”
“Let him up, Dave,” Luke’s mother said. “That’s my son.”
Dave’s frown said it all; this was the first he was hearing about a son. Luke didn’t know what was worse, the fact that his mother was clearly boffing this thug, or that she was so embarrassed by Luke that she had decided not to mention she had a son.
When Luke was back on his feet, breathless and angry as all hell, he turned to his mother and threw her a fake smile. “This might be a stupid question,” he said, “but is Dad in?”
* * *
His parents had been separated for almost three years, and neither of them had thought to let him know. His father now lived with some floozy by the Thames—a whore, his mother said, but Luke didn’t believe that was accurate—while his mother and Dave were planning on marrying once the divorce was finalised.
Dave owned a rock-themed pub in Camden; Luke had probably walked past it many times, not once thinking to stick his head in just in case his mother was planning on marrying the proprietor. Funny, that.
“Sorry about what happened outside,” Dave said. They were now sitting opposite one another in a living-room whose primary décor was porcelain dolls. So many goddamn porcelain dolls.
“S’alright,” Luke said, rubbing his reddened wrist.
“I thought you were being a smart-mouthed fucker,” said Dave, folding his huge arms across his chest. Printed upon his tee-shirt was a British Bulldog, everyone’s favourite patriotic/xenophobic mascot.
“I thought you’d killed my parents and buried them underneath the patio,” Luke said, being a smart-mouthed fucker. “So pleased you’re just shagging my mom.”
Dave took that as a compliment, somehow. “She never told me she had a son,” he said. “It’s come as a bit of a shock, if I’m being completely honest.”
“That’s funny,” Luke said, “because she never told me I had a future stepfather. Do you think we should call her on it when she’s done butchering the tea?” Luke was not in the mood for this. He had always wondered what life would be like if his parents split, and ostensibly this was it. Dave and his mother. Big Dave, as they no doubt called him down at his Camden boozer. His mother looking like a tangerine, with huge hoop earrings clattering noisily against the side of her face. Luke was hardly in a position to criticise anyone’s relationship—it was only a couple of days ago Karen had ejected him from the marital home for trying to strangle their daughter in her sleep—but this was a farce.
An unexpected travesty.
“He wasn’t nice to her, you know,” Dave said, and for a few seconds Luke wasn’t sure who he meant. But then it hit him. His father. His father wasn’t nice to his mother. “He was knocking her about—”
“You don’t know anything about my father,” Luke said. He was unsure why he was leaping to his old man’s defence—perhaps because he wasn’t here, in the home he had bought with his wife, to defend himself—but it seemed the right thing to do. “You only know what she’s told you. They’re as bad as each other, and I’d be more likely to believe that Mom was the one knocking Dad about.”
Dave lit a cigarette, and the room quickly filled with a grey fug. Luke remembered back to the night—Halloween ‘88—Ryan went messing. His father had lit a cigarette and his mother had, as she always did, reproached him for it. Did Dave get the same treatment or was that simply something she had reserved for his father; it wasn’t the smoking that bothered her, it was the smoker.
“Hate to say it, son,” Dave said, putting far too much emphasis on the last word for Luke’s liking, “but your father’s a prick what likes to knock defenceless women around.”
Luke shook his head; he wasn’t rising to the bait. It was already clear that he and Dave were never going to get along. There would be no father-son camping trips with this one; no fishing or golf expeditions, which suited Luke just fine as he’d only met the man ten minutes ago and already hated being in the same room as him.
Just then, his mother walked in carrying a tray laden with china. Cups and saucers rattled as she traversed the furniture, trying desperately not to spill a drop, and she finally set the tray down on the coffee table between Luke and Dave. Luke noticed his mother’s garish nails as she poured out three cups of tea. They were nails which didn’t belong on a human, not unless said human hid in treetops and hunted voles at night. It was a wonder she could even pick up the teapot.
A deathly silence had descended upon the living-room, and Luke turned his attention to the carriage clock on the mantelpiece, either side of which sat two more ugly fucking porcelain dolls. It was almost eleven, not that Luke had anywhere else to be.
“So…” his mother said as she settled herself down onto the sofa next to Dave. He placed a huge hand on her thigh and gave it a squeeze. Luke couldn’t have been less bothered by the action. These assholes, he thought, are perfect for one another.
But then, he’d thought that of his parents for so long, too.
Eventually, his mother went on. “How’s Lydia?”
Lydia? His beautiful daughter who he was missing something rotten? The
best thing in his life who he had tried to murder because she had turned into something pure evil? Just hearing her name out loud caused his heart to skip a beat, and it was all he could do not to break down in tears right there in front of his mother and big Dave, the arsehole.
“She’s doing well,” Luke said, for she was, as far as Luke was aware. “She’s good at school, and she’s just joined the Brownies. Absolutely loves it.” I tried to fucking kill her, Mom! I tried to kill Lydia because the Ice Cream Man—you remember him, don’t you?—possessed her and made her levitate off the bed.
He almost said it, too, managing to pull himself back at the last moment.
“You could have brought her to see us,” his mother said, slurping noisily at her watered-down tea.
“Oh, that would have been a lovely surprise for her!” Luke said with mock enthusiasm. “You can never have enough grandfathers, as far as she’s concerned. I know she would have just loved big Dave—”
“There’s no need to be like that,” said his mother, placing teacup into saucer and wiping her lips with the back of her hand. “Is it wrong that I want to see my granddaughter once in a while? What happened all those years ago, it was silly, Luke.” She waved a hand dismissively through the air. “I never wanted any of this. I didn’t want to fall out with anyone.”
Always the victim, Luke thought. “Pity you hate Karen then, isn’t it,” he said.
“Pity she hates me!”
“Who’s Karen?” Dave asked.
“Don’t worry yourself about it,” Luke told him. “One new name today is enough for you. Don’t want to go overdoing it.”
Dave snorted. “I’ll knock that smug look off your fucking face, you little—”
“Dave!” gasped his mother. “Just leave him alone, okay? It must have been incredibly hard for him to come here at all today.”
“I was just passing through,” Luke said, just in case his mother made the mistake of assuming he had come all the way to Havering just to see her. “Thought I’d stop by, make sure my parents hadn’t killed each other. Turns out they haven’t, because they’re getting divorced. Oh, Happy Days!” He almost sang the last part.