The House at the End of the World

by Madeleine Marsh

  ‘I’ve done a lot of bad things in my life,’ he confesses without really meaning to. ‘You kid yourself that conning people out of money is okay because you’re not actually hurting them. A couple of hundred dollars here, a thousand there. But I know I was lying to myself. They were vulnerable people who needed that money. God knows how many have lost their spouses because of what I did, or even took their own lives.’ He feels a hand on his shoulder and his head snaps back.

  ‘I’m not a priest,’ Joe tells him gently. ‘No need to confess your sins to me. No point, either. As far as I’m concerned you’re even. You’ve helped a lot of people these last couple of weeks.’

  ‘But you’re not the one who dispenses divine justice.’

  Joe chuckles. ‘No, I’m not. And if you’d said that to me two months ago I really would have laughed in your face. To tell you the truth, I’m still not sure what I do believe because despite everything, I can’t bring myself to admit we actually faced down Satan.’ It’s surprising, because Rick can’t see that there’s any way of denying what happened in Five Points, but each to their own.

  ‘I do believe and I am going to Hell for deceiving good people out of their hard-earned wages.’

  ‘You’re too hard on yourself. Besides, if there is such a thing as divine justice, there’s also divine forgiveness and you’ve definitely earned that. Those school kids in Redwood? They’d have been barbecued if it wasn’t for you. That family in Winters? You and I have fought shoulder to shoulder plenty of times. So if it goes to trial you can call me up as a character witness but if there’s any kind of justice in the world you won’t need to.’

  They’re sweet things Joe’s saying and they put a smile on Rick’s face as he hands over the clean cutlery. He lets himself believe it for a while, that he’s going to be okay, that they’ll see their homes again and their families. Rick’s got a family, albeit an estranged one, living in Florida; Lorna and Melissa, a teenage daughter he doesn't know and an ex-wife who hates him. The others don't know about them because he hasn't mentioned them. When all this started he kept experiencing this irrational fear that somehow he was partly responsible for what was happening and that if he contacted them he would just drag them into it. That was the last thing he wanted to do because in his own, possibly meaningless, way he still loves them. He’s thinking now that he was fooling himself, something he’s exceptionally good at, with his reasons for not calling them, not warning them. If Melissa had told him to fuck off he might have wished some terrible fate on her and he knows he couldn't live with that. So maybe he didn't call them because he’s selfish but he doesn’t think it matters, not now. He doesn’t know if the chaos spread beyond the West because by the time it became clear that it wasn’t just a seasonal increase in weirdness and violent behaviour, there was no television, no Internet, no mobile networks, no communications of any kind, not even radio.

  Joe described it as the tactics of war, silencing the other side, making it impossible for them to group and plan. That’s what their enemy did by blocking every possible means of getting news out to anywhere. How it was done, no one knew. No one they met had managed to work it out. But it was highly effective. Pack mentality quickly took over when normality and routine broke down. In many of the places they drove through there were long-running drunken brawls, destruction and looting; typical panic behaviour. In the first few days Rick was with the group he fought as many humans as he did other things before they started to stumble upon fewer people and more bodies. The closer to the end they got, the quieter things became. Of course at the time they had no idea they were getting closer to the end. Or maybe Matt and Luke did. Matt recorded everything they found and where they found it, building up a map, the map that finally landed them in Five Points.

  The greatest strength of human beings, Rick has realised, is the determination to survive. In every town they found pockets of resistance, people fighting something so huge they had no chance of stopping it, something so vicious that they couldn’t ever hope to win. But that wasn’t preventing them from trying. Wherever they went, Matt and Luke were like modern-day prophets, drawing people to them, quickly dispensing practical advice on how to keep the evil things at bay and what to do if that failed. Rick can’t help but wonder how many of the people they met and fought alongside, even just for a couple of hours, have made it, how many are still alive. He can only hope that Mel and Lorna are okay.

  He fishes around in the bottom of the sink and hands Joe a stray fork before pulling the plug and watching the water drain away.

  ‘Are you okay?’

  Rick nods. ‘Gonna finish my beer then go upstairs, try to get some sleep. If that’s okay with everyone.’

  ‘I’m sure it’s fine.’ Joe pats him on the shoulder and leaves him alone in the kitchen to dwell on whether he’s said too much.

  There’s nothing to do now but wait out whatever’s happening here and see what comes next. He leans against the sink and drinks his beer slowly, washing out the glass before heading upstairs with a murmured, ‘G’night’, to the others and a last look at the locked door he’s been unable to open.

  Upstairs in the luxurious bathroom he stands over the ornate porcelain toilet and stares at his own yellowish stream of piss, trying to remember the last clean urinal he used. Definitely not the one in Hooters in Fresno where he’d been approached by two – two! – guys in the time it took him to relieve himself. In Hooters, for fuck’s sake! The world has never failed to surprise him, which probably isn’t the best claim for a conman to be making but it’s true. He just wishes he could have taken more pleasure in those surprises, seen the funny side more often, found more reasons to laugh. Matt and Luke are constantly laughing, fooling around together. Even under the worst of circumstances they’ve managed to hang on to their sense of humour and he envies them that. That’s how they’ve managed to survive, he suspects. He hasn’t laughed in a long time, not a real belly roar as his father used to call it, one that starts in his lungs, rolls up his windpipe like a wave, into his throat and out of his mouth in a tide of mirth. He wants that now, wants to feel that release of the heavy pressure inside him.

  He finishes, flushes, sidesteps until he’s standing in front of the sink and looks at his own face in the bronze-framed mirror above it. He half-expects a ghoulish stranger to be looking back at him, or a mutilated face just beyond his shoulder, but it’s only him, his reflection staring gauntly out from the glass. He’s disappointed that his own imagination still seems to be running riot even after everything he’s been through, as if that wasn’t enough.

  He examines his own image. His face is thinner than it once was, cheekbones showing through not in a ruggedly handsome way but in a starving, skeletal way. His hair is thinner too; red-blond wisps he’s insisted all his life aren’t ginger. Neither of his parents were ginger but he wouldn’t have bet against his Mom having had an affair. His eyes look sunken, dark shadows around them. The others don’t look this haggard from their recent experiences. Matt and Luke, the bastards, are in great shape. Then again they were practically born into weirdness.

  He turns on the cold water, puts his hands under the stream and splashes his face, lowering his head to do so and looking back up, almost daring the mirror to show him something blood-curdling and horrible like all the things he’s seen in recent weeks. But it’s still just him, with water dripping from his eye lashes and droplets following the sharp curves of his hollow cheeks. With a small sigh he reaches for the towel on the rail and pats his face dry. It’s a luxury not to be using paper towels from gas station restrooms or ratty cloths in motel bathrooms that countless others have wiped who knows what parts of themselves on. Not that he knows any better about this place. It just feels clean and that goes a long way.

  He glances in the mirror one last time and bites his tongue to silence the scream his own reflection raises in him. The flesh from his face has been wiped away, leaving strings of muscle and bright white bone. His teeth are locked in a macab
re grin and his eyes are deep in their sockets, round and bare. The towel drops from his hands and he looks down, expecting to see the inside of his face looking back at him, smudged and distorted. But the towel’s clean, and when he looks into the mirror he’s whole again, as if the glass is mocking him, taunting him because he dared it to. He wishes he could be sure that the sights he’s glancing momentarily are hallucinations and what he’s looking at now is real. But he can’t be, because he doesn’t quite believe it. He can’t help but worry that the house is creating this facade of normal and that the horrors he keeps glimpsing are what’s actually real.

  ~..~

  Something’s up with Rick, even Joe can see it and he’s never been one for bothering to read people. Their conversation in the kitchen is the most the guy’s said to him since they rescued him from behind the strip joint, and that means something’s wrong above and beyond the usual and the obvious.

  But if whatever’s looking out for them now can keep on doing so for another couple of days it’ll give him time to find out what’s up and possibly to help. Before his wife died he was one of those people others looked to for advice, and he was happy to give it. Then Babs passed away and he didn’t want to know about other people’s problems because they seemed so small and insignificant compared to his own, compared to the gaping hole her death left in his life. This recent insanity has affected them all differently, each in their own way, and it’s allowed him to care again about other people. Matt and Luke for starters. If he and Babs had had kids they’d be Matt and Luke’s age and however weak that connection might seem it’s opened him up to actually giving a shit about them, especially considering the circumstances they’ve found themselves in. They help so many and they’re not alone in doing so. There are unsung heroes in every town, people who made it, people who didn’t, people who saved lots of lives, people who saved just one. It all makes a difference. Their little band, stuck here in this odd house, can't be the exception. Out of everyone who’s been fighting back, they just happened to be at ground zero at the right time. Although he doubts very much it was by chance because too much has happened for it to be coincidence. There’s the map Matt drew up, the map that somehow directed them to Five Points, and if that was where Matt and Luke were always headed it makes the rest of them either privileged or very unlucky.

  When the door opens, he and Emilie glance up from where they’ve been sitting staring into the fire, both lost in their own thoughts. It’s only Gabe finally coming back in after sucking on however many cigarettes.

  ‘You can smoke inside,’ Joe tells him, watching as he runs his fingers through his hair to comb out the rain before hanging up his coat.

  Gabe shakes his head, determined. ‘I’m not about to take the rest of you down with me.’

  Joe gets to his feet. ‘Coffee? Sorry, we’ve only got instant.’

  Emilie declines, but despite his grimace at the idea of freeze-dried granules, Gabe nods. ‘That would be great. Thanks.’

  Joe switches the light on again in the kitchen, as thankful that they've got power as he is bemused by it. They were lucky the diner in Five Points had its own generator. If it was luck, because whenever he stops to think about everything that’s happened he can’t help but reckon things might be turning out exactly the way they’re meant to.

  He runs the cold water, fills the kettle and makes two mugs of coffee. The unexpected discovery of beer and wine in the fridge overshadowed the discovery of the jar earlier, but right now it’s just what he needs. Caffeine has always had an unusual calming effect on him.

  He doesn’t think they need a look-out, but the group works well as a team so he’s willing to ask the question and listen to the opinions of Emilie and Gabe. But Emilie’s gone by the time he hands Gabe his coffee and sits down opposite him on the couch, facing the locked door Rick didn’t manage to open. Despite Joe’s usual curiosity, he’s not particularly interested in finding out what’s behind it tonight. They’ve found lots of scary and horrible things behind lots of doors. A closed one that stays closed isn’t as worrying as it possibly should be. If there is something sleeping behind it, he’s content right now not to know. Whatever it is clearly isn't about to spring out and try to eat them or it would have done so already. None of the monsters they’ve come across have been of the patient variety.

  ‘Em’s gone up,’ Gabe tells him. ‘I told her it was okay. She was exhausted. Do you think we need a look-out?’

  ‘No. But I'm happy to keep you company if you want to wait up?’

  He counts Gabe as a friend whereas that term doesn’t seem to fit right with Rick or even Emilie. He’s known Gabe longer, sure, but not by much and he doesn’t have any more in common with the salesman than he does with the other two. Still, Gabe is someone he might like to share a couple of beers with at a quiet bar in a quiet town once this is all over. He’s under no illusions that life can ever go back to anything he’d term ‘normal’ but even if he can’t go back to Alpine for whatever reason, he is hopeful of spending the rest of his years in a small town, fixing cars during the day and throwing back beers and shots in the dark hours. That’s if they can find a way to leave here and if there’s anywhere to go.

  They throw a couple more logs on the fire and sit side by side, drinking their coffee while they listen to Rick and Emilie moving around upstairs. Footsteps cross the landing, a toilet flushes and the pipes start to creak and groan in accompaniment to the sound of fast flowing water. A shower suddenly feels like a heavenly idea and Joe would be lying if he said he wasn’t looking forward to a good night’s sleep, if he can get one. The four of them haven’t slept well since this began, especially Rick who looks like he really needs a rest. Matt and Luke sleep like babies every night with an uncanny and, no doubt, self-taught ability to drop off anywhere, under any circumstances, and to wake alert, focussed and ready for action in the blink of an eye. It’s the one thing they haven’t been able to teach and comes of spending half their lives in places that aren’t safe, often under imminent threat. A lack of sleep makes people sloppy, they said, but sleeping doesn’t have to mean you let your defences down.

  They met others like Matt and Luke on the road, few and far between, people who knew about the battle before the chaos hit. Those people slept with weapons under their pillows, with one eye open – figuratively rather than literally – so as never to be caught off-guard. Matt and Luke are unusual, but in some ways Joe considers them lucky. They travel together, they protect each other, they have one another’s backs. And while he’s certain there's more to it, he hasn’t seen any explicit evidence.

  Sure, he’s seen them touch to check for wounds, to patch one another up. They aren’t physically shy around each other, there are no physical barriers between them. They comfort and hug, they sit too close together. They share a room, double or twin, whatever’s available. They might be fucking and Joe wouldn’t care if they are but he’s never seen anything to prove it, nothing beyond an intense relationship, definitely more than a friendship, forged in battle. They love one another, that's clear, but beyond that he has no clue what they are.

  The shower stops, the floorboards creak, a door closes and then silence. The house falls quiet save for the odd small noises in the rafters; beams and joists heating up, stretching and bending and settling again. That, and the crackling of the fire.

  When they’ve both finished their coffee, Gabe nudges Joe in the ribs. ‘Go to bed. I’ll watch the door. I’m sure it’s just a locked door and I’m equally sure there's nothing outside but rain, but if anything comes in from anywhere I’ll scream like a girl and attack it with a poker.’

  Joe grins, making his muscles ache. ‘Okay. If you’re sure.’

  ‘I’ve faced worse than a locked door.’ He waves his hand in the air. ‘Be gone.’

  With a nod, Joe does as he’s told, rinsing their mugs out in the kitchen and leaving them on the side to dry before bidding Gabe a good night and climbing the stairs. He heads for the nearest open
door and empty bed, kicking his shoes off and lying down on his side on the mattress, above the sheets, finally allowing exhaustion to claim him as he closes his eyes, asleep in seconds.

  ~..~

  Gabe sits in the silence on the couch, poker across his lap, staring into the flames and enjoying the heat on his face. It’s nice but he isn't worried about sleep tempting him. He’s spent too many anxious hours as a look-out, too many dark nights on watch, to close his eyes unintentionally. Besides, however safe the others might feel, there are odd noises now and again that make his ears prick up. It's probably just the house warming up but it’s keeping him on enough of an edge to stay awake. Outside the storm is still raging. He can hear the thunder rolling across the sky and if he glances over his shoulder, through the windows either side of the door, he can see the lightning ripping apart the night and the rain beating uneven time against the miraculously fixed glass. Now there’s a phenomenal trick.