by Kevin Brooks
I looked down at Iggy. He wasn’t moving.
I looked at Candy. Pale and wild.
She said, “He’s still breathing.”
Her voice was strangely remote.
“Are you sure?” I asked her.
She nodded. “We’d better do something…before he comes around.”
“Do something?”
She looked at me. “We’re both dead if we don’t.”
I looked back at her, wondering what kind of something she meant. Tie him up? Run away? Or maybe she was thinking of something more permanent? It was a possibility—I could see it inside her. The way she was looking at him. The long-held hate in her eyes. The way she was standing, gripping the base of the lamp in her fist.
She could kill him, I thought.
If she wanted to.
She could end it right now.
How did that make me feel?
I don’t know. I didn’t know how to know. The truth is, at that moment, my feelings meant nothing. They were irrelevant. This was nothing to do with me. I was just a bystander. A spectator. Someone who just happened to be there. This was all about Candy: her life, her death, her choice.
It’s up to you, I thought, looking into her eyes. I can’t help you decide. All I can say is, whatever you do, it’s OK with me.
I’m not sure what I thought I was doing—sending unspoken messages, assuming she could read my mind—but it seemed like the right thing to do at the time. And whether it worked or not, I still don’t know. But as we kept looking at each other, breathing in the silence, I saw something fade from Candy’s eyes, and I felt as if she’d pulled herself back from a place where she didn’t really want to be. The hate and the tension gradually eased from her body, her eyes came slowly back to life, and eventually she blinked and relaxed her shoulders and dropped the base of the lamp on the floor.
“We’d better go,” she said wearily, glancing down at Iggy.
“OK.”
“Find something to tie him up with, and I’ll get dressed. All right?”
“Yeah.”
She turned to go, then paused and looked back at me. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I shouldn’t have—”
“You saved my life,” I said. “You don’t have to be sorry about anything. It was my idea—”
“He would’ve killed you.”
Just then, Iggy groaned—a low, grunting breath. We both looked down at him. He was still out cold, but his breathing was getting stronger. Candy and I looked at each other for a moment, then we both got moving.
While Candy quickly got dressed and started throwing some stuff into a bag, I found a roll of tape and began tying up Iggy. Even though he was still unconscious, my hands shook with fear as I knelt down beside him. Up close, his body was enormous. His skin rock-hard. Scarred, patterned, tattooed. His muscles were bigger than my arms. As I unwound the tape and cautiously positioned his arms behind his back, I felt like a vet in a safari park, tending to an anesthetized beast—ready to jump and run at the slightest sign of life. As quickly as I could, I wound half the roll of tape around his wrists, then I shuffled down and wound the other half around his ankles. It was a lot of tape and I wound it as tightly as I could, but I didn’t think it’d hold him for long when he finally woke up. It was better than nothing, though.
I looked around, found the straight razor, picked it up and closed it, and put it in my pocket. I was just standing up as Candy appeared in the doorway. She looked fantastic—hair tied back under a little black hat, jeans, T-shirt, a scruffy old coat.
“OK?” she said, looking at Iggy.
“Yeah—let’s go.”
“Just a minute.”
She came over and knelt down beside Iggy and started going through his trouser pockets—first the back pockets, then she pulled him around to get to the ones in the front. As she pushed and pulled at his legs, he started groaning again. His head began to move, too.
“Come on,” I urged Candy. “He’s coming around…”
“Just a minute…”
She was digging desperately into his pockets, her face creased in concentration. His body began moving, rolling from side to side. His head turned. Eyes fluttering. Mouth muttering…
“Gnuhh…uh…uh…”
“Candy!” I hissed. “Leave it…come on. What are you doing?”
She was pulling out the contents of his pockets and stuffing them into her jeans. Cash, keys, credit cards…and other things, too. Little packs, plastic bags, bottles of pills…
I reached down and grabbed her arm. “That’s enough,” I said. “We have to go—right now.”
“OK,” she said, shoving something else in her pocket, “I’m coming.”
As she went to stand up, Iggy suddenly flexed his arms and rolled his head to the side. His eyes were still glazed, but the look he gave Candy was enough to stop her in her tracks. She froze, staring back at him.
“Yuh…” he muttered, his eyes flickering weakly to me. Without meaning to, I stepped back. His arms tensed again, getting stronger, and his eyes refocused on Candy.
“Yuh…dumbitch…” he whispered, a pained grin cracking his face. “Yuh…yuhshoulda yuh shoulda killed me…”
Candy’s face had ghosted over. The awe had come back. The hate, the fear…even the adoration. It was all still there. Iggy knew it. Candy knew it. And I knew it, too. There was still a part of her that couldn’t resist him. I didn’t understand it and I didn’t want to believe it, but it was there, in her face…
And I wondered then if Iggy was right.
She should have killed him.
“Maybe I will,” she said, her voice barely audible.
Iggy laughed, coughed, swallowed his breath. “Too late…” he spluttered. “You had your chance.” Suddenly he opened his mouth and lunged at Candy, as if he was trying to bite her. She flinched away, half stood up, then lost her balance and toppled back against the bathroom wall.
Iggy laughed again and started slithering toward her, his arms and legs wriggling hard against the tape, his body snaking from side to side. Christ—it was horrifying. Like something out of a terrible dream. Candy was transfixed…couldn’t move…couldn’t take her eyes off him.
He started humping his back, lurching across the floor, grunting under his breath, “Come to Daddy…Come to Daddy…”
I couldn’t stand it anymore. I stepped up and swung my foot at his head. A juddering pain shot up my leg and for a moment I thought I’d kicked the wall by mistake, but then I looked down and saw that Iggy had stopped moving and there was a faint red mark on his cheek, so I guessed I must have hit the target. Not that it made much difference.
He was already starting to move again—straining his arms, his shoulders, his neck…stretching the bands of tape on his wrists…
I took Candy’s arm and pulled her to her feet. She felt like a puppet in my hands—loose, limp, lifeless.
“Come on,” I said, pulling her toward the doorway. “Come on.”
She started moving, but her eyes were still fixed on Iggy and she was walking in a trance. I put my arm around her waist and dragged her through the doorway.
“Where’s your bag?” I said.
“Uh?”
“Candy,” I said firmly. “Look at me.”
Her head lolled loosely in my direction.
I reached out and balanced her chin in my hand. “Look at me…Candy. Come on, snap out of it…Candy!” Her eyes blinked at the sharpness of my voice. “Where’s your bag?” I asked her again.
“Where?” she said.
“Your bag…the bag—where is it?”
She looked at the bed.
I took her hand, walked over to the bed, and picked up the bag. She was beginning to move a little less stiffly now. Still holding her hand, I led her over to the door.
“Where are we going?” she said, frowning.
“I’ll tell you later. Do you need anything else?”
“What?”
“Do you need—”
A loud crash came from the bathroom.
“Forget it,” I said. “Let’s go.”
I opened the door and ushered her into the hallway. The crashing from the bathroom was getting louder by the second. Crashing, smashing…then violent shouting: “Yo, bitch! BITCHBOY! You running? Hear me? YOU HEAR ME! You better run…You meats now…you my little meats…”
I shut the door.
The voice kept on.
I turned around.
Candy was holding a key in her hand.
“Lock it,” she said. “Lock the door.”
“Are you all right now?” I asked her.
She shook her head. “Lock him in.”
I took the key and locked the door, then took Candy’s hand and walked her quickly down the hallway. She was beginning to look all right again. Not great, but not too bad. Her eyes were fixed to the floor. Her breathing was a little strange. But she seemed to be walking steadily enough. Heading for the stairs, I picked up the pace. Candy responded.
“OK?” I said.
She nodded.
At the end of the hallway, a group of girls were gathered together on the landing, watching us curiously. I recognized the girl in the bathrobe and the one who’d told me where Candy was. I guessed they’d been alerted by all the noise. As we approached, they stepped aside to let us onto the stairs.
“Candy?” one of them said.
Candy looked up at her. “Hey, Janine.”
“You OK with this?” Janine asked her, glancing at me.
“Yeah,” Candy smiled. “He’s OK.”
We passed the girls and started down the stairs.
“Good luck,” someone called out.
“She’s gonna need it,” another voice added.
All the way down the stairs, I kept expecting to hear the sound of raging footsteps clattering down behind us, or the sound of the front door opening and Iggy’s crew piling up the stairs to meet us…and I couldn’t stop thinking, Is this really happening? Is this really me? Am I really doing this?
Doing what? asked a voice in my head. You don’t know what you’re doing. You don’t know where you’re going. You don’t know why you’re running down the stairs of a dingy old house, with a traumatized girl by your side and a slithering black razor-monster haunting your mind…You don’t know anything, do you?
“No,” I replied out loud, “I don’t.”
“What?” said Candy.
“Nothing,” I said. “Is there a back way out of here?”
“Yeah, but it’s locked. Iggy hides the key.”
We were downstairs now, in the hallway. The lights were on. I could see the woman called Bamma standing in a doorway at the end of the corridor, her impassive figure blocking the background of a dim white kitchen. She wasn’t doing anything, just staring at us.
“What about her?” I asked Candy. “Can she get us out the back?”
“I don’t know…” She glanced at Bamma. “Maybe…but if Iggy found out she’d helped us…” She shook her head. “Why can’t we just go out the front?”
“Because that’s where people come in. I don’t want to meet anyone else.”
“No one else comes here.”
“Are you sure?”
She nodded.
“OK,” I said, moving toward the front door. “Let’s get out of here.”
chapter fifteen
There wasn’t anyone outside the house. I paused on the steps and looked up and down the street, just to make sure, but everything was quiet. Just parked cars, streetlights, empty roads. The cold night air was misted with the smells of the city—traffic fumes, concrete, dust—but it felt good to be outside again.
Out of that house.
Out of that room.
I shut the front door and we scurried down the steps.
The little park across the street looked a lot darker now—the darkness shifting in the rustle of shadows—and I had to squint to see the spot where I’d hidden in the bushes…the shoulder-high thicket of shrubs…the smell of the earth…damp and dark…litter…sap…thorns…
It seemed like a long time ago.
Just for a moment I thought I could see myself there—crouching down, looking out through the iron bars, watching the house…the windows, the steps, the front door. These steps. This front door.
Watching myself.
In the shadows.
“What are you doing?” asked Candy.
“Nothing,” I said.
We left the house behind and hurried away into the night.
There was something between us then, something that hadn’t been there before and wouldn’t be there again. I’m not sure what it was, but I think it had something to do with the balance of things. We were both changing, each of us in different ways, and neither of us could know what those changes meant or what they might mean to us in the future. I suppose we were still trying to work out how that made us feel—about ourselves, about each other, about everything.
I don’t know…
It’s a difficult thing to think about.
It wasn’t simply that we were changing, either, but that the changes themselves kept changing, too. It was like being on a seesaw: One minute I was this and Candy was that; the next minute she was this and I was that.
Up, down.
Down, up.
Scared, calm.
Calm, scared.
In control, out of control…
It was pretty weird.
But strangely exciting, too—like we were starting all over again.
When Candy hailed a black cab at the end of the street, I went from up to down in an instant. There I was, Joe the Hero, Joe the Savior, Joe the Man, and I hadn’t even thought of getting a taxi. I’d just thought…Well, I hadn’t actually thought of anything. We had to hurry, that’s all I knew, and hurrying—to me—meant either walking quickly or running. The idea of getting a taxi never even occurred to me. I mean, where was the taxi rank? Where were the rows of Mondeos with HEYSTONE CARS written on the side?
Yep, that made me feel highly sophisticated.
And then, to make things worse, when the taxi pulled up at the side of the road, I couldn’t work out how to open the door. I just stood there, fumbling stupidly with the handle, yanking uselessly at the door…and suddenly I was the slack-jawed yokel again—the little boy lost, dazed and confused, blinking at the big-city lights…
It was pathetic, I know. I shouldn’t have cared about anything except getting away from Iggy as quickly as possible. It was pathetic to even consider feeling pathetic. It was like combing your hair just before the end of the world—utterly pointless. But sometimes you just can’t help yourself, can you? You just can’t help feeling what you feel.
“You getting in or what?” the taxi driver said.
I tugged unsuccessfully at the door again, then Candy leaned over and thumbed the latch on the handle. The door swung open and we both clambered in and sat down next to each other.
“Where to?” asked the driver.
“What?” I said.
“Where to?”
I looked at Candy. She looked at me. And then a funny thing happened. As we sat there looking at each other, silently wondering where we were going, I felt the seesaw moving again. Candy started moving down, taking the yokel with her, and as they went down, the balance shifted, and up came Joe the Man again.
“Liverpool Street station,” he told the driver, almost adding, And step on it.
The taxi pulled out into a stream of traffic and we headed off into the bustling chaos of the night.
The farther we got from the house, the better it felt, and after a while we both began to relax a little. I think we both knew there was a lot more to come, but just for the moment it was enough to sit back in silence and watch the streets pass by, just breathing and resting and soaking up some reality. We’d both been somewhere else for a while, a place where ordinary things didn’t exist, and now was the time to start bringing them home. The ordinary th
ings: other people, time, distance, reason, hunger, thirst, the need to pee…
I crossed my legs.
I thought about things.
I looked at my watch.
Candy turned to me and whispered, “What’s the time?”
“Six-thirty.”
She nodded. Then whispered, “Where are we going?”
“Liverpool Street,” I whispered back.
“Why?”
“What?”
“Why are we going to Liverpool Street?”
“Why are you whispering?”
She smiled and whispered, “I don’t know.” Then, speaking in a normal voice, she said, “Where are we going after we get to Liverpool Street?”
“Does it matter?”
“Of course it matters—”
“No—to you, I mean. Does it matter to you? Is there anywhere you particularly want to go?”
“Like where?”
“I don’t know…friends or something…your parents’ place—”
“I’m not going home,” she snapped. “I’m not…I can’t…”
“All right…what about friends? Someone you can stay with for a while…”
“You’ve just met my friends—back at the house.”
“That’s it?”
“Yeah—that’s it. What do you expect? You think I go out to dinner parties every night? Dinner parties, wine bars, charity functions—”
“Yeah, all right. I’m sorry. I was only asking…”
She turned away and stared out the window. I looked at her…in her little black hat and her scruffy old coat—she looked as if she ought to look older or younger, but she didn’t. She just looked different. Different enough to say what I wanted to say? I couldn’t tell. I didn’t know…I didn’t really know if I wanted to say it or not myself.
“Listen,” I said, “there’s this place…”
She looked at me. “What?”
“It’s just an idea…” My voice was shaking. I cleared my throat and started again. “We’ve got this place in Suffolk…my family, I mean. Well, it’s my dad’s, really…you know…”
“Not really.”
“It’s a bungalow…a holiday cottage…on the Suffolk coast. It’s empty at the moment. No one’s there. It’s right out in the middle of nowhere…”