Rottenhouse

by Ian Dyer

  ‘Everything okay, Si?’

  Simon pushed himself from the shed, his forehead a little red from the harshness of the bare timber and he looked at Lucy. ‘Err, yeah. Fine. Just Kyle with one of his stupid jokes I guess.’

  Lucy shook her head and rolled her eyes. ‘What’s he trying to pull now?’ She then turned to her dad and continued, ‘Kyle, he’s one of Simon’s old college mates. Loves to play practical jokes, but I don’t see the funny side most of the time. Gets annoying after a while.’

  Mr Rowling drank the rest of his lemonade and placed his glass back onto the table. The little birds were tweeting again and from the garden opposite a small black cat hopped onto the wooden fence and began walking across it; its tail flowing from side to side to keep balance. Mr Rowling clicked his fingers and the cat immediately jumped down and made its way to him. Even the animal world is at his beck and call.

  ‘Well, what is he up to now?’

  ‘We’re selling up. That you contacted Marcus and offered to sell him all my stuff. Something about we needed the money, desperate to keep the business afloat to get as much money together as possible.’ Simon shook his head. ‘Guy is off his trolley.’

  Lucy didn’t reply straight away, from a distance Simon couldn’t tell if that digital egg timer was ticking away behind her eyes or not, so he guessed that it was, which made him more suspicious than he thought he should have been. She kept her eyes on Simon as he sat back down at the table and he poured himself another glass of lemonade. He thought it was odd of her, usually she loves a bit of Kyle bashing, but surely he wasn’t right. Was he? Could Lucy be selling up his stuff without even speaking to him, unlikely, but so had it been unlikely that Simon would have witnessed a man hacking apart another man this week. Simon was starting to realise that, in this place, anything was possible.

  ‘He’s not right, is he?’ Simon had lowered his voice to barely a whisper in a vain attempt to keep it from Mr Rowling, but it was no good, and he saw from the corner of his eye that the old man, though still stroking the cat with one hand hanging down from his chair, had looked up and was waiting for the situation to evolve.

  ‘Of course not. Don’t let him get to you.’ Said with an authoritative stance but there was something underlying in her tone, her mannerisms and it didn’t sit well with Simon. Like the look she gave him yesterday in the kitchen, or like she had been after that bullshit attempt at sex last night, she was different. But he had to be careful here, he couldn’t mention the wedding. But at the same time he had to know. Simon’s old adage sprung to mind and he repeated it a few times

  Go with the flow, Simon

  Go with the flow, Simon

  Just go with the sodding flow. Simon. Simon.

  ‘SIMON.’ Lucy yelled pulling him out of the fugue.

  ‘Yeah, sorry…What?’

  She was looking at him with black insect eyes and Simon turned to see Mr Rowling waiting for something. But what?

  ‘If yaneed money, Simon, if business is bad, like I hear things are down in the cities, then don’t think I can’t help.’ Mr Rowling lifted the cat onto his lap looking ever more the like the Bond villain Simon was beginning to think he was.

  ‘Dad, no, it’s not like that.’

  ‘Yeah, Mr Rowling thanks, but really, business is great. Never been so good despite, like you said, the rest of the UK struggling. Kyle is just trying to stir things up, is all. Appreciate the gesture but we’re fine.’

  ‘Yeah, dad, Simons right. We’re good. Really good.’

  Mr Rowling continued to stroke the cat. ‘Family is an important thing, Simon. Thought I’d lost mine, but sat just there is a woman I thought I would never see again.’ He lent forward and let the cat jump down onto the floor. He unconsciously rubbed down his trousers to get the fur and fluff off and licked his lips prior to commencing. Simon noted that the birds, the crickets, even the stream had fallen silent; waiting for the old fella to continue. ‘She tells me yagood man, Simon, honest, trustworthy and the like. I have no reason to doubt that. You’ve seen some things that don’t sit well, I get that, but that don’t mean to say they aint right, that don’t mean to say we aint got reasons for doing what we do.

  ‘I saw ya face last night when I told ya we don’t do with police and the like here. You looked as if you’ve just picked up the finest goose in the market only to find out it were a rabbit dressed in feathers. We had police, when I was a boy we had two local fellas who watched over us. But they weren’t good men Simon. They were bad men. That the opposite of good. They did things to kids, Simon. Not nice things. Bad things. So we got together, a few of us, and put an end to it.

  ‘For good, Simon, and by that I mean we killed em.’

  He leant back and wiped the sweat from his brow with a white hanky that he had retrieved from his back pocket.

  ‘I’m not sure what you want me to do with that, Mr Rowling. If it’s an acknowledgment of that and my approval then that is something I cannot give. What happened last night with Stevie and then today, it seems barbaric. I can hardly believe it all happened and yet I was the one that saw it.’

  ‘Such a shame. His mother must be in bits.’ Lucy added but Simon didn’t dwell on her words and by the looks of it neither did her father as he took up the conversation again:

  ‘We will find out who did it, Simon. He got what was coming to him last night, might seem odd to you, that, but like I said and will go on saying; is that we do it different up here. That said, his death want right, and we shall find out who did it and bring him to justice.

  ‘Rottenhouse justice.’ He added as an afterthought and now that he had stopped the birds started singing to the soft beat of the crickets and in the background the stream seemed to flow once more.

  5

  Mr Rowling left the couple alone at the table and headed inside.

  Simon took a deep breath and let it out in one long sigh. Lucy poured herself half a glass and held it to her forehead. It made Simon notice that it had gotten hotter in the garden. The sun had started its descent and would soon fall behind the valley wall that he and Lucy had climbed that morning. All of a sudden he felt dirty. Not just hot and sweaty, but dirty like he had just ran a half marathon through mud and grit and was made to stand in front of a wind machine just for good measure.

  Lucy waited for her father to be out of sight and then said, ‘Sorry I’ve been a bit off, if that’s even the right word, Christ, I can’t think straight. Got a million and one stupid things going through my head. Memories of my childhood, this house, the hills and how bloody green everything is, still is. It hasn’t changed, Si. I know people say that a lot, but really, this place hasn’t changed one little bit, it’s all the fucking same as it was when I left. And as for all the attacks and murders; I am as shocked as you are. Sorry it’s not going to plan, Sausage.’

  Simon could have cried and he felt his face tighten. And when he looked up and saw her eyes were welling up he felt his throat tighten and was sure, given the opportunity, his eyes would soon leak. All that had happened, all that he had been through, all that Lucy had put him through was swept away with that one single heart felt statement. ‘Was there ever a plan? Do we ever have a plan? I can see what you mean about not changing and I suppose why should it, I mean apart from all that’s gone on, you can’t argue that this place is stunning.’

  ‘He’s right though, when you think about it. Might seem completely crazy but they have their reasons.’

  ‘We all have our reasons, Luce, but that doesn’t make them right. I just can’t understand how your dad can be so cold about it. I’ve never met anyone like him. You have to admit he’s got some issues going on.’

  ‘He has his ways. Guess I got used to them, but they do seem to have worsened since mum died.’ She looked solemn. Her eyes closing and opening slowly, wetter than they had been a minute or so ago. Lucy brushed her hair from her face and took in a deep breath. She had never really talked about her mum’s death. Lucy always managed to chan
ge the subject whenever the conversation came up. He knew she had cared for her mum, deeply, and that they had been more like sisters than mother and daughter.

  Simon said, ‘Can’t believe how beautiful it is here. A few ticks shy of perfect. It’s like a movie set, everything framed and brightly coloured. Reminds me a bit of Hobbiton, not that I’ve seen many little people.’ He then pictured Lewis and Pickering and a few of the others he had had the honour of meeting last night in the club. ‘A few orcs and trolls mind you, but defo no Hobbits.’

  A little chuckle popped out of Lucy and she lifted her hand up to her mouth to quash it. ‘Does that make my dad Bilbo?’

  ‘Not a chance. If he’s anyone he’s Saruman. Except he aint got no tower, only a club.’

  With her head cocked to one side and looking down at the patchwork lawn she smiled and said, ‘Sméagol then? No wait…probably more like Gollum’

  He saw that Lucy was biting back a laugh and that was enough to make him burst out with deep and relieving laughter and together, sat in the hot garden in the middle of butt fuck nowhere, drinking lemonade from glasses owned by a sarcastic, egotistical moron, they shared that laughter and it made them feel better about everything. However, one mile away, old widower Johnson, who was mother to the late Stevie Johnson, had just received, from the back of an old van, the last loosely wrapped parcel of her sons chopped up body. Unlike Lucy and Simon she wasn’t laughing. She wasn’t crying either. She wasn’t doing anything except making sure that he was all there before Lewis and Pickering left.

  Skin You

  1

  Early evening and it was still hot in Rottenhouse and the air smelt of asphalt, sickly sweet with lavender and freshly cut grass and as they drove to the club Simon lent his head out of the back passenger window and inhaled deeply. It was a smell he had never taken in before and though sickly and sour he enjoyed it. Found it strangely soothing; like incense in a small room.

  It was oddly quiet tonight in the valley. The birds, the crickets, even the trees in the summer breeze seemed lifeless and when getting out of the car Simon could hear his own heart beat as it pumped blood around his body. There were no cars in the car park but to his side, though he tried not to look, the burnt out corpse of a house was still there, untouched, like a reminder to those that leave candles on at night that this is what can happen.

  Last night when the club had been draped in darkness and only lit by the two Victorian lamps, it had looked ominous. A sleeping giant that you dared not wake. But as he, Lucy and the ever present Mr Rowling walked from the same parking spot as last night and toward the old building Simon could see that whatever thoughts or nightmares he had conjured up were farfetched, childish almost.

  Lucy gazed at the building for a moment, smiled, but didn’t say what was on her mind as they reached the stone steps. Entering the club through the giant doors, she placed her palm against the cool red brick and Simon was sure that her eyes had narrowed then and that there was a tiny flinch as if she had been shocked with a small jolt of electricity.

  ‘You okay, Luce?’ Simon whispered.

  ‘Yeah, I’m good. Just been a long time, is all.’ Lucy struggled with that last part, her throat not letting the words out so it sounded choked, forced.

  There was something there, he knew there was; a fear of something. He could see that fear, or what he thought was fear in those deep and delightful eyes. It was the same fear he saw when she had gone to see her friend who was dying of lung cancer. And even though she said she was alright, that everything was fine, Si, just upset is all, there had been something that had troubled her, put a fear in her so deep that she too could suffer, that she was not beyond the reach of Deaths cold hand. But what could possibly cause such a fear when touching the brickwork of this old place?

  They leak. They bleed. They don’t stop once they started.

  Get a grip, Si. Get a grip. This is the real world, not a horror novel where the buildings come alive and eat you up or that the old haunted house is built on an ancient Indian burial ground and just to add insult to injury a radioactive waste dumping ground.

  ‘Are you okay?

  ‘Wha?’

  ‘You look a little pale. Seen a ghost?’ Lucy smirked and placed her hand upon his cheek. Her hand was warm and he leant into it noting that the good old Mr Rowling was now talking to a skinny man far off in reception.

  ‘Peachy. Though I wonder what treats we are in for tonight.’

  They walked in together, not holding hands, for Simon guessed that old man Rowling wouldn’t approve of that, but close together so that they bumped hips a couple of times. Taking a deep breath, watching as Lucy, who would be known as Barbara to these folks tonight, Simon readied himself for another night at the club.

  2

  Early evening light drifted through the tall windows of the club, it engulfed the bar with a pale pink glow on a sweet summer’s eve. Dark shadows were cast in the corners of the room, hiding potential monsters. The old oak and beech trees that encircled the building cast long twisting lunatic black lines across the wooden floor that in the prevailing wind they waved and grabbed at you as you walked past like the clutches of hell itself.

  3

  Sunday night at Rottenhouse Working Man’s Club was ladies night, for a fashion, and the usual guttural man talk was now interjected with the occasional twitter and muted cackle of the woman folk. They were sat in the far corner of the club, past the counter on the right had side not too far from where the Chairman had been seated not 24 hours prior. Was there a reason to them being sat near the all-seeing, all knowing and all judgmental Chairman? Though it pained him to think so, Simon guessed the answer was pretty obvious.

  Simon, a bit more at ease with himself and his surroundings (though when entering the club and as much as he tried to stop his eyes from looking, Simon couldn’t resist the pull of the far end of the old reception area and the stairway that led down into that black nothingness that he had dreamt of last night) sat in the exact same place he had last night, drinking the exact same ale he had supped the night before, looking at exactly the same group of men that he had seen here last night. The only differences - apart from the women folk and the stale air now not so quite as stale as there was a hint of perfume acting like an undercurrent to a corked wine - was that he was now not sat apart from the rest of the men, but intermixed with them; one of them if you were to believe in such things, and that the Chairman’s seat was empty, like a throne of an old king, it sat unoccupied, patiently waiting for its master.

  The floor of the bar had been arranged differently to last night. Now most of the tables were on the left hand side and spread out accordingly so that it left a walkway through to the bar and space to get to the toilet without much toing and froing. On the right, where the men folk had been seated yesterday, and Simon presumed for most nights except a Sunday when the ladies joined them, there was now a raised platform and upon that a microphone stand, drum kit, a couple of acoustic guitars and many other musical instruments that Simon did not know the name of and some even he didn’t even recognise. Below the raised platform was a clear spot that could possibly be a dance floor, though Simon doubted that there would be much dancing going on tonight.

  Taking down a good measure of his ale his eyes locked onto the rough, worn circle of flooring that made up the Beating Zone, and wasn’t surprised to see that it was still devoid of any sort of detritus. Simon had only seen that piece of floor once but his hatred for it was deep. Each time someone ventured toward the Beating Zone his heart raced and his body flexed, poised like a coiled a snake to strike at whatever came at the passer by though he doubted what the hell he would do if something actually did happen. What was odd, more odd than the women sitting on their own and all drinking the same drink, more odd than the locked door in the corner of the room, more odd than the stairway that led down to the eternal darkness in the reception, was that as the person who approached the Beating Zone – like the tall skinny man he had m
et last night was doing right now – they got within a step of entering it then veered wildly to either the right or the left, like there was a hole to hell itself beneath their feet and their brain screamed get away, move! Simon was amazed that the skinny man moved instinctively to this right to go around the Beating Zone without even looking up, and carried on to the bar without a passing glance at the worn floor.

  Local voices flowed over him, like a passing train not stopping at your station. Leaving them well alone and distancing himself from what the men were conversing about unless it directly concerned him, which most of the time it did not for fear of putting his foot in it. Lucy on the other hand, was having the reminiscence of her life. Whatever fear Simon had presumed was there; was gone and she was conversing with the lady folk like they were her best buds from back home. There was muffled laughter, as if it were not forbidden, but wholly frowned upon by the husbands, and Lucy would occasionally look up to look for her future husband to make sure that he was okay.

  And Simon was, for the most part. Yeah, he supposed, shit had most certainly gotten real over the last couple of days. This was the first in-law meeting to beat all first in-law meetings and he would be able to regale his mates with tales of this wondrous for years to come. At first he thought himself alone, that Lucy had drifted away and was replaced by her old, lost self, Barbara. But this afternoon, he had spoken too, been talked to, by his Lucy and it had filled his heart with joy and his soul with a renewed sense of hope that this journey hadn’t been for nothing and that he wasn’t alone in all this. He had her and would always have her. There was still some doubt though; watching Lucy with those once childhood friends filled him with that doubt. She looked so comfortable, at ease. He had never seen that look in her before. Well not never, there had been occasions, but from what she had said about this place and the reasons behind her leaving Simon thought it was odd. Perhaps it was an act or perhaps she was being polite? He couldn’t be sure and who could without the power of mindreading? Her eyes were wide and she seemed interested in the other ladies small talk, something to which he knew – like he knew that she had one sugar in her tea but none in coffee – that she hated small talk and would at all costs get out of it.