by Ian Dyer
2
Walking slowly and carefully ssshing the pigs as he went by them, Simon walked up the small set of steps and onto the porch. The old wood moaned softly and Simon placed the small knife onto the porch floor and grabbed the gun. It was heavy, a shotgun with sawn off barrels so they were barely a foot long each and it had a dark coloured wooden butt and the thing looked old but useful and Simon crept back down the stairs and sat with his back against the raised porch and investigated the weapon. In the distance, still slumped on the bridge was old man Lud. Simon questioned where his head was, guessed it must have floated off down the river. Apart from in video games of his youth he had never fired a gun, never held one, and holding this contraption felt alien to him. In movies and TV shows actors always looked comfortable holding guns, it looked easy, as if they fitted in your hands and were meant to be there and that may well be the case for smaller handguns but this piece of machinery felt clumsy. It wasn’t a pump action shotgun and pressing a small button on the side of the barrel nearest the trigger and pulling the two barrels down, the gun split in 2 on a couple of hinges and two golden bright shells were sat in the breach like two eggs in a cup.
‘That’ll do.’ Simon closed the gun, stood, and readied himself by taking in a deep breath and stretching out his neck and shoulders in long arching movements. As he was about to walk up to the main door he froze. The sun was giving out its last bursts of light before it finally set and the sky had turned almost black. Inside the house would be blacker and he couldn’t risk turning on the lights. He would go around the back. Confront the O’Hagan’s face to face.
And that’s what Simon did. He walked around the side of the house, not on the walkway but just below, just in case there were peepers in the windows. Around the back of the house the hill sloped down steeply but there was enough of the plateau here so that a small vegetable garden could be kept as well as a shed. The back of the house was as bad as the front and the smell and the heat seemed to settle here and not be taken away by the soft summer breeze.
Everything in Simon’s body told him to run when he saw in the garden, surrounded by the guts and entrails of a recently slaughtered pig, the mother and the largest of the three brothers. The brother wore the same garb as his father only he filled it out. Earlier the brother had looked big and Simon had been some distance away, now closer, he was a giant. He had a head the size of a pumpkin and a jaw that could crush rocks. On his head the cap was perched awkwardly and he kept on pulling it down as he went about his gruesome business. He was using the biggest cleaver Simon had ever seen and beside him was the mother and as big as he was she was just small. A tiny woman in a filthy yellow plaid dress which was covered in dirt and blood. She had small features and beady eyes and mousy brown hair that was matted. There was no beauty there and probably never had been.
Big brother and small mother continued on chopping and cleaving and heaving as Simon stepped out from behind the rusted carcass of an old Ford Anglia. He had the gun pointed at them and his shadow, with the sun behind him, stretched out far enough so that what was left of the pig was covered in it, as too was the small mother.
‘Nobody move.’ Simon said, though to him it seemed not the right thing to say. Neither of them listened though, and big brother brought the cleaver down with a mighty chumpf and little mother turned to see what the fuss about.
‘Who’s that?’ Little mother said. Her voice was barely a whisper. ‘Who thefuck are you?’
‘I said nobody move.’ Simon took a step forward and unknowingly crushed some potato plants beneath him. Big brother looked up which seemed to take some effort.
‘He’s gone and stamped on daddy’s spuds, mother.’ Big brother said. His voice was huge, thick like mayonnaise, and Simon could tell this chap had never been to a college. Probably never set foot in a school his entire life.
‘He’s holding Luds gun too.’ Mother said, and then she pointed to the house behind her with a gnarled thumb, ‘Go get daddy, he’s gonna want to see this.’
Big brother took off his baseball cap and threw it to the floor. He kept hold of the cleaver, gripped it tighter as he looked at Simon, then the gun, then back at Simon and then to the axe he held which was still dripping with blood. He coughed up a mean wad of phlegm and spat it out. A bit of it clung to his dry lip and it dripped down like dirty egg white onto his tatty vest.
‘Daddy’s dead.’ Big brother said and Simon could see that even though the lights were on but nobody was home up in that big old head of his he still had a brain and that brain was all instinct and not marred by the modern world in which Simon lives in.
Mother narrowed her eyes and then put her hands on her small hips. Her skin was crumpled up like rolled wool. ‘Nah. This little chap didn’t do with Lud. Gun aint been fired, would have heard it. And as fer that bleeding axe, could be pig’s blood is all. Nah, he aint done with Lud.’
Simon raised the axe and now both weapons were trained on the pair. ‘Guess again, woman. Now I asked Lud to give me Lucy back and he refused, so I am here asking you the same thing; give me back Lucy or I’ll kill you just like I killed your daddy.’
‘Is he right, son?’
Big brother wiped his nose with his bare arm and then looked up to the sky. He sniffed the air like a dog trying to find a scent. His head moved from left to right then right to left and then it arched so far back he thought the big guy was going to fall over onto his arse. With a quick snap he returned his gaze to Simon, but now his eyes were wide and he raised the cleaver so that the pointy end was aimed directly at the man with the gun.
‘Father’s dead, mother. I can smell his blood. He’s over by the bridge and this streak a piss must’ve cut him deep coz there’s alota blood.’
A few things happened very quickly then. The mother screamed such a deep scream that it defied everything about her size and birds flew up from trees and the scream drowned out the rushing river. She ran at Simon all hands reaching out like talons and her eyes wide with hate and anger and revenge. She reached Simon quicker than he had anticipated and he didn’t have time to fire the gun or to raise his axe and all he could do was swing the shotgun in a short arc, move his body back a step and then let the little woman run face first into the butt of the gun as he brought it down and when he brought it down there was a crunch of bone and a tear of skin and a shriek of pain and the old woman fell to the floor and didn’t move. Blood poured from the open wound below the woman’s left eye and the cut was deep enough so that Simon could see bone poking through. Just when Simon thought that the old woman had either died or was out cold she began to fit and her body contorted in odd angles and she foamed from her mouth and nose. A few seconds of that were followed by a deep groan coming from her belly right up through her chest and out her mouth and then she was dead and she lay in a pool of blood, spit and vomit.
‘Imagonnakillyou!’ Big brother charged in and Simon felt pity for the dumb brute. The big guy had instincts, could tell that his own father had been murdered and where the body was, and he could also snap Simon into two pieces with his shovel like hands of his and muscles the size of mountains, but all that pure strength and anger was directed at simply charging at Simon much like his father, and then his mother had done, and they were both dead. Simon knew he had been lucky with the father and had relied on his own quick instincts and perhaps a bit more luck to kill the mother but he had time with the big one and used the time to raise the shotgun, wait till he was about 5 feet away and then pulled the trigger.
The boom from the shotgun wasn’t as loud as Simon had anticipated but the low noise didn’t diminish the impact the released shell had on the chest of the big bastard running at him. The pellets tore through the blue overalls and the white vest and the skin and the bone and then all the little pellets ripped the insides out of big brother straight out his back leaving a hole the size of a football right in the middle of the big man’s body. Big brother stopped dead in his tracks, literally, and opened his mouth as if t
o say something but there was nothing to say because he was dead, he just didn’t know it yet. The body swayed back and forward as if it were a little leaf on a rose bush and then blood came out if his mouth, his eyes and his ears and out of the hole where little bits of innards hung like a busted piñata. He fell to the floor with a thud, an arm outstretched as if he were trying to reach his mother but couldn’t make it. And that was that. Another two people dead by Simons hand though at this point he wasn’t really thinking about that or the consequences. Those thoughts were being pushed to the back of his mind by the adrenaline, by the need to find Lucy, and the natural instinct we all have to survive.
3
Then there was only the sound of the pigs munching and the river flowing. Night time was creeping in and the forest animals were falling quiet. It was the lull before the nocturnal creatures went about their business. It was dark enough now that Simon couldn’t see through the trees and it was a sea of black nothing. Soon, without a moon and no overhead lamps, he would be surrounded by the blackness.
Simon, for reasons unknown to him, searched the body of big brother and found nothing but a wet hanky, what looked like a rabbits foot tied to a piece of string, a lock of ginger hair and a lighter, which he took and placed in his back pocket.
There was another low moan. It came from the house, from behind one of the bare dirty windows. Whoever was up there hadn’t heard, or had heard and ignored the gunshot and now that it was darker Simon could make out a yellowish light coming from one of the upstairs windows. A soft breeze whipped around him and he could smell fresh pine and water. In other times, and with a lick of paint and a few fixes, this place would be a lovey place to live.
But now wasn’t the time to think about such things. He went into the house not caring how much noise he made.
4
The guts of the house were ruined. Walls knocked down, bare wet walls, hanging electrical cables and bare light bulbs. Anything that could be rusty was rusty. Anything that could be mouldy was mouldy, and flies hung around like whores on street corners. It didn’t stink as much as it should but there was a stench here that hung about. There were no discernible rooms. What looked like what was once a dining room was now a mechanics dumping ground. What looked like a kitchen now looked like something you wouldn’t want to sit in let alone cook a meal in though there was still a cooker but it was brown and green and covered in congealed fat and grime. Cupboard doors hung off hinges and pots and pans and plates and mugs were strewn here there and everywhere. The kitchen led through to a hallway where on a table was a box with six more shotgun shells. Simon put the axe down, replaced the fired round and put the other five in his pockets making them bulge and dig into his thighs.
Another moan and then laughter. Two sets of laughter; one was wheezy the other sounded muted as if behind a hand. The moan went on and on and sounded both painful and excited. At the end of the hallway there was a set of stairs and the soft yellow light that Simon had seen outside was clearly visible up there. From upstairs the sound of bed springs squeaking and heavy movement was ended with more moaning and laughter and talking too.
‘Please don’t be Lucy.’ Simon said as there was another moan only this one was full of pain.
Simon ran up the stairs, saw that the light was coming from the room at the very end of the hallway and headed that way. His cheeks felt wet and he didn’t know if that was from tears or sweat. Clumsily he dropped the axe, but before he could react he was outside the room and then inside the room with the shotgun raised and he was shouting, ‘Let her go you fucking animals!’ and there was a commotion and two men moved quickly away from the bed and they turned to see who it was that had come storming in and their hard cocks swayed and pointed at Simon like their dirty fingers did, and their eyes were wide and their mouths open in shock as the man they saw in front of them had a gun and it was aimed at them, ‘Who the fuck is you,’ one of them said and Simon guessed it was Harry because the other said, ‘He’s got yer gun, Harry,’ and the two of them looked at the gun and then back at Simon. Whoever was on the bed moaned but the three men had other things on their minds.
‘Let her fucking go or I swear to God I will shoot your fucking brains out.’
The brother that wasn’t Harry raised his hands and now Simon saw that they were both totally naked. Harry raised his hands too, mimicking his brother, and he looked to his brother and then to the girl on the bed and then with curious eyes back to Simon.
‘Let who go? Her?’ He gestured to the girl on the bed who was naked and on her belly and covered in cuts and bruises and claw marks. She had pale skin, pale like Lucy’s. She had dark hair, dark like Lucy’s and Simon was crying now as he knew who it was on that bed.
‘You fucking animals.’ Simon said and pulled the trigger twice.
5
The smell of cordite, blood and sex was all around him. The yellow light was bright now and outside the world was black and that blackness tried to come through the windows and Simon was glad the windows weren’t smashed.
Simon dropped the gun and the woman on the bed shuddered and moaned and tried to say something but couldn’t as her mouth was full of rag. She tried to roll over but couldn’t as there was a large leather restraining belt holding her down.
Simon stood there for a minute, not too sure what had happened and why he was here. Everything had happened so fast. This could be a movie he had seen and was now dreaming it; re-enacting scenes from that film but altering them to fit his circumstances. Harry’s body stopped twitching and the blood from the two men started to pool around Simons trainers. This wasn’t a dream. This was real and the moans and cries coming from the woman that he loved and that had been raped countless times slowly brought him round and Simon leapt over the twitching body of Harry caring not that half his face was missing and was now decorating the far wall. Simon rolled Lucy over.
As soon as his hand touched the woman’s flesh he knew the truth of it then. And it was a rotten truth.
The woman that he rolled over and took out the rag filling its mouth wasn’t Lucy and by the resemblance to the old woman downstairs he guessed that it was her daughter and that the men that were fucking her were her brothers.
‘This can’t be happening.’ Simon said, but knew that it was.
The woman on the bed looked near to death, all skin and bone, but she didn’t squirm or try to break free. She wasn’t pretty and shared an ugliness with her mother and had jagged features. ‘Are they dead?’ She asked and her voice was soft, angelic, and it filled Simon’s heart with sadness. Her eyes were still shimmering though; amber gold and they were her one redeeming feature.
‘Yes. If I untie you can you walk? I’m getting you out of here.’
‘Out of here?’
‘Yes, to a hospital.’
‘Aren’t you here to fuck me? Did they bring someone new to taste my honey?’
‘No. No I’m not. You don’t have to do that anymore. You’re safe now.’
‘I want to be fucked. I like it.’
‘What the hell.’ Simon got up from the bed, almost slipped on the blood and grabbed hold of the broken wardrobe to his side.
‘Daddy fucked me the best. He could go for a long time. Please don’t let him be dead.’
‘He’s dead.’ Simon muttered with a dry throat and wiped away the sweat and blood from his face with the back of his sleeve
The girl started to cry and Simon went to leave.
‘Don’t go. I’m still tight. Come back and see. You can hit me and cut me and bleed me if yawant. Whatever yawant I don’t mind. I don’t want to be alone.’ She opened her legs and some of her brother’s semen leaked out of her poorly shaven vagina.
‘I’m sorry.’ Simon said and he turned and walked out of the room and the girl screamed at him but the words were lost amongst the bestial cries for sex and the screams from the girl went on and on as Simon walked down the stairs, through the hallway and out the front door into the night where the stars sh
one brightly and the river flowed freely.
‘This is a rotten place. And rotten things need to burn.’ Simon said and headed over to where a tractor was parked next to a disused diesel pump, and he was running on pure instinct now. It had consumed him.
Lent against the tractor, trying not to think about Lucy and where she might be but failing miserably, he put his hands over his eyes then over his ears and roared at his feet to try and release the anger he felt at himself and the situation that he was in. He had killed five people for nothing. He tried to justify it as self-defence but he had put himself in those situations. It was his actions that had led to where he was now. No one else’s. All that he had preached to Lucy and Bob over the last couple of days about how they should live their lives and what was happening up here was wrong seemed laughable now, and Bob had been right, it did depended on your point of view. From the outside he had killed five people in cold blood. But he knew it was justified. It was them or him. If he’d of know that Lucy wasn’t here then it would have been different.
But Lucy hadn’t been there and now he had to clean things up.
Simon grabbed the jerry can that was by the tractor, knew by the weight of it that it was full, and walked with it hanging by his side back to the house.
He made that trip a few times and to make sure the job was done right he put buckets of the liquid inside the house. He found some blue gas bottles as well which he placed next to the buckets of stinking diesel. He did this in silence and didn’t speak up when the girl called for him to taste her honey and fill her brown hole from up there where he didn’t want to go and when he was finished he walked back to the bridge and carefully slid down to the rushing river where he covered his face in the cold water and drank deeply and washed himself clean of the fluids that he was covered in. Then, as promised, he took a piss in that river, but he was sad because it was too dark to see trickle in.