Road of the Dead

by Kevin Brooks

  “I think we’d better go to bed,” I said into the silence.

  Cole looked at me. Not yet, his eyes said, I haven’t finished.

  “I’m tired,” I said, kicking him under the table.

  He continued staring at me for a moment, then nodded. “Yeah, well,” he said, “it’s been a long day, I suppose. Maybe you’re right.” He rubbed the back of his neck and turned to Abbie. “Do you mind if we head off to bed now?”

  “Of course not.”

  He smiled at her then, which took me by surprise. I knew it was only a fake smile, but it was still nice to see it. Cole doesn’t smile much at the best of times, and since Rachel’s death he hadn’t even come close.

  He kept on smiling as we said good night and left them to it, but as soon as we were out of the kitchen his face went cold and the smile disappeared like the light of a clouded sun.

  As far as I could remember, I’d never spent the night in the same room as Cole before. I’d never had to. Unlike Cole—who was born in a trailer—I was born and raised in the house at the breaker’s yard. As houses go, it’s not the most stylish place in the world, but what it lacks in style it more than makes up for in rooms. If there’s one thing our house has got, it’s rooms. It’s got loads of them—sitting rooms, dining rooms, bathrooms, bedrooms. It’s got so many bedrooms I used to sleep in a different one every week. Sometimes I wouldn’t even be on the same floor as Cole, never mind in the same room.

  So this was a new experience for me—sharing a sleeping place with my brother. And I kind of liked it.

  Not that we did much sleeping.

  For the first hour or so we just sat on the bed and talked in whispers. Cole kept asking me what I felt about things—about Abbie and Vince, about Red, about Pomeroy and Bowerman. And I was happy enough to tell him. But after a while I realized that he wasn’t giving anything back. The information was all one-way, and I wasn’t getting anything out of it. So when Cole paused for a moment to light a cigarette, I took the opportunity to ask him what he thought about everything.

  He didn’t answer me at first. He lit his cigarette, went over and opened the window to let out the smoke, and then he just stood there for a while, looking down at the yard below.

  “Cole?” I said.

  “Hmm?”

  “What do you think?”

  “What do I think about what?”

  “Everything…anything. All those questions you were asking Abbie and Vince. The stuff about the car, where Rachel was found—”

  “Keep your voice down,” he reminded me. “They’ll hear us.”

  “I’ll start shouting if you don’t answer me.”

  He breathed smoke out the window, then turned and looked at me. “What do you want to know?” he said softly.

  “Anything.” I sighed. “I just want to know what’s going on.”

  “I’m not sure yet.”

  “But you’ve got an idea?”

  “Not really…just a feeling.” He came over and sat down beside me on the bed. “I need time to think things through. I’m not like you, Rube. I’m slow. It takes me a while to get hold of things.”

  “You weren’t very slow tonight,” I told him. “You were shooting questions at them like a machine gun.”

  “Yeah, but I didn’t really know what I was doing. I was just asking whatever came into my head. I don’t know what any of it means yet.”

  “But you think it means something?”

  “Yeah, it has to. I mean, Vince doesn’t like us, does he?”

  “No.”

  “So why was he so keen for us to stay here?”

  “He wants to know what we’re doing. He wants to know where we are. He wants to keep an eye on us.”

  “Right. And he’s in with this Redman guy, and Bowerman, and they both want us out of here—”

  “Everyone wants us out of here.”

  “Exactly. And you know what that means, don’t you?”

  “What?”

  “Either they’ve all got something to hide, or they’re all scared of someone who’s got something to hide.”

  We continued talking for a while—about feelings and raincoats and cars and coincidences—and although we didn’t come to any conclusions, we knew we were getting close to something. It was just a matter of finding out what it was.

  At some point in the early hours of the morning we heard Abbie and Vince coming up to bed. We stopped talking and listened, but there wasn’t much to hear—footsteps and mumbles, bathroom sounds, doors opening and closing. Eventually, a door along the landing clicked shut and the farmhouse went quiet again.

  Cole got up and went over to the window. It was still open. The night air was still quiet. But as Cole stood there looking out, his figure silhouetted against the blue-black sky, I could hear the faint whisper of a rising wind coming down from the hills and creeping over the moor. It sounded cold and lonely, like a final breath, and when I closed my eyes and opened my mind, I could see it all again—the ring of stones, the stunted thorn tree, Rachel’s last breath stealing away on the wind…

  “What’s that?” said Cole.

  I opened my eyes and looked at him. He’d turned away from the window and was staring hard at the bedroom door.

  “Listen,” he said.

  I couldn’t hear anything at first, just the quiet moan of the wind outside and the deathly silence of the farmhouse, but then—just as I was about to say something to Cole—I heard the unmistakable sound of someone crying. The sobs were muffled and indistinct, so it was hard to tell where they were coming from, but we both knew it could only be Abbie. She was in her bedroom, crying her eyes out, trying desperately not to make any noise. I imagined her clutching a pillow to her face, trying to smother the sound of her sobbing. I imagined her shoulders heaving, her stomach lurching, her breath coming out in uncontrollable gulps…

  I couldn’t imagine what Vince was doing.

  I looked at Cole. It was hard to tell what he was feeling, but I doubted it was sympathy. He lit another cigarette and stared at me without expression.

  “What do you think?” I asked him.

  He didn’t say anything, just shrugged.

  The sound of the sobbing was fading now. The silence was returning. I looked at the door, thinking of Abbie and Vince in their room, and I wondered what they meant to each other.

  I said to Cole, “They’re not very happy, are they?”

  He shrugged again. “Who is?”

  I looked at him. “I think Rachel was pretty happy most of the time.”

  “Yeah…”

  We both sat in silence for a while, alone together with our thoughts. Mine were mostly good ones: Rachel smiling, Rachel laughing, Rachel singing to herself when she thought she was alone in the house. I was right—she had been pretty happy most of the time.

  “It’s not fair, is it?” I said to Cole.

  “No.”

  “How come all the crap people don’t die?”

  “It’s a crap world.”

  We finally got to sleep around three. Cole let me have the bed, and he stretched out on the unmade sofa bed. It didn’t look very comfortable, but he didn’t seem to care. He hadn’t even bothered getting undressed.

  “Why don’t you cover yourself up?” I suggested. “There’s probably some blankets in one of the cupboards.”

  “I’m all right,” he said.

  “You’ll freeze like that. Let me get you a blanket—”

  “Ruben?”

  “What?”

  “Shut up and go to sleep.”

  I shut up and went to sleep.

  It didn’t last long.

  I’m underground. I’m cold. It’s dark. A poisonous stink thickens the air and clings to my skin like fog. For a tick of a moment I think I’m awake, and the stink is just a sleep fart, but I know in my heart that I’m wrong. This is no sleep fart—this is something foul.

  This is inhuman.

  This is the Dead Man.

  I can feel
him. His skin—stiff with muck. His hands—purpled with blood. His smell—the gaseous reek of decay. This is the death of his body: the peeling scraps of skin, the loose teeth, the blowflies crawling in his mouth and his eyes, flesh flies, maggots, bacteria. I can feel it all. I can feel his innards bursting, liquefying, fermenting. I can feel the insects feeding on the liquid stink…And now, worse than anything, I can feel him dreaming of me in his death—telling me what he did to Rachel, showing me, telling me, showing me, telling me…showing me the mortal fear on her face. Making me see it. Making me feel it. And I’m crying like I’ve never cried before. I’m begging him to stop. I’m tearing at myself. I’m raging and sobbing and screaming like a crazy man—no, oh no no no no NO! nothing should ever be like this…NOTHING! nothing nothing NOTHING oh God oh God OH GOD…

  “Ruben!”

  Now he’s got me…

  “Ruben!”

  Now he’s shaking me…

  “RUBEN!”

  My eyes snapped open and the Dead Man died. I was sitting up in bed, staring into Cole’s dark eyes. He was holding me gently, his hands on my shoulders. My eyes were bulging and I was shaking like a leaf.

  “It’s all right,” he said calmly. “It’s only me…you were dreaming.”

  Cold sweat was pouring from my skin and my heart was pounding like a hammer. I could feel the dreamscreams lodged in my throat, choking the breath from my lungs.

  “I c-can’t breathe,” I gasped.

  “Yes, you can,” Cole said. “Just take it easy. Breathe slowly. Not too much…nice and steady, just take a little breath and then let it out again.”

  I breathed in, then coughed and retched into my hand. I could still smell him—the Dead Man. His stink of death was still inside me. I could feel it under my skin, poisoning my blood, crawling into my heart. It was sickening. Terrifying. I didn’t want to breathe that smell.

  “Come on, Rube,” Cole said, tightening his grip on my shoulders. “Just breathe…get some air into your lungs. You’ll be OK.”

  “I don’t want to die,” I told him.

  He froze for a moment, then said, “What are you talking about? You’re not going to die.”

  “I don’t want to be with him.”

  “Who?”

  “The Dead Man.”

  I was crying now. Not just for myself, but for Rachel, too. It wasn’t right, what we were doing. We were taking her down there…taking her back to the Dead Man. It wasn’t right. We were taking her home to put her in a box and lower her down into the ground with him. Down into the dead of dark, down into the underground cold, down with the insects…

  “Ruben?” said Cole. “Who’s the—?”

  “It’s not right,” I said.

  “What?”

  “It’s not right.”

  “Ruben—look at me.”

  “We shouldn’t be—”

  I stopped suddenly as he took my head in his hands. His fingers felt cool and calm and strong. “All right,” he said firmly. “Just look at me, now—OK? Look at me.”

  I looked into his eyes through a veil of tears. He didn’t say anything. He just cradled my head in his hands and let the tears flow over his fingers until the river was dry. All the time, his eyes never wavered. They held me in the darkness like a distant light on a winter’s night. I don’t know how long we sat there for, but eventually I realized that I wasn’t trembling anymore and my breathing was back to normal again. Cole had taken his hands from my face, but I could still feel the touch of his fingers cooling my skin.

  Best of all, he was smiling at me.

  “All right?” he asked. “Feeling better now?”

  I nodded.

  “Good,” he said. “It was just a dream, Rube. You know that, don’t you? Dreams don’t mean anything.”

  “This one did.”

  His eyes never moved from mine. “Do you want to talk about it?”

  “It’s not just that…it’s not just the dream.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “I was going to tell you…”

  “Tell me what?”

  I lowered my eyes, unable to look at him. When I spoke, my voice was barely audible. “I saw him do it, Cole. I was there. I saw him get Rachel.”

  “Who?”

  “The Dead Man.”

  I told him everything I could. I told him about my night in the Mercedes. I told him about being with Rachel on the moor. I told him about the Dead Man. I even told him about the ring of stones and the stunted thorn tree. He didn’t say anything when I’d finished, he just went over to the open window and stood there gazing out at the predawn sky. As I sat in bed watching him, waiting for him to say something, a gentle breeze drifted in through the window, scenting the air with something sweet. The room seemed to glow in a lazy blue-black light.

  After a while, Cole came back over and sat down next to me again.

  “Why didn’t you tell me before?” he said.

  There was no anger or bitterness in his voice. He wasn’t annoyed with me for not telling him about the Dead Man—he just wanted to know why I hadn’t.

  “I don’t know,” I said honestly.

  “Did you think I wouldn’t believe you?”

  “No.”

  “What, then?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe I was just waiting to see if it meant anything.”

  “Why shouldn’t it mean anything?”

  “Because up until now it didn’t matter who killed Rachel, did it? You said it yourself when we were talking to Pomeroy—it doesn’t matter who did it or why they did it or how she died. She’s dead. Dead is dead. Nothing can change that—reasons, revenge, punishment, justice. Nothing can change what’s already done.” I looked at him. “Right?”

  “Right.”

  “So, up until now, the Dead Man didn’t mean anything. It didn’t matter who he was. It didn’t change anything.”

  “Up until now.”

  “Yeah—but things are different now. Now he means something. If we can find him and prove he killed Rachel, we can bring her home and put her to rest. That’s what Mum wants, isn’t it?”

  “Yeah.”

  “That’s what we’re doing here.”

  “Right.”

  “And that’s all that matters.”

  Cole lit a cigarette and smoked it thoughtfully for a while, digesting what I’d just told him. I watched the smoke drifting in the breeze, and I wondered idly if what I’d just told him was true. I guessed that most of it was. And even if it wasn’t, I was pretty sure that Cole hadn’t been telling me everything he knew, either. But that was OK.

  “All right,” he said quietly. “Tell me about this Dead Man.”

  “There’s nothing else to tell,” I said. “I’ve told you everything I know about him.”

  “No, you haven’t—why do you call him the Dead Man?”

  “Because he’s dead.”

  “But you called him that before he killed Rachel. He couldn’t have been dead then, could he?”

  “Yeah, he was—”

  “Come on, Rube. You can’t kill someone if you’re already dead.”

  “He wasn’t dead physically.”

  “What do you mean?” Cole frowned. “What other kinds of dead are there?”

  “He was as good as dead,” I tried to explain. “It was already decided. I don’t think it even mattered whether he killed Rachel or not. He was going to die whatever he did.”

  “Someone had already decided to kill him?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Who?”

  “I don’t know. All I know is that there was nothing he could do about it. Once it had been decided, that was it. He was dead from then on.”

  “And he’s definitely dead now?”

  “Dead and buried.”

  “Where?”

  “I don’t know. I think it’s probably around here somewhere, but I’m not sure.”

  “Are you sure about the rest of it?”

  “No.”

&
nbsp; “But you felt it?”

  “I think so.”

  “You think so?”

  “Yeah,” I said, “I think so.”

  I hesitated for a moment, wondering if I could tell him what I wanted to tell him. We’d never really talked about the weird stuff I feel before. I knew he knew about it, and I knew he believed in it, but I’d never tried explaining it to him. I’d never been sure that he wanted me to. And I wasn’t sure now, either. But I knew if I didn’t do it now, I probably never would. So, before I could change my mind, I just opened my mouth and started talking.

  “It’s hard to explain,” I told him, “but when I get these feelings, I don’t have any control over them. They just come to me. I can’t do anything with them. They’re not facts or thoughts or sensations, they’re not anything I can describe. They’re not even feelings, really. I only think of them as feelings because that’s the closest I can get.”

  I looked at Cole to see how he was taking it so far. His face was blank, but his eyes were waiting for me to go on.

  “I don’t know what they are,” I went on, “and a lot of the time I don’t even know what they mean. Sometimes it’s simple. Most of the stuff I get from you is pretty simple.” I smiled at him. He didn’t smile back. “I don’t get everything,” I said, trying to reassure him. “I only get what I’m given.”

  “Who gives it to you?” he said.

  “I don’t know.”

  He nodded. “What about the stuff that isn’t simple?”

  “I don’t know…it’s like it doesn’t come to me fully formed. It comes in pieces—fragments, notes, layers, shades…weird kinds of pieces. And when that happens, I have to guess what’s missing—or feel what’s missing— and then I have to try to work out what’s supposed to be there. That’s why I’m not sure about stuff sometimes. I know it’s supposed to be there, but I don’t know what I’m looking for. I don’t even know what I’m looking at half the time. It’s like trying to solve a multidimensional crossword puzzle with most of the clues missing, and the clues that aren’t missing are written in a language I don’t understand.”

  Cole nodded again. He ran his fingers through his hair and looked at me. “Pretty weird stuff,” he said thoughtfully.

  “Yeah.”

  “But it’s real?”