Road Kill

by Hanna Jameson

  I hesitated, feeling stupid, but only for a moment. There were a couple of empty bottles on his coffee table but not that many, not enough for a drinking session. I craned my neck so I could see the contents of the bin and then stomped into the kitchen.

  ‘So you’re just taking the day off?’ I asked.

  I opened and closed a few cupboards. Fridge was empty.

  Noel shut the front door and came into view to roll his eyes. ‘Yes. What do you want me to say?’

  I walked up to him and peered into his eyes. They were watery, tired, maybe bloodshot.

  ‘I don’t know,’ I said.

  Moving down his small hallway to the bathroom and bedroom, he snapped, ‘What are you looking for?’

  I halted and looked over my shoulder.

  He scowled back.

  I put my hand on the handle of the bathroom door, watching for a reaction.

  He stood there, stiffly, with his arms folded.

  In the bathroom I crouched to rifle through the under-sink cabinet, stretched for the one behind the mirror. In the bin there was an empty pack of something. Epilim.

  ‘What the fuck is this?’

  ‘It’s medication.’

  ‘For what?’

  ‘It’s a… mood stabilizer.’

  I found another empty pack. ‘And this?’

  ‘An antidepressant.’

  ‘Why are they here?’

  ‘I finished the course, I’m due another prescription.’

  ‘You expect me to believe that?’ I stood up, crushing both of the packets in my fist. ‘You just happened to finish them at the same time?’

  ‘Well… yes.’

  ‘How many did you take?’

  ‘It’s none of your business.’

  ‘I’m not leaving then.’

  ‘Yes you fucking are.’ He half-heartedly tried to take me by the arm.

  ‘No!’ I snatched it away. ‘I’m gonna wait here until I’m convinced you haven’t done something really fucking stupid and I don’t have to call an ambulance.’

  ‘Fine! Just… What are you gonna do, just stay here in my bathroom?’

  ‘No.’ I barged past him again. ‘I’m going to sit on your sofa and watch you.’

  ‘I’ll go out.’

  ‘Fine, go on then.’ I leant against his sofa and waited.

  He hovered, inclining his head towards the door but failing to move his feet.

  ‘No,’ he stammered. ‘No, it’s my fucking house.’

  ‘Of course you weren’t going out.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because you’ve …’ Neither us wanted me to say it but I forced the words out. ‘You’ve just fucking topped yourself and if you go outside someone’s going to call an ambulance once you pass out.’

  ‘I haven’t topped myself.’

  I got my phone out and dialled 999.

  ‘What are you doing?’

  ‘If you haven’t, then you won’t mind me calling paramedics to come look at you.’ I held up the mobile, thumb poised over Call. ‘They’re not going to have to pump your stomach if you haven’t taken anything, right?’

  He said nothing.

  My voice shook a little. ‘Right? Because you haven’t taken anything? Right?’

  It had all been posturing until then, just stomping around to make myself feel better. I hadn’t been certain, until then.

  Noel picked up the beer bottles from the coffee table and went to drop them in a bag of recycling under his kitchen sink.

  I followed him.

  ‘Noel—’

  ‘It’s none of your fucking business.’ He leant against the side, taking deep breaths.

  ‘It fucking is. How fucking dare you! What, you’re just gonna sign out, just… what, leave the rest of us here to deal with your shit? Fuck you! You don’t just get to run away because you’re not having fun! You think any of us are having fun?’

  ‘Can you just get out of my face?’

  I punched him, in the face. It hurt more than I was anticipating.

  He clapped a hand to his cheek and for a second I thought he might punch me right back, so I started shouting, ‘If you don’t go and throw all that up I’ll fucking kill you myself, you selfish piece of shit!’

  I blocked his path when he tried to sidestep me, and we stood head to head.

  ‘This isn’t fair,’ he said.

  ‘Life’s. Not. Fair.’

  ‘Who… the fuck… are you,’ he said, ‘to tell me there’s something to live for?’

  ‘I’m not telling you there’s something to live for.’

  ‘Then what are you doing here?’

  ‘I’m just not letting you go now! You can’t leave me to tidy up all this shit by myself, you’ve got to just…’

  ‘What, just put up with it?’

  ‘Oh grow up,’ I scoffed.

  I pushed him again, for good measure, and he grabbed me by the wrists. ‘Fucking stop that!’

  ‘What, are you gonna hit me? Go on! Go on, I dare you!’

  ‘For fuck’s sake…’

  ‘Good luck keeping this up when you’ve got an ambulance here and little cartoon birds are flying around your head!’

  ‘Christ, do you ever stop fucking talking?’

  He pushed me away with disgust and I caught myself in the doorway, hurting my shoulder.

  Noel held the bridge of his nose for a moment.

  ‘Get out,’ he said.

  ‘No.’

  ‘Daisy, fucking get out or I swear to God I’ll…’

  It had never crossed my mind that he would hurt me. It still hadn’t, really. But I couldn’t stand there for ever, in protest.

  ‘If I don’t hear from you in fifteen minutes I’m calling an ambulance,’ I said, storming out.

  ‘Yeah, you fucking do that!’

  And he slammed the door.

  On the verge of tears, my shoulder aching again for the first time in a while, I sat down in the hallway. I swallowed back the urge to cry, watched the clock, and waited.

  CHAPTER FORTY

  Ronnie

  I had the dream again, before Eli woke me from my nap and said we were going back that same evening. The man dressed in cheap blue tat was getting closer, shuffling behind buildings. I got a better look at how he was walking, with his arms contorted back, straightened and upwards like wings, fingers splayed. He was standing on his toes and with his knees bent, like an injured stork.

  Even if he caught up with me he didn’t look capable of harm. He looked as though his limbs could be bent and broken like straws. But it was the way he moved that gave me the creeps…

  ‘Ron, time to go.’

  ‘Argh, fuck.’

  I swung my legs out of bed and felt, for some reason, that this might be the last time I ever woke up. If we went into those tunnels tonight, I thought, that’s where we would be staying.

  Everything was so dark. Light was struggling.

  I waited for Eli to get out of the car first, which he did.

  We left the headlights on but they only followed us so far.

  ‘Should we try a different building?’ I asked.

  ‘Yeah, I’m not sure laundry is where it’s at.’ He gestured at a spire, which could almost be mistaken for a tree. ‘There’s an entrance to one of the tunnels in there. Apparently they were concealed in case any patients worked out where they were and tried to escape.’

  ‘OK.’

  I wasn’t OK, at all.

  It was surprising just how much you could see when your eyes adjusted to moonlight. Eli said it would be better to let our eyes learn to cope with the darkness rather than blind each other with torch beams before we got inside. After the first minute I could see more than outlines. I could even see the thread-veins across leaves. I could see markings against brickwork.

  Then Eli switched on his torch to get a better look inside a window.

  ‘How will we even recognize him?’

  ‘We might not.’ He tentatively checked
the window frame for glass. ‘He’ll recognize me though.’

  I turned on my own torch and climbed into the building.

  Somewhere inside, there came the scrape of feet against ground, voices…

  ‘Shit!’

  Even Eli sounded startled as we both fell into instinctive crouches and turned the lights off. I had my hand on the butt of my gun, though in this darkness I wouldn’t be able to see who I was firing at. No moonlight here. Not a sliver.

  ‘What the fuck was that?’ I snapped, as quietly as I could.

  The whisper still seemed to reverberate.

  ‘Better to know we’re not alone sooner rather than later.’ Eli adjusted his crouch until he was in a position to spring. ‘If it’s him—’

  ‘If it is him… he’ll know this place better than us, even in the dark. He’ll—’

  There was a scuff of shoes in the doorway and we both leapt to our feet.

  ‘Fucking show yourself!’ I shouted.

  ‘Don’t shoot, fuck, don’t shoot!’

  Eli took one hand off his gun to shine his torch directly in front of us, and I lowered my weapon at the sight of a young couple almost shitting themselves with fright. Their hands were in the air and faces wide.

  ‘Are you security?’ the dude yelled, shifting in front of his girlfriend. ‘We’re sorry, look, we’re really sorry, we were just looking around…’

  ‘Fuck.’ Eli breathed a sigh of relief and rested the butt of his gun against his forehead. ‘No, we’re police. We’re looking for someone and had a tip-off he was here. I suggest you go home.’

  ‘Yeah, we will. We’ll go.’

  ‘Have you seen anyone?’ I asked, glad that I could sound assertive when called upon. ‘Why are you kids even out?’

  The girl piped up, ‘Well, you know there’s rumours that the kids who vanished were kidnapped by this bogeyman called Cropsey. He’s meant to haunt the woods.’

  ‘Cropsey?’

  ‘Yeah, he’s a ghost story.’

  I shone my beam at the girl’s face and she squinted. She was wearing a necklace of shells.

  ‘In some of the stories he’s a ghost, but most around here think he’s just some homeless guy. Maybe a mental patient who never left.’

  Eli motioned his torch at them. ‘You know anything about the Satanic groups that come here?’

  The guy said, ‘Yeah, but no one’s ever seen them. It was a stupid idea for a date but we just thought it would be creepy. Fun-creepy.’

  ‘Has there ever been any evidence of these rituals?’ Eli asked.

  She said, ‘There’s some graffiti back there, but not much. It’s mostly talk. And the missing kids, but no one ever found them so…’

  The boy looked pretty spooked now, just letting his date talk.

  ‘The guy we’re looking for, he’s pretty dangerous. So we recommend you go home, OK?’ Eli was hilariously serious for a moment. ‘Don’t approach anyone else you run into.’

  ‘OK, we’re sorry. We’re sorry.’

  She took hold of her partner’s arm and hurried him over to the window frame, climbing out one after another. I could hear them exchanging profanities as they ran across the field towards the road. They’d be bricking it all the way back to civilization and beyond that, I thought. But at least they were able to leave.

  ‘We should have checked…’ I trailed off.

  ‘What?’

  ‘If Trent’s been living here, we should have checked if there were any more disappearances. Since the eighties, I mean.’

  Eli looked away and moved on as if I hadn’t spoken.

  I wondered if he was deliberately trying to split us up, and then followed him. Fuck that. I wasn’t doing this one alone. Not tonight. We either both got out of here, or neither of us did.

  I kicked away rubble and wire, and felt my way along the corridor.

  ‘Where did you hear the entrance to the tunnel was?’ I asked.

  Eli shone his torch at the ground, searching for the promise of stairs nearby. ‘The basement. There’s gonna be beds turned on their sides and leant against the wall to hide it. Anyone who goes down there must put them back every time.’

  ‘Anyone who’s crazy enough to go down there.’ My eyes were starting to itch from the dust in the air.

  ‘Scared, Ron?’

  He smiled at me. I saw him, even in the gloom. I couldn’t fucking believe that he was smiling.

  ‘Fuck. Off.’ I stopped. ‘You’re dragging me into a tunnel full of crazy homeless and psycho ex-mental patients. They’re all gonna be like Gollum down there!’

  ‘They’re not gonna have these though, are they?’ He waved his firearm at me.

  ‘No,’ I conceded. ‘But they have the element of surprise.’

  ‘The more you keep talking, the more surprise they’ll have.’

  I wanted to retort, but he had a point. I caught up so we were walking side by side. I was thinking, Both of us leave, or neither of us do.

  At the end of the corridor that would never end, we found some stairs. I peered into unused dormitories. There were rows of unmade beds, frame after frame standing there like fleshless carcasses.

  As we went down into the hole, further and further, I wondered if Eli was still smiling.

  There were curtains pinned to the walls and draped across furniture.

  Who was still putting up curtains down here?

  Eli was dragging an old bed to one side. I stood back and stared for a second before remembering to help. We lifted it off the floor and Eli let it fall to his left. The metal clanged and rattled to the ground and it took a long time for the angry echoes to die down.

  Without any conferral, Eli walked into the tunnel.

  It didn’t look like a tunnel so much as the end of the world. The beams from our torches seemed swallowed by it. Eli didn’t seem to mind; he vanished into the dark as if he could see perfectly. It hadn’t even broken his stride.

  ‘Come on, it’s fine,’ I heard him call, like I was a nervous swimmer being coaxed into a pool.

  ‘I’m not sure it is.’

  ‘You get used to it.’

  ‘See anything?’

  ‘No.’

  I took a step forwards, unsure where to put my feet.

  ‘See anyone?’ I called again.

  ‘No.’

  Something brushed against my foot and I leapt sideways, stumbling against something jagged and metal.

  ‘Fuck’s sake! Eli!’

  ‘What?’ The dim beam of light ahead of me halted and turned, sweeping across the floor.

  ‘We’re not going to find anything down here, we can’t even fucking see!’

  The beam shone into my face. ‘It won’t be any different coming back in daylight, we’re underground.’

  ‘This is fucking stupid. I’m waiting back here. You can give me some fucking signal if you find anything.’

  ‘A signal, like what?’

  I turned, my head starting to ache with the concentration required to not fall over something. ‘I don’t know. Shouting like hell and shooting something will probably be enough.’

  There was an ominous quiet.

  ‘I can’t believe you’re not coming with me.’

  I couldn’t find Eli with my torch any more. ‘Where does this lead to? Maybe I can find the exit and come from the other side?’

  ‘It’s out in the grounds somewhere.’

  ‘Out in the grounds’ meant above ground, which was good enough for me.

  ‘I’ll be out there,’ I said, unsure whether he could hear me. ‘I’ve got a good sense of direction. If this tunnel goes in a straight line, I’ll find where it comes out.’

  Nothing back.

  Taking a last look at the gaping hole, I turned and tried to find my way back to the staircase. I stood in the middle of one of the dormitories, a doorway in front of me and a doorway behind, and didn’t recognize anything.

  On second thought, had the dormitories been upstairs or downstairs?

>   Beds stared back at me. At least in the tunnel I’d had Eli’s footfalls to give me some purchase on the space. The lone sound of my shoes on this floor was unbearable and inconsistent. I felt surrounded by the furniture suddenly and I paced towards the nearest doorway.

  I didn’t know if I was going in the right direction.

  At the far end of the dormitory was a crucifix nailed to the wall. I was surprised it hadn’t been looted.

  I wondered if it had been there when the kids were being infected with hepatitis and tuberculosis, experimented on like rodents. Maybe that’s why no one took it with them? It was as infected as everything else. The mattresses left leaning against the wall were stained deep with blood and crying and faeces and disease and semen and ugliness.

  I kept moving, out of the dormitories and up some stairs. They weren’t the same stairs as before; I didn’t recall the cave-in down the centre, leaving them cloven like that. But I didn’t care. Up was an improvement.

  Everything was so fucking yellow. The walls had a sickly, jaundiced glow.

  I took the corridor to my right. If I had my bearings, the tunnel was directly below. A door at the end promised to lead out of the building but it didn’t. It was a windowless office. In the middle of the room, expectant, was an operating table. The leather was worn. Grey belts hung from the sides like lifeless arms.

  There was no other exit.

  I scanned the room, pacing around it with my eyes on the floor. It was covered in smashed glass. The phials and jars had probably been raided decades ago for cheap highs.

  I crouched, putting my gun on the floor, and pulled a couple of drawers out of the overturned desk in the corner.

  There were still papers, I was surprised to see.

  I coughed into the cloud of dust that billowed into the needle of light emanating from my phone.

  A lot of the writing was too small for me to read, but about four pages down, bent out of shape and almost illegible, was a parental consent form. Tests. That was how they had phrased it. Not anything so alarming or intrusive as experiments, but tests. Without that signature, without consenting to that paragraph, this child would have no place at Willowbrook.

  The signature was smudged but the name printed beneath it was Darick West. He couldn’t have had any idea, I thought. How could he? He couldn’t have known that tests meant forced infection with hepatitis, diseased injections, the ingesting of other children’s excrement…