Six Days, Six Hours, Six Minutes

by Alex Smith

  The car stuttered and pulled away, but Blake still waited. The street was deserted, no people, not even a magpie in the tree. The rain was a velvet fuzz that seemed to hang from the sky, gossamer thin, rather than fall. Once the sound of the engine had faded it became ridiculously quiet, impossibly quiet. The world was holding its breath, and in that sudden abyss Blake knew that there were eyes on him, that somebody was watching. It was as if every other sense had dulled in order to divert resources to his vision, saying look, look and you’ll see it. And he did look, but there was nothing except dark windows, empty cars, the bare, skeletal branches of the trees. There was nothing.

  And yet, there was something.

  He gently closed the door, hearing the brand-new Yale snap into place.

  He should have felt safe.

  Twenty-One

  “So, you’re back then?”

  Julia stared at him from the halogen-baked hallway of her parents’ house, her face and hair bleached by the artificial light. It could have doubled as a tanning salon in there. Aldous stood protectively behind her left shoulder, his arms clutched behind his back as he frowned at Blake. From inside the house came the sound of Hermione’s voice and Connor’s slightly pissed-off squawks.

  “Yeah, sorry I’m late, I stopped by—”

  “I mean you, Blake,” she said, folding her arms over her chest. “You’re back. My husband.”

  “Oh, yeah, sure,” he said. “I’m here, Julia. It was just…”

  Aldous raised his eyebrows expectantly, leaning forward.

  “Look, can we talk about this later, in private?”

  Julia examined him, her eyes as bright as the spotlights, scouring his face for the truth.

  “You know you’re always welcome to stay, Jules,” said her dad. “Until things—”

  “Oh shush, dad,” she said. “You’ve done nothing but look at your watch since we got here. It’s fine.” She grabbed her coat off the hook, putting it on and giving her father a peck on the cheek. “Blake just needed some time, didn’t you Blake?”

  “Yeah, I was just being a di… Uh, I was just stressed. Work, you know?”

  Julia retreated into the house and he heard her calling to Connor, heard her mum putting up some kind of softly spoken argument. Aldous coughed awkwardly, glanced back, then looked again at Blake.

  “I suppose you can come in,” he said. “I don’t know how long they’ll be.”

  Gee, I can come in? I can cross the threshold of your fake mansion? Look at me, ma, I’ve made it!

  “No, it’s cool, we’d better get going. Looks like the rain will be starting up again soon.”

  Aldous craned out of the door, looking up into the night like he hadn’t noticed what season it was.

  “Oh yes,” he said. “It is a bit bleak.”

  Connor’s chirrups burst into the hallway a second before he did, the kid laughing as Julia carried him through. She pushed her feet into her shoes, kissed Hermione—who had followed her out and who glowered at Blake—kissed her dad again, then pushed out into the gloom. She thrust Connor at Blake.

  “Stick him in, will you? Bye, guys, enjoy your game, dad. Don’t lose too much of my inheritance.”

  Aldous laughed as he closed the door behind them, only for Hermione to appear in the gap.

  “And don’t be frightened to come back, anytime, if things… if you need to.”

  She said this with another stern look in Blake’s direction, then the door closed. Blake switched his squirming son to the other arm and walked to the car, the engine still running. It felt like a million years since he’d held Connor and he gripped him tight, pressing his face into the kid’s head. He’d obviously had a bath at the house because he smelled gorgeous, and he was wearing a set of pyjamas that Blake had never seen before. He could have stood there for hours, for days, for the rest of time, just breathing in that smell. It was as good as air, it was life.

  The car door slammed and he looked to see Julia in the passenger seat, thrusting her hands up to say what the hell are you doing? He opened the back door and eased Connor into his car seat, the kid starting to scream almost immediately. He fastened the buckle, brushed the rain from his hair, then clambered in beside Julia. She looked at him with annoyance but it didn’t last, the ice melting after a second or two. She reached out and took his hand.

  “Are you okay? You look like shit, Blake, you really do.”

  He felt the tears pushing at the back of his eyes, her kindness unexpected. They rarely fought, but when they did the grudges could last for days—weeks, sometimes—taut silences and narrowed eyes and slammed doors. He gripped her hand in both of his, locked his throat tight until he knew for sure the sobs wouldn’t fall out as soon as he opened his mouth.

  “I… I had some bad news,” he said, and he didn’t even know it was coming until he’d spoken it. “At the doctor’s.”

  Julia’s surprise was as profound as his, her face falling so fast that he almost reached out to hold it in place, almost sucked the lie back in. He held her hand tighter as she started to cry, letting his own tears roll down his face. Connor’s squeals had started to quiet, as if he could sense the drama playing out before him.

  “Oh Blake,” Julia said, pulling her hand free to wipe her face, then gripping him again so hard his finger bones popped. “Fucking hell, Blake, why didn’t you just tell me?”

  “I didn’t want to worry you,” he said, gulping air past the painful lump in his throat. “I’m sorry, Jules, I just didn’t want to worry you, not until I knew for sure.”

  “And do you? What did they say?”

  Fuck.

  “Um… I don’t know yet, they need to run some tests.”

  “Testicular?”

  “Uh, look can we talk about it—”

  “Oh shit, that’s why you were talking about babies, right? That’s why you wanted to try for another one.” She sobbed again, a great, heaving snort that she tried to cover with her hands. “I’m so sorry, Blake. I… I called you a dick. I’m so sorry.”

  He held her fingers to his lips. The lie was polluting the car, making him feel like he couldn’t breathe. But it was better this way, right? Better that he had a reason for doing the things he did. Better that she thought he was ill than crazy. Better, too, that she knew he was going to die. Not with cancer, of course, but death was still there, just out of sight, wearing a dirty coat and an Arsenal cap. It was better that she came to terms with it now, before he went. And the cowardice of that thought, the pathetic surrender, made him start to cry again.

  “We beat it before,” she said. “I can help, we’ll do it again.”

  “I don’t even,” he started, and for a moment the momentum of his honesty almost dragged out the actual truth. Wasn’t it better to tell her? Better to give her some warning about the man who was stalking them? That way she could prepare, she could run if she needed to. But the devil would be there. He was watching them right now, for all Blake knew. Tell anyone, and your wife and child will die. And he saw her, saw them both, strung up from the ceiling, their tongues lolling and their faces blue. He swallowed hard. “Please, don’t worry, I haven’t had the results yet. I’ll tell you all about it another time, it might be nothing.”

  She shook her head again, and at least the lie was reinforced by a different kind of truth, at least the pain in his expression was real. He smiled at her, gave her fingers another squeeze, and turned to the back seat.

  “Don’t panic, little guy, mum and dad are okay.”

  Connor started to cry again, struggling against his restraints. Blake turned to the wheel, his hands shaking. Julia sobbed quietly, smudging her fist over the steamed glass. The UPS truck was gone—Blake had driven around the block looking for it but there was no trace—and the road was deserted, the cars all tucked away for the evening. He sat there for a moment, the engine only idling but his brain racing, trying to work out if he’d done the right thing or if he’d only succeeded in breaking his wife’s heart for what
would be the first time of two this week, if the devil man had anything to do with it. Then he gently pulled out onto the street and drove into the night.

  It was a quiet journey, once Connor had settled down. Julia was content to hold his hand, sniffing. For one crazy moment, as they approached their turn-off from the ringroad, he thought he might just keep driving, heading out of the city, out of the country even. The man might know all about them, but he wouldn’t be able to track them forever. They would lose him in the dark and the rain, sooner or later. Lose him on the endless roads that crisscrossed Europe, in the countless hotels. He would give up, after a while, and move on to somebody else. And the thought of it, of the vast world out there which could pull them to its breast and keep them from harm, actually made his foot push down on the accelerator, made him feel like if he went fast enough the car would bank up like a plane, soar into the clouds, up into the cold, silent skies above them.

  “Whoa there,” Julia said, and he thumped down again, tires thrumming on asphalt. “You’re going to miss the turn.”

  “Sorry,” he said, smiling at her again and flicking on the indicator. It could never work. Julia would have to give up her job, they wouldn’t have anything to live on. And what if the man didn’t give up? What if he just kept on following them? I am the night that devours the day. They could never relax, they could never settle. He would always be there. And when he found them, it would be Julia and Connor who suffered.

  No, let’s head home, let him know you’re doing what he says. You’ve still got five days to figure this out.

  He glanced in the mirror, no idea if the lights behind him belonged to the man or one of his stinking disciples. Pulling off the main road he navigated back home, pulling up the driveway and cutting the engine. He’d left the lights on in the hallway and the living room, the curtains open, and a warm, yellow glow spilled out into the garden. Compared to the rain-slicked evening it looked like a haven in there, and Blake had the weirdest feeling of watching a theatre set, a diorama of some kind. He half expected to see himself walk past one of the windows, or Julia with Connor in her arms, kissing him as she carried the kid up to bed. And he suddenly wondered if maybe this was why he’d been chosen, if this was why the devil man hated him so much. His wasn’t a perfect life, not by any stretch of the most perverse imagination. But to somebody with no family, with no friends, with nothing, wouldn’t this seem like the dream? Apples in the garden, a wife and child, and a house that glowed in the dusk like a setting sun. Wouldn’t a sight like that piss you off enough to want to shatter it?

  “Blake?” Julia said, softly, like she didn’t want to startle him. He smiled at her.

  “Sorry,” he said. “Miles away.”

  She didn’t call him a dick this time, she nodded in sympathy. He knew then that he’d done the right thing by lying. Not just to make things easier for him, but to put her mind at rest too, to give her an explanation for why he was acting the way he was.

  “Come on,” she said, popping her door. “Let’s get inside, get warm.”

  “Yeah,” he said, following her out, halfway to the house before remembering the front door. “Oh, and there was a bit of drama earlier, another bit of drama.”

  “Yeah?” Julia said, following him with Connor in her arms, the kid’s face pushed into her neck.

  “The lock on the front door.” He spoke without thinking, almost frightened by how easily the lies fell from his mouth. “It broke. It jammed. You know the way the door’s always getting stuck? Well, it must have been on its way out because the whole thing locked. Locked open. I didn’t realise until I went looking for Doof. Stupid mutt—” Forgive me, Doof “—escaped, I found him halfway down the street eating cat shit through a wire fence. Cut himself a little, but he’s okay. He’s cool.”

  “Fucking hell, Blake, are you shitting me?”

  He reached the front step and pulled one of the new keys from his pocket. It turned easily and the door opened.

  “Anyway, I got him back and tried to fix it, but the damn thing wouldn’t shift, so I called a locksmith and he put a new one in. Didn’t want to risk the door being stuck open all night.”

  The house pulled him inside with a warm hug and he shivered into it, automatically looking for signs of an intruder. But the hall was clean, the house was quiet, and when Doof trotted through from the living room he showed no sign of fear. In fact, he seemed to have completely forgotten the horror of earlier, the fact that he had almost died. He ran to Julia and tried to jump up her leg, delusional with happiness, his big eyes rolling in their sockets.

  “Poor little bastard,” Julia said, handing Connor to Blake and crouching down to investigate the dog. She probed his neck, checking her fingers for blood. “A wire fence? Jesus, he looks like he’s been strangled.”

  Blake turned away, the colour rising in his cheeks. He walked into the kitchen—window closed—and sat Connor on the counter, holding him tight as he pulled off the kid’s coat. From the hallway he heard Julia sigh as she closed the front door behind her.

  “Some days,” she said. “It never rains but it pours.”

  SUNDAY

  Twenty-Two

  Blake couldn’t sleep.

  His mind was a battlefield, a maelstrom of panic and horror. Images lit up the darkness of his skull like mortar blasts, flashes of fire and burning visions of his dying wife and child. He saw them as war-dead, flesh ruptured by shrapnel and lead, bones cracked over the frozen ground. He gritted his teeth against their screams, covering his ears even though he knew it wouldn’t help. He screwed his eyes shut and still watched them die, over and over.

  And above it all, was him—the devil man—a grinning face in the smoke. He loomed over the scene like a kid playing toy soldiers, dirty fingers tugging at his wife’s limbs, plucking Connor’s head from his twitching body, his mustard gas stench making Blake choke, making him claw at his own throat.

  He sat up, groaning the last scraps of the image away—not a nightmare, he didn’t feel like he’d been asleep. No, just exhaustion, its weaponry of lies and cruelty. He thumbed his phone, squinting to see 3:32 on the screen. Maybe he had got some sleep, then, although he had no memory of it. But he and Julia had turned in early, no later than half nine, and he couldn’t have been tossing and turning for six hours, surely.

  Connor mumbled something in his sleep, the sound picked up by the baby monitor on Julia’s bedside table. Blake rested his head on the pillow, listening to his son, only for the devil’s face to ghost into sight, so close, so real that he flinched hard enough to pull the sheet off Julia. She moaned, turning over, and Blake stared defiantly into the shadows of the bedroom to see the space where the man wasn’t standing. He blinked, the shadows shifting playfully, trying to make him see things. Then, knowing that there wasn’t a hope in hell of him falling back under, he eased himself out of bed.

  He closed the bedroom door behind him and stood on the landing. The tiredness was like a parasite, pressing against the back of his eyes, coiling into a sickness in his gut. He rubbed his stomach, not sure what to do with himself. He couldn’t make any noise up here or Connor would wake. He half-thought about curling up on the landing where his constant fidgeting wouldn’t wake Julia, but it was colder tonight, and he was in his shorts, and there was something unthinkably tragic about the idea.

  He tiptoed into the bathroom and pissed as quietly as he could, digging an old T-shirt and sweatpants out of the laundry basket. Then he crept downstairs, practically soundless, convinced he was a ninja until he was three steps from the bottom and the psychic dog started barking. He opened the kitchen door and stepped inside, switching on the light and checking that the window was still closed. Then he crouched down and let Doof scrabble onto his knees. The dog licked his face, panting like he’d just run a marathon. The wound around his neck was still red and sore but the worst parts had crusted over and he didn’t even seem to notice it anymore.

  “Not morning yet,” he whispered to the dog. �
��Get back to sleep, champ.”

  Doof didn’t obey, but he was yawning as Blake walked through to the garage door and checked that it was locked, then checked again. He was halfway into the kitchen before going back to check one final time. Jules hadn’t come back here before bed, which was just as well as he had no idea how he was going to explain getting this lock changed when it was the front door that had broken.

  But he was getting good at lying. He’d think of something.

  He scooted Doof out the way and closed the kitchen door behind him, walking into the living room and crashing on the sofa. He felt on edge, and it took him a moment to realise that it was because the house felt different. Nothing sinister, just a sense of displacement, like he had caught his home unawares by waking so early. The air was unfamiliar, almost stale, like a set that had lain unused for a period of time. There was an unreal quality to the furniture, to the decoration. Their stuff could have been nothing but props, almost perfect replicas that would be hollow and weightless if you lifted them, streaked with dust. He felt like he could grab hold of a piece of wallpaper and the entire lie would peel away, revealing something else underneath.

  Christ, he was tired.

  He sat with his eyes closed and listened to Doof scratch at the door for a minute or two. Then the dog gave up, snorting quietly as he returned to his bed. Maybe he should take him out for a walk, investigate the streets just in case there was a UPS truck close by. They wouldn’t expect him to be awake at this hour, maybe they’d be dozing behind the wheel, off guard. Maybe he could sneak up on them.

  And then what? Stuff a potato in their exhaust?

  He was too tired to think of a plan, and the thought of getting up, of putting on his shoes and heading out into the cold and the rain… It was just so comfortable here, the sofa cloud-soft beneath him, the house floating over the city below, over the mountains…