Six Days, Six Hours, Six Minutes

by Alex Smith

  “Come on,” he said, dropping the crowbar. He took the guy’s arm and draped it over his shoulders, holding his weight. The smell coming off him was unbelievable, unbreathable. Blake was pretty sure he’d shit himself too.

  His phone buzzed inside his pocket.

  Ignore it.

  But what if it was the man? What if it said I am behind you?

  Ignore it.

  He took a stumbling step, the guy lurching along beside him. They dropped down onto the grass together. Blake’s car seemed a million miles away, maybe he should take the Ford instead. The keys were probably in the ignition.

  Buzz. Ignore it.

  He couldn’t. He stopped, shunting the guy up before he could fall over. He fished his phone from his pocket, seeing three texts there, the same number as before, each saying the same thing.

  His name is Daniel Keller.

  “What?” Blake muttered. He put the phone away again, taking another step. “What does that mean? His name is Daniel Keller? Whose—?”

  The young man’s arm was suddenly noose-tight around his neck, choking him.

  “No!” the guy shouted. “No! No! No!”

  Blake grunted, trying to prize him loose. The man’s other arm was around him now too, groping at his back, and all the while he was screaming.

  “No! I don’t want it! I don’t want it!”

  Then he was gone, letting go of Blake and staggering back, a sickness of bone and blood and dirt whose eyes were pools of terror.

  He held the rusted utility knife in his fist.

  “I’m sorry I’m sorry I don’t want it I don’t want it I’m not him.”

  The guy rammed the end of the blade into his own throat, not a moment of hesitation. He pulled it free with a wet, sucking sound. Nothing came out, like his body was too stunned to react. He stabbed himself again, the blade sticking behind the cord of his windpipe. He wrestled with it, both hands wrapped around the hilt, looking like he was sawing through his own neck. His eyes rolled upwards, his face contorting in what might have been fear, might have been ecstasy.

  Biology caught up. A fan of blood jetted from the wound, spraying over the garden, over Blake’s face, startlingly hot. He blinked it away, shaking his head like an idiot, unable to take his eyes from the flapping mess of the man’s throat. Daniel Keller opened his mouth but all that came out was more blood, dark clots that spilled like vomit. His hands dropped to his sides, the knife still wedged in his throat. The wound was whistling a nightmare tune as his lungs fought for air.

  He collapsed like a felled tree, dropping to his side in the long grass. His feet twitched, drumming the dirt, beating out a rhythm for the handful of seconds it took him to lie still.

  Blake’s reactions kicked in, too slow. He fell onto his hands and knees by the man’s side. Daniel’s throat was a ruin, glimpses of muscle and cartilage in the bloody broth. He reached out and touched it, trying to remember how to bring somebody back, knowing that it was impossible.

  Then he was moving, crawling on all fours like a dog. Only when he reached the edge of the lawn did he get to his feet, careening like a drunkard across the driveway, no idea where he was going, just desperate to get away, to put this house and its dead behind him.

  Forty-One

  “Julia?”

  The engine of his car was revving so hard he couldn’t hear her, and he’d called her name twice more before he recognised the sound of their answering machine message. He waited for it to beep, saying, “Julia? Are you there?”

  Of course she wasn’t. She was still at work.

  The Volvo lurched onto the road, tires skimming the wet asphalt.

  “Listen, something bad is happening,” he said. “I…”

  He stopped, swallowing hard. Then he ended the call. Something was nagging at him, a voice of alarm he couldn’t quite make sense of. He took his eyes off the road long enough to dial 999. The devil would be going for them now, wouldn’t he? What if he’d already got Julia? She might be clasping at her tattered throat just like Daniel, gurgling her last words onto the carpet.

  His thumb hovered over the call button.

  “Come on, you fucking coward,” he said to himself.

  He grabbed the wheel with both hands, chewing at his thoughts as the car chewed up the A11. He wasn’t sure how much later it was when he saw lights up ahead, a petrol station and restaurant. He turned off, parking in the half-empty car park and cutting the engine. The wipers beat their endless rhythm, chucking rain off the windshield. Other than that, there was only silence. He felt the real world start to coalesce around him, felt the seat against his back, the pedal beneath his feet, felt the warm air flowing in from the vents. His autopilot was being switched off, and in its place came the horror of what had just happened. His face felt stiff and sticky, coated with dried blood. He reeked of fear, and of the man who had just died. Daniel Keller. His face bloomed in the window, filling Blake’s entire field of vision, those eyes boiling as he sawed at his own throat.

  He forced himself to think about Julia and Connor. He thought of them the way an addict thinks of his next hit, with a craving that made him feel sick, that made his head ring. All he wanted to do was throw himself into Julia’s arms and feel her hold him. To push his face into Connor’s smell and breathe him in. The distance between them was unbearable, the thought of it overwhelming. He needed to get to them.

  Before he does.

  With nothing else to do, his body began to shake. He clamped his trembling hands between his thighs, the judders tearing through him like he was a building being demolished. He stared at the phone again but he didn’t reach for it. If he called the cops now, what would they do? There’s a man trying to kill my wife and son. They might send a couple of constables to the hospital, they might send one to Connor’s nursery, and it might keep the devil away for a few hours. But then he’d know for sure that Blake had called them. He’d know that Blake had broken the rules.

  No. The police couldn’t help. How long had the devil been playing these tricks? How many families like his and Elizabeth’s? And the police had never caught him. No, whatever happened next would need a different kind of violence.

  Voices spilled out of the nearby restaurant—a Burger King—and Blake looked up to see a gaggle of girls walking past. One of them said something and they laughed, none of them noticing the old Volvo, the ruin of a man inside. He might have been a ghost, he felt as good as dead. He watched them walk to their car, watched them drive away. A lorry rumbled past them as they pulled out, its air brakes hissing as it eased its way onto the forecourt. Why was the world carrying on as normal? Why hadn’t it stopped?

  Think, he told himself. But all he could see was the dead guy, all he could feel was the dried blood on his face, all he could smell and taste was that stench. It was like Daniel Keller had consumed him, like the man was trying to possess his body, take control of his senses.

  He waited for a family to walk from the restaurant to their car, then popped the door. He ran across the car park, head down, knowing what he looked like. A couple of teenagers kicked open the door of Burger King as he was reaching for it and he spun away, keeping his back to them so they wouldn’t see the blood. Even so, one of them stopped talking mid-sentence and he heard them both hold their breath until they skittered out of reach.

  Blake walked past a penny-ride and pushed into the toilet. Too late he realised there was somebody else inside—an old guy in a plaid shirt drying his face with paper towels over the sink. He looked at Blake in the mirror, a perfect double-take. Then Blake’s reflection was there alongside him. He looked like he’d crawled out of a battlefield. When he tried to smile it was a skeletal grimace. He even had blood on his teeth.

  “You okay there, mate?” the guy asked. He wiped his face again, but his stance had changed, one white-knuckled hand gripping the edge of the sink.

  “Yeah,” Blake croaked. He tried to laugh, couldn’t remember how. “Hit a deer a way back.”

  �
�Deer?” the guy said, nodding. He glanced at Blake’s face, the bloodstains looking more like burns in the harsh lights, like his face had lost a layer of skin. His jumper was more rusty brown than grey, streaked with gore. “What did you hit it with, a brick?”

  He roared at his own joke, then threw the towels away and walked past. Blake waited for the door to close behind him then stripped off his jumper, stuffing it in the bin. Some of the blood had soaked through into his T-shirt but there were only a couple of blotches. He practically dived for the sink, would have dived into it if he could. He scrubbed at his face until the water ran pink, then dried himself. It wasn’t a thorough job, but he needed to get home.

  His head was clearer now that he’d cleaned himself. He studied himself in the mirror—jaw clenched, face bruised, four claw marks streaking one cheek. It was his eyes, though. They were dark and full of something alien. They were a stranger’s eyes, and it hurt Blake’s soul to look into them. He was losing himself, he realised. Something was leaking out of him.

  He might keep taking. Your name, your mind. He might make you one of his.

  Blake turned away, shaking his head.

  Never.

  He made his way back to the car. Inside, he picked up his phone. There were no more messages, and Blake wondered if somehow he had imagined it all, if it had been some kind of hallucination. So he clicked on the unknown number and saw the man’s texts there, as real as those from Julia. And again he had an overwhelming urge to call her, to tell her to get the hell out of the city before the devil turned up at the door.

  Only, if he did that, he’d be breaking the rules. He’d be giving the man the perfect excuse to carry out his threats.

  Haven’t you done that already?

  He wasn’t sure that he had. Unless the man was watching him, he had no proof that Blake had spoken to Daniel. Maybe he’d just been probing, maybe he’d known that Daniel was out at the Nevill house, maybe he’d guessed that Blake was out there too and put two and two together.

  But how the hell had he known where he was?

  He controls everything. Nothing is yours anymore, don’t you get it? Your phone, your car, your house, your job, your life. He owns it.

  Your phone.

  He picked up the iPhone and turned it over in his hands. Was it possible? Had the devil man somehow bugged his phone? Even as he thought it, something clicked into place in his head. The locksmith. That’s how he’d got his man into the house. If he could hear every call Blake made then he’d have listened to him call the locksmith. All he had to do was call the same number and cancel the appointment, then send one of his guys to the house.

  The photo, too, the one that had flashed up when the man had used Julia’s phone to call him. How could he have got an image like that onto Blake’s phone unless he’d somehow accessed it? It’s how he knew where he’d been today, too. Either he was tracking the phone’s GPS signal or—Blake nodded to himself—or he was monitoring the browser activity. Blake had searched for the address on Google. If the man knew that Daniel was sleeping out in the Nevill place then it didn’t take a genius to work out that they might meet.

  So the fucker had cloned his phone.

  How the hell didn’t you see that before?

  But the man didn’t know that Blake knew.

  Could he use that?

  He opened up the call function and dialled the number for the hospital. It connected, the receptionist putting him on hold for what felt like forever until Julia’s voice breathed into his ear.

  “Blake?”

  Don’t cry don’t cry don’t cry, he ordered himself.

  “Hi,” he said, coughing away the lump in his throat.

  “Where are you?” Her voice was cold.

  “I’m on my way home,” he said, keeping his voice as level as he could. “I’ll be an hour or so. Do you need me to pick anything up?”

  Silence. He could picture her chewing her pinkie nail.

  “Did you do whatever it was you needed to do?” she asked. “Because I hear there are some pretty cheap hotels around here.”

  “I did it,” Blake said. “It was nothing. I’m coming home. Everything is fine.”

  “We need some baby wipes,” she said. “I’ll get Connor.”

  She hung up.

  Had the devil been listening? Blake replayed the conversation. Just a guy talking to his wife. Nothing suspicious. If he could somehow convince the man that he hadn’t talked, that everything was normal, then he’d be buying himself time—at least until the end of the week.

  Who else had he called?

  Shit.

  He’d spoken to Adam, asked to meet.

  Double shit.

  He’d spoken to him again, talking about Google search. Blake dialled his friend’s number, hoping to dowse the flames. It went straight to answerphone.

  “Hey,” Blake said after the beep. “Look, everything’s fine. It’s sorted. Life is great. I’ll give you a call next week, maybe go for a beer or something, yeah?” He paused, not sure what else he could say. “Say hi to Adam Junior for me.”

  He hung up. Even if the devil man thought he’d broken the rules, this might stay his execution a little. Like Daniel had said, he was more interested in making him afraid than killing him. He flicked through the apps, finding the Dictaphone, the lengthy conversation with Daniel stored there. Had the man been listening to that? Could he use Blake’s phone like a remote mic? Or would he browse through it later? Blake jabbed the delete button, wiping it just in case and instantly regretting it. That had been his only piece of evidence.

  Not that evidence was much good if you were too dead to use it.

  What about the camera? Was the man watching right now? Blake peered into it, thinking I’m onto you. You don’t know it, but I’m onto you.

  He opened the glove box and stuffed the phone inside. Then he started the engine, pulling into the forecourt of the petrol station. He filled the tank with diesel and walked into the shop, browsing the aisles until he found baby wipes. He picked up a bunch of tulips too, tucking them under his arm as he walked to the cashier.

  “Forget your anniversary?” the girl asked as she rang everything through. Blake smiled.

  “And her birthday, but these will make up for it, right?”

  “Oh sure,” she said. “Nothing says I love you like 99p flowers. Anything else?”

  “Yeah,” said Blake, nodding at the racks behind the till. “Give me one of those phones.”

  Forty-Two

  He called the hospital again as soon as he’d set up the burner phone, standing outside his car so that his old phone wouldn’t pick up his voice.

  “What, Blake?” she snapped. “I’m on rounds.”

  “Julia, look, this is going to sound really weird, but I need you to listen to me.”

  “What?”

  He heard somebody else speak to her, Julia muttering something in reply.

  “Don’t go back to the house tonight, not by yourself,” he said.

  “What?” she said for a third time. “Look, I—”

  “It’s not safe,” he said. “Please.”

  At this she hesitated, the muted chaos of the hospital a dull chatter behind her.

  “Something bad is happening,” he said, taking advantage of her silence. “I can’t talk now. But I swear, I’ll tell you everything when I get back. Just please, don’t go home alone, yeah?”

  “Blake…”

  “Just ask your folks,” he said. “Or a friend. Please.”

  The sound of an alarm rippled across the call, somebody coding in the hospital.

  “I’ve got to go, Blake,” Julia said.

  “Please, Jules,” he begged, but it was to an empty line.

  He opened the car door, brushing the rain from his hair as he climbed inside. There was nothing left to do but drive.

  It was almost dark by the time he parked up on the driveway. The rain had slowed to a fine drizzle, fresh and cool on his face as he stepped out and
stretched. It looked like Julia was back. She had drawn the curtains, but a thick, golden light dripped from the edges of the windows, pooling on the flowerbeds and the wet grass. The hall light was on too, and he caught a glimpse of her as she walked from the kitchen into the living room, broken into a million pieces by the tessellated glass.

  It didn’t look like his home anymore. It looked like a piece of stage scenery, something thrown up while he was away. He had the idea that he could walk around it and see the joists and the supports, the ropes and wires, the unpainted backboards.

  The need to go inside was powerful, but so was the urge to turn around and flee. He wished he could grab the sickness that had invaded his life, drape it over his shoulder and haul it across the country to somewhere it could never find his wife and child. If he could leave now and take the devil with him, if by turning tail and bolting he could guarantee that Julia and Connor would be safe, then he wouldn’t think twice. Even if they spent the rest of their days thinking he’d abandoned them. Better that than what had happened to the Nevills. Better that than watching the devil drag your kid from a wardrobe.

  He walked to the gate then remembered what he had in the trunk, returning to the car and fishing it out. He honestly wasn’t sure what good the CCTV system would do him now, but he’d feel safer with it watching them. He’d be sure to rig it up to the new phone, though, not his old one. Giving the man a live feed of his house wouldn’t exactly do much for his chances of survival.

  Survival.

  The day had kicked ten shades of shit out of him, for sure. Talking to Daniel, hearing what he’d had to say, seeing what he’d done to himself at just the thought of the man—it had made Blake more frightened than ever. But at least he knew something now. He knew about the phone being cloned. He knew the man picked vulnerable, frightened boys to do his dirty work. He knew, too, that he didn’t always stick to his own rules. If he’d told Elizabeth Nevill that he would kill her family instead of her then he hadn’t kept that promise. He’d killed them all, and that was a fact worth knowing.