by Stephen Laws
Ferocity
Stephen Laws
The Brooligan Press
London
New York
This novel is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental
First published in January 2007 by Leisure Books, a division of Dorchester Publishing Co., Inc.
This edition published 2019 by The Brooligan Press
Stephen Laws has asserted his right to be identified as the author of this Work in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the copyright owner
Copyright © 2007 Stephen Laws
ISBN-13: 978 1 9160578 3 8
I could fill several pages with thanks to the people who have helped me during the writing of Ferocity, but there are a few people who I need to thank this time for very specific support, assistance and inspiration for the novel you now have in your hands—and they are—
Don D’Auria—for his continued faith
Mike Thomas of Newquay Zoo
Sergeant Eddie Bell
Keith Durham—whose cup (or mug) of friendship
came at a vital time, and always ‘runneth over’
Will Haughan—who knows all about the Fingers of
One Hand.
Paul Simms—inventor of Domestovision and
Iron- O-Rama (and who deserves a knighthood for
same)
David Williams of Sedalia—a place at the end of the
trail that is also close to my heart
The Wednesday Boys (sometimes Tuesday)
TGW of the Bent Ear
JB—for “Sit Him High”
EM—for “La Cosa Buffa”
EB—for “Rampage”
And for Mel, Eve, Jon, Alan, Pam, Alison, Andrew, Rachel, Peter, Andrea, Rick, Ray, Jane, Charlie—whose presence has enriched my life.
This one’s for my blood brother,
Steve Gallagher
ONE
“Give me the money,” said the man in the woollen hat, and suddenly there was a knife in his hand.
Cath looked at David, then back at the man who had stepped out of the doorway onto the rain-washed street before them. He was wearing a long, dirty coat with no shirt underneath, bare-chested even in this dank and freezing New York weather. Cath looked back at David, and their eyes met—what else was there to do?
They both burst into laughter.
It was a good joke.
The man threw the knife from hand to hand, the way a seasoned knife fighter might do. But he fumbled the catch and when the knife skittered to the wet sidewalk, David guffawed, his breath rising in a cloud around his head. The man cursed, stooped and grabbed the knife back up as if his dignity in this enterprise was at stake. Wiping his nose with the coat sleeve of his other arm, he drew a deep breath and shook his head as if he was angry that he’d gotten off to such a bad start and wanted to begin all over again.
“I said give me the fucking money.”
“No, you didn’t,” Cath said.
“What?”
“You didn’t say ‘Give me the fucking money’. You said, “Give me the money.”
“What?”
“There wasn’t a ‘fucking’ in the first thing you said.”
Cath looked back at the reception doors behind them. Beyond them lay the offices of her American publisher. Her agent was still in there, talking with Cath’s editor about ‘other business.’ Over coffee, they had spent the morning discussing minor changes to Cath’s latest manuscript—laughing at some of the English phrases that required amendment for an American readership. Words like ‘line’ instead of ‘queue.’ From there, the conversation had somehow moved to bad lines of dialogue from corny books and movies. Now here was this guy, just outside Cath’s publisher’s office, asking for their money and dropping his knife. Was Cath’s agent standing just inside the doors, laughing at the joke he’d arranged?
He must have moved quickly to arrange something like that.
It was a joke, wasn’t it?
There was a scuffle of movement and Cath looked back to see that the man was running away, ragged coat flapping, breath streaming around his head. His foot twisted in a gutter; he staggered, cursed and ran flapping into a side alley. David was watching the man go, his back to her. Cath laughed, uncertain now—and moved to touch his arm. Before her fingers made contact, David suddenly sank to his knees on the sidewalk.
And Cath knew then that it wasn’t a joke at all.
Because David was kneeling on that sidewalk, getting the knees of his expensive suit trousers soaked. He was clutching his stomach, his head bowed, and the steam of his breath was coming in short, frozen bursts around his head as he fought for that breath.
This had gone too far. It was time to stop.
“Stop . . .”
Her voice was real, the rain was wet and cold, and the sidewalk was hard and shining. The sky was heavy and solid; piles of dirty snow in the gutters looked carved from dirty stone. And where David was kneeling on the sidewalk, the rain was turning dark and red. He was trying to look up, trying to speak to her—but could not find his voice. Cath could see the dreadful terror on that strong and handsome face; a terror that if he moved, if he took his hands away, something awful—something horribly awful—would happen. Taking away his hands would mean that they wouldn’t be able to rewind this nonsense and go back to the start again. Cath was moving to him, but oh God why was she moving so slowly? David was gingerly taking one hand away from himself, and Cath could see his wedding ring shining somehow luminously bright against the thick warm blood that covered his fingers.
“Cath?”
There was blood on his lips when he was finally able to speak, and his voice was thick with fear and horror. Now she knew that the breath-steam coming from his mouth was David’s life, evaporating up and out of him into the harsh, cold New York air. There was no one here to help, and she couldn’t move, couldn’t even reach out to touch him. She wanted to touch his face, grab for his outstretched hand. She had to hold him, wrap herself around him and keep him warm. Stop the life from escaping and bring it back. It would be all right. He’d be all right. Someone would help. Someone would come and . . .
“CATH!” David screamed. Suddenly there was blood everywhere on that rain-washed sidewalk where he knelt, as if something inside him had ruptured. The horror instantly broke Cath from her immobility. In the next moment, she grabbed his ice-cold hands in her own pulling them to her own chest, and all she could moan was:
“Nooooo . . .”
Because in the moment their eyes met, they both knew—and in that horrifying instant, they saw their daughter: Rynne.
David wasn’t ready, and she wasn’t ready.
Cath tried to pull him close, and David sprawled against her. There was no warmth in him now. His flesh was as cold and as hard as the wet slab of sidewalk on which they were kneeling. Was that it? Was he turning into some terrible, frozen travesty of himself—turning into dead stone?
“David!”
And Cath was sitting up in bed, weeping, and enveloped in that same deep grief that was such a fundamental part of her life now. She’d been weeping as she slept, she realised. Her face and pillow were damp. The bedroom window curtains were open—she always slept with them open now, terrified of the claustrophobia that crowded in during the night. Rain was runneling down the windowpane, filling the room with a swirling kaleidoscope of
blue and black streamers. And that terrible New York morning was five years away on the other side of the ocean.
Had she cried out in her sleep? What if she’d frightened Rynne?
Quickly, Cath slipped from the bed—no blurriness as she flung back the coverlet. Instant wakefulness, like every other night these nights; as if her subconscious mind was always alert and waiting for some terrible alarm call to come. Perhaps in some way she might be transported magically and instantly back to that cold, wet New York street—maybe she’d have a chance to do things differently. Maybe wait for five minutes inside those reception doors until the man in the woollen cap and long coat had found someone else to accost. Was she still, after all this time, waiting for David’s dying voice to summon her? Whatever—she was up and out of bed and standing in the doorway, hands braced against each side of the doorframe. Ready and waiting for the next signal, the next sound.
It was only then that her waking mind caught up with her.
Only then that Cath’s conscious mind arrived, taking over from that dull-witted and slumbering twin. She paused to listen in the darkness, looking across the landing to her daughter’s bedroom. The door was ajar, and there were no sounds. She must still be asleep. Somewhere, distant thunder grumbled in the valley. Cath remained braced in the doorway, taking deep breaths to clear the terrible, recurring nightmare. This was so much more than a bad dream. It was a vivid replay of what had happened years ago, so long that Rynne had no real memory of her father. It was a real time replay of the actual event with all of its grotesque absurdity, its horror, its fear and terrible loss. So very real every time it played.
There was no sound from Rynne. Cath hoped she was still asleep.
Wiping the moisture from her face, Cath moved quietly to Rynne’s door and looked carefully inside. The only sound from within was the faint hiss and bubble of the aquifer on the small goldfish tank standing in the corner. Rynne’s three goldfish cruised silently around their underwater castle. Did fish ever sleep? Did they dream?
Cath moved inside.
Rynne was lying face down, quilt pulled back. Her mouth was open, long blond hair tousled around her head. Books scattered on the floor, toys heaped in the far corner—despite early evening pleas for the room to be tidied before bed; and of course, she looked so much like her father—even down to the way he’d looked when he slept. Cath moved to the bed, began to reach out to stroke the hair away from her daughter’s forehead—and then she felt it again; rising from deep down, rising from the place where she kept it guarded under lock and key in her heart. The thing her counsellor had called submerged, unresolved grief—but what she called The Beast. She’d been told that if she didn’t let nature take its course, if she didn’t allow that grieving process to take place, then she could never be healed. But no matter what the textbooks said, Cath knew that if she allowed The Beast out of its cage, it would overwhelm her. It would drag her down and destroy her—and hadn’t there been times when she’d wished that it would? Only one thing had prevented her from giving in to it on those bad, dark days. And that one thing was a person—her seven-year-old daughter, now lying blissfully unaware in a safe place of her own. Cath looked down at Rynne and felt The Beast rising from the darkness. It was coming, and it would overwhelm her if she let it.
No, I can’t.
She’d spent so long not giving in to that grief, had spent so much time fighting it. For the sake of Rynne, yes. But for her own sake, too. If she allowed it to drag her down into despair, she feared that she’d never emerge from it again.
I won’t give in to it. Not now.
Cath withdrew her hand and stood back from the bed. Rynne mumbled in her sleep, moved her lips and turned over.
Carefully, step-by-step, Cath backed out of the room onto the landing. When the thunder grumbled again, it was like the sound of a caged animal. Now, she had the crazy feeling that she was on some kind of video rewind, backing out of the room in the hope that the feelings inside her could be rewound, too. Perhaps she could go back to bed and pretend that she’d never have the dream again, that she hadn’t come into Rynne’s room and found the aching darkness and despair waiting for her—a darkness not healed, no matter how much she pretended, always waiting for her.
Cath stood at the top of the stairs, staring down into the darkness. So dark that she could see the same phantom movements that lived behind her eyelids when she lay in bed at night. They were the same movements that could swirl and twist and form into faces and places and wild, unbidden configurations. As a child, she had often been frightened by them at night—had been so relieved when her father had told her that everyone saw the same things; that they were corpuscles, magnified against the dark backdrop of her eyelids and that the mind took them and made shapes from them, reflecting every thought she’d ever had, every sight she’d ever seen as her mind and body ‘wound down’ for the night—like a cinema screen. As an adult, Cath had come to believe that the phantom light show was some huge, complicated trailer for the dream world. Perhaps the place her stories came from—the same fantasy world that she had loved so much it had led to her brief flirtation with acting in her early years (in two “dire movies” as she often referred to them).
But tonight, she felt like a little girl again; and her father’s reassurances were the words of a ghost-person who had become part of that dream place. Those dark and swirling shapes that filled the staircase were real. They were beckoning to her now, swarming and rising toward where she stood. Her childhood terrors were tangible, real, soul-sucking. She could see no details of the staircase, the walls or the floor or the ceiling. She felt, rather than willed, her hand rising to the light switch. But if she switched on the light and dispelled the phantoms, wasn’t that giving in to the childhood fears? She was a grown woman, with a child of her own.
Giving in now would be like lying to Rynne.
What would David say?
David, his breath rising from his mouth, like his spirit escaping into the frozen air . . .
Cath withdrew her hand, started down the staircase into the darkness.
Soft carpeting under her feet. The handrail at her left.
The darkness undulated around her. She felt like a blind person headed straight for a brick wall. Didn’t they say sometimes that blind people could sense a solid obstruction ahead, like some kind of extra, unknown sense? She could feel it now but kept descending, waiting for the moment when her face would press up horribly close to some ghastly, contorted face in the darkness—or until something slammed hard into her with agonizing pain.
But now she could see a faint slab of grey below. The window in the front door. There was the lounge door on her right, more grey rectangles against the deep black.
Cath wasn’t a fearful little girl. She was a thirty-seven- year-old woman whose husband had been murdered on the streets of New York. She was a writer, with seven novels and two movies to her credit—one of the latter being half-decently good. And this house was the ‘house in the country’ that she and David had talked about long before Rynne was born. Once, it had been a fantasy-dream place. Now it was a retreat—because she couldn’t bear to live under the same roof in the city where David and she had shared so much love, so much of their lives. Everything about that house reminded her of him. The bed, of course. The wardrobes, even the bathrooms and—God help her—the cutlery drawer in the kitchen. Not only the tender and meaningful moments but also—perhaps even more keenly distressing—the everyday, ordinary things, like preparing an evening meal together. Sometimes those memories were almost too terrible to bear. And whereas most people assumed that the move from the city to the country represented some kind of reflection of her growing status as a writer (especially the monetary side of things)—in truth, she had been trying to escape that ongoing cancer called grief.
Had it been a successful move? Only time would tell.
But she couldn’t ignore that old but profound cliché.
You can’t escape what’s ins
ide you.
Bleak and hollow, Cath returned to bed. She was cold, felt she would never sleep again that night.
But she did. As she always did—and on the following morning, there would be the guilt that she was able to sleep at all.
She felt that there should be dreams.
But there were none.
There was just a low, barely discernable rumbling—perhaps faraway thunder—like some beast pacing its den, wanting out.
TWO
Drew Hall cursed as the Land Rover pitched in a rut at the side of the road. He steadied the wheel, and shifted down a gear as he continued on through the night. He’d thought about cutting across country over the Fell. It would take less than half the time than using the village road, but he’d busted the exhaust last time he’d tried that at night—an expense he could ill afford. Now it looked like he’d bust it again or maybe blow a tire on this badly maintained stretch. There were no lights on this route beyond the village leading to his farm, and no moon. The Land Rover’s headlights cut a swathe through utter darkness.
“Need cat’s eyes in the road,” he said aloud, and allowed himself a grimace. It had been yet another unsuccessful night hunt, and not for the first time he wondered why he was doing this at all.
The road took a sharp swerve to the right, and he could see the distant lights of the writer’s house. When he drove past it, he’d be only a mile from home. The road acted as a boundary to his farmland, and although he’d seen her distant figure from the hillsides above, they’d never been introduced, had never spoken. She had a daughter living with her, perhaps seven or eight years old. Faye Roche—once the village schoolteacher, now long retired—was working for them part time as housekeeper. But he’d not seen Faye to speak to since the writer had bought the place and moved in, more than a year ago.
The lights of the writer’s house were larger and nearer. He wondered if she was burning the midnight oil. Not long now.