Hollow Oaks

by Paddy Kelly

  Images tumbled. Of Gemma, the deceitful cow, but with an amazing mouth. The older lady I’d delivered craft items to who’d surprised me by wanting more than just jars. And finally Debbie, her powerful hips, her chocolatey brown eyes.

  My breath quickened, my fingers danced, and for a second, it was close, gathering … and then, without warning, it fled. I slumped into my pillow, feeling utterly pointless, and stared up at the cracked ceiling.

  Oily wine and tasteless food I could handle, boring ciggs I could live with. But how could I live without sex? What sick torture was this?

  I sat up. The urges from Vesta’s house. Didn't Tommy say one of them was lust…?

  I fumbled for my coat on the bedside chair, and extracted the plastic bag of urges. On came the light, and I extracted the vial I wanted, with the round symbol on the bottom, and held it up. Inside sloshed a few thimblefuls of liquid, with the viscosity of a strong stout. I poked off the beeswax seal, and sniffed. Minty. Bitter. I swallowed most of it, rubbing the last third onto my face and hands, spreading the startling scent. Dropping the vial on the carpet, I sat back.

  After a minute, nothing felt different. I hadn't taken a great many urges in my life, but their effects were generally fast. Was it still active? Only one way to find out.

  My legs shifted and down went my hand, probing. I sighed, finding the place, eyes closed—

  A sound came from the hall. A scuffling, as if someone was sneaking past the door.

  Intruder was my first thought. I held my breath, and my hand, listening. There it was again, trying not to be heard. I reached for the meat cleaver I’d liberated from the kitchen before retiring. With its solid weight in my hand, dressed in pyjama bottoms and t-shirt, I slid to the door to listen. Nothing. So I snatched it open and slipped my head out.

  A shadowy hallway, lit by a single sconce, with a carpeted strip running along—

  A noise from the far end. Something was there, around the corner. Crouched low, I darted up the hall, swung the corner, the meat cleaver high, all ready to—

  "Aagh!" Debbie staggered back, hands up. "Stop, stop, it's me!"

  “Debbie." I gawped at her, heart thudding. "What the hell are you doing?”

  "You mean, why am I walking around my own house? I might ask what you're doing with one of my cleavers. I don't recall you asking to borrow it."

  I lowered my weapon. "Sorry, I heard … yeah. Sorry."

  Her hair was loose, falling down beyond her shoulders. She wore a pyjama top over underwear, showing bare legs. Her breasts pressed the fabric out. Don't stare, Bren. A button in the middle was undone. No, don't stare. And through the gap was pale—

  "I heard a noise," she said. "Like a voice. A strange voice—"

  "My phone," I said, pointing to the low table near the wall. "I put it there to load. Plug in the room was on the fritz. I have some voices as ring signals." I put down the cleaver and checked. Missed call from Seamus Cavan. "Bad choice of signal, I admit."

  She nodded. Then inhaled. And her eyes narrowed. She sniffed the air and her gaze flared with … something, a thrilling something that just as quickly died.

  She shook her head. "I'm still a tiny bit drunk. I shouldn't have had all that wine."

  I shrugged. "It was a hard day. I think we needed it."

  She nodded, saying nothing. We were a metre apart, on opposite sides of the low table. The silence between us drew out until it was close to a roar. In her neck, a fat vein pulsed.

  "Um," I said, looking at her face, not her chest, her face, my fingertips stinging. "Tommy," I blurted out, just to say something. "What's his problem? You think he'll help us?"

  "I'd be fairly annoyed if he doesn't."

  "Yeah. And, um … is there some … issue there? Between you two?"

  A tingle was crawling through me. Scurrying along tubes and synapses. I was trembling, fixated on the dark sweep of her hair. How could she not see me trembling?

  "What issue?" she said. Those dark eyebrows, the maddening fatness of her lips.

  "I dunno, it's just, he seemed extra pissed off. And I wondered why."

  She ran a gaze across me, eye to eye, and shifted a hand to the gap in her pyjamas, where the button was open, not to close it but to scratch the skin inside. The hard and salty curve.

  I pressed a hand against the wall behind me, hoping it would hold me up.

  "Okay. We had a … thing when we were younger, stupid and short. Then I went off to college, and that was the end of it. But I think he kept on hoping. And I told him, as we had to do business, that we needed to keep it professional. I thought he got it. But now, with all this stuff, maybe it just … bubbled up again."

  Wide-eyed, I nodded, crackling from the urge. We had a thing… I couldn't shake that thought, that image. Debbie being kissed hard, and kissing him back, the muscles on her back sliding under his fingers, her buttocks being pressed by hands not mine.

  For a while, she just stared, loudly breathing. And with a slap, it hit me why.

  She could smell the urge. It was drifting across to her from where I'd dabbed it on my neck and hands, crawling into my head but also hers. Fanning flames. Burrowing deep.

  Her stare, I couldn't meet it and I didn't know what to look at instead, so I nodded down, towards the floor. "Um, your foot. Is it … good now? Better?"

  I looked up, and saw her lips open, just a crack. "It's okay. And how is your hand? I'm not very good at bandages. Maybe … I should check." She swallowed. "Give it here."

  To the swoosh of blood in my ears, I stuck my hand over the table, the barrier between us. She shook her head. "No," she said, slippery soft. "Come around. It's easier."

  I stepped around the table, trying not to stumble, and stood beside her, in the space between table and wall. I lifted my hand, to the furnace whine of my own breath.

  She took it, turned it, nodding as she checked the wound I'd given myself in the tomb. The urge was on my hand, and now its fumes were creeping into her, stoking her fires.

  "Fine," she muttered, and dropped it. She took a breath. Her shoulders and her breasts, I watched them, my sight red-rimmed from the urge. Their swell, their fall.

  We stood side-by-side, facing the hallway. I nudged the table back with my leg, making more space, so I could turn to her. She turned too, and the look she gave me was so hungry I could have slammed her against the wall right there, and ground myself on her thigh until I’d left a glistening streak down her leg.

  Her tongue appeared like a nipple to wet the corner of her mouth. A groan slipped out of me, and I cleared my throat to mask it and I wasn't sure if it worked or if she noticed or—

  "And you," she said. "I'm sorry if you get this all the time, or if it's very personal, and it is, I mean, it couldn't get more personal, and it's not my business, but I'm curious, and…"

  "Ask it," I said, between accelerating breaths. "It's fine, just say it."

  "I just wondered" — she nodded down towards my crotch — "have you, did you…"

  The genitals question, making its appearance. But my brain was too ablaze to care, and as wrong as it felt, I still grabbed her hand, and turned it, and slid it inside the waistband of my pyjamas. Her eyes widened. I moved the hand down, my heart a coked-up woodpecker, and down some more, and I shuddered as it stopped at the wrongness.

  "That answer your question?"

  She bit her lip. Her finger moved, crept forward, and stroked.

  I locked my legs, straining air through clenched teeth. A shudder, biting back another groan, as the finger moved. Back and forth. The vein in her throat pulsed like a rope, like a heart of its own.

  Around the back of her head I slipped a hand, pulling her face to mine. Our lips pressed, and I felt the hard dab of her tongue as the finger kept moving, and then I was gasping, gagging, hand sliding across her back, pressing her to me—

  "Wait," she said, panting, easing me back. "Not here. Your room."

  Her hand grabbed mine, pulled me away. I staggered after
her, along the hall, through the door into my room. She closed it and we fell together in a tangle onto the bed.

  In the sharpness of the urge, the clarity of the now, hands crawled, lips climbed my neck. I squirmed free of her grasp and moved down, sliding my tongue over her salty stomach, then further down, to grab her underwear. With some hip-lift help, off they came, and I ran a tongue up each thigh, to the arching of her back, and reached the untrimmed hair, my head a scream and a flame and a spin.

  My tongue dabbed and darted, and she made a sound like hiccups, as the ancient bed creaked to her thrashing. She gripped my hair, pulling me back up along her, until our mouths connected. She circled my tongue with hers, devouring her own taste. Gasping, my leg pressed between hers, I snapped open the buttons in front to wrap my mouth around the nugget of the nipple, as her hand reached down and found me and two fingers—

  A knock came on the door, booming like thunder, and a voice. "Bren?"

  We froze with a gasp. I lifted my head and stared at Debbie, a string of drool stretching from my lips to her breast. She stared back, eyes big and disbelieving.

  I looked towards the door, trying to not make the bed creak. Was it locked? Had she—

  Another knock. "Are you awake?" It was Gernaud. "Answer, or I come in and—"

  “No!” I said, but it came out like a bark. She lay pressed under me, one breast revealed, the other a half-hidden curve. The urge inside me, a blue fire, pounding.

  I cleared my throat, tried again. "I mean, no. What is it?"

  "Tommy, he had seen a thing. The cameras he put at the walls, he says that somebody is out there. He went out to check and I think we should also. Right now."

  "Okay," I said. "Get to him, fast. I'm coming."

  Debbie nudged me off her, resolve all over her face. I saw what was going to happen. She was going to stand up, do a bunch of things, and this moment, this bliss, would be gone.

  "I tried to wake Debbie," Gernaud went on, "but she was not there, maybe she—"

  "Just go!" I barked at the door as Debbie scooped up her underwear and yanked them on. "I'll find her. Now go help Tommy!"

  Footsteps receded from the door. I watched Debbie button her pyjamas through a spreading dullness, as the urge loosened and began its slide. The moment, broken.

  Debbie stepped back to the bed. She gripped my hair, yanked back my head and pasted a fierce kiss across my mouth. I closed my eyes to exit time and swim in it.

  She stepped back, as my bound chest inflated with fresh heat. She stared at me, with the tiniest quiver of confusion. A sniff of the air. A frown.

  "Get dressed," she said. "Fast. See you downstairs."

  She hurried to the door, checked outside, slipped out and was gone.

  The urge was barely a tingle as I speedily dressed. And her face, the flicker of doubt … I couldn't think about it, not now. Clothes on, coat on, I followed her scent down the hallway, and swept up my phone, and even with the buzz of the hunt, one thought burned bigger than her and what had happened.

  My desire hadn't all been scooped out. It was still in there, even if it took the kick of an urge to set it alight. Whatever the fuath had tried to do, I wasn't quite dead yet.

  Although the night was young. And death had had plenty of practice.

  CHAPTER NINE

  "Hey!" We heard the yell from the wall when we were fifty metres away. Tommy's voice, ringing out in the dark. "Stop! You fuckin' hold it right there!"

  Debbie, her shotgun slung across her back, was running beside me, leading the way past shadowy, oversized shrubs. She was moving fast, even on her injured foot. I caught a glimpse of her mud-splattered face, angry as hacked stone.

  She raised a hand with something in it, and up ahead the big gate began to open with a squeal, rumbling along tracks. We reached it and darted through the opening, where we staggered to a gasping halt.

  Outside the walls, trees grew in a shaggy denseness. A narrow road wound away into the drizzly murk, and we saw barely five metres along it in the dark.

  "They fucked off!" Tommy dropped to the ground a short distance along the wall, having clambered over, I assumed, in pursuit of the intruders. "Up the road, and I didn't—"

  "Parking place," Debbie said, panting painfully. "Along the wall" — she raised a hand and pointed — "then right at the corner. Faster than the road. Here." She unslung the shotgun and thrust it at me. "Safety's off. I'll get the car. Go!"

  I snatched the shotgun and followed Tommy along the dark wall, ducking branches. No sign of Gernaud, which made me worried, but my main feeling was one of grim violence.

  The people we wanted were maybe nearby, having stupidly come to us instead of us having to come to them. Now we just had to catch them.

  Tommy reached the corner and swung a right up a narrow path through the trees. I followed. A cloudy night but the moon was up, and in its light, beyond Tommy, I spotted a low stone wall with a gap and a flat space beyond. Tommy belted through the gap. I stumbled after him into a gravelled space big enough for ten cars, with a narrow exit on the other side.

  A dirty white van sat parked, and by the van's open back door Tommy was grappling with a man bigger and wider than him with a cap and a moustache.

  He smacked Tommy, sending him to his knees. He then raised something, ready to slam it down. In a horrific flash I realised it was a wrench. I raised the shotgun straight up and jerked the trigger. The unbelievable boom jolted pain across my wrists and the two men turned to me. "You fucking back off!" I yelled, pointing the gun with shaking arms. "Now!"

  The man kicked Tommy, then took off, sprinting around the van to the other side.

  The gun was in my hands, and I knew I should shoot, blow out the tyres, something, but I couldn't, and instead I dropped the gun to the gravel and sprinted towards the van.

  My plan pulled itself together on the hoof, as the van's lights blazed to life, its back door gaping. I yanked out my mobile, along with a woolly glove, shoved the phone into the glove and, a metre from the open back door, as the wheels spun, spitting gravel and dirt, I slung the padded phone into the back. I tripped, and fell to my knees as the engine roared and gravel pelted me in the face as the van raced off.

  Tommy stumbled after it, a dozen steps until he grasped he wasn't going to make it. He ran, panting, back to me. "The fuck? Why didn't you fuckin' shoot them?"

  I climbed to my feet. "Because you were in the way, and … I'm not a fucking killer, am I?"

  "Fuck's sake," he said, gulping big angry breaths. We could still hear the van, in the distance. Too far to do anything about. He stamped the ground. "Fucking shit."

  Gernaud sprinted up, and skidded to a halt. "Where are they?"

  "Fucking got away," Tommy said, red-faced. "Now we'll never—"

  "Wait," I said, catching my breath. "One second. That's not … all true."

  "What?" Gernaud and Tommy said, facing me at the same time.

  "My mobile," I said. Chest hurting, but breath slowing. "Tossed in the back. Remote tracking app. Just need to … get to some internet so I can … log in and track it."

  They stared at me in dumb silence, four big eyes in the dark.

  "Fucking hell," Tommy said. "Not too shabby. But they'll stop to close that door in a bit and then maybe they'll find it and then the game'll be up."

  "It's inside a glove. They might not notice it. Not right away, anyway."

  Tommy took one last look at the road, where no lights could be seen.

  "So back to the house?"

  "And fast," I said. "If we're lucky, we can track where they go. Even listen in on them. And maybe we can nail the bastards before they know what's hit them."

  We huddled around Debbie's laptop, with Willy the dog eyeing us from the sofa. I was drumming annoyed fingers at the slowness of the connection.

  "I'm sorry," Debbie said. "My foot slowed me down on the way back. I was just opening the front door of the house when I heard the van, and I wasn't sure what to do, so—"


  "It's okay," I said, and turned to smile at her. "We'll get them." For some reason, she didn't acknowledge that smile, just turned to stare at the laptop.

  "It is loaded," Gernaud said, stabbing the screen with a finger. "Look."

  I flicked through menus on the website and selected map. Another spinny-loader wait. And then it was there, a red line snaking across a map, with a dot at its head.

  They were apparently heading for Dublin, and they'd really put the foot down. I zoomed in, watching the dot update its position every few seconds.

  "How much charge is your phone containing?" Gernaud said.

  I found the menu, and stared. "Damn. Twenty-five percent. Stupid battery."

  "Then let us not waste it," Gernaud said. "What are our options?"

  "We can take pics, or grab audio and video. Even send messages to the screen. Tell them to fuck off or whatever. Not constructive, but fun."

  "Audio," Debbie said from behind me. "Do that. See if they're talking."

  I turned on the audio. It took a few seconds until we heard a muffled rumble, and two men talking. One had a Dublin accent, and the other was Irish too, but from somewhere else. We strained to listen, but the rattle of the van blocked it out. Then a ticking indicator came on, the noises dropped, and the voices, for a moment, stood out like crags in a sea.

  "—have to do it, Bruno," I heard the non-Dublin voice say. "She won't—"

  Then traffic noise swelled to swallow all other sounds. We listened for a minute more, but all we got was creaking and rattling.

  "The battery," Gernaud said, pointing to the top of the web page. "Twenty-two is left."

  "Damn it," I said. "Have to kill the audio." I tapped, and our eavesdropping window closed.

  "Can you take a photo?" Debbie said.

  I shook my head. "Phone's in a glove. Plus, they're up in front."

  "Bruno," Tommy said. "That was the name, wasn't it? Then we've something to go on. And I got a good look at him. Plus some of the license plate."

  I turned to him. "Really? You got the license number?"

  "A bit. Was dirty as fuck, but I saw two sevens at the end. Might help us find them."