by Ryan Casey
He rose slowly from the chair. The silhouette of the head was still behind the frosted glass window. He lowered to a crouch and moved through the kitchen door, his black Doc Martens squelching in the half-dried blood on the floor. He stepped onto the cream carpet, marking it with the bloody footprints. He kept his gun pointed at the door. Point at the door, at all times. Something was strange about this. Something didn’t seem right. Something was off. He reached the end of the hallway and the foot of the staircase. The clock from the kitchen ticked and tocked. He hadn’t even noticed it before, but now, as he approached the door, reached for the handle, prepared to fire a sedative right into his subject’s chest, it ticked and tocked louder than ever, like it was inside his head, working its way towards something he didn’t yet understand.
He reached for the handle of the door. He was ready for this. He was ready to aim and he was ready to fire. He’d handled much more complex situations than this before. In fact, this should’ve been a doddle to him.
But still, he couldn’t get that image out of his head. His daughter’s red balloon, barely clinging to her fingers with a tiny, thin piece of paper. “Don’t let it fly into the sky,” he’d said. “They cost five dollars too much!”
He took a deep breath. Held it in. Counted the ticks of the clock.
Three.
Two.
One.
He lowered the handle and fired the sedative the second the subject fell through the door.
And he exhaled.
The subject was on top of him. He was sleeping already. In fact, he looked like he’d been sleeping when he’d fallen through the door.
Wait. He’d fallen. Why would he fall?
He looked more closely at the subject, gathering his thoughts. He was wearing a high visibility jacket. On his head, a reddish hat barely clung on to thick, long curly hair. Something damp was pressed against his cheek. Something damp, from the subject’s neck.
When he touched his face to wipe it off, he realised what it was.
And he realised that this wasn’t his subject, not at all.
His fingers were covered with blood. The dampness had come from the neck of this man, who definitely wasn’t the subject. He was too old. Bearded. Rugged.
And he had a huge gaping wound pressed against his face.
He pushed him away with all his strength. As he did, more blood from the man’s wound oozed out onto his face, staining his hands, staining the carpet. He grabbed the feet of the dead man and he pulled him inside. The front door was wide open. Outside, cars drove past. A neighbour sat in their lounge on a laptop, eyes elsewhere. At least they hadn’t noticed. He didn’t want to have to kill anybody else.
Slamming the door shut, he turned to look at the man on the floor. Blood was dripping out of him, like somebody had just snipped a hole in the bottom of a bottle of Coke and left it to drain. His high-visibility jacket was stained red: a red stain that now spread across the carpet, down past the staircase, down towards the kitchen door.
The first thoughts he had, as he watched the blood collect beside the skirting board beside the kitchen door, were: Who is this man? Why was he outside? And why is he dead?
But those thoughts didn’t last for long. Not when he saw what was standing in the kitchen. Not when he saw its eyes, red, bloodshot, completely focused, staring right at him.
He laughed. He wasn’t sure why he laughed. Perhaps it was a laugh of relief. A laugh of the weight on his shoulders lifting away from him. But mostly, it was a humbling laugh. Fair play, he thought. Fair play for at least trying to save yourself.
He lifted the gun as the subject, Jonny Ainsthwaite, threw himself at him, and he fired.
A sedative pierced the skin of his subject. He knew that he’d be on his knees in a matter of seconds. He knew that he’d done his part, and now all he had to do was deliver his subject to his employers.
Except there was something different this time. The searing pain in his neck. The blurring speed of Jonny Ainsthwaite as he’d thrown himself at him. The stinging, burning, tearing sensation right across his throat.
And then the fall to the knees. The warm liquid seeping out and covering his front.
He laughed again now, as he kneeled there, his subject standing opposite him. Blood dripped from Jonny Ainsthwaite’s mouth. His teeth were wedged with flesh. The sedative shot had hit him square in the heart. Not a bad shot, he thought. Not bad, but not quite quick enough.
He fell face-flat onto the floor. He couldn’t breathe. He felt like he was drowning, in fact, but it didn’t panic him. No, he’d been prepared for this day. Prepared for the day that he was taken away. Taken away from this life and taken back to that scene and that memory: that memory where his daughter was holding her red Pluto balloon, barely gripping it as the paper slipped further upwards, out of her grip, closer to the sky.
“Hold on tight to that,” he said to her.
And then he heard a voice: “It’s prettier to let it fly.”
His heart thumped faster. He hadn’t heard that voice for so long, in all its rich, soft clarity. He started to turn, but he didn’t want to ruin the moment. He didn’t want to push his luck.
But the image was growing richer. He was seeing things in the distance that he’d never seen in the memory before. The Wonder Wheel filled with people. The pier, closed for construction, clawing its way out to sea. The smell of hot dogs, popcorn, sea salt.
He pushed his luck. He turned to his left.
And there she was. Shirley. Her freckly, dark-skinned face. Her beaming white teeth. So rich. So clear. So close.
He reached out his hand, and she took it, the warmth of her fingers intertwining with his. They didn’t say anything. They just stared into one another’s eyes—he just stared right at her luscious, chocolate brown eyes, and smiled.
Then, they turned back to Penny, and watched as the paper of the red balloon drifted free of her fingers, and the Pluto-embossed balloon rose up into the sky, up into the clouds, up above them and away, forever.
He smiled as the scene faded, as he choked up his last blood-drenched breath and drifted away into unconsciousness.
He could still feel the warmth of her hand in his.
31.
Everything that happened after The Incident seemed like a blur.
Deano Adlington stared at his reflection in his bathroom mirror. He looked deep into his eyes, but they seemed to be shaking. Behind their green tint, there was a vibration which he didn’t understand. A sensation that was new to him. New to his body. New to his mind.
And it had all started after The Incident.
He watched the boiling hot water run from the tap. The bathroom door was closed and locked, but nobody was coming in here. Not yet, anyway. He had some time. Time to do what he knew he had to do. Time to apologise—apologise in the only way he could, to them, to God, to everyone—for what he had done. For what he still did not yet understand.
The boiling water swirled down the plughole. Steam rose up and up, coating the mirror in condensation, the white tiles in droplets of water. He still didn’t understand what had happened down at that pond. Not exactly, anyway. It was strange. It wasn’t that he couldn’t recall events. Rather, they were out of focus. Blurry. Blurry and vibrating, like his eyes as he stared into them, dark bags underneath that were never there before. Out of focus. Distant.
He lowered his collar and winced. He knew what to expect. He’d seen it already, and it had been stinging and searing through his body for the best part of an hour. But after he’d… well, after he’d done what he did—what he hated himself for, what he could never forgive himself for, what he’d pay for—he’d felt relief. Temporary relief from the pain. From the lightheadedness. Somehow, he’d felt relief.
And yet, when he pulled his collar away from his neck, dried blood clinging to his skin, he had no idea how he could possibly feel relief with a wound like this.
Seeing it now, in all its detail, didn’t disgust him like it had t
he first time. Sure—seeing tendons spewing out of his neck, seeing disconnected veins clearing up as they spilled out the last of the blood running through them, seeing the mess all over his clothes—it discomforted him.
But mostly, it made him want to repeat what he’d done. The relief he’d got from it. Oh, the fucking relief.
No. He couldn’t think that way. He had to do what he had to do, now.
And all that he wanted to do was tie a piece of wire around his chomped-up neck and choke to death. It was the only way he’d ever forgive himself for what he’d done.
But he couldn’t even do that.
He stared at the running tap. Hot, clear water, whirlpooling out in front of him. He didn’t know why he was running it. Maybe when he’d first come in here, he’d considered cleaning himself up. Going on as normal. Pretending to everybody that he’d just had a little excessive shaving cut.
Explain his way out of the sudden disappearance of his family.
He shuddered to think about it. He couldn’t picture them anymore. He couldn’t think about what he’d done because there was nothing logical about his actions at the time. He’d done it. He’d acted purely on instinct. Purely to satisfy his… his hunger.
And he knew now. He knew exactly why that man—fuck, that boy—with the scraggly hair and the glassy eyes at the pond had done what he’d done. He’d had no idea at the time, the life disappearing from his veins, slipping down the ridge and into the murky water with the drowning girl, the drowning kid, the drowning colleague, Victor. He’d had no idea at the time, as his head slipped below the stagnant water and clouded the metallic, bloody water even more. He’d had no idea.
But now, he knew exactly why the boy had done it. The very same reason he’d done it. Instinct. There was no arguing with instinct.
He put the plug in the sink, let it fill up with steaming hot water, then turned the tap off. He couldn’t see his face through the completely condensation-covered mirror anymore. Better. He didn’t want to see himself. See the blood between his clenched teeth. See those eyes—those vacant eyes—that had followed him to where his instinct desired and chosen them. Them, of all people. He couldn’t look into his own eyes anymore, because somebody else—some thing else—was looking through them.
He cast his mind back to The Incident. Not the first part of it—the searing pain and the confusion as those blunt, cracked incisors forced their way into his tender neck—but the second part. The part after he’d died in the water.
The part where he’d woken up again.
He wasn’t sure where he was, only that he was trapped. He couldn’t breathe. He pushed his way out of the darkness and he realised he was underwater, and then the events of the manic last few moments of his conscious awareness came flying back to him.
When he pulled himself from the water, he noticed something was different. There were people approaching up ahead. Except he didn’t see them like people—he saw them like little pockets of heat. Pockets of heat that he just wanted to tear open, cuddle up to their innards, use their kidneys as cushions, and relax. Ease the burning pain running through his bleeding, mashed-up neck. That’s all he wanted.
The rest of what happened all went by so fast. He’d seen her, still in the water. The girl—yes, the blonde girl. The one whom he’d seen as he’d tumbled in. The one that must have grabbed little Peter’s leg and pulled him under to a bloody death. The one who lured Victor in and took him too, like a more attractive, albeit more bloody, Medusa.
And something inside him flared up. Out of nowhere, like a signal or a trigger, his entire body told him to walk away from the people—the heat sources—with the torches walking in his direction and get the fuck out of there. He wasn’t a Cub Scout guardian anymore, the voice in his body told him. The voice that he knew was in control of him now. The voice that had taken hold of him the second he’d opened his eyes.
A new life.
Except it wasn’t life. It was something much, much grimmer.
After he’d run away from the pond, the torchlights getting closer, he was immediately relieved, if it was possible for him to feel relief with the hot pain on his neck and the overwhelming emptiness in his stomach. He was relieved—akin to relieved—when he saw what the people with the flashlights did with the blonde girl, and then with little Peter.
A gun to the head of their thrashing, screeching, blood-soaked bodies.
And then a shot. One shot each, right between the eyes.
The flash of cameras.
Then nothing.
He’d stayed there a short while afterwards just staring into the darkness, trying to understand the sensation inside him. The hunger—that’s all he could describe it as now—and the way it throbbed inside him. What do you want, he thought. What the hell do you want me to do?
It was only when he reached his front door that he remembered Victor. Victor, who had been in the pond too. Where was he? And then he figured he had the answer, in a twisted sort of way. Of course, Victor had found his way home too. Victor would be making sense of the new sensations, the new emotions inside him now. Victor would be hungry, too.
Famished.
He leaned down into the sink. The steam from it was so hot. Cassy had told him to turn the hot water temperature down because she always scalded her hands unless she diluted it with a bit of cold. Strange, really. They always used to piss Deano off, her constant, incessant, irritating-as-fuck demands. But now they were gone. Irrelevant. Never to return.
And he kind of missed them already, as he rubbed his tongue against his metallic-tasting teeth.
His dad used to tell him he’d screw up in life. That he’d never find a woman, settle down, marry, have a kid. And if he did, that he’d screw it up some day. Thinking of his dad sitting there, glued to his leather chair, his arse making huge shit-stained dents in the material, Deano took great pleasure in ticking off the list. He had found a woman. He had settled down. He had married. He’d had a kid. And he hadn’t screwed it up.
If only his cunt of a dad was still here. He’d be laughing. Laughing his smoky breath out of his frail old lungs.
Of course he’d screwed up. Of course he had.
When he got back home and managed to stop his hands from shaking, the first thing he’d done was make a beeline for the kitchen. His wife was in there. His son, Joe, three years old, was at the table spooning mushed food into his mouth. Always preferred it that way. And hell, it was all ending up in the same place anyway.
After the whiff of a freshly baked cheese and onion pie entered Deano’s nostrils, the first thing he remembered was the shock on Cassy’s face as he marched towards her, unable to stop himself, unable to contain it anymore.
The second thing he remembered as he bit as hard as he could into his wife’s neck was the feeling. God, calling it a mere “feeling” wasn’t doing it justice. It was orgasmic. Beyond orgasmic. Orgasm squared. So much that he wanted another taste. Another try. Just one more. One more, then done.
The third thing he remembered, after the sensation faded, was the disproportionate amount of blood that pooled out underneath his wife and his kid, and then the thump to the stomach of guilt and grief and realisation of what he’d done.
He moved his face closer to the scalding hot water. He wanted to burn it all away. Burn away the blood and the skin and the remnants of everything bad he’d done. He wanted to drown, but he knew he couldn’t or he’d have drowned in that pond. He wanted to die, but somehow, suicide had just about made itself infinitely more difficult.
His face was so close to the water now. So close to the heat, and the warmth, and the searing of his flesh. He deserved to be punished. He deserved it more than anything. His dad was right—he was a bad man. A very bad man. And yes, he had screwed it. Fucked it all up. Of course he had.
He heard a knock at the bathroom door.
His face was inches away from the water, but the second he heard it, he yanked himself away, banging his head on the counter above in the
process. The knock at the door. Too light to be a police officer’s. Besides, why would an officer be in here anyway? There hadn’t been any protesting or commotion, not that he could remember. And he’d have heard them at the front door if it was the police.
No. This was a knock from within. A knock he recognised.
He walked across the bathroom to the door. He could hear muttering outside now. Pained, confused mutters and whimpers. His stomach knotted. He had a feeling what was happening. Just like the blonde girl, and little Peter, and Victor, too, wherever he was. Just like the curly-haired kid with the dead eyes.
Just like him.
He took in a deep breath. Grabbed the bathroom door handle. Opened it up.
The weight from his shoulders lifted. The grief evaporated and joined the rest of the steam in the bathroom. Because even though he had killed her—even though he’d kill them both—there was no denying what was standing in front of him.
Cassy stared at him. Tears dripped down her cheeks. Blood dribbled down her mouth, drying in the corners. She looked at Deano with an amazement. A confusion. A sheer lack of understanding, one that he’d felt just hours ago.
Holding her hand was their son, Joe. He too had a huge chunk of his neck missing. He too was shaking. He was rubbing up to his mother’s skirt, blood staining the cream, flowery pattern.
“I… I think we—we need an ambulance, Deano,” Cassy said.
Deano felt the tingling inside him. The tingling that he’d felt when he’d walked away from that pond; the tingling he’d felt when he marched through the door of his house and sunk his teeth into his wife and toddler’s necks.
“I think we need something else,” Deano said.
He shut the bathroom door, took Cassy’s free hand, and the three of them walked down the stairs together, out into the street, out into the night.
It goes without saying that that was the moment—one of many isolated moments, actually—that the Turnstone spread really started, and the world changed forever.