‘As I heard you knocking, it’s like I knew I was expecting someone. Expecting you. That’s why, in spite of all the hell that’s going on, I answered. Why is that?’
‘I do not know. I only know they always answer when I call.’
‘Always? How long have you been doing this?’
‘For as long as I have been needed. Perhaps even longer, it’s hard to say. My memory is not what it once was. Or perhaps it is, it’s so hard to be sure.’
‘So why have you come calling on me?’
‘Because it is time to deliver the warning.’
‘All right then.’
‘You can save Alice.’
Bill’s heart leapt a little, he tried to stamp out the sting of fruitless hope. ‘No. She’s dead. She’s a long time dead, now.’
‘In a way. They took the spark from her. What you would think of as her soul. They took it. For the time being, it can be given back. If it is released to her again, she will live.’
Bill began to feel warm again. Just a little. ‘So what’s the catch?’
‘You have to go to Mary’s house. To the farmhouse that rests at the foot of Apoc Hill. You have to go inside and find Mary.’
Bill closed his eyes and saw Mary on the floor, reaching out to him, begging.
‘So, she really is in there? She really needs help?’
The Knot Man nodded. ‘I spoke to her. She did not listen.’
‘Why do they want me to save Mary?’
‘It is the next move of the game. They’d rather you did it of your own volition, it is more elegant to them that way, but they do not mind forcing your hand if they must. It is the move that counts, not the motivation behind it.’
‘So if I do the thing they want, Alice lives? She gets back her soul?’
‘Perhaps.’
‘Perhaps?’
‘You are dealing with monsters. Perhaps she will live, perhaps she will not.’
Bill nodded. ‘So I go there, I actually go there, to the place that makes my insides recoil, and maybe she lives.’
‘And the game takes its next step forward. It continues.’
‘You keep calling this a “game”. What about this is a game?’
‘All of it. The oldest game. Played out since the light met the dark for the very first time.’
Bill felt like a speck about to be crushed.
‘So what if I don’t go?’
‘There is a time limit. If the game does not move forward, it will cease, and all of this will end. But Alice will remain dead, and her spark, her soul, will be taken back to Hell with them. Damned forevermore. A little girl tormented for eternity.’
Bill sighed, ‘Seems to me as though they’ve backed me into a corner. A choice that seems like no choice at all.’
The Knot Man nodded, ‘Indeed. The Hill has chosen well this time.’
Bill looked over his shoulder, as if he could see through the wall to Alice, cold and dead and motionless on the sofa. No, not just dead: empty. Empty of her soul. What would happen to it if they took it down with them? Would she be aware? Would she feel whatever it was they would do to her?
‘Are you a father?’ Bill asked. The Knot Man tilted his head to one side.
‘I… Perhaps I was. Sometimes I think I might have been, a long time ago.’
‘I have a daughter. A daughter I’d do anything to protect. Alice isn’t mine, but she was somebody’s, and I’d like to think if the same thing was happening to someone else, and it was my daughter on their couch, then that other person would do all they could.’
The Knot Man stood and placed his hat upon his head. ‘The second warning is delivered. Do as you will, Bill Reed.’
Bill nodded and watched the Knot Man as he walked from the kitchen. Listened as he heard the front door open and close.
Bill stood, drank some water, and prepared himself to drive into Hell.
CHAPTER THIRTY
As Bill drove toward Apoc Hill, he thought about his daughter. He thought about the night Kate, his ex-wife, had finally walked out on him, on both of them, for the very last time. She’d made the threat more than once, of course; a few times she’d even gone through with it. Packed a bag and stormed out, the door crashing and bouncing as she shot through, jumped in her car and drove off, back end wheel spinning and kicking to one side as her fury and urgency to get the hell out of there overpowered the car’s ability to move in a straight line. Of course, the first few times Bill hadn’t been all that worried, just hot from the heat of another argument, but not really worried that it was all done. It was like they both knew they were just going through the motions at first, that they were just trying this whole leaving-forever thing out for style. A couple of days later, Bill would hear the door open, hear Cali exclaim joyfully and her feet slapping against the floor as she ran towards whoever had just entered the house.
‘Hey,’ Bill would say, as he walked through the front entrance and saw his wife holding a tiny Cali in her arms.
‘Hey,’ she would reply. A little smile, a little devil in her eyes, and that would be that for a little while. But the night she left for good? That night felt a whole lot different. That night Bill knew even before she walked out the door and got into the car that this would be the final walk out. Somehow his gut just knew, and he never expected any reconciliation.
So that time, rather than try to tell Cali that everything was fine, and that Mummy was just going away for a couple of days, he just held her in his arms and let her cry on his shoulder until the material of his shirt turned see-through. Seemed like Cali felt the same thing in her gut. Like father, like daughter.
That had been the second time in her short life that he’d held her and made a silent vow to always protect her. To always love her, support her, and do whatever it took to keep pain from her front door; even if it meant piling that pain onto himself instead. If it meant she didn’t feel it, then it wouldn’t even take a second of indecision; he’d gladly take it and ask for more.
As Bill drove towards Apoc Hill, his gut was telling him something right now, too. It was telling him that he was driving towards the wrongest place on Earth. It was telling him that he was very likely driving towards disaster. Bill didn’t care. He looked in the rearview mirror; Alice’s body was reflected back at him, curled up on the seat, dead. She wasn’t his, but that same instinct burned fierce. What else could he do? The world had turned yellow, monsters now walked amongst them as though it was the most ordinary thing in the world, and a small girl he’d taken into his care had been murdered. If there was a chance that going to the house by the Hill saved Alice, then he had to try.
Bill knew Cali would say not to. Tell him to run, to hide. No use. He’d never be able to look his daughter in the eye again, never be able to look himself in the eye come to that, if he let Alice die on his watch just because he was scared to go and do something dangerous.
He wondered if he was driving towards his own death. Was that the price for trying to put things right?
Apoc Hill rose before them.
The Hill shone red underneath the yellow sky. Every blade of grass that covered its surface was a bloody red.
Bill pulled to a stop at the foot of Apoc Hill; the tatty farmhouse stood in front of him. It felt wrong. It felt like they’d come so far they’d left behind the real world and driven into a nightmare. It twisted his stomach and made his heart thump-thump-thump. Bill looked at the Hill with its blood-red grass and sensed that it wasn’t as empty as it seemed. Like it was covered in things that were being hidden from him.
‘Alice, I want you to stay in the car.’
Well, let’s get to doing this.
Bill opened the door and stepped out, locking the car behind him. He looked in at Alice, pale and still and tiny on the back seat and he felt a fire burning inside of him. He looked over Apoc Hill, with its unnatural red grass, and felt as though a thousand pairs of eyes were looking back at him. Mocking him. Like he was doing exactly what they wanted.
Bill shuddered.
He turned his back on the unseen things and began to walk towards the wooden house. There was a hole in the roof, through which spiralled more of the yellow pollen to spread across the sky. Bill marvelled at the sight. If it all wasn’t so terrifying, it would be beautiful.
He reached down and pulled his grandfather’s old service revolver out of his pocket. His dad had given it to him in his will. Bill had no idea if it even worked anymore, and whether it would be of any use if it did.
He stepped up onto the porch and it creaked beneath his weight. Bill realised that this was the first sound he’d heard since he’d closed the car door. It was eerily silent, as though the world was holding its breath in anticipation.
Bill knocked on the door once, twice, and waited, but there was no response. No one could be heard approaching to answer. Bill tried the door, and found it open. With one last look back at the car, at Alice’s crypt, Bill squeezed the grip of the old gun and stepped across the threshold, letting the door swing closed behind him.
Bill shivered; the inside of the house was like ice. Every footstep sounding like the kick of a bass drum, Bill made his way through to the first room. There was blood sprayed across a chair, across the carpet; jets had spewed. A smashed plate, mouldy bread and cheese. The TV was tipped onto its back and in front of it, a large dark stain. Blood soaked into the carpet. By the chair, that’s where the attack had started, and by the fallen TV, on top of that large stain, that’s where it had ended.
Bill wondered what had happened.
He crouched by the stain and poked at the large, bloodied knife that lay close to the stain with the tip of his gun.
‘Anyone home?’
Bill stood and made his way into the next room, the kitchen. No blood here, no signs of a struggle.
Tap-tap-tap
Bill whirled, gun held tight in both hands, and pointed the weapon in the direction of the window. Something was outside looking in at him. Bill felt his mind shriek, but he kept his mouth closed so the noise didn’t escape into the house. The creature that looked at him was not a person, not a Yellow Man with horns, not a twisted person with eyes turned yellow by the pollen; this thing that waved at him was the darkened midnight scrawl of an insane person.
Shaking all over, not able to turn away from the thing, Bill pulled the trigger of the old service revolver, once, twice, three times; the glass shattered and the bullets hit home, tearing away pieces of the creature’s face. But it did not fall, it did not jerk or shout or scream, it simply stood and continued to slowly wave at him. Bill staggered back into the front room, back to the normalcy of a bloodstain and a knife.
‘Okay, Bill, okay.’
He could do this.
Whatever it was, he could. He had to. For Alice.
A creak from upstairs.
What was he expected to do in here? What was the end game, exactly? How was he supposed to deal with a thing like the creature at the window? Had he just been brought here to fall beneath the teeth and claws of something from a nightmare?
He made his way to the staircase and slowly began to ascend, sweat running cold down his forehead.
‘Okay, I’m coming up…’
Where was the Yellow Man now? Could he not step into the real world, the awake world, to tell Bill just what the hell it was he was about to face? What it was he was about to do?
Bill reached the top of the stairs alone.
He turned to see yellow pollen slowly dancing out of a partially opened door.
Okay then.
Okay.
He pictured Cali in his mind, just six years old, laughing and hugging him. He couldn’t remember what had made her laugh and why she was hugging him, but he’d never forget the sound of that laugh or how that smile had exploded across his face. Never could, never would.
Okay then.
Bill stepped towards the door, a breath or two to try and steady himself, then he pushed it open and stepped inside.
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
The room was yellow.
The pollen shot from two impossible spaces that had been torn into the room, and roared through the hole that the stuff had punched in the ceiling. The walls, the floor, the furniture, what remained of the ceiling: all were coated by the stuff. As Bill stepped slowly into the yellow room, he felt sure he now knew very well what evil smelled like. It wasn’t unpleasant, it wasn’t the rotting of a corpse or the breath of a diseased rat; no, it was sweeter than that. Intoxicating. It made you want to open your mouth and drink it on down.
Bill could feel the maddening urge to open himself up to it, to allow it to swamp him, to seep into his flesh.
‘No. No.’
Bill tried to ignore the feeling and instead concentrate on where the pollen was coming from. The two tears in the fabric of the ordinary. Now that he focused, Bill saw that they weren’t just impossible tears, they were people. He could see faces above the two tears, could see arms and legs. It was like the evil from… from…(might as well just say it)…from Hell… The evil from Hell had punched right through their torsos, exploding them outward and allowing the intoxicating yellow access to the world of man and woman. Access to surge across the sky and turn all that was good and ordinary abnormal and monstrous.
To spread death and despair.
To make a son take a hammer to his Mother’s skull and leave her splayed out in a bathtub.
Bill could see a huge darkened shape writhing in the void beyond the tears. It was moving closer. It was the nightmare creature that he’d seen above Apoc Hill, that he’d seen reach out to take his daughter. Was it a demon? Or was it the true shape the Devil took? Not a red man with cloven hooves and a trident to lean on, but an indescribable abomination torn from the nightmares of everyone.
Bill wondered how it was he was expected to stop it.
He turned his back on it and saw the shape in the corner of the room. A woman was balled up on the floor, knees touching her forehead, naked but for the pollen sheet that had draped itself over her.
‘Mary?’ his voice was a dry croak.
Bill moved quickly towards her, crouching down with a grunt. Was she dead? He placed a hand on her shoulder; Mary moved slightly under his touch. Not dead, then.
‘Mary, can you hear m—’
Mary’s head twitched back and Bill saw her face for the first time. It was stretched in a rictus grin and her eyes were black, black, black—
…
…
…
—Bill could see a young girl sat at the foot of the staircase. He looked around; he was still in the same house, but it looked better kept together. Cleaner.
Bill approached the girl and sat down beside her; he knew who it was.
‘Hey there, Mary.’
Mary turned to him, one finger on her lips, ‘Shh! Don’t let him hear you.’ She pointed through the gap in the door, and Bill saw a man strike his wife. Strike Mary’s mother.
‘Hey!’ said Bill, fury rising, ‘Don’t you do—’
The man’s head turned and Bill saw the face at the kitchen window grinning back—
‘My God, what are—’
—Bill was on the floor, looking up as a boot stamp, stamp, stamped his flesh and bones to mush. He could hear himself scream, but it was not his own voice, it was a woman’s scream—
‘Damn it. God damn it. Look what you’ve made me do. Look at all this mess.’
—Bill was guts and brain and blood on the floor; he could no longer scream, could no longer cower, it had finally, finally come to this, like he knew it surely would one day. He was crazy, after all. Crazy, mean, monstrous… the things he said he did up on the Hill when the moon was full and he’d had a skinful.
‘They talk to me, you see? They come and they dance and they tell me exactly what kind of a whore I took for a wife! The Hill knows you! Oh yes, the Hill knows you, whore.’
—Bill was in pieces as his husband and his son chopped and chopped and throu
gh the chipper he went, fired out over the Hill to an audience of darkened shapes that danced like he was a cooling rain on a humid day.
—Bill was in bed; Bill was a ten year old girl and he knew what that floorboard creak outside of his bedroom door meant. He pulled the covers to his chin and peeked through scrunched up eyes to see the handle turn.
Please let him see me all asleep and leave, God Jesus, please let my Daddy see that. Make him good, make him good.
‘Mary, I know you’re just pretending there. I know.’
The fumes rolled off him and made him gag, made him feel dizzy.
‘I’m sleeping sound, Daddy.’
‘No you’re not. The Hill told me what to do, y’see? Told me that this was right.’
The covers pulled down, a rough hand on bare skin, shivering but not because of the cold.
‘Don’t you listen to those old demons, Daddy. Don’t you listen.’
‘I try, but sometimes the dark demands things and God hasn’t given me the wherewithal to refuse. Sit up—’
—Gone, gone, gone was Bill. There but not, detached and away through the window and over the Hill. The bedroom light danced shadows across the ground as he flew, but where he flew was no better. A hill covered in shapes, a monstrous beast that writhed and roared in the yellow sky, its thick arms rolling out to grasp and squeeze and desecrate.
The Yellow Man stood atop Apoc Hill and smiled, waving up at him.
‘I knew you’d come, Bill. What wonders Mary must be showing you. What delicious treats. I wish I could experience them all again with you, they fill you up.’
I’m being taken away, I’m being torn out of myself and the dark is rushing in! The memories (They’re not mine, this isn’t my pain!)—My name is Bill Reed. My name is—
Bill screamed and closed his eyes as the Yellow Man began to sing and—
—leaned on the knife so it slowly slid into his daddy’s/her daddy’s/Oh God, help me, help me, take me out of this nightmare! I’ve seen enough! This is not mine! This is not mine!
Apocalypse Hill (Apoc Hill Miniseries Book 1) Page 13