God knows what had been done to them, those sheep. Each had a shaved area on the neck, and a black box on a collar, and wires going from the box into the skin. Whether it was that which had made them mad, or the fever that Luke brought, I couldn’t say then and still can’t; but they glared at me red-eyed, and they showed their teeth and wanted at me, no doubting that.
Given the choice, given any kind of choice I’d have left them safely penned. Choice I didn’t have, though. I gestured to Luke, get the hell back out of the way, these things are mean and I want them safely past you, not turning and coming back, and as soon as he was out of sight I stood the fire extinguisher on end and unlatched the gate of the pen. I swung it wide open, to stand as a barrier between the sheep and me, and then I punched the button on top of the extinguisher. A jet of water spurted out of the hose; I grabbed it and aimed it through the mesh, straight into the face of the first sheep as it lunged at me, massive teeth snarling the wire.
It choked and turned aside, saw the empty corridor and charged off. I hoisted the extinguisher under my arm and directed the jet at the other sheep, herding it out of the pen and after its companion. No way to turn the flow of water off; I just dropped the extinguisher, slammed the gate and got out of there. With any luck sheep could climb stairs, even mad sheep could find their way out, to what I didn’t know and didn’t care.
Didn’t care where Luke had gone either, or what he would do now. I just walked cautiously down the corridor and up the stairs myself, ears straining for any scutter of hooves on tile, any sound of threat.
Nothing in the corridor above, nothing in the foyer; the rabbit in its corner was still now, dead I hoped. I didn’t go to check.
Outside and no signs, no sounds of movement. I took a breath and started for home, my feet wanting to run and my mind saying no, take it steady, try at least to look innocent and uninvolved in anything.
Started for home and got not very far at all, barely fifty metres before I did hear something.
Not the sound of a sheep, the sound of a kitten: a faint mewing, coming from under a bush as the best path home led me through shrubbery towards the road. I checked, all my nerves brittle, my eyes jerking and my mind screaming mad cat, beware!
It wasn’t mad, only afraid, or seemed so; and not afraid of me. It came crawling on its belly from the shadows, a black kitten too small to be alone in the night, and what could I do? I picked it up and cradled it, felt its mewing change to a mute purr, a slight vibration under its skin; and I tucked it into my jacket, pulled the zip up to give it comfort, and carried it home.
And so, when Carol came back from her parents, Shaitan was there with me to welcome her; and he made the difference, he was a buffer to set against our uncertainties, a small dependent life for whose sake we had to make this work.
o0o
That was the story I gave to Suzie as we walked that day, though I didn’t tell it all, only as much as she needed. Or as much as I could bear, perhaps. I’d never told anyone but Carol before, and Carol couldn’t have taken even what detail I gave Suzie. Wouldn’t have wanted it.
The grip of Suzie’s hand in mine was all for me, though, whatever comfort she could give; and her eyes watched me sideways, suspiciously, clocking I think that I was leaving some things out. Wanting it all, she was, or seeming so. I guess, when you’ve seen your brother appallingly killed, the deaths of strangers and animals are no great matter; knowing your partner’s secrets matters more. Perhaps.
She didn’t dig, though, or not into the messy stuff I’d left out. All she said was, “I remember this. There was lots about it on the telly, big story for a couple of days, yes?”
“Yeah, it was. National news. Once they’d had a look at the bodies, they decided those two guys probably hadn’t killed each other,” which was when I started thinking again about the kids, and what a frenzy could do to them, and what responsibility I carried by saying nothing. “The inquest brought in a verdict of unlawful killing, but no one ever got arrested. Some of the papers had big theories about black-magic cults, or some drug the scientists were experimenting with, that turned cute little bunnies into killers. I know the university’s animal-rights groups did get investigated pretty hard. I think the only reason the kids got away with it was that they weren’t an organised group, they didn’t belong to anything, they were just a bunch of friends who happened to throw up this one big idea...”
And were unlucky enough to know Luke, foolish enough to take him along.
Suzie grunted, thought about it for a minute, then, “So what are we saying here, Luke drives people crazy as well as animals? He hasn’t driven you crazy. Or me. Though I don’t think I like him much.”
Well, that wasn’t a surprise. Luke didn’t go out of his way to be liked. Didn’t go out of his way for any reason. “Just depends, I suppose,” I said, thinking on my feet, trying to find a logical explanation for something that didn’t actually seem to operate in a logical universe. “The wrong people in the wrong place, perhaps. I mean, you saw how Carol was, just with having him in the house there. Animals are okay if they can run away, it’s when they’re caged or trapped; and the same with people, I think. If they feel caged or trapped. He’s got this aura, and I guess some people just can’t take it at that intensity.” It hadn’t been a lot of fun for me, driving cross-country in a car with him; and I was inured, I’d thought I was immune.
Another grunt, and she swung my arm vigorously in time with her pacing. “Well, don’t you get into any lifts with him,” she said, doing a mind-reading act, doing it well.
“Promise,” I said lightly, earning myself a scowl.
“I mean it, Jonty. He’s, he’s not safe.”
No. Safe he certainly wasn’t, though I’d never seen him lift a finger to harm a living thing.
“I’ve known him a long time, love,” I said, which was true; and, “I can handle Luke,” which blatantly wasn’t.
She snorted disbelievingly, you think you’re immune? And she had both hands tight on my arm now to say that if I wouldn’t be careful on my own account she’d be careful for me, she’d keep me close.
Which was fair enough, I supposed. She’d married me, after all. And I’d married her. She was entitled.
“What happens when we get there?” she asked, after a little while walking in silence. “I mean, he’s going to have a confrontation with Deverill, I suppose, but what about us? Do we go in with him, or just hang around, or what?”
“I don’t know,” I admitted. I hadn’t thought it out that far. “We’ll just see what happens, I guess. What Luke does, what he wants. We don’t have to wait, he can find his own way back.” The same way we’d come, inevitably; that was the only route he’d know. “Could be a wasted journey anyway, Deverill may not be there.”
“He should’ve phoned first,” she said. I just laughed. There wasn’t a phone in the city would work for Luke, even if he’d thought to use one.
o0o
Talking passes the time. Time passes, and you get there in the end. We walked, we talked; we mostly followed Luke, who spoke not a word to us; and eventually we came to a village and found the right road out of it, so that five minutes later we stood outside Deverill’s impressive gates, impressively closed to us.
Suzie and I stood, at least. Luke of course had ranged ahead, seeing nothing to say that his quarry lived here. The name was there, carved into the stone gateposts on either side of the drive, but he wouldn’t see that.
So I stood still and waited until he looked back from the next corner, and then I beckoned and he came running.
“This is Arlen Bank?” he demanded.
“This is Arlen Bank,” I confirmed, looking to see if either one of the posts held a buzzer or an intercom, any way to communicate with the people inside.
“Good,” Luke said, and he swarmed up one of those gates in nothing flat, a handhold and a foothold and another hand and he was standing ten foot above us, standing on tiptoe on top of the gate and staring into the grounds beyond.
Look out, Luke, you’ll fall—but that wasn’t funny, would never under any circumstances have been funny, and I’d never under any circumstances say it. Besides, he had a perfect balance; I’d seen him do harder, madder things than this, and never give a hint of falling.
Turned out that the intercom unit was on the pylon beside the gates. Turned out that we didn’t need to use it. The camera atop the pylon was whining softly, seeking us out, zooming in. I waved at it, a vague and stupid gesture, and wondered if I needed now to buzz them anyway, and tell them who we were. By the time I’d decided that etiquette said yes I did, it was again too late. There was a car bumping over the grass inside the gates, a serious-looking 4 x 4 in too much of a hurry to divert onto the tarmac’d drive.
Probably Luke had broken some kind of security beam, I thought, by climbing onto the gate. It was just too quick otherwise, to have spotted us here and got a vehicle this far in response.
The car stopped and Dean jumped out, looking pretty serious himself. It’d be okay once he saw me, I thought, or at least it would be better. I wasn’t sure how far my writ ran, either as colleague or life-savee, but I thought I could argue us as far as an interview with Deverill.
But of course Dean wasn’t looking at me at all, he was only looking at Luke, where he stood so high against the sky; and so far as I could tell from the back of his head in silhouette, Luke was only looking at Dean.
And then he wasn’t only looking at all, he was jumping down, even as Dean yelled, “What the hell do you think you’re doing up there, shit-for-brains? Go on, get the fuck out of here...!”
But Luke got down on Dean’s side of the gates, he floated down and landed on the balls of his feet as lightly as any lad from the Kirov or the Royal Ballet, and even I couldn’t tell if that was just his natural grace or something more.
He came to ground maybe five metres in front of Dean; and five metres quickly became three and two and one, because Dean went charging like a bull, or like a hard efficient bulldog angered by an affront to his master, and there wasn’t time for me to shout more than his name as a warning to him even if he would ever have paused to listen.
He charged in, thinking that this would be easy: some kid playing games, he was thinking, no doubt, some cocky nineteen-year-old fancies a dance on the grass...
If Luke had really been nineteen, no doubt that’s what he would have got, just a Dean’s Excuse-me and the bum’s rush after, with more than grass-stains on his skin to show for it. But I didn’t think you could count Luke’s true age, not in years, not in any human scale; and you certainly couldn’t count his looks. Pretty enough to tumble, he looked, and far too pretty to brawl.
So Dean went charging in, quite likely smiling inside, looking forward to this; and when he came up for air he was smiling right up front, smiling wider than ever he’d smiled before.
He was smiling because Luke had torn open both his cheeks, and all the flesh was flapping loose and happy.
It had been so quick, I had to play it through my head again. Child of my times, I needed the slo-mo action replay before I could quite believe it. Dean likewise, I thought: at least he stood there staring, doing nothing more, while his mouth gaped wider far than it was meant to and the blood ran freely over his jaw and fell like rain on his T-shirt.
He had been charging, then, and Luke had lifted his hands, that was all, to catch Dean’s head between them; and then suddenly Dean hadn’t been charging any more, he’d been standing rock-still, all his strength and momentum nothing against Luke’s solidity. Hitherto-irresistible force meets truly immovable object, and that’s what happens, I suppose. Nice to know, after all this time.
What happens, to be precise, is that object sticks its thumbs into force’s mouth, one on either side, and tears the flesh like damp cardboard until the rips reach almost from ear to ear.
o0o
Suzie gasped and ran forward—brave girl, stupid girl—while I was still rooted with shock. She ran to one of the gates and tried to pull it open, then tried to shake it off its hinges while it moved no more than I did, than Dean did, than Luke.
Then Luke did move again, and so did I. I sprinted up to where Suzie was trying to climb the gate now as Luke had, clinging to the wrought-iron risers with both hands as she fitted her soft boots into decorative whorls and frets. I grabbed her round the waist and pulled her down again, held her hard against my body as she struggled, as she fought to be free. Distantly I was aware of her sobbing foully, “Let me go, you fucking bastard, for Christ’s sake let me help him if you won’t, you shitting coward,” and so on and on in a relentless monotone while her eyes and mine were riveted to the mad circus beyond the bars of the gate.
Luke held Dean around the neck now, with his other hand clamped in his hair; and as we watched he pulled, he peeled Dean’s scalp away from his skull as swift and easy as peeling a satsuma. There was a wet, choking sound from Dean, closest he could get to a scream perhaps with his throat full of blood. So much blood there was, it was soaking Luke’s filthy whites also; but he wasn’t near done yet, it seemed. This wasn’t enough. His clawed hand let go of what it held, let the mess hang from Dean’s neck, a slack wet flap of dripping skin and hair; and then it gripped Dean’s T-shirt and yanked once, ripped it from him like a sodden rag and tossed it aside.
The same for his jeans, the same single tug to tear riveted denim into shapeless nothing, and then Dean was naked but for underwear and shoes. Luke sank his nails into a blood-streaked shoulder and tore skin from flesh and bone just as easily. Baby-pink skin, that was, freshly regrown from the burns Dean had taken saving me; and his body might just as well have saved itself the effort. Might as well have saved itself the effort of saving me, come to that, wouldn’t be in this mess now if I’d burned up like Oliver...
Suzie gasped, and her breathy cursing died to a mutter, to a moan. She stood trembling now within the circle of my arms, so that I could let her go and climb the gate myself, knowing myself as useless as she would have been if I’d not prevented her from trying. What could either of us do against Luke? No argument would touch him, no pitiful muscle would hinder him for a moment from what he chose to do.
Knowing that, I climbed anyway, watching my hands and feet now, not watching Luke. Maybe that was why I climbed: to have something else to look at, to focus on. But I wasn’t totally focused, because the lightest touch on my ankle stopped me dead. I looked down and saw Suzie stretching up, to hold me. Mostly what I saw was her eyes, huge and dark in a face turned pale and sick, slicked with sweat. She couldn’t say don’t leave me, not with her conscience and mine both screaming go! go!—but those desperate eyes said it for her, and they did more than her hand did, to keep me still on that side of the gates.
I was at the top now, more or less, one elbow hooked over. When I looked across I saw Luke dragging Dean towards the nearest tree, still with that arm around his neck and the other hand still tearing strips of skin. Dean wasn’t resisting but he was conscious yet, I could see his feet stumbling in the grass although Luke must have held most of his weight now, his legs surely wouldn’t do it.
I don’t know trees, but this was something tall and sparse, more trunk than branches. Spruce or fir, my mind wanted to claim against my ignorance. Whatever, it was way too high and unladderlike for mortal man to get up without climbing irons. But Luke just kicked his trainers off, slung Dean over his shoulder and started up it, clinging with fingers and setting his toes in the bark as if there were rungs to hold him.
Up and up he went, maybe forty feet up before he found a branch to hold him; and me, I just clung to the gate and watched him until Suzie tugged at my trousers, more imperative now, come on down, there’s no point even pretending any more...
So I jumped down beside her, and we clung together instead and only watched—no sound, no movement, in me at least no feeling left at all—while Luke set Dean in the groin where branch met trunk, and skinned him.
I could see too well despite the d
istance, despite the height. I could see with a rare clarity, as if my eyes had a zoom feature suddenly, and a finer focus. Good country air, perhaps. Or perhaps it was this also that made Luke stand out in crowds or solo on hillsides, that he walked all the time in a different kind of light.
I didn’t think of looking away. I wanted to cover Suzie’s eyes, to stop her seeing as I was seeing, but I had no right to make that choice for her; and she chose as I did, or was compelled as I was. At any rate, we watched together as Luke methodically flayed my friend Dean, peeling his skin from him like wet tissue paper, length by length.
Too late—knowing it was too late, knowing it would always have been too late but doing it anyway just for the gesture, just to have something done—I did briefly fight off that sapping paralysis of watching, long enough to trot over to the security pylon and jab the buzzer, jab and jab until surely I must have alerted someone on the other end of the intercom. I didn’t wait to talk to them, though. Their camera would tell them better than I could, what was happening to their buddy. Me, I went straight back to Suzie. Wrapped my arms around her with a whispered “Sorry” into her hair—sorry I left you even for a moment, sorry I abandoned you to stand and be a witness here alone—and stood with her again, the two of us witnesses and very much alone but for each other.
o0o
Dean had saved my life in hospital, but not I saved his, I had no way to do it. You’d have needed a helicopter, to come at Luke in that tree. You’d have needed a squad of Marines to tackle Luke anywhere, and I wasn’t sure a squad could do the job.
Suzie and I, we did what we could, we bore witness. And when it was over or all but, when Dean was dead or dead enough—looking dead at least, looking like a side of meat even to my unwantedly-good sight, looking reduced that far from human—it took only the slightest movement in her, the first hint of a turn to turn me too. We turned away without discussion, without thought. I put my arm around her shoulders and felt her shaking, pressed her close against my side so that she could feel my shaking too.
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