by Kevin Brooks
The flashlight’s still blinding me, so I still can’t see who’s there, but just as I’m raising my hand to shield my eyes again, the flashlight is suddenly lowered. It takes a little while for the burning bright afterimages to clear from my eyes, but once they’re gone, I can finally see what I’m up against.
There are two of them.
The one who spoke to me is a skinny monkem in his early twenties. He has nasty little eyes, whiskery tufts of beard on his chin, and his skin is so pale that it looks almost transparent. He’s wearing a camouflage jacket and a matching peaked cap with earflaps, and his cheap denim jeans are tucked into ankle-high boots. The most noticeable thing about him though, the thing I can’t take my eyes off, is the rifle he’s holding in his hands. It’s real, no doubt about it, and as I sit there staring at it, dazed and confused, an unwanted image of the old-monkem-lady’s rifle flashes into my mind, and I can see it now for what it really was — a walking stick . . . not one of the old-fashioned wooden ones, but a longish metal one, the kind that comes up to your elbow and has an arm clip and a sticky-out handle . . .
I blink hard and shake my head, clearing the useless image from my mind, and I refocus on the skinny monkem in front of me, and the rifle that definitely isn’t a walking stick in his hands.
Now that he isn’t shining the flashlight directly into my face, I can see that it’s attached to the rifle. I can see his companion now too. He’s standing next to him, a couple of feet to his right, but he’s hanging back a little, as if he knows his place. He’s roughly the same age as the one with the rifle, maybe a bit younger, and their faces are so similar that I wouldn’t be surprised if they’re brothers. The younger one isn’t so pale and gaunt, though, and although he looks kind of tough — and he’s quite a bit bigger and heftier than the other one — he doesn’t have the same sense of menace about him. He’s dressed almost identically to his brother/companion, but without the hat. He’s got a canvas bag slung over his shoulder, and dangling from his left hand is the limp body of a small brown deer. It’s only a little thing — not much bigger than a small dog — and it’s hanging from the big monkem’s hand by its tiny horns, swinging gently in his grip. From the way he’s holding it — as casually (and mindlessly) as if it was a bag full of trash — it’s obvious that the dead animal means absolutely nothing to him. I can’t see where it’s been shot, but blood’s oozing from somewhere . . . the red drops dripping slowly from a delicate hoof, peppering the snow with a ragged circle of bright pink spots.
The skinny monkem moves his flashlight then, directing the beam at my injured right foot. It’s the first time I’ve seen it clearly, and the sight of it turns my stomach. It’s a complete mess. The big toe’s split open, the nail hanging off, and there’s blood everywhere . . . all over my foot, my toes, my ankle . . .
“That looks painful,” the monkem says.
There’s no sympathy or curiosity in his voice, just a slight mocking edge, and there’s something in his eyes, something about the way he’s looking at me, that makes me think of a cruel child poking a damaged insect with a stick.
“You ought to get that looked at,” he goes on. “Probably needs a couple of stitches.”
“Yeah . . .” I mutter, lowering my eyes and gazing at the ground.
“Yeah?”
I look up at him, not sure what he means, and when I see the blankness in his staring eyes, I know he doesn’t mean anything. He’s just saying something — it doesn’t matter what — to get a reaction. He knows I’m scared, and he likes it. I’m his damaged insect, and he’s going to carry on poking me with his stick until he gets tired of it, or until I stop moving, whichever comes first.
I start getting to my feet then. I still feel dizzy and sick, and I don’t doubt that standing up’s going to make me feel even worse, but if that’s what it takes to get away from this hillbilly-psycho-monkem and his sidekick/brother, that’s what I’m going to do.
I’ve barely even moved, though — only just starting to lean forward and push myself up — when the hillbilly takes a step toward me and prods me in the chest with the rifle barrel. It’s not a hard prod, and it doesn’t really hurt that much, but because I’m already off balance, it’s enough to knock me back against the granite slab and then back down onto my backside. When I immediately try to get up again, the hillbilly gives me another poke with his rifle, only this time it’s more of a jab than a prod, and it does hurt. As I slump back down to the ground again, he moves closer and presses the rifle barrel into my chest, pinning me back against the slab.
I look up at him.
He’s smiling at me.
It’s the ugliest smile I’ve ever seen.
“Where’s your manners?” he says.
“What?”
“I was talking to you. You can’t just get up and go when someone’s in the middle of talking to you. It’s bad manners.”
I can’t remember if he was talking to me or not, but I know it doesn’t matter. All that matters right now is that he’s holding a rifle to my chest.
“Sorry . . .” I mutter, trying to sound genuine. “I didn’t realize you hadn’t finished talking . . . I didn’t mean to be —”
“What’s your name?”
“What?”
“You heard me. What’s your name?”
“Elliot.”
“Elliot?” he sneers. “What kind of name is that?”
“It’s not any kind,” I mumble. “It’s just —”
“Shut up.”
His voice has changed, it’s suddenly harsh and urgent, and when I glance up at him I see that he’s not looking at me anymore. He’s staring upward, his hunter’s eyes scanning the path at the top of the slope. Something’s alerted him, and a moment later I hear it too — the faint sound of voices . . . male voices . . . coming along the path . . .
They’re too distant to recognize, but I’m pretty sure it’s the four monkems from the field, and they’re definitely getting closer now, their voices carrying down through the icy black air into the valley . . .
The hillbilly turns off his flashlight, plunging us into sudden darkness, and a moment later he’s crouching down next to me, holding a hunting knife to my throat. I can feel the tip of the blade pricking my skin, and as he leans in close to me, his face almost touching mine, I can smell the stomach-stink of his breath.
“You make a sound,” he whispers, “and I’ll cut your throat.”
The four men were standing around a caved-in hole in the path — two on either side — and as they swept their flashlights over the surrounding area, it wasn’t hard to figure out what had happened. The boy had clearly come along the path — his blood-spotted trail in the snow was unmissable — and it was equally obvious from the undisturbed snow on the other side of the hole that he hadn’t gone any farther. The ground must have been weakened here for some reason — maybe a badger or a fox had burrowed in under the path — and the weak point must have given way when the boy stepped onto it. There was very little snow on the steep-sided slope of the valley, so it wasn’t quite so easy to track the boy’s descent, but there was still enough evidence to show that he’d fallen — scuffs and skid tracks in the dirt, broken branches — and besides, where else could he have gone?
“I told you not to bring your damn dog,” Davey Price said to Geoff Crocker. “Olive told us the kid’s scared of dogs.”
They were both gazing down into the valley, sweeping their flashlights around, searching for any signs of life in the darkness. Molly the dog was sitting beside Geoff Crocker, and he had her leash gripped tightly in his hand.
“What was I supposed to do?” he said to Davey. “I couldn’t just tie her up to the gate, could I? And anyway, I thought she could help us.”
“Yeah, right. She was a great help, wasn’t she?”
“I was only trying to —”
“Hey,” one of the other two said, “this isn’t the time for arguing, okay?” His name was Athel Wright. He glared at Davey and Geo
ff for a moment, then peered down into the valley. “There’s a young boy down there somewhere. He might be seriously hurt — in fact, I’d be surprised if he isn’t — and even if he’s not hurt, he’s scared, he’s cold, and he’s alone in the darkness.” He looked over at Davey and Geoff. “We need to find him as soon as possible.”
They both nodded.
Davey put his flashlight in his pocket, cupped his hands to his mouth, and started shouting down into the valley. “HEY! HELLO? ARE YOU DOWN THERE? CAN YOU HEAR ME?” He paused, listening. Then tried again. “IT’S OKAY, DON’T BE SCARED . . . WE JUST WANT TO HELP YOU . . .” He paused and listened again, but there was still no response.
“We need to get down there,” he said.
“It’s too steep here,” Athel observed. “We’ll either have to head back along the path and cut down one of the tracks where the slope’s not so steep, or else keep going this way, take the steps that lead down to the river, and then come back along the path through the woods.”
“Which way’s quicker?” Geoff asked.
Athel thought about it for a moment, then said, “I think it’s probably best to go back the way we came and cut down into the woods.”
“We could split up,” Davey suggested. “Two of us go back, the other two go forward.”
Athel shook his head. “We stay together. One lost soul’s enough on a night like this. We don’t want to lose anyone else.”
Before they left, Davey called down into the valley again. “WE’RE NOT LEAVING, OKAY? WE JUST NEED TO FIND A WAY DOWN. WE’LL BE WITH YOU AS SOON AS WE CAN.”
“WE’RE NOT LEAVING, OKAY? WE JUST NEED TO FIND A WAY DOWN. WE’LL BE WITH YOU AS SOON AS WE CAN.”
There’s a part of me that hears the shouted voices drifting down into the valley, and it knows where they’re coming from and what they mean, but it’s only a very small part. The rest of me — the most of me — is in a different world now, a world of howling demons and insatiable beasts whirling around inside me, getting bigger and bigger all the time . . . bigger, faster, stronger, hungrier . . .
The Moloxetine’s worn off.
The lock on the cage has cracked and crumbled . . .
The door has swung open . . .
The beast is free.
I can feel it raging inside me, pumping raw fear into my heart, my blood, my flesh . . . sickening me, emptying me . . . shaking me to my bones . . . and I can taste its stinking breath rising up into my throat . . .
But it’s not pure fear.
There’s something else there too, something that’s almost indistinguishable from fear, but with one crucial difference — instead of every cell in my body screaming at me to run away, this time they’re raging at me to fight.
I am the beast. Its fury is mine.
And as the hillbilly crouches there beside me, still holding his knife to my throat — and still breathing his psycho-stink into my face — I feel the crazed fury taking me out of myself, lifting me up into the darkness . . . and now I can see him again, the me that’s down there, and I can see the monster squatting down next to him too. And the other one, the sidekick/brother, standing motionless in the dark, the dead deer hanging from his hand . . . I can see him as well. But he’s nothing.
The monster’s the one.
He’s got his knife in his right hand and his rifle in his left, and he’s watching the flashlights at the top of the slope, watching intently with his animal eyes as they head back along the path, back the way they came, and he knows exactly what the men are doing. WE’RE NOT LEAVING, OKAY? WE JUST NEED TO FIND A WAY DOWN. They’re going to cut down one of the tracks where the slope’s not so steep, then double back along the path through the woods.
The monster smiles to himself.
He’s happy.
He likes the thrill of the hunt. It doesn’t matter to him if he’s the hunter or the hunted, it’s the raw exhilaration that does it for him — the rush of adrenaline, the primal vitality, the sense of kill-or-be-killed — it makes him feel alive.
He likes having power over things too. Animals, people . . . he doesn’t care. They’re all the same to him. He likes to frighten things, hurt things, kill things. It makes him feel good. And that’s the whole point of everything, isn’t it? Making yourself feel good. What else is there?
I follow his sick-eyed gaze as he glances at the other-me beside him.
The other-me’s a mess — his dirt-streaked face covered in cuts and scratches, his sodden clothes ripped and torn, his right glove missing, fingernails torn and bleeding, his bare foot badly swollen. The bruising on his foot is an ugly mixture of purpled-black and yellow, and in places the skin is dead-white. The other-me’s complexion is almost bloodless too, his face white beneath the dirt and mud, and the eyes . . .
The other-me’s eyes.
The moment I look at them, they blink, and in an instant, they change from the desperate eyes of a frightened animal — staring, haunted — to the cold hard eyes of a survivor. As well as seeing this sudden change, I can feel it too. We’re together. I can feel what we feel, in our head and our heart . . . and I can feel the heavy rock in our hand. I can feel it right now, and I can feel us finding it a few moments ago — our hand cautiously scouring the ground, looking for anything to use as a weapon, our fingertips lighting upon the ice-filmed rock . . . then taking hold of it, feeling its size and weight — all the time making sure the hillbilly doesn’t know what we’re doing — and then, once we’re satisfied that the rock is big and heavy enough, but not too big or heavy to get a good grip on, all we have to do is keep hold of it, keep still, keep our face blank, and wait for the right moment.
We don’t have to wait very long.
The hillbilly-monster is waiting too, waiting for the flashlights to disappear into the darkness. And when they do — and after he’s carried on watching for another minute or two to make sure they don’t come back — he slips the hunting knife back into the sheath on his belt, transfers the rifle to his right hand, and with his left hand turns on the flashlight.
We act instantly, dropping our left shoulder and swinging our right arm as hard and fast as we can, and before the hillbilly has a chance to do or say anything, we hammer the rock into his head.
The other-me is something else now.
Something else.
A thing of cold silence, dead in the heart . . . not me. I’m still up here, looking down . . . watching this thing-that-isn’t-quite-me-anymore . . . watching as it drops the bloodied rock and picks up the hillbilly’s rifle, not even glancing at the monster slumped in the snow beside him, not caring if it’s dead or alive. The other-me just gets to its feet, holding the rifle at its waist, and turns to the sidekick/brother.
The flashlight on the rifle is still turned on, and as the other-me levels the rifle at the sidekick/brother, the white beam lights up his fear-stricken face. Without taking his wide-open eyes off the other-me, he takes a hesitant step back, half stumbling over something, and raises his hands in the air. He’s so frozen with fear that he doesn’t realize he’s still holding the dead deer, and it just hangs there from his raised hand, swinging lifelessly in the black-and-white air.
The snow’s started falling again, fine and light in the dark.
“Lay it down,” the other-me says to the sidekick/brother.
“What?”
“The deer . . . lay it down on the ground, and do it carefully. If you drop it, I’ll shoot you.”
The sidekick/brother doesn’t understand — it’s dead . . . it’s nothing . . . what does it matter if I drop it or not? — but when a crazy kid with a loaded rifle tells you to do something, you don’t ask questions, do you? You just do what he says. So the sidekick/brother slowly stoops down, still holding the deer by its horns, and lays it carefully in the snow.
“Now turn around,” the other-me says when the sidekick/brother has straightened up again.
“What? Why . . . ? What are you going to —?”
“Do it.”
The other-me waits until the sidekick/brother is fully turned around, then it pauses for a moment, looking down at the hillbilly-monster’s boots. They’re large, at least a size nine or ten, which normally would be far too big for it, but its right foot is so swollen now that even a size ten would be too small for it.
The other-me takes a final look at the sidekick/brother. It sees him standing there, his raised hands trembling, his hunched shoulders rigid with tension — braced for the terrible thud of the bullet — and the other-me knows it doesn’t have to worry about him. He won’t try to follow us . . .
Us?
It?
Him?
Me?
I don’t know anymore.
I don’t know what’s happening to me.
It’s cold and dark, and I’m limping along the pathway through the woods, using the rifle as a walking stick. My right foot’s useless, just a throbbing mess of flesh and bone. Everything else hurts too . . . every cell in my body. And I’m so tired . . . just so incredibly tired . . .
There’s a flashlight in my left hand (I must have taken it off the rifle), and in its beam I can see the lightness of the falling snow, and I can see the white-topped branches of great black trees, and up ahead of me I can see an endless climb of rough wooden steps leading up the steep-sided slope to the narrow dirt track at the top . . . and then another pathway appears beside me, running parallel to this one, and on that pathway there’s a wolf . . . a big bad wolf . . . and the red-hooded figure of a little girl carrying a basket . . . and as I watch them walking along their pathway through the woods, I hear a voice from a thousand years away