Vicious Rumer

by Joshua Winning

  While the circumstances surrounding her death have been the subject of much debate – with some alleging Sebastian Grim himself was responsible for Celene’s murder – the most troubling part of her legend is the supposed existence of a daughter. Crystal Visions’ own investigation returned no results. If she does exist – and survives – she provides a truly tragic footnote to Celene’s terrible story.

  Part Two

  THE DEAD ROOM

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  TWO DAYS BEFORE THE HAMMER

  I need to ditch Nicotine Man’s van. Seems crazy after what I just went through to get it, but every second I’m in it, I’m traceable. It could be bugged. Reverend Mara and his dogs could be tracking me right now, tearing out of the warehouse and following a blip on their phones that says where I’m headed.

  I shoot a glance in the rear-view mirror. Red tail lights stream away on the motorway like angry little fireflies.

  So far, none of the other drivers have given me a second look. I’m a shadow, but I’ve never shadowed in a van. Any of the cars could be following me and I wouldn’t know until I’m choking on their fumes.

  I’m headed towards the city but I have no idea where to go. Nicotine Man grabbed me outside the hell pit masquerading as my flat. He knows where I live, who I am, who my mother was. And if he knows all that, he must also know who I work for. If Julian’s involved, I’m screwed.

  I peel my hands from the steering wheel one at a time. I’ve been gripping it so hard my knuckles are stiff. My fingers creak as I flex them.

  The clock on the dashboard says: 00:34.

  Skinny died roughly twenty minutes ago.

  Time of death: 00:14.

  I add him to the mental list of people I’ve killed. I don’t know if there’s a time limit attached to people who get too close to me. Does some kind of cosmic countdown start ticking the moment we meet? I can’t be sure. Skinny scratched it and we’d only shared a few hours in Mara’s pit.

  With Frances, it took four months. Troll and Pearl’s dog Rufus bit it after a year. The rules seem to change depending on the person.

  But it’s inevitable.

  Everyone I meet will die, horribly and unexpectedly.

  I wonder if Skinny had a family. He did something that twisted Reverend Mara’s knickers, but that doesn’t mean there isn’t somebody out there who loved him.

  My fingers ache again. I’m clenching the steering wheel too tightly. I force myself to take a deep breath. Focus on the road.

  I still don’t understand why the Reverend came after me. Why does he think I have the Crook Spear? And what the fuck is a Crook Spear, anyway? A weapon used by crooks? Spears seem pretty old school to me, though there was something sort of old school about Mara, too.

  I run through a list of people who might have the intel I need. It’s short, especially with Julian crossed off. I don’t have any friends. I don’t have a family. There’s a guy who runs a Turkish supermarket across my street, but that’s too risky. Bolt? It’s an insane thought and I try to brush it off. But… the Reverend probably doesn’t know about Bolt. How would he? He’s not a friend, technically, and we’re not related.

  No. Not Bolt. Never Bolt. I must be desperate to even consider him.

  I flip the radio on and crank up the music as Joan Jett thrashes out a ferocious anthem.

  The traffic starts to bunch up as I get nearer to the city. I slow down, which sends a shock of irritation through me. I consider moving into another lane, but what if that one slows me down even more? The crawl back to London is a tedious kind of mental torture. Why do so many people want to cram into the city anyway? Seems to me the main reason they flock there is to get lost. Become nobody. Solidarity in anonymity. That I can sort of understand – it makes my job easier, anyway. But personal space? What the fuck’s that?

  Finally, I’m back in the city. I know North London well and steer off the motorway, entering a warren of smaller streets. I find a quiet street with no shops, just slumbering suburban houses. Parking the van, I get out. The rain’s cleaned the air and I fill my lungs, suddenly grateful to be alive, to be back in the city, to be anywhere other than the place I just escaped.

  I think about Skinny, the sound of the bullet and the hot gush of red, and shake it off.

  Light floods the street and I stiffen, but it’s just a car passing further down. The driver doesn’t notice me, scooping the light away as he disappears round a corner.

  ‘Quickly,’ I tell myself.

  I scan the parked cars and approach one. I’ve picked up a few tricks over the years. I work my magic on the car’s lock and pop the door, getting in. My hands tremble as I reach under the steering wheel, yank the wires free and use them to start the engine.

  The car eases away from the kerb. I keep checking the mirrors as I get back onto a main road, waiting for a black SUV to suddenly appear or a red dot to come through the window.

  So far, so good. I feel better now I’ve dumped the van. I just need to get as far away from it as possible. It starts to rain again. Pretty soon it’s pouring. The kind of rain that wants to beat you to the ground. I drive on and the windscreen swims, as if water’s about to come rushing inside.

  I glance at the rear-view mirror and my chest tightens.

  An SUV is right behind me.

  I try not to freak out, but there’s no air in the car. I take the first right. The SUV follows me. Jerking the wheel, I take the next left, and the SUV’s still behind me.

  The rain pounds the windscreen and I imagine it flooding my mouth.

  I pick up speed and turn onto a main road, but the SUV is right there, always in the mirror, its headlights filling the car.

  I stomp hard on the accelerator and weave through the traffic. Red eyes blast through the rain, seeking me out, and I don’t stop, tearing through the traffic lights. I think I hear a distant honking but I don’t know what it is.

  There’s no SUV in the rear-view mirror now, but that doesn’t mean I’ve lost it. I speed up, panic frothing up from the pit of my stomach, and I’m driving like a maniac, but maybe only maniacs escape gangsters, so I keep my boot wedged against the accelerator, the thrum of the windscreen wipers like a ticking clock.

  Everything’s so heavy. I can barely grip the wheel.

  If I can just get to the house… But the car whines and we’re crawling now. The world’s slowing down. Straining against chains. Just a few more streets and I’ll be there. Two more streets. One more.

  Exhaustion sucks at my strength and it’s so hard to keep my eyes open. Is this what happens when you’ve survived a near-death experience? Everything suddenly shuts down?

  Crunch.

  The car nudges the kerb and grinds to a halt. The headlights illuminate the house. It’s like something from a horror movie. So run down it’s forgotten what it’s meant to be.

  I should get out of the car. Into the house. The one place nobody will find me.

  Frances, I think. Frances, where are you?

  But Frances doesn’t answer. It’s just me and the rain and then even we don’t exist any more because my eyes are so heavy that suddenly darkness swallows me whole and I’m a nobody who’s nowhere with nothing.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  FOUR YEARS BEFORE THE HAMMER

  After the thing with Troll and the dog, I’m moved to another foster home. My sixth, but who’s counting? It’s only a few months until I turn sixteen and I plan on riding it out then hitting the road. No more social services. No more weirdo parents acting like your friend. No more skinny school bitches.

  The weirdest thing is my new foster parents are actually decent human beings. Frances is Irish, in her late fifties, thin as a birch with silvering curly hair. George is a little older, paunchier and hasn’t lost his Greek accent. He tells stories about how they met when Frances was on holiday in Greece and he moved all this way just for her. He never stops joking but he always fluffs the punchline and Frances’ laughter trickles into every corner of the house.


  She’s the last person I killed, before Skinny.

  We’re driving. I’ve lived with them in their North London home (Victorian, creaky) for a month. Frances is behind the wheel and she’s being mysterious about where we’re going, which isn’t like her. She usually lays things out plainly. Makes sure I know I’m not being tricked. She says we’re going food shopping, but she’s quiet and we’re going the wrong way for the supermarket.

  We drive into a run-down neighbourhood. The car draws up to a house with boarded-up windows and an overgrown garden. It looks like one of those houses you see in the paper; the ones where something awful happened, and I shiver despite the sun coming through the windscreen.

  ‘Why are we stopping?’ I ask.

  Frances takes a moment to answer.

  ‘Rumer, how much do you know about your mother?’

  The question catches me off guard and I’m suddenly aware of the seatbelt cutting into my collarbone. I can’t look at Frances.

  ‘Some stuff… Enough to know I don’t want to know more.’

  That’s not entirely true. I’ve read everything I could get my hands on. Newspapers. Magazine articles. They’re all over the internet. Pearl’s friend Lola brought a piece from some magazine called Crystal Visions to school one day; the article where Dominic Waters says my mother cursed me. Of course I read it. And of course Lola hung it over my head like an Acme anvil. You’d think she’d have been scared after finding out who my mother was. Shows how smart she was.

  ‘It’s understandable you’d only want to know so much,’ Frances says in her soft Irish lilt. She’s originally from Belfast, I think. ‘Some of it is just too…’

  ‘Fucked up?’

  ‘Sad.’ She doesn’t tell me off for swearing. ‘But it’s important for a person to know where they come from.’

  ‘Even if they come from the worst place possible.’

  ‘Especially then.’

  I don’t want to be having this conversation. I thought Frances and George were nice, but they’re just as fixated on my past as everybody else. Why is everybody so obsessed with my mother? All I want to do is forget she ever existed.

  ‘You saying I come from here?’ I eye the house again.

  ‘It’s the first place you lived, as far as anybody can tell. This is where you were found.’

  ‘Found?’

  I’ve been in The System since I was five. I know bits and pieces, but my workers loved stressing how important it was for me to live in the present, build a life with my foster families, yada-yada-yada. Like it’s that easy.

  The house stares back at me. This is where I lived before The System swallowed me up, but I have no memory of it.

  ‘Social services found you here,’ Frances says. ‘You’d been living with a family; friends of your mother’s, I think. Nobody’s entirely sure who the family were, but one day they upped and moved and they left you behind. It’s unclear how long you were here alone, but eventually somebody found you and that’s when you were picked up and found a new home with your first foster family.’

  The Carmichaels. I was with them for three years. They had five kids and I was the smallest. Mostly forgotten or used as a punch bag. My memories of that time are half glimpsed and confused, like they’re projected onto water, only the ripples keep obscuring the stuff I want to see.

  The dad, Liam Carmichael, died in a freak accident involving a power tool. The mum, Linda, couldn’t cope and sent me back into The System.

  (And do you really think it was a freak accident, knowing what you know about me?)

  ‘How do you know this is where I was found?’

  ‘I’m friends with Siobhan at the office. I assured her I thought it would be in your interest to be told certain things. You’re almost a grown-up, you have the right to know.’

  I don’t want to know.

  My past is a snapping mongrel at my heels, always catching up with me no matter how fast I run.

  ‘Our past doesn’t define us, Rumer,’ Frances says. ‘It’s always a part of us, like a foreign accent or a wrinkle, but we can grow beyond it.’

  The house is to my left.

  Frances is sitting on my right.

  I’m caught between them.

  I want to believe her. Believe that, when we drive away from here, it’ll sever some sort of invisible tie with my past. I can stay with Frances and George and be happy. Go back to school, maybe even university. Do normal things. Things people do when they’re not cursed.

  ‘Can we go?’ I ask.

  Frances starts the car and we leave the neighbourhood, but no matter how much better Frances tries to make me feel, it doesn’t work. This is who I am. I am who I am to infinity and back again.

  ‘Oh, would you look at that?’ Frances tuts.

  We’re back from the shops and George is snoring in the lounge. She’s not looking at him, though. She crosses to the window. A potted plant has shrivelled into a brown skeleton. ‘Another one bites the dust. My favourite, too.’ She leaves the room. All the plants in the house seem to be dying, no matter how carefully Frances tends to them.

  Later, George makes a Greek salad and some special bread that’s almost like cake. He’s so bubbly and Frances’ laughter makes the living room glow gold. We eat with the dining room doors open so the summer air gusts in and the birds serenade us. I almost forget the broken-down house, but every time my mouth twitches into a smile, an image of the house kills it.

  I notice Frances doesn’t eat much, but she’s never had a huge appetite.

  We play poker all evening. It’s one of the first things they taught me and I like the skill involved. The lies. My poker face is like a china mask. It’s almost funny how easy it is to make them think they’ve got me figured out, then I swoop in with an ace and the expression on their faces is priceless.

  My room’s the best in the house. It’s in the attic, hidden away. A porthole with coloured glass always catches the evening light, stamping a pink circle on the wonky floorboards. I like sitting and watching it roam about as the sun lowers.

  Strings of bottle caps hang by my bed, decorations I make using things I find on the street, and I fall asleep listening to them.

  I wake up to a strange sound.

  Crying.

  My stomach flips. It’s Frances.

  I go to my bedroom door. Frances and George are on the landing downstairs on their way to bed.

  ‘She’s a troubled girl,’ George says softly.

  ‘She’s no trouble, none at all.’

  ‘Then what’s wrong?’

  ‘I don’t know. I just feel… different. Like something’s wrong. I… My appetite’s gone.’

  I grip the door frame. I’ve never heard Frances talk like this. I feel sick.

  ‘Perhaps you should go to the doctor.’

  ‘I can’t. I’d rather not know.’

  ‘It could be stress. Or–’

  ‘It’s not stress! I’ve never been happier. Rumer’s changed everything. I can’t lose her.’

  Lose me? Now I really do want to be sick. I don’t understand what Frances is talking about. Why would she lose me?

  ‘I just need sleep,’ Frances says.

  There’s movement and I hurry back to bed.

  When I hear Frances coming upstairs, I pretend to be asleep.

  I don’t know how long she stands at the door watching me, but I can tell she’s still crying, softly, like she can’t help it. And I can’t help thinking it’s my fault.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  She’s lying on the kitchen floor the next morning.

  There was a crash that I heard all the way up in my attic room, and I stumbled out of bed, nearly tripping down the stairs, a hot, horrible certainty bristling through me.

  ‘Frances? Frances? Speak to me.’

  George is on his knees. Frances’ hand is clasped between his, pressed to his cheek, but she doesn’t move. Her chest doesn’t move.

  There’s breakfast everywhere. She w
as cooking when it happened and a frying pan is tipped over beside her, baked beans splattered on the linoleum, the hob still burning. The heat’s unbearable and I can’t escape it. I’m rooted to the spot. I can see George’s mouth moving but no sound reaches my ears.

  All I see is her face. The trickle of blood on her top lip. Her eyes staring at me.

  An aneurysm, we find out after the autopsy. It was only a matter of time.

  They would say that. How do you explain the unexplainable?

  I stay until she’s buried. I owe her that much.

  The next day, I pack my bag, leave George a note and spend my first night on the street.

  In the nights that follow, when the summer heat starts to boil off and the autumn winds make it almost impossible to sleep, I sometimes feel Frances nearby. Like she’s watching over me. Or judging me. Wishing I’d never come into her life, because if I hadn’t, it would never have happened.

  She was happy before me, and I was happy being miserable before I knew what it was like to be loved.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  ONE DAY BEFORE THE HAMMER

  A car horn jolts me awake. I grimace, rub my neck. I slept in the driver’s seat. Why did I sleep in the driver’s seat? And whose car is this? My mind tries to plug back into reality and, despite the knotted cables of my thoughts, I remember. All of it. The warehouse. The Reverend. Skinny. The SUV in the rear-view mirror and my panicked race through London.

  I try to stretch but my body’s bound in elastic bands. Everything hurts. I touch the broken tooth and shudder. For a moment, I feel like Frances is in the car with me, which is how I know I’m on the edge of delirium. I need food. Water. A soft bed and a dark room.

  Cracking the door, I get out into drizzling rain and see where I am.