Vicious Rumer

by Joshua Winning

  ‘Rumer.’ His hands flail for the windowsill, but he can’t break free.

  I imagine what it would be like to watch him die. There’d be some poetry in it. He cursed me so that everybody who gets near me ends up dead. Maybe he can be one of them.

  ‘There’s a way out.’

  He chokes on the words and I clench tighter.

  ‘What do you mean?’

  His Adam’s apple twists in my grip.

  ‘If… you kill her… it goes away…’

  My grip slackens and I let him push my hand away. He coughs and backs off a few paces, clutching his throat. Finally, he meets my gaze.

  ‘It’s true,’ he wheezes, almost doubled over as he cradles his throat. ‘You can fix what we did. All you have to do is take her life. Take hers to reclaim yours.’

  I sag against the windowsill feeling like I’ve finally lost my mind.

  ‘You’re nuts,’ I say, because even though he’s confirmed everything I’ve ever feared, this is one step too far into Crazy Town. All my life I’ve known I’m cursed, that somebody did this to me and there’s no way to undo it, but now this guy, this boozer, is telling me something even more terrible. It can’t be true.

  There’s a noise.

  The door opens and Celene casts a look around the room, seeing me clutching the windowsill and Dominic cowering by the door.

  ‘What’s going on?’ she asks. ‘Domhnall, what–’

  Dominic, or Domhnall, whatever his name is, shoots her a look of terror and then darts out onto the landing. Celene doesn’t try to stop him. I hear his footsteps clomping down the stairs and then a door slamming.

  Celene’s gaze flicks at me. ‘Are you okay?’

  I grip the sill, drained, my head spinning. My legs give and I slump to the floor.

  Is it true? Can I fix what they did to me? Is it as easy as that?

  Easy as killing my mother?

  She hurries to me and I flinch. She must notice because she stops a foot away.

  ‘Are you okay?’ she asks again and she’s so good at sounding concerned I almost admire her.

  ‘Just leave me alone.’

  ‘Did he hurt you?’ she asks.

  Apart from confirming my worst fears?

  ‘Rumer, did he hurt you?’

  ‘No. He couldn’t hurt a barfly. Too drunk and old and–’

  ‘Crazy.’ Celene considers a wooden chair in the corner but doesn’t sit down. ‘He’s troubled, Domhnall. I’m sorry he… I don’t know how he got past me. Maybe when I was in the bathroom. What must you think?’

  She paces from one side of the room to the other.

  ‘Worried what we talked about?’ I ask, because I have to know. I’ll be able to tell from her reaction if what Dominic, Domhnall, said was true. That the curse is real and I can break it by taking her life.

  ‘He’s a pathological liar,’ says Celene, and of course she’d say that. In four words she can make me doubt anything he might have said. But I’ve seen liars, shadowed enough of them, and she doesn’t look afraid or angry or suspicious. She looks sad. Tired.

  ‘I do my best for him,’ she says, ‘but there’s only so much you can do for an alcoholic. Ever since he lost that job at the paper. They raked him over the coals. He told too many lies. Domhnall has… Well… He lives in his own world. I’ve never understood him.’

  So there it is. She denied it without denying it. I’m staring at her as if trying to read her mind. See past the white hair and the ageing rock-chick look she’s going for. I want to find the woman who did all those things in the nineties. Find out the truth.

  The fight with Dominic has eaten up the last of my energy, though and, as much as I fight to stay conscious, it’s a battle I quickly lose. The last thing I see is Celene looking at me and I could swear she’s close to tears.

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  TWO YEARS BEFORE THE HAMMER

  The last person I killed didn’t die. I’ve been shadowing for a year and I’ve turned into something new. I’m not Schoolgirl Rumer, raw and miserable, and I’m not Soft Rumer, the one who lived under Frances and George’s roof. I’m different. Quieter. More focused. Living for the packet of money Julian leaves under the floor in the old phone box.

  He didn’t mean to take me on full time, I’m pretty sure of it. The first job he sent me on was following a man suspected of cheating with his wife’s cousin. All I had to do was catch them in the act and take photos with the phone Julian left in the envelope. I had the photos in two days. They didn’t suspect a thing and I got a £100 bonus, which may as well have been a million. I stuffed my belly so full that night I almost vomited the crisps and fizzy drinks back up.

  Julian must’ve been impressed because he kept giving me work, and who was I to refuse? Life’s all about standing on other people’s shoulders, shouting the loudest, finding a way to survive despite the odds, and here was my ticket to a roof, a meal and something resembling a life.

  It’s hard to keep track of time, but I notice the front page of a paper a week after my eighteenth birthday. By now I have my own flat, a damp den above a newsagent. It has bare bulbs, something masquerading as carpet, rags for curtains. But it’s mine. Comics and movies are my friends. I watch DVDs on a cruddy old TV my landlord sold me at a steal, mostly because it flickers between colour and black-and-white every five minutes. But I don’t care. I have my own frickin’ TV.

  I’ve lived here almost a year when things get weird again.

  The sun is scorching the day I’m shadowing a guy who’s supposedly ripping off his boss.

  Jimmy Long is forty, overweight, crammed into a suit, sort of like a hippo with a degree. A long-serving London chancer who’s got by as a salesman for a car parts company. At least, that’s his story.

  I’ve been assigned to catch him selling drugs to a mechanic, whose business is a cover for some kind of pharmaceutical empire, but so far all the guy’s done is take me on a merry dance across London. He has meetings in greasy cafes even I have trouble stomaching.

  Eventually, he travels the entire length of the Central Line, gets out at a stop I’ve never heard of, and leads me to Mick’s Motors, a garage that resembles a cavernous corrugated shack.

  Sweating into my jacket, I peer into the dark of the garage. My hair sticks to my face and my throat’s scratchy and dry because I guzzled an entire bottle of water half an hour ago and didn’t think to save the rest for later.

  Jimmy’s having a heated conversation with a guy in a dirty blue boiler suit. The guy turns and the name stitched on his chest is BARRY, because of course it is.

  Jimmy says something like ‘your boss ordered the product, I’m delivering it’, but Barry says he doesn’t ‘want that filth here, what’d he bring it here for?’.

  I notice Jimmy’s knuckles are bone white around the case he’s carried all the way to the garage, and his throat is reddening like somebody’s strung string around it.

  Slipping my phone out, I snap some pictures of them, but it’s too dark. Julian needs shots that leave no room for doubt. Cursing, I slide into the garage, melting into the shadows. Crouching low, I move between cars with missing bonnets and wheels.

  ‘You wanted the stuff, now it’s here. Where’s the dough?’ Jimmy’s cherry cheeked. I watch them through the windows of a scrapheap car.

  ‘Come back when Mick’s here.’

  ‘Mick said you’d finish the deal. I’m not going–’

  Jimmy stops mid-sentence because Barry’s grabbed his arm and growled something under his breath.

  Bad move, Barry.

  In a flash, Jimmy’s slipped a hand into his jacket and then Barry steps back, arms above his head, going ‘woah, woah woah’. Jimmy’s clutching a gun. Good for him, didn’t think he had the balls.

  Raising the phone, I snap a few pictures. They’re clearer. Not amazing, but they’ll do, and it all looks very dramatic now the gun’s made an appearance. Maybe I’ll get another bonus.

  I’m not supposed to interfe
re with the people I follow, and I could really do without the hassle of stopping Jimmy doing something murder-y, but before I can slink away from whatever mess he’s about to create, a car screeches to a stop in the garage door, blocking it.

  Red and blue lights dart inside and I spit another curse under my breath. What the hell are the cops doing here?

  An officer hops out of the car and assesses the situation with bright eyes.

  ‘Jimmy.’ His voice echoes through the garage. ‘You really want to put holes in this guy with the law watching?’

  ‘Stay back,’ Jimmy says, his complexion now fish-belly white, his collar damp with sweat.

  I’ve been following Jimmy all day and I didn’t notice the police hanging around. Have they followed us both here? No, I’d have spotted somebody tailing us. Somebody must’ve tipped them off that Jimmy was closing a deal at Mick’s. Now I’m trapped in here with them.

  All I can do is crouch where I am and hope they don’t see me.

  Already, the clock’s ticking in my head. My gaze sweeps the garage, from the oily floor to the cans of petrol and the cars; rusty, decrepit death traps all by themselves.

  I’ve gone over a year without anybody dying and it felt good. I could almost forget about the curse. But it’s always been there, hiding just out of sight, like the spider in my mind, and I can feel it in the garage with me, breathing down my neck, deciding who it’ll take this time.

  ‘Jimmy–’ the officer says.

  ‘Quiet! I need to think!’

  ‘Jimmy, you’re not this guy. You’ve not done anything yet. Just put the gun away and–’

  My leg’s gone dead from crouching and I shift my weight. My boot scuffs the cement loudly and every muscle in my body tenses.

  ‘Who’s there?’ Jimmy yells. I see he’s squinting across the garage at me.

  Shit.

  The officer turns to peer in my direction, and then Jimmy grunts, because Barry’s gone for him. They struggle and the officer draws his baton, then a shot rings out, but it’s come from the mass of limbs that’s Jimmy and Barry. They’re fighting for the gun, and another shot pops loudly, hitting something, and then suddenly there’s fire.

  Flames erupt from a petrol can, spewing into the air. The blaze spreads swiftly. Mick’s Motors has sponged up decades of flammables and the place goes up like a haystack.

  The jig’s up. I can’t hide any more. I hurtle from my hiding place, running for the exit as a wall of heat presses in around me. As I skirt around the police car, a horrible groan rumbles through the garage, and I turn just in time to see the ceiling collapse.

  Jimmy and Barry and the officer are in there somewhere.

  I hesitate. My boots cement to the floor and I know this is my fault, but what can I do? There’s nothing to stop the fire with – nothing I can see, anyway – and I’ve never been able to save anybody before. Why break the habit of a lifetime?

  Something shifts in me, though, something I’ve never felt before, like meat straining away from bone, and for the first time I decide to try. My eyes water as I peer into the black smoke, then I edge into the flaming garage, my arm over my mouth. The voice in my head screams at me to run, to save myself, but it sounds too much like what I imagine my mother sounds like, and the thought of somebody else dying because of me – because of her – is too much to bear.

  The air’s thick with smoke and fire and I’m light headed because of what I’m breathing in. I keep searching, and the more I search, the more I realise this is a suicide mission. Maybe I’ll finally kill Rumer.

  Then, out of the smoke, a flaming figure thrashes, coming right at me. For what feels like an eternity, I don’t move, mesmerised by the column of fire, but then my instincts kick in.

  Not even feeling the flames, I grab the figure, throw it to the ground and roll it until there aren’t any more flames, just a charred person who lies motionless.

  I grab his shoulders and drag him across the floor. He’s so badly burnt I can’t bring myself to look properly, focusing on each agonising inch of cement. I have no idea if I’m going in the right direction, but I’ve committed to it now. If we burn, we burn.

  I spot the police car in the garage entrance and I heave the unconscious figure out into the open air. When we’re clear, I retch and cough until I’m sure I’m going to choke a lung onto the pavement.

  Exhausted, I crouch by the figure. His clothes are burnt to a crisp. The police officer. In the smudged black mess of his face, a shockingly green eye rolls, then blearily trains on me.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ I murmur.

  Sirens are wailing so I know he’ll be found. I begin to get up, but the officer grabs my wrist.

  ‘Th-th–’

  I shake him free and run.

  In the days after the fire, I keep thinking about the cop. I saved him, but I don’t know what that means. Has the curse worn off? Was I just lucky? Or was the cop somehow different? Immune?

  I think myself in circles for a few days, obsessively checking the news to see if the officer died in hospital.

  Curiosity overpowers me and, even though I shouldn’t, I go to the hospital where he’s being treated. He’s asleep when I get there, half his face bandaged up, and a nurse scares me off when she asks if I’m a relative.

  But then I go back a second time.

  The fourth time, he’s awake and asking questions before I can bolt out the door. I talk. Small stuff. If he asks the wrong questions my mouth clamps shut and he changes the subject.

  Maybe he can see the guilt on my face.

  The board over his bed says his name’s WINSTON, which is so ridiculous I decide to call him Bolt, because that’s what I want to do every time he looks at me too closely, like a strange bug he’s spotted crawling up the wall.

  The next time I visit, he’s not there. The nurse says he was let out, and because I’m an idiot, I find out where he lives. I watch his flat a bit. I have to know what was different, why he lived.

  One day, I’m at the bus stop just down his street when somebody sits next to me.

  ‘Going somewhere fun?’

  I look over and it’s him. His eye’s bandaged. I glimpse the scarring at the edges and feel guilty looking. His one brilliant green eye gleams like a lighthouse beam. He’s studying me and I pick at the sleeve of my hoodie. He seems to be the only person in London who can see me, which both revolts and excites me. I’ve not had a friend since Troll.

  ‘It was raining,’ I say, which is true, but the rain never bothered me. It’s obvious he knows why I’m here, ten doors from his place, but he doesn’t get me to spell it out.

  ‘Don’t know about you but I’m parched,’ he says. ‘Want a tea or something?’

  I’d be an idiot to accept – apart from anything, it’s a twentysomething guy asking a teenage girl into his flat. I’ve stared at enough newspaper headlines to be able to come up with one automatically.

  COP BUTCHERS GIRL WHO SCARRED HIM FOR LIFE.

  But my curiosity gets the better of me and I relent, following his broad back up the street, all the way in to the flat above his dad’s old shop.

  ‘Needs a woman’s touch,’ I tell him.

  ‘I’m conducting an experiment,’ he says. ‘Seeing how filthy I can make the place before the furniture starts talking.’

  It’s been so long since I’ve talked to anybody, I’ve forgotten how to have a conversation. You ask questions, right? That’s polite and shows you’re engaged. I try to think of something to fill the silence. Anything that isn’t an apology.

  ‘When you going back to work?’ I ask.

  ‘I quit.’

  ‘Why?’

  He points to his bandaged eye. ‘Don’t fancy desk work for the rest of my life.’

  The guilt quadruples, hardening like an ugly hunk of metal in my chest.

  Bolt goes into the kitchen and comes back with a tray that holds a teapot and mismatching mugs. As he crosses the lounge, his foot catches a floorboard and he crashes to the f
loor. The teapot smashes, hot tea covering the floorboards, and I react too slowly. Bolt grabs a mug and smashes it against the wall.

  So this is my fault, too. He’s so angry, I get out of the flat quickly, leaving him in the lounge.

  The next time I visit Bolt, he’s drunk. His tongue rolls around his mouth lazily and the conversation’s weird. We sit in the dingy lounge playing poker but he can’t sit still for long. I only stay an hour.

  The time after that, he’s sober – or seems it – and we drive out to the coast. It’s bitterly cold but bright. We draw in the sand.

  After a few weeks I realise I’ve seen him more and more and the hunk of metal in my chest has grown so heavy I’m surprised I can still move. Troll’s face keeps surfacing in my mind. The sight of him broken in the junkyard. I find I can’t look Bolt in the eye.

  One day we’re driving and I feel a warm weight on my knee. Bolt’s hand.

  He must feel me tense because he removes it again almost immediately.

  ‘You okay?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  We drive a lot. Aimlessly. There’s something comforting about it.

  And when did I start saying ‘we’?

  The van suddenly feels tiny and I swear the metal chassis is creaking inward, trying to crush me, but slowly. So slowly it’s torture. I resist the urge to hurl myself out of the moving vehicle and manage to breathe until we’re back outside Bolt’s.

  ‘Tea?’

  I’m not going in, I’m not going in.

  ‘Rumer–’

  ‘I’m not going to be your girlfriend.’

  He opens his mouth then shuts it.

  ‘This isn’t right.’ I stare at the street through the windscreen. It’s drizzling rain and there’s no colour in the world. ‘Sorry.’

  I get out and hear him do the same.

  ‘You think you’re the only one with problems?’

  I shouldn’t take the bait but still I turn to face him, blinking through the rain.

  ‘I’ve never said that.’

  Bolt shakes his head. ‘Rumer, this doesn’t have to be complicated.’