The Killer You Know

by S. R. Masters

  “No, Steve,” Jen says. “I need to contribute something. After what I—”

  “It’s fine, I’m doing it. End of. We have to check every place and be prepared for any outcome.”

  Steve is taking control. It would be just like the old days, just like Will wanted, if not for Steve’s wan face and wavering voice giving away just how little he wants this role now. He tells us to charge our phones, and to run in different directions and call the police if anything goes tits up out there.

  “Just try to get to the nearest safe place,” he says. “Run all the way to Knowle if you have to. And for fuck’s sake, if he tries anything, don’t hold back.” It’s the last thing anyone says for a long time.

  It’s nearly 9.30 p.m. when I step inside my parents’ bedroom and look through Mum’s drawers. If I’m going to die tonight, I might as well die knowing the truth. And just as Dad said, in the bottom drawer beneath some bed clothes, I find a box full of newspaper clippings and computer printouts, all about my recent successes. It would feel good now to cry, and I often wish I had the knack, but I don’t.

  Downstairs Steve is on his feet. “I don’t think we can leave it much longer,” he says. “Whatever you lot want to do, and I’ll understand, I’m going. If I’m right that this is about me, then I think I can still stop it.”

  The atmosphere on the walk to the fence behind Mr. Strachan’s old garden is businesslike. Before any of us can do the same Steve leaps up to the top of the six-foot fence in one bound and jumps down to the other side, no shed there now to hide behind. Something cracks in the woods nearby, loud enough that Jen and I look at one another. When Steve reappears, he is holding a balloon. SHOW is written on the white rubber in black marker above a smiling face with two crosses for eyes.

  “Does it mean something? Is it an anagram?” Jen asks.

  We walk to the bridge over the river next, and I somehow end up leading the way. I’m in an oversized synthetic coat of Dad’s and a light rain taps its hood.

  We pass the pub on the main road, The Centurion, renamed thanks in no small part to the pot Will found out by the lake. A healthy New Year’s Eve crowd are celebrating inside. Shortly, we pass the walled mansion on the right, unchanged since we were children. Then we are at Raven Way. Over in the direction of Balsall Common a firework explodes in the sky, scattering multicoloured sparks. What I’d give to be there, or in the pub, instead of here.

  A pavement has finally been added to this section of the road, and we follow it along the right-hand side until we reach the bridge. Like starlings we cross the road together without speaking. The river is swollen, so wide that it’s running through all of the overflow tunnels.

  Jen peers over the bridge’s edge, shakes her head, then lies over the wall on her belly, gripping the edge to stop herself plunging headfirst into the water. Her legs bob up and down as she tries to see inside the tunnel where Steve once left his clue. “Someone grab my hand and I can get a bit lower.”

  “Fuck, Jen, be careful,” Steve says. He gets closer to her. “Let me, I’m taller.”

  Jen straightens her body and looks behind her to check where Steve is. Then she gives Steve her hand. “I think there’s just some rubbish in there.”

  The headlights of a car coming towards us from the direction of Balsall Common illuminates the bushes a little further down the road. We continue searching on the bank until the car, a police car, reaches the bridge. When it crosses the headlights are blocked by the wall but cast their light on the tree hanging over us.

  It would all be over if I simply yell something now. We could get in the car and tell them everything. Will won’t know. He can’t be watching our every move.

  From our position down below the road we all see the balloon tied up on the branch of the tree.

  The police car appears to slow down but we are well concealed, and once the lights disappear into Blythe Steve retrieves the balloon by climbing the trunk and along the branch. He brings it over. ME is written on the white rubber in black marker, another Nirvana face below.

  It’s apparent now that these aren’t anagrams. He is keeping things simple, spelling it out to us. SHOW ME… what?

  We keep talk strictly navigational on the twenty-minute journey to the next stop, the lake—now the centrepiece of a luxury golf course. The area has changed so much, all the dirty paths are proper roads, the pits and mounds of earth all flattened and overlain with trim grass. A giant club house and car park have been built at the end of the path, obscuring the lake. There are no cars, and all the lights are off.

  The eighteenth hole has its own island, connected to the main course by a thin strip of grass on the lake’s west side, and it’s as close to the islet we can get without getting in the water. We walk around to the green and approach the water, Jen crying out when she thinks she sees someone standing by some bushes watching us. It’s just a tree, though, and she apologises.

  “I hate this,” she says. “I keep seeing him everywhere.”

  In the moonlight, the islet appears to have survived the redevelopment but for a large sign asking golfers not to disturb the wildlife.

  “Better just get this done,” Steve says. He puts down the towel bag he’s been carrying and pulls his jumper and top over his head. “Like ripping off a plaster.”

  “Steve, it’s freezing,” I say, knowing he will do this anyway.

  “Like a plaster.” Steve runs to the shore and jumps in, disappearing into the black water before emerging again several tense seconds later. Agitated ducks honk over on the islet. Steve crosses the ten-metre stretch and exits the water unscathed.

  “I should have stretched,” he shouts.

  It’s cold for me just watching. How must it be for him in his boxer shorts, his bare feet on the uneven, stony surface? I know all too well how that water feels, because I’d gone in on behalf of us all the last time we’d done this.

  He’s carrying another balloon when he re-enters the water. “The clue is YOUR,” Steve says, then plunges into a breaststroke, the balloon floating behind him.

  SHOW ME YOUR… It gets us no further in understanding what it is Will wants us to see.

  Halfway across, Steve stops swimming and cries out.

  “You okay?” I say.

  “Cramp,” he says, and starts to laugh. Only then the lake is filling his mouth and he’s going under while trying to say something through all the water.

  “He’s fucking drowning,” I say, but just stand there watching. He vanishes completely until only the rain disturbs the surface of the lake. He’s not coming up. After all this, the promise and the terror, it will end in such a stupid—

  I throw down the knife I’d brought with me and yank off my top and jeans. Only when I am in mid-leap do I notice Jen jumping too. Then I am under, the water clamping my body. With great effort I kick against the paralysing cold and break the surface. My hamstrings cinch, my calves are rocks. I’m close to panic, but I fight. I take a breath. And another. And another.

  A hand emerges from beneath the lake a few metres to my left. I swim over, gasping, and beneath me warm hands grab my legs. Then they are tugging, and I am going under again, and I try to scream but now the water is in my mouth. I’m drowning too, I’m fucking drowning. I’m one of those people in the papers who swim in quarries despite people dying that way every year. The people you think must be idiots to take such risks, the cautionary tales of the world.

  The hands stop tugging, and I buck, gasping in what air I can once I’m above the waterline. Jen is yelling my name, but I ignore her and reach out with my left leg while moving my right to stay afloat. But then hands are on my arm, and I take the hands with mine and pull. Steve’s head appears in front of me, his hair plastered against his skull except around the little bald patch that is no longer hidden. I manage to wrap my arm across his body to keep his head up above the surface, trying to pull him by the armpits and not put pressure on his rapidly moving chest.

  “Fuck,” he says. “My
legs just went.”

  The green’s edge is sheer, but he manages to pull his upper torso out while I push the rest of him to safety from beneath. Jen helps me out of the water, then clambers out herself having retrieved the balloon. She ties it to the other ones, which are weighed down by her jeans, away from the lake.

  “We need to go and get dry properly,” I say.

  Jen picks up her phone from where she threw it down. “It’s nearly eleven,” Jen says. “We can’t risk it. By the time we get back and dry off it’ll practically be midnight. And we don’t know what else he’s got planned for us.”

  “We keep going,” Steve says, rubbing his legs, shoulders bobbing, shaking his head.

  So I put on my top and pick up my knife, reassured by its handle in my palm once more.

  A six-foot wire-mesh fence separates the golf course from the old footpath linking the far end of the lake to the road. Once we have climbed over, we kick our way through dense weeds to get to the six concrete blocks at the road’s end.

  More fireworks burst in the sky, not just from Balsall Common now but from every direction. I again fill with that ache to be somewhere else, at some non-specific New Year’s Party that isn’t here. It’s stupid really, because usually I hate New Year: too much liberal drinking, not enough discerning sex. Yet there it is, a yearning for something I don’t even like. Nostalgia is an illness, that’s what Rupesh said. Another twinge of longing strikes, even more ridiculous than the first, because now I miss a conversation from just last week.

  Steve stands and faces us when we reach the railway bridge.

  “Let’s stay close,” he says. “Everyone keep your eyes open. I’ll go first.”

  We help one another over the still dangerously low railing and onto the ballast at the track side. We run across, and only when we reach the embankment does it becomes clear the foliage is so dense we can’t find the old path.

  “Didn’t Rupesh find another way to the pylon?” Steve says. “Isn’t that how he won my round of The Dedication? He came up behind me.”

  “Yeah, I told him to use it to surprise you,” Jen says. “I found it when I was messing around here once. With Will. It’s probably as high down there, though.”

  Steve leads us along the tracks away from the footbridge. It’s hard to walk as the ballast is steep here. The pylon is visible to our left, a steel skeleton against the night sky, crackling now as it did then.

  “Hold on,” Steve says, thrusting out his right arm. I jump.

  Another balloon, dripping with rain, lies in the grass on the embankment. Steve walks over and grabs it with one hand. With his other hand, he picks up something wrapped in a plastic bag attached to the balloon by a piece of string. It’s an envelope. He opens it and reads the message while we all watch. Steve begins to nod his head. After a moment, the balloon bursts in his clenched hands.

  “What did it say?” I ask.

  Steve throws down the remnants of the balloon and the envelope, then descends the ballast. He crosses to the furthest track, and turns to face us. He pulls the strap of his bag over his shoulder and throws it over the tracks.

  What the hell is he doing?

  “This is what he wants,” he says, “just like I said.”

  Now I understand. He gets down on his haunches, gazing at the rail before him, the threshold between our world and Will’s insanity. Or was our world ever sane? How could it have been if it led to this? Our childhood games created Will Oswald and this moment.

  “Steve, what’s going on?” Jen says. “Tell us your plan.” Her voice is stony. A teacher’s voice.

  “There’s no other way,” he says. He bites his top lip. “I have to get on the tracks.”

  “Stop being ridiculous,” I say, but because he sounds so serious. Jen retrieves the balloon remnants and brings them over. We can see the D and the ATION in amongst the smiley face, and can work out the rest.

  SHOW ME YOUR DEDICATION.

  I don’t wait to read what’s in the envelope. I throw my knife down on the floor and run to Steve. I try to grab him but he pushes me away, hard. The force is terrifying, his determination palpable.

  “Tell me how else we do this?” he says. “Did you read what he wrote?”

  Jen arrives beside me with the envelope. The black ink on white paper is just about visible in the starlight. I can guess what the clue is but I read anyway, fast, because a train could come at any moment.

  Dear Steve,

  Impossible’s what you said?

  You didn’t stick around to see.

  But now you get to find out.

  Look up at the stars and trust me.

  Prove to yourself it can be done.

  Nearly there now. So don’t let us down.

  If you fail, he’ll be dead before you get here.

  Love, Will x

  PS And hurry, midnight’s coming! See you at the pylon.

  “You lot need to move away,” Steve says. “Just in case. I think I can feel one coming in the tracks.”

  A hum fills the air. I turn in the direction we came from and see the lights of an approaching freight train, high speed.

  “This is fucking idiotic, Steve,” I say. “You’re not actually thinking of doing this?”

  “He wants me to prove myself, that’s what this has always been about, to humiliate me the way he thinks I humiliated him. It’s this or Rupesh dies, right?”

  “If he wants one of us to lie under a fucking high-speed train then the rules have changed,” I say. “You think Rupesh would be here doing the same for you? No, he’d be spouting some shit about the moral responsibility not being black and white or being more complicated than our brains can handle. And he’d be right, because this is—”

  “What do we do then?” Steve says, still staring at the tracks.

  “Phone the fucking police,” I say. “Like we should have done before.”

  “No,” Jen says. “We can’t. Not yet. We do that, he’ll definitely kill Rupesh.”

  The shearing sound grows louder so quickly.

  He stands, and he is not looking away, in profile he appears so determined.

  “I’m not losing you now I’ve found you again,” I say.

  The train is nearly on us, the driver sees us and blasts the horn. The noise isn’t only loud, but invasive somehow. It slices into my head.

  Steve reaches out and grabs my hand, and for an insane moment I am convinced he is going to pull us both into the train’s path. Instead, he squeezes, then allows himself to be dragged to the embankment again where all three of us stand, breathing hard, waiting for the train to pass. The driver will surely phone the police now.

  “What now?” Jen says. “What the fucking hell do we do now?”

  Steve is staring over at the opposite embankment, at the foliage near the top. It takes a moment for me to understand something is wrong there; that is why he won’t look away, why he won’t answer Jen.

  “I swear, I see someone,” Steve says.

  Jen gasps. “Where? You sure? Shit, I think I see.”

  “Don’t stare. It’s him,” Steve says. I look up to where shadows that could be people move from side to side. “He’s watching us. Just… Shit. He’s seen me.” He jumps the first track. “Come on, before he gets to Rupesh…”

  Steve runs towards where he saw Will, across the second rail and up the embankment. We follow, and I retrieve my knife on the way. At the top, the scrubland between the tracks and the pylon is taller than us, but Steve leads us along a faint path through it. I’ve never brandished a weapon like this before, out in front of me, ready to use.

  I concentrate on every step, Jen in front of me, whining “no” but pressing on regardless.

  Jen says, “I think I heard someone.” But she’s panicking, it’s impossible to hear anything with us all brushing up against the scrub surely?

  “I heard it,” Steve says.

  “He’s near us,” Jen says, her voice shrill, jammed up in her nose, making everything
worse.

  Then I hear something, ahead of us and to the left. A rabbit running away? A fox? Will throwing something at us?

  I speed up. It’s claustrophobic, worse than the maize fields, perhaps because these plants aren’t meant to be here. They are wild, thick, untended. If someone is in amongst them, someone unafraid of this place, I want to be out in the open as soon as possible.

  “Keep going,” I say, bumping into Jen with my shoulder. My grip on the knife tightens.

  We walk quickly, for less than a minute, even though it feels longer. Once out in the clearing at the foot of the pylon, Jen turns to us.

  “He was there. Shit. Shit,” she says, her breathing laboured.

  “Keep going,” Steve says.

  We move through shorter grass towards the concrete base to the right of the pylon. Only then Steve stops abruptly, a whimper escaping his lips. The suddenness is awful, and I’m of all things angry. I don’t want to be scared any more. I resent it. Want it over now.

  Then I turn and see what he is seeing.

  Someone is sat at the bottom right leg of the pylon, twenty metres away from where we stand. The body is slouched and still, around the head a plastic bag that tapers at the neck.

  “Is it him?” Jen says. “Is it Rupesh?”

  There is a second body, a plastic bag around the head, lying at the feet of the first. I recognise the cagoule on the body slumped up on the pylon. Jen runs over to the prone form at Will’s feet, calling out Rupesh’s name. She begins tearing at the bag on his head, tugging it apart from the top because the bottom had been attached to his neck, too. She cries out, “He’s breathing. I think he’s okay.”

  The same can’t be said for Will, though. He isn’t moving and something about the way his body has come to rest—has folded—is unnatural.

  I step closer, Jen’s one-sided conversation with Rupesh becoming louder, though I’m not listening. Steve tries to hold me back but I shrug him away. I want to understand. Is it over? Is this it, Will’s final message?