by Dan Cummings
He laughed fondly, reliving the moment and wishing he could somehow freeze frame it, contain and control it. ‘I haven’t been able to quite recapture that phenomenon, but I will, even if it takes the entirety of my life. So I believe Sam. I think maybe somehow, your beau Karp, he had the rotten misfortune of experiencing my earlier, cruder work and established some form of long-lasting contact with another being.’
Lindsey stared at the excitement manipulating Hurst’s features, her voice soft but damning. ‘You’re fucking crazy.’
Hurst took a disappointed breath. ‘To an extent. But that is based purely on our differences of experience. I do believe in what Sam said, therefore I do believe there might be something on its way here with Karp, and if I’m correct, I won’t seem so crazy then, will I?’ he asked rhetorically.
‘But I’m here purely for the purpose of furthering this ground-breaking work. I’m not being a martyr for some botched gangland nonsense because Grainger’s nephew and his friends are savages. When this blows up I’ll cut you loose. I would just like you to tell your boyfriend and his,’ that obsession flashed in his eyes again, ‘avatar to spare me. I don’t want to hurt people. It’s just about the greater good. Imagine how many other scientific breakthroughs might be possible if we can form a sustainable bridge. A whole culture is residing on the other side of reality’s window.’
*****
Sam stared slack-jawed at the unsteady figure taking red-tinged form from the darkness. Despite the poor health of the thing, it unmistakably radiated territorial threat to Sam, who had shuffled back into the heavy locked door, the screwdriver hot and itchy in his cramped palm. The slim man moaned and took another tentative step towards the tangled wreathes of red LED lights, highlighting the extent of his damage. Sticky’s face, or most of his head rather, appeared to be crudely wrapped in gauze and damp-looking bandages. The skin of his neck and throat glistened with sweat as if from a temperature or infection, making the flesh shine like a red star under the Christmas lights. His t-shirt was of an indiscernible colour beneath the light but looked filthy and pus-soiled.
‘S-Sticky. You recognise me, right?’ Sam’s voice was riddled with doubt. ‘What did they do to you?’
Sticky stopped advancing, his attention captured by something other than Sam, his neck rotating his head about in different manic angles like he was trying to gauge the source of a new noise or smell. Sam stayed quiet, allowing the bandage-swaddled head to focus on anything other than him. Sticky’s hands looked awful, palsied claws of shiny, discoloured flesh, the fingers slowly, awkwardly clenching and opening. Seemingly, he was listening to something, nodding like a zombie to some type of unheard decree.
Sam had a sinking feeling. Did Sticky have his very own Frogmore? Sam held his breath, waiting to see if Sticky’s private friend appeared. Nothing showed up, but whatever it was, it must have continued talking. Finally, Sticky stopped nodding and returned his attention towards Sam, his feeble hand pawing at the gauze, tearing it away to reveal whatever ghastly damage it concealed. Sticky’s cheeks had been sliced to ribbons by something, the wet, flayed wounds like infected fish gills. His other hand, absent from personal volition but guided by some unseen master, reached into the pocket and presented a sharp sliver of wood, broken from a joist. Sam imagined that piece of wood or one very similar gouging into the flesh of his face. He also noticed, as his eyes became more adept in this red gloom, that the walls had illegible streaky lettering emblazoned across them.
‘Scribbles?’ Sticky drawled like a stoned, gibbering freak, ‘Mr Scribbles? Cut the meat, break the bone,’ he started to chant.
Sam spun back to the door in vain, yanking the handle fervently. Hearing those words spoken aloud helped Sam distinguish the blood smear lettering on the door. That was all that seemed to be written across the walls; MR SCRIBBLES. CUT THE MEAT. BREAK THE BONE. Sam started throwing his shoulder into the robust wood. The whole house looked like a stiff breeze could knock it down but the doors were fit to withstand the desperate blows of a thirteen-stone teenager. An excited groan pulled him away from his fruitless escape attempt.
Sticky slobbered like a heavily sedated drone, his dying, gangrenous feet carrying him towards Sam in what was most likely his final, moribund act. The clumsy, uncoordinated hand brandished the sliver of wood towards Sam in a threatening manner, almost dropping it but managing to retain it for his last obedient act. If this Mr Scribbles thing was genuine and not just a product of a mind burning out like a star, it was either a nascent monster unable to achieve what Frogmore had, or simply a foul-spirited orchestrator content to have its sickly puppet mutilate itself and any other fool who wandered in there.
Sam was frozen with dread, too horrified at getting anywhere near the pitiful Sticky. Sticky giggled, his hacked-up mouth and cheeks puffing out like rotting billows, and slashed towards Sam with the inches of blood-coated hard wood. Sam fumbled away from the door and the attack, trying to ward him off with the screwdriver. Moving deeper into the red arena of light, dried blood and darkness, Sam was petrified that his death might strike from behind in the form of this elusive Mr Scribbles.
Backpedalling away from Sticky, Sam started to spin, paranoid of every dark corner and hiding space amidst the joists. Sticky followed after him like a physically lame stalker, twitching, slobbering and continuing to heed the advice of an invisible, violent pest. With an unexpected burst of speed, Sticky barrelled towards Sam, his wooden shard held low for a gut stab. Sam thrust out with the metal, aiming for the dilated spark of delirium that was Sticky’s right eye, a fatal strike for sure if he hadn’t mistimed it through panic and left himself open and off balance. Luckily, Sticky’s blundering head dodge managed to thwart his own attempt and instead caused him to bumble into Sam, knocking them both backwards. Sam’s Achilles was snared by a coiled thread of Christmas lights snaking across the floor, tripping him over, and in the process, dragging Sticky down on top of him.
Screaming in a primal cry of survival, Sam wrestled with the deformed lunatic straddling his chest, pus-crusted bandages dangling over his face like Halloween decorations had joined forces with those of Christmas in a dual seasonal blowout.
The fingers of Sticky’s left hand sought out Sam’s right eye, a weak attempt at gouging it, ‘MR SCRIBBLES WANTS THIS!’ he yowled like a loon. He brought up the sliver of wood with his right hand like Sam was some sacrificial goat.
A screech of pain whistled through Sticky’s droopy mouth, his cuts having left his bottom lip like a gory sad face, as Sam drove the Phillips-head below Sticky’s ribs. Another noise roared up, this one seemingly from everywhere. It took Sam a second to identify it as the sound of guns. Downstairs had become a war zone.
Chapter 39
The bleak perimeter of Grainger’s drug and thug hangout rippled, the small portal’s waves undulating out behind the cover of some deathly ill trees. Frogmore stepped out onto this new Lily Pad with guile, his eyes taking stock of any proximate threats. The house was louder than a bass-drop bomb and red flags flashed up in his furtive evaluation of the surroundings; they were invited here and yet there was no presence, however subtle, of Grainger’s brutes, just a trash-filled dump of land.
Frogmore smoothly reached back into the vortex and led Neil out. ‘It looks like they don’t picture you as a credible threat.’
‘I’m not,’ Neil whispered, nauseous and beyond scared to the point where he had willingly accepted his coming demise. So long as he could rescue Sam and Lindsey from the chaos he had borne, he felt like he might at least die with a somewhat cleaner conscious, even if Matt’s fate would follow him to the other side.
‘It’s okay, pal,’ Frogmore said optimistically, if not a little winded from dragging Neil with him on this suicide mission, ‘I am. Call him back, say you’re outside. Once they come out, I’ll dine on their pain and misery. By the way, you’re much heavier than you used to be.’
Neil looked at him nervously, incapable of reciprocating his daring sense o
f adventure. ‘Can bullets kill you?’
Frogmore stared up at his tall friend, black humour coiling around sincerity. ‘You wouldn’t be planning on shooting me after all this would you, pal?’ Neil looked at him soberly, not sure how to answer under the weight of Frogmore’s pitch black mirth. ‘I’m only playing. I don’t know, I’ll endeavour to be hastier than the lead. That’s why we’re playing this carefully.’ His nictitating membrane shifted damply over those intense yellow eyes. ‘I’m not about to rush into that den of villainy in case I run onto the wrong end of something painful.’ He saw how Neil was shaking from adrenaline and the pungent scent of imminent violence, like ozone. Placing one wide moist palm on Neil’s arm in an act of comfort and shared camaraderie, he said, ‘Go on now, call Sam’s phone. Once they make their move, I’ll make mine.’
Neil tried to will his hands to stop shaking. ‘I’m scared, Froggy. What the hell am I supposed to do here?’ His eyes glazed over at the mean-spirited intimidation of everything that house advertised.
‘You wait for the screams and confusion to begin then try and find a safe way inside. Try to find your friends. Remember, you die, we all die; so don’t go being a hero.’ With a quick series of springy leaps, Frogmore cleared the open ground and was scaling a drain pipe before blending into the gloomy slant of the roof and disappearing over the other side of the house.
‘I’m not,’ Neil answered dryly, hitting the call button, feeling like a sword was dangling over his head by a frayed rope.
A voice filled with sinister enjoyment; Shit Storm playing with him. ‘Karp, hey man. Please tell me you’re here, I’m getting bored waiting and I have a friend I need you to meet. In fact—’ Neil heard Staubach muttering to someone, asking if they wanted a quick word. The other voice was rough and curt, clearly someone who wasn’t currently sharing Staubach’s brand of gleeful antagonism. ‘Sorry, bro. I think he wants to meet you in person. Wait there, I’ll be right out.’
The phone went dead, and by the feel of it Neil’s pounding heart wasn’t too far behind.
Chapter 40
Dodd was slowly rocking on his haunches, hunched in the bushes at the side of Neil’s house with a rucksack at his feet. He was never the religious type, not out of any deep intellectual reasoning and contemplation, more from an almost childlike sense of loss and confusion at having been overlooked by any benevolent force one too many times. Be that as it may, his bleary eyes implored the stars, his quiet begging searching for something in the ether. Maybe gods weren’t the answer, but monsters. If only he had a bodyguard like Karp.
He felt the text message interrupt his pleas, knowing full well who it was. Only one person it could be. Only one thing it could mean. He was still in God’s blind spot. Wiping his tears and runny nose on his worn and faded jacket, he pulled his gibbon mask over his head and unzipped his bag, hearing the clink of glass bottles inside. What choice did he have? Denying Staubach’s orders meant a fatal knifing would be an ideal outcome. He lined the Molotov cocktails up like soldiers before him, a volatile formation in the soil. Holding the lighter in his hand, he gently rocked back and forth, estimating how far he could get away from this town with no money, no friends and no car. The lighter felt impossibly heavy with the density of his past sins and those yet still to come.
Chapter 41
Deadbolts screeched like rusty ghouls and the iron door swung inwards. The porch lit up from the strobing lights within. Staubach sauntered out, all cocky swagger and malice dressed up like congeniality. As he took a bump of coke from the webbing of his thumb, sniffing noisily with the seasoned nasal capillaries of a frequent user, his bloodshot eyes perused the wasteland around the house, scrutinising the shadows around the parked cars and few abandoned wrecks parked without form or order across the dust, dirt and weeds.
‘Karp.’ Staubach spoke loud enough to be heard over the din of the music. ‘You don’t want to fuck around here. It’ll get poor fat Sammy deader than Matt, and fuck me if I’m not just looking for an excuse to have some alone time with that tight piece, Lindsey.’ Staubach’s plastic front started to show in the face of the quiet ground. His eyes bored suspiciously into every sliver of shadow and cover, seeming to doubt their own ability, looking for monsters in his periphery. ‘If you do have some little pet, you better keep its leash on if you want your buddies to stay in one piece.’ The Glock remained tight against Staubach’s olive cargo pants. ‘You know whose place this is, right?’ Staubach hollered into the masses of shadows staining the cars between the old street light and flickering glow pulsing through the cracks in the boarded up windows. ‘Remember Noakes, the guy you fucked up last night? Sure you do, well his uncle is waiting inside for you and his patience is wearing pretty fucking thin. Get out here right the fuck now unless you want another dead friend.’
Neil slowly stepped from around the side of the house, surprising Staubach, who jumped, his twitchy aim locking onto Neil. ‘There he is.’ His grin was toxic. ‘You best leave any of your spooky shit at the door. My peeps are waiting for you in here. Play nice and I promise no one else needs to get hurt.’
Neil slowly walked around to the battered and nearly sunken porch steps on rubbery legs. It seemed that Staubach had his own share of raw nerves as his eyes continued to scan for an unseen threat. Had Frogmore already shown his hand to him before now? Hands still raised, Neil eased up the creaking steps, the barrel of Staubach’s gun seeming impossibly large, a calibre capable of destroying more than the sum of its target, not merely flesh and blood, but life.
‘I’ve been so looking forward to this,’ Staubach seethed, his faux grin faltering before his stored rage. The barrel crashed against Neil’s temple, flooring him in a blinding flash of hot electrical pain. ‘Get the fuck back up.’ Staubach grabbed him by the scruff of his neck just as hollering and yells of surprise burst forth from inside the house, quickly followed by several rapid peals of thunder, the gunshots adding their own flash to the drug-fuelled lighting.
Seizing the distraction, Neil pulled out the sliver of windshield from his back pocket and jammed it into Staubach’s thigh, slicing his own palm in the process but it was a worthy sacrifice. As he gritted his teeth against the fire in his palm, an unrestrained rush of righteous fury burst forth from Neil. Through all the terror, all the intimidation, all the insurmountable victimisation, one little detail had somehow become lost amidst the noise. Neil was still bigger than Staubach, and now Staubach had a limp. Neil tackled the expletive-spewing classmate, taking him down before the gun was brought up. Running on pure unfiltered survival, Neil used the glass to slice at Staubach’s gun hand, fighting through the pain and desirous that his enemy would drop the pistol before he had to drop the shard. Staubach’s bloodshot eyes seemed full of additional crimson, like the fire of his hatred was burning through his capillaries. Snarling through the skin-shredding agony, Staubach squeezed the trigger near Neil’s head, the report crushing his eardrum like a sonic hammer.
Hitting the porch on his right flank, Neil was confined to a box of temporary imbalance and shrill ringing. Still on his back, Staubach kicked out, hitting Neil in the chest and pushing himself up against the wall with his bleeding forearm cinched against his stomach and his other hand clamping the gouge in his blood-soaked pants. Shooting off inaudible venom from an expression of bottomless spite, Staubach got his feet under him, his back against the graffiti-thick window board, and awkwardly angled the gun down at Neil. Neil felt like his one and only chance to save Sam and Lindsey had been thrown away stupidly.
Why didn’t I just kill him? Cut his throat?
Neil’s eyes framed the depths of hopelessness flooding his mind, watching the muzzle as it came to rest on his face. He didn’t close his eyes though, despite how scared he was; they bored defiantly into Staubach’s, the bottom of his periphery detecting the slow squeeze being applied to the trigger. Through the squeal of tinnitus, he watched as a body, a big one, blasted through the boarded window, colliding into Staubach’s back, h
is shot going wide, his now-moving feet tripping over Neil’s body and helping him bust through the weathered porch railing.
In shock, Neil stared through the open window into a darkness shot full of strobe light, bullets and sporadic muzzle flares. Clicking his jaw, his left ear was slowly bartering with him over the return of a sense he had all too often taken for granted. Scrabbling across the porch on all fours, expecting Staubach to be up and firing at him any second, he quickly flipped a coin in his head. Stay low and creep into that den of itchy trigger fingers, or bolt around the side of the house and hope there was a quiet back door and a weapon? Splinters erupted from the door frame, almost peppering Neil’s stitched eye socket. Ducking into the gloomy club scene of the hallway, Neil watched as the bulky silhouette of some bruiser with an afro stumbled backwards on shaky legs into the corridor, landing awkwardly against the staircase, a black spear of tongue following after him, cracking out like a whip. Something dark and chunky was ripped from the Miles’s face but the dearth of suitable light kept it under wraps.