Sin

by Shaun Allan

  The van had almost a full tank of petrol, which I was sure would get me to some semblance of civilisation. Guessing that Martin's farm wasn't just a single dot of life in a vast expanse of nothing, I'd have to find a town or village eventually. Wouldn't I? I could drive until I did, of course, but I preferred to have some sort of warning as to what I might encounter. The glove compartment was suddenly very inviting.

  A couple of CDs, old when I was still in the land of the living - before my incarceration. A small unopened packet of tissues. A cigarette packet with four fags left. A pen. Blue. Leaked. That was it.

  I slumped back in the seat and flipped the glove box shut. The latch didn't catch and it fell open again, one of the discs slipping out and falling into the footwell. Sighing I leaned down to pick it up, and saw a corner of white stuck under the passenger seat. An envelope. Maybe Fate was lending me a helping hand. Perhaps the glove box was supposed to fall open and let a disc drop out. That would be the only way I'd find my salvation - if salvation was what it was.

  The envelope was dirty and water stained and had the look of something that had been kicked out of the way, forgotten about for a long time.

  "A bit like me," I joked to the magpie that was watching me from a few feet away. It stared at me then dropped its gaze to the puddle of sick on the road. Was it hoping for a free lunch, or was it calling me a disgusting slob? Maybe a bit of both - I was a disgusting slob who'd just provided lunch.

  The envelope had been opened. Inside was what appeared to be a bank statement. Hadn't this guy heard of identity theft? Wasn't leaving something like this just lying around, an invitation to be robbed blind? I felt sure that even the most casual thief would have a credit card, flat screen television and designer wardrobe by the end of the week based on a find such as this. Luckily, at least for Sarah and Martin - my latest victims - I wasn't a casual thief. Nor was I an experienced one. Their statement would serve only to give me an idea of where I was and that was all. I wasn't interested in fleecing what was essentially an innocent couple.

  Yes. Innocent. Martin had been a monster, but he was trying to repair the damage. I didn't believe he was still the same man. Perhaps it was a case of Jekyll and Hyde, that old horrific double act whose sense of humour was surpassed only by the Two Ronnies or Morcambe and Wise. Would it be a case that, if Miss Temptation walked in front of him, wiggling her sexy little behind, Martin's dark side might re-surface, the monster reborn?

  I didn't think so. Just like my father's abuse of me was another life, the farmer's abuse was dead and buried, complete with a marble headstone reading: "Here's lies the black heart of Martin Collins, beloved husband, father and rapist. R.I.P."

  There was I, again, defending what some people would call the indefensible. Martin had torn young Sarah's life apart. String him up, slit his throat and leave him to rot. I couldn't say those people were wrong. But I... I knew him. Or I knew that part of him. I'd felt it. Another aspect of that darkness permeated my own soul. Was I, again, trying to forgive myself?

  Who cares! Whether I was innocent or guilty of mass murder was irrelevant. I'd gone and done it, guv'nor. Fair cop. String me up, why don't you?

  But I was just trying to live my life. I was trying to escape from the death and the devastation. I didn't want it to happen. So go easy on me, ok?

  Anyway. The envelope.

  The statement was in Martin's name. A quick glance, out of curiosity rather than possible profiteering, told me that his account was in exceptional order. He could keep his wife and child in a very healthy lifestyle for a long time to come. But that didn't interest me, not really. It was his address.

  Martin Collins

  Shadow Hill Farm

  Grainthorpe

  Lincolnshire

  LN...

  My eyes barely registered the postcode. They'd noticed the town and they'd noticed the county. Home Sweet Home - give or take a few miles or so.

  I knew the name Grainthorpe. From somewhere it swam about in my head, hinting at its location. I'd been there, or at least I'd been through there. A few houses, a main road. Perhaps a small shop. I could just about grasp fragmented images. But even if I hadn't known the town - although I knew it was only a village that might have aspired to township - Lincolnshire, in all its green and pleasant glory, I knew well. The town I'd grown up in, Grimsby, was slap bang in the middle. OK, it was slap bang to the side. On the edge of falling into the North Sea and swimming away to sunnier climes. But let's not be pedantic. Euphoric yes, but not pedantic, if you please.

  Lincolnshire, or more generally Lincs if you happened to be an envelope or a postcard, was split into more then one county. North, North East and simple Plain Jane Lincolnshire. I didn't know where the Southern part had disappeared to - perhaps it was on holiday in those aforementioned sunnier climes. Parts had lost their way for a while and called themselves South Humberside, but they'd recovered and reverted to their proper name eventually. Grimsby, named after the Dane who'd settled there to protect the heir to the Danish throne, wasn't as Grim as the name might suggest.

  Ok, so the fishing industry had floated away, but it was still prospering. Or so I thought anyway. I'd lived in nearby Scunthorpe, a town held hostage to its steel industry, for a good few years and Grimsby might have faltered along its path while I was away, but I'd grown up there and both Joy and my parents had remained there. I'd moved back after Joy had died, taking up residence in her house. Maybe I did that to bring myself closer to my sister and maybe it was because I needed the cocooning blanket of somewhere that wasn't mine. Joy's house, which would still hold a connection to her, could offer some illusional protection against my demons.

  Or not.

  So.

  Grainthorpe, Grainthorpe, Grainthorpe.

  I wiped a small dribble of vomit off my chin and flicked it towards the magpie. It regarded me with watchful eyes, much like HG Wells' Martians. Was it drawing its plan against me? One for Sin, two for Joy, wasn't it? Sorrow, Sin - it was all the same. Why did I know Grainthorpe? Lincolnshire had a million small villages scattered about, some no more than a house and a post box, some lacking even the post box. So many of them were less than dots on a map to me, so why did I remember this one. Then I remembered why I remembered.

  Ice cream.

  I scream, you scream, we all scream for Armageddon. Or Robbie Williams. Or vanilla with cinder toffee and a flake. On the road (A18? A16?) out from Grimsby to somewhere else was Applebys Ices. Applebys was one of those old family run businesses that was soon to be celebrating or recently had celebrated its centenary. Ice cream made the way it used to be before Walls and Nestle muscled in. A hundred different flavours, ranging from mint choc chip to Magic Mandarin and beyond. I couldn't remember exactly which post box it was near, but I was sure you had to pass through Grainthorpe to get there. That meant, if I followed this road, with all its bends and wiggles, I'd either be scoffing a 99 or hitting my old home town.

  I could have, should have, appeared in the middle of a furnace. I could have popped up in a nowhere town in a country I hadn't heard of. The potential was there, I supposed, for me to resurface on the event horizon of a black hole. That would have been some event - me, my very own Singularity point. But I didn't. I'd hop-skipped-and-teleported to just down the road from an ice cream parlour. And a good one at that.

  Who'd have thought it?

  With a smile, the first really real one of the morning, I gave the eye-spy-my-little-magpie the one finger salute and pulled the van door shut. The engine growled into action and I started along the road. One bend was basically the same as another, each too close to get much past about 35 miles an hour, but that was fine by me. I had the window open, the crisp morning-after-the-storm smell of the air singing in my nostrils and I knew where I was - give or take. Dennis Hopper could be riding nice and easy along sweet old Route 66 and it wouldn't feel this good.

  "Hi ho, Sliver," said Joy from the passenger seat.

  I looked over but she wasn
't there. The smell of jasmine drifted past me and out of the window and I smiled again.

  Hi ho indeedy-o. Where we'll stop nobody knows. Well, if I was driving towards Grimsby, I knew exactly where I was going to stop.

  * * * *

  Chapter Ten

  The road curved and swung more times than a ride at Alton Towers, but without the queues. The odd long stretch let you build up some speed (as much as the van could give a pretence of speed), lulling you into a false sense of security before a bend leapt out to slow you down again. I went through a couple of villages - houses crowding around the road like spectators at a race track - but didn't catch their names. Not that I would have readily recognised them anyway. But then, in an open field to the right of the road, was a tree. I recognised it immediately. It was dead, that much was obvious. One lone branch stuck out and up, and just above where the branch jutted out, the tree stopped, looking like its head had been lopped off. Was it waving to passers by, just being a friendly headless tree, saying "Hi, how's it going?" Was it a warning? Signalling people to STOP! DON'T GO ANY FURTHER! THE MAD TREE-HEAD-CHOPPER-OFFER IS LURKING HEREABOUTS AND HE'S HUNGRY FOR MORE TROPHIES! Or had it been pointing up at something in the sky - a UFO that, upon being spotted, had zapped it with its green death ray, petrifying the tree where it stood so it couldn't tell anyone else its secrets?

  Ask me another.

  Either way, I knew it and I knew that onward bound was home sweet pseudo-home.

  A bend and the magical sign for Horseshoe Point. Magical, I hear you say? No such thing. It's easy-ish to believe in teleportation and murder-by-mind, but magic? Nah. But this sign, that'd have you convinced, I'm sure. Sometimes, driving along this road to Appleby's and beyond, you'd reach the turning for Horseshoe Point, a small sandy bay with a couple of grass patched dunes for company, in the blink of an eye. You'd be there before you knew it. But go again, and it would seem to have moved - taking an age and a half to find. So yes, it was magical.

  I saw a sign for Tetney and knew sanctuary was close. Tetney was a strange little place, a little more than a village but a little less than a town. It had pubs and some small shops and even more than one post box. What made it strange was the curious practice of, once a year, making scarecrows. Yep, scarecrows. Like a summer fair but held in each resident's garden, scarecrows would be made and put up in all manner of curious guises such as Mary Poppins, burglars and Spiderman. Dressed not to scare any black feathered birds, but to scar and invade the minds of the young. Well, actually it was a quaint custom which brought more smiles than scares, but what happened at night with those straw stuffed characters, eh? Did they party hard, or creep into bedrooms wielding knives? Just a thought, you know.

  It wasn't Scarecrow Weekend, thankfully - I had enough nightmares whilst awake without any holding my hand as I wandered through the Land of Nod.

  Through Tetney's double bend and onto the Grimsby straight, and, finally, into Grimsby itself. I was breathing hard, as if I'd run all the way here from the Collins' farm. Perhaps it was the impending relief of being able to rest properly. Maybe get a shower. A bite to eat. Or perhaps it was because it had been too long without anything happening. No deaths due to me. No sign of pursuers. It was too quiet for too long.

  Sod it. Enjoy the peace, however short-lived.

  It wasn't too far from the mini-roundabout that told me I was in Grimsby to my destination. I hoped it wasn't my Final Destination and Death wasn't hot on my heels, clawed hand reaching out for the scruff of my neck. If I was forced to have these special gifts, or curses, it would have been nice for Fate, God or whomever to chuck in a sprinkling of Spidey sense for me so I could tell if I was going to be discovered or attacked or torn limb from juicy limb. But there were none so I had to put my trust in a whole heap of nothing, and not for the first time.

  So just keep on trucking, matey. I couldn't help, hinder or do diddley-squit. I had no choice but to keep on a-trucking.

  It was good, wonderful in fact, to see people. Normal people who, in the most part at least, weren't high on drugs or babbling nonsense. Ha! Was life so different from a mental institute? Anywho. Normal people. Sane people. Ones who wore colours other than white. Ones who were allowed spectacles and watches and laces and, gosh almighty, a belt! Couples hand in hand or arm in arm. Smiles. Vacant expressions that weren't drug induced but were simply normal people getting on with their normal lives in their normal way.

  LIFE.

  What an absolutely joyous thing it was. I felt like an evangelist bursting to spread the Word (and rake in the donations), but I wasn't the Messiah - I was a very naughty boy. I felt like winding the window down and shouting, with my head sticking out, wind in my hair like a spaniel: "Hey you lot! Do you know how lucky you are???"

  Of course, they wouldn't know how lucky they were. They just got on with living the same way they got on with breathing. It was free and they did it without thinking. There were no direct debits being drawn from their bank accounts every month to make sure they received their quota of breaths and heartbeats. They didn't have to swipe their credit cards or remember a pin number to make sure they woke up each morning after falling asleep the night before. It was just there. The way electricity is when you flick a switch or water is when you turn on a tap. No thought, no messing, just good old Existence. Do with it what you will.

  Naturally a shed load of stuff went on to get electricity to the socket or fresh water to the tap, just as plenty happened to get life shoe-horned into the tiny body that popped out of your mum's bottom bits. But once it was done and you flicked that switch or turned that tap or cried that first slapped-arse cry, who thought there'd be a time when it wasn't there? Unless someone didn't pay the bills and you were cut off...

  In the matter of Life, your Honour, that'd be me.

  The traffic lights in front of me were at red. I stopped, pulling behind the yellow Toyota in front of me, and had a flashback to a game I used to play. Yellow cars were rarely seen at one time, with blues, reds, silvers etc. being the norm. Yellow was too bright - too in yer face. So when you saw a yellow car, you'd shout out "Yellow car!" and smack the arm or leg of the person you were with. Crazy little bit of fun, I know, but the thought of it still made me smile.

  Raised voices dragged me back from the brink of a happy memory. An argument between a young couple. I didn't hear what she'd said to him but I heard him shout back at her that 'it didn't mean anything.' Well, wasn't that a statement that needed no explanation? Even if it had, however, I'd still know, in that wonderfully twisted way I had.

  The man, about 22 or so, partially raised his hand, then clenched his fist and lowered it again. I could tell the intent. It was a habit of his. A nasty habit because he wouldn't always lower it, but he would often clench the fist. The bruises on the girl's face had faded but I knew there were some still lingering on her upper arm and on her abdomen. He saw me looking and made a what-are-you-looking-at-face before spinning away from his girlfriend and storming off. She stood there for a moment, trembling, and then ran after him, the word 'sorry' forming on her lips.

  He was right. It hadn't meant anything. None of the other women had. Nor did she, not to him. She was a trophy to him. An accessory. Someone to prove his manhood because she was so pretty and he could treat her mean and she'd still stay keen.

  I felt the creeping sensation I'd had earlier. I saw the dog wander from nowhere into the road. I saw the Mondeo coming up behind me start to swerve to avoid it and bear down on the boyfriend. I could feel how his bones would break and could hear the noise his head would make when it hit the pavement.

  Then the lights changed to green. The yellow Toyota pulled away (smackety smack) and I drove after it, frantically pulling myself in, clenching my body tightly, screaming inside myself to suck it in, suck it in.

  And the Mondeo stopped inches from the boy. And the dog sniffed at a dropped crisp packet in the road and trotted away along the street. And the girl caught up to her man, because he was such a
man, and they both threw evil looks at the Mondeo driver, who was sitting there not quite comprehending what had happened. And they walked off arm in arm, her kissing his cheek, him strutting because he wasn't just a man, he was the man.

  And me? I drove down a few streets, across a couple of sets of traffic lights (both at green) and around one or three corners. I parked up at my parents' house. And then I cried for a little while.

  A woman, old, wrinkled and looking like a sofa that had been left out in the back garden over winter was walking her dog. The dog, a Pug, glanced at me as they passed the van. I half expected it to shy away or start growling at me as if I was the spawn of the devil (and wasn't I, effectively?), but it didn't. It paid me less attention than it might a lampost it had just peed up. The woman, her long scruffy brown coat hanging around her four sizes too big, seemed to want to say something. Probably ask if this dishevelled man, wearing clothes that were too big, crying alone in his van was ok. The terrier pulled at its lead, eager to claim a small gatepost as its territory, and the woman forgot all about me and hurried along, as much as her shamble would allow, after her pet.

  I wiped my eyes and then remembered the tissues in the glove box. Helping myself to one - Martin wasn't going to miss them - I blew my nose. I should move the van. Park it somewhere else. My parents' house had been standing empty for the couple of two years and more. A stolen van outside a supposedly empty house? Not the best idea in the bargain basement of Ideas Inc., purveyors of the finest thoughts, anecdotes and concepts money can buy. I moved it. Not far away was a supermarket, one of those that stayed open 24 hours a day, except on Sundays, just in case you needed a loaf of bread or a tube of toothpaste at two in the morning. Cars were parked there at all hours of the day and night, so one more wouldn't hurt, I assumed. And if, three days from now, it was noticed that this particular mucky white van had been there for a while, then Mr. or Mrs. Collins would come and collect it, with no idea how they could possibly have forgotten to take their car when they'd stopped off to buy a newspaper and some tea bags, or a tube of toothpaste.