‘No!’ Lucy banged hard on the window, the pane rumbled with a cushioned echo, she banged harder and harder, slapping her palms on the sun warmed glass. Kirsty and Lennon got up from the sofa and approached.
‘Poppy! No, not you, not you . . .’
Lucy’s voice deteriorated into shrieking sobs as she slumped to her knees. Dylan bent low to comfort her, but she threw off his embrace with a jarring elbow. She clambered back to her feet and stormed upstairs, each footfall echoing through the house, threatening to rattle nails from their fixings.
‘Well,’ Dylan shrugged, ‘what was I supposed to say to her? She wanted to see her friends. I can’t win.’
‘It’s not about winning with teenage girls, Dyly, it’s about finding middle ground,’ Kirsty interjected.
‘Middle ground? Her best friend has turned into a brainless zombie and is now standing outside on our lawn. How am I supposed to find middle ground with them fuckers out there? Tell me! She just flies off the handle like a mentalist, you can’t reason with her.’
‘She’s just upset, she’s just reacting to this a bit strongly. She might think she’s grown up, but she’s still a child at the same time.’
‘I don’t need this Kirst. Not now. I need calm. I need everybody to be calm and collected and just listen to me. I don’t want us to die . . .’
‘Guys?’ Lennon said quietly.
‘We’ll be okay; we just have to stay inside.’
‘I plan to do exactly that, if she wants to go outside and talk make-up and boys with Poppy that’s fine with me, but she’s got to start listening and not exploding at every opportunity…’
‘Say guys, look,’ Lennon continued. This time he pointed.
‘Just bear with her,’ Kirsty defended, ‘please…’
‘For Christ sake, can you two look outside?’
‘What?’ Dylan half shouted, turning to follow the direction of Lennon’s pointing finger. Kirsty did likewise.
Outside, in the garden, on the path and on the road, everybody in the crowd had their heads bent up towards the upstairs of the house. Everybody.
‘Lucy will you come downstairs please… it’s important,’ Kirsty beckoned.
Lucy screamed something back that was too high pitched for Dylan’s adult ears to comprehend.
‘Lucy! Get down here now!’ her father barked
A second of pause followed by the exasperated tone of a curse word, then came the thunderous stomps down the stairs. Dylan, Kirsty and Lennon watched as the crowd’s gaze returned in unison to ground floor level.
Lucy barged back into the living room, face of thunder, tone of petulance. ‘What?’ she said, her voice curt and angry.
‘Stay here.’ Dylan then beckoned his wife and brother upstairs. Dutiful and curious, they followed.
‘Why?’ Lucy snapped in a duh tone.
‘Just stay there sweetie,’ Kirsty cooed, ‘this won’t take a second.’
Lucy swore again as her family headed upstairs without her.
Dylan moved onto the landing window and looked down on the crowd below; all eyes were set on downstairs.
‘They didn’t follow us.’
Lennon nodded, as did Kirsty.
‘Luce come upstairs will you darling?’
‘For christsake dad, will you please make your mind up, you’re driving me mad!’ Lucy stomped back up the stairs; her fuming face surged towards them on the end of the landing, ‘what now!’
‘Look outside.’
‘At what?’
‘They’re all staring at you.’
Lucy stepped forward, inching her way between her mother and uncle. She stopped by her father and looked down on the mass of faces below. They were all staring up at her.
‘Lucy, these people are here for you, want to tell me why?’ Dylan asked, looking down at his daughter, her gaze just as perplexed as he felt.
‘I don’t know, I . . .’ her voice trailed off and her bottom lip began to quiver. Tears pooled in her reddened eyes. Dylan wanted answers, his daughter knew something. Everybody outside was looking directly at her. Their eyes followed her around like dutiful puppies on a biscuit.
‘Tell them about the dream,’ Lennon put forward, hoarse and quiet, the tone wasn’t his to use. He was being serious for once.
So she did. She told them everything.
***
Her mother’s false smile. A close up, she remembered. A series of images, like a movie trailer, a greater amount of time but condensed.
The car crash; she even knew the colour of the poor guy’s hat. That starts the dream, a crowd of faces, some strange, some familiar, gather round, until she can’t count anymore.
Pans, cups, buckets all brimming with water. Just images, no correlation or standing in the dream.
She had described what had happened so far, all of which he could agree on. As for the cold beans, Dylan guessed at some point they’d be eating beans from a tin. Maybe the power would go out.
People digging, she had said, fingernails breaking against rocks in the hard, compacted soil.
He was stumped with that one; the same went for her vision of the man in the coat made of skin, and the fire close but not too far away. Maybe the plane that crashed earlier. Now the summer winds carried the raging heat towards them. Another thing to worry about.
An ache in her stomach, maybe she’d get food poisoning at some point, he thought grimly.
‘Have you had dreams like this before?’ Dylan asked.
‘Not like this one,’ Lucy replied, ‘not this real.’
‘Is this dream anything to do with the boy from school?’ Dylan asked.
‘Why would you even ask that? He wasn’t in the dream. It’s not about him,’ Lucy shot back with a snap of her tongue.
‘Lucy!’ Kirsty defended, ‘as strange as it may sound, your father thinks that your dream might be connected to what’s going on outside.’
‘I have to ask. Who’s the man in the dream? Do you know him?’
‘Never met him, he’s a stranger. But he seemed to know me.’
‘How do you mean?’
‘The way he looks at me. It’s funny.’
‘Funny, how?’
‘Just a crazy look, hungry, I don’t know, just weird.’
‘What’s he doing in the dream, tell me exactly.’
‘I’m in the living room downstairs,’ Lucy looked down at her feet and sighed, ‘I’m . . . err, I’m naked . . . I think.’
‘It’s okay sweetie, we all have strange dreams. Carry on.’
‘Okay, I look out the front window and this man, he’s good looking, like a movie star, he could be famous, he just has that look, well he walks up the driveway in this strange coat, right up to the window and looks in, straight at me and smiles.’
‘Does he speak, say anything?’
‘No, but there’s one thing I haven’t told you, that I didn’t want to tell you…’
‘What? Why?’ Kirsty queried.
‘In the dream, the carpet is soaking. I look down. You, Dad and Uncle Lenny. You’re all dead. I think I killed you…’
The Heat Of The Long Night
‘That’s not gonna happen darling.’ Dylan put his hand on his daughter’s shoulder, giving it a reassuring squeeze.
‘I know I’d never want to hurt you guys. You’re my parents, I know that I can be a bit of a bitch sometimes, but I do love you, you know that don’t you?’ Lucy looked at them both as earnest and as loving as she could, dimpling her cheeks to pleading sweetness.
‘Of course sweet pea,’ Dylan answered, squeezing her shoulder harder.
‘It’s just that if it does come true, you will try and stop me, won’t you?’
‘It’s not going to happen Lucy.’ Kirsty gave a half laugh, before moving in for a supporting hug, again Dylan squeezed her shoulder. Despite her dreams, they’d stick by her. They were her parents after all. Some stupid dream wasn’t going to change that.
‘But if I do. If I try . .
. Please stop me. Don’t let me do it!’ Lucy’s voice moved higher, she shook her head as if to rattle free the notion of parenticide from her troubled young mind.
‘You won’t darling; it was just a stupid little dream. It doesn’t mean anything,’ Kirsty reasoned.
‘But it does. Everything else has come true so far. I hate it!’ Lucy buried her face into her mother’s chest, the anguish flowed freely now.
‘It was just a dream, don’t worry too much about it.’ Dylan shot his wife a concerned, though reassuring look, shaking his head, ‘. . . shhhhush, just a dream.’
‘Just promise me . . . if I do go crazy, knock me out, tie me up, just don’t let me hurt any of you!’
‘It won’t come to that . . .’ Dylan reckoned.
‘Promise!’
‘I promise. Just tell us when, give us notice if possible okay? If you’re gonna go schizoid on us, give us a heads up at least kiddo.’
‘I‘ll do my best, Dad.’ Lucy turned, and fell into her father, embracing him as tight as her arms would allow.
Outside, as darkness had fallen as it should; one by one, the street lights flickered on, right on time, illuminating the mass of bodies with an orange glow from another world.
***
Sitting around the kitchen table with Lucy drinking apple juice, they tried to stomach their coffees. Sinking them down through a false veneer of vague smiles, they laughed as Lennon told a few dirty jokes to lighten the mood. Even as the laughter carried on further into the evening, Dylan couldn’t help but feel foreboding fingers creeping up the rungs of his spine. Their laughter was real, he was sure of that. But was it that they were just getting in one last laugh before the world crumbled around them all. There was no nervousness, no anticipation on show. Lucy was getting on with Lennon, his family was being genuine for once, and this was how they felt. Infected with laughter, it was good. It was true.
Happy to be alive.
They could be splattered on the pavement, they could be trapped inside the burning wreckage of an airliner doomed by gravity after the pilot, crew and passengers were hypnotised by mind rays from Mars.
They could be outside.
The laughter was just their thankful human nature coming out. Maybe it was down to nervousness, and all this was just an act. The scene outside the front (and back) door played into his mind after he laughed at the punch line of another of Lennon’s filthy jokes.
They were doomed to die, in one way or another. It could be tomorrow, could be in a hundred years’ time. It didn’t matter. But the strange threat outside intensified the stifling feeling he felt creeping round his neck like an invisible garrotte. This was the final laugh. There has to be a final everything, right? The last kiss, that final drive to work before you smash into a bus driven without enough due care and attention, the remnants of the meal that will remain inside you when they lower you into the ground and cover you in six feet of fine, cold soil. The last dance, the last time you squint wearily at the morning sun. It all adds to the same equation. You don’t know when you’re going to go, so make it count. That’s why their laughter was so infectious. Just in case, it’s the last time. At one point, the laughter became too much, Lucy didn’t even get the joke but she was laughing with sheer joy at her parents’ reactions, especially her mother’s shock and a few choice dirty words that had spouted from her uncle’s mouth. They’d become hysterical as the madness of the situation was drowned out by their commune of humanity. But soon, the humour abated, and they all calmed down to a reasonable level.
‘Mind if I have a beer, Dyldo?’ Lennon asked, getting up and heading towards the fridge.
‘Just one bro, I’d rather make them last.’
‘Sure no worries, I’ll take it steady,’ Lennon said as he opened the fridge door, reached in, grabbed a Bud, placed it in his mouth and dented it with his incisors, then popped it open by trapping it with his molars.
‘I wish you wouldn’t do that,’ Kirsty protested, ‘you’ll ruin your teeth.’
‘I’ll be fine. My teeth will stay where they are until they’re punched out.’ Lennon smiled, dropping the bottle cap in the bin. He returned to the table, choosing to remain standing. ‘Is it getting hot in here, or is it just me?’
‘It is a bit.’ Kirsty responded, blowing air up across her face as if to illustrate the fact. She fanned herself, but it did little good.
‘It’s them outside, it’s their body heat.’
Lennon’s eyes widened, his brow crinkling ‘Really? Y’reckon?’
‘Can’t be anything else, wasn’t too warm today. Now there are lots of them, their combined heat is essentially going to cook us from the inside out.’
‘Not literally though, don’t exaggerate darling,’ Kirsty corrected.
‘I hope not, but the way today has gone it wouldn’t surprise me.’
Everybody smiled wryly, Lennon chugged back some beer.
‘Can’t we open a window or something? Change the air?’ Lucy suggested.
‘Hell no! I don’t want to give them a way in,’ Lennon protested.
‘They’ll just stand there won’t they?’ said Lucy, ‘if they wanted to get in, I think that they would have already.’
‘That may be . . .’ Dylan thought for a second, then, ‘okay, upstairs windows only, and keep them on the latches.’
‘Cheers, Dad!’ Lucy glowed, whilst getting up from the table, ‘I think I’ll go to bed now if that’s okay? If Mum and I are doing the last shift, I’d like to be fresh.’
‘I reckon that might be a good idea, are you going to bed darling?’ Dylan casually asked his wife, as if the hordes outside didn’t exist at all, as if this were a normal prelude to slumber.
‘Yeah I think so. Why not?’ she said as she leant over and kissed Dylan tenderly on the forehead. ‘Don’t worry, I won’t open the window too far.’
‘I know you won’t.’
‘Good night Papa Bear.’ Lucy too kissed her father, this time on the cheek. He couldn’t remember the last she had kissed him so sweetly. He had thought that he was losing her to the weird, wide world, new friends and that word he dreaded; boys. Evidently, he was still her Papa Bear, a nickname she had endearingly called him from the ages of three to eleven. Nostalgia swelled his heart.
‘Good night, sweetheart.’
‘Good night girls,’ added Lennon with a gormless grin, waving his hand in an over enthusiastic bon voyage. He sat down, took another chug of beer. The rim popped as he pulled it away from lips, and then placed the half empty bottle on the table.
The girls headed upstairs to bed. They heard windows opening and sighs of relief as the humid atmosphere of the house was lost and exchanged to the outside. Lennon turned and leaned into his brother and said, ‘right; what the fuck are we going to do?’
‘About what?’
‘Them.’
‘The Starers?’
‘Don’t give them a name,’ Lennon scolded.
‘Them is a name.’
‘Doesn’t sound as ominous as The Starers.’ Lennon stood up and removed his t-shirt, revealing his mild case of beer belly beneath. He wiped the sweat from his chest and head, then dropped the t-shirt over the back of the chair.
‘Sounds like a horror movie,’ Lennon moved his hands up beside his head and tickled the air with tingling clawed fingers, then in an ominous gravelly voice he announced, ‘The Starers! Coming soon . . ., or are they already here? Watching you take a shit!’
Dylan laughed; Lennon sat back down, the sweat of his back sliding him down into the leather chair with a damp squeak.
‘Christ it’s hot! I feel like I could peel my skin off and hang it up,’ declared Lennon, ‘so what’ll we do?’
‘I say we wait.’
‘You on about them outside; The Starers?’
‘Of course.’
‘Do you not fancy a break to the car; see how far we can get?’
‘Not particularly, no. In case one of them bastards out there suddenly turns
hungry and bites my head off.’
‘I’ll go.’
‘I’m not losing you Lennon. We’ve already lost Mum and Dad in this past year. No. End of.’
‘Just a thought; an experiment at most.’
‘No. Don’t even risk it.’
‘Can I have another beer then?’ Lennon looked down on Dylan with oh-so-earnest cute puppy dog eyes. He even fluttered his eyelashes like a flirting whore.
‘Last one. But pour me half.’
‘Deal.’ Lennon downed his Bud and headed back to the fridge to obtain another, opening it in the traditional teeth cracking manner. He grabbed a glass from off the counter top, pouring Dylan just less than half. He didn’t mind. He wasn’t really in the mood for booze. He was just being social.
The Keene brothers talked as the night boiled on. They talked about girls that they’d gone to school with and the one in particular that Lennon had made moves on last week, getting nowhere but a cop of a tit and a midnight fumble. Dylan talked about work, telling some of his work mates jokes, places he’d been and funny stories of the road. When he suggested that Lennon try for a job with the company, he shot it down as soon as the sentence had left Dylan’s mouth.
‘You’d get sick of working with me; you’d hate me after eight hours on the road.’
‘You wouldn’t necessarily be with me; you’d be another driver’s mate most of the time. It’ll be easy money.’
‘I’ll think about it.’
‘Monday morning, I want you dropping off a CV, no excuses.’
Lennon paused, thought for a moment then nodded in the direction of the front room. ‘You’re talking like there’s an end to all this.’
‘Everything has to end at some point, they can’t stand out there forever, they need food and sleep, and they’re still human y’know.’
‘How do we know that, they might have been brainwashed by Martians for all we know.’
‘That’s doubtful.’
‘How do you think it’ll end? All this fucked-up-ness.’ Lennon gestured all around with a sweep of his hand.
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