by Dave Shelton
“At the next intersection, turn right.”
Oh no. That did it. They were definitely going in the wrong direction now. They weren’t heading for the conference center at all.
“Hey!”
The driver made no sign of having heard him.
“Hey! I don’t know how stupid you must think I am, matey boy, but you’re not going to get away with this kind of thing with me.”
Still there was no response. Just the sound of the engine, the sound of the road, and the rhythm of the wipers clearing not rain now, but snow from the windshield.
“I booked you to take me to the Hardwicke Center, not for a scenic drive through—”
He realized for the first time exactly where they were now.
“Through the woods.”
He was back there. Where it had all happened. Precisely one year ago.
What was this?
They had never found the other car. Never found Mr. Korbin. He had assumed they would, and feared that they would connect the two accidents. He had feared the inconvenience, embarrassment, and expense of a court case against him. But the snow must have covered Korbin’s tracks. A week or so later, when it at last thawed away, he had worried that something must surely turn up, but he had known better than to go back to look. He’d heard nothing on the news. There had been that one visit from the eager young policeman, but a quiet word with the chief constable the next time they played golf together had ensured he wasn’t troubled again.
It made no sense that the crashed car had never been discovered but, as time went by, he’d found he wondered about it less and less. Some miracle had saved him and he had chosen not to question how.
The snow was heavier now but the driver took no notice. If anything, they were accelerating.
“Stop this!”
He remembered now the photograph the constable had shown him. It wasn’t only of Mr. Korbin. It was a family photograph: dark and stocky Mr. Korbin, his pretty young wife, his grinning son. Korbin had one burly arm around his wife’s thin waist, his other bent at his side, his hand resting on his son’s shoulder.
“I said, stop this! Stop the car!”
The driver said nothing but took one hand from the steering wheel and moved it to the stick shift.
The photograph must have been taken on a sunny day. The Korbins were all squinting in the sunlight. Mrs. Korbin wore a light cotton floral-print dress, the boy wore shorts and a T-shirt, and Mr. Korbin had rolled up the sleeves of his collared shirt. On his left forearm there was a tattoo: writing, though it was impossible to tell exactly what it said.
It was clear enough on the burly forearm of the driver now, though, as he shifted up a gear and accelerated once more.
The tattoo said: Scream if you want to go faster!
“Please,” he shouted. “Please don’t—”
And then he was blinded by bright light. A red BMW was coming at them far too quickly and on the wrong side of the road. He was thrown against the door as the taxi swerved violently. He felt the bump and lurch of it leaving the road, but they did not slow down. He was pressed back into his seat as the car sped over a short patch of rough earth and on into the woodland.
“Oh God!”
Something was happening to the driver’s skin. The scratches and scars on his hands and neck were opening up to weep tears of blood.
The car swerved through the trees, branches crashing against the roof and windshield.
The driver’s hands were clamped tight on the steering wheel, his body hunched in concentration as he steered them, at terrifying speed, deeper into the woods. Lines of blood were extending back from his growing scars.
When, at last, the driver turned his head, he recognized Korbin’s face at once, even through its mask of blood.
The woods were denser now. They were racing straight toward a sturdy and immovable tree trunk. There was no way around it, and they were traveling absurdly fast.
He threw his arms pointlessly up in front of his face, but through the gap between them he could still see the tree trunk growing in an instant to fill the full extent of the headlights’ glow, and the driver’s face bloodied, decayed, and distorted, grinning back at him in the instant before his annihilation.
Time stopped. The snowflakes hung in the air. He could see the pattern of the bark on the tree, a trailing thread from his coat sleeve catching the light from the dashboard, the unholy leering smile of the driver.
There was a scream forming in his lungs and it would never be released.
“You have reached your final destination.”
Mr. Harlow’s head is slightly bowed over his notepad, and he remains hunched and still for a moment. Then he taps a finger lightly, once, on the open page, as if placing a final full stop, and closes the pad. Only then does he half raise his eyes to look for a reaction. The others gently nod their approval.
“Thank you,” says the pale man, with a slow, small bow of the head.
Jack closes his eyes and shakes his head, as he tries to dislodge from it the images that the story has put there: not only those that the story described, but also the ones that Jack has imagined for the moments after the end. He doesn’t want them in there.
“Thank you, Mr. Osterley,” says Mr. Harlow quietly. Then, after a pause, he draws in a modest breath and blows out his candle. He allows himself a weak smile as he pushes his chair back from the table, away from the light, and leans back, happy to retire into darkness.
“Yes. Thank you, Mr. Harlow,” says Piotr the giant. His impressively bushy beard quivers with glee as he speaks in a heavy accent that Jack can’t quite place. “Is very good tale! Is magnificent. It give me the geese bump, is so scary! And I am bravest man from my village. I do not scare so easy! Oh no! Not on my nelly!”
“Thank you, Piotr,” says Mr. Osterley calmly and quietly. “Your enthusiasm has been noted.” There seems to be no reproach in his voice, but still the big man falls instantly silent, like an over-excited schoolboy who’s been told off.
“I just like story,” he mumbles, hunched over now, as if trying to compress his immense frame into a smaller shape.
“Oooh, and quite right, too,” says a woman’s voice. Jack looks over. She is quite small, this woman, and enormously untidy. Everything about her is untidy: her clothes, her hair, even her skin somehow seems to be the wrong size for her. She looks like a baby bird with scruffy explosions of tangled hair that set off in a variety of directions from her head, like patches of newly sprouting feathers. “It was a smashing story. Well done, Mr. H,” she says. Her head jerks as she speaks, her eyes swiveling madly to maintain a fix on whoever she’s looking at. She reminds Jack of his great-aunt Millie. She might easily be just as mad, too. The association makes Jack feel a tiny bit more at home, just a little more at ease. She gives a strange little laugh. “Ooh, yes, just smashing.”
“Perhaps,” says Mr. Osterley, “we might have your contribution next, Mrs. Trent.”
“Ooh, now, dear, you really must call me Josephine. I can’t be doing with formality, me. I’ve no time for it.”
Mr. Osterley’s lips purse, just the tiniest amount, and he pauses before he speaks again. “Josephine, then. If you would be so kind.”
“Of course, my dear. Of course. Now then, tonight I thought I’d tell you a story that happened in my own village. Imagine! Ooh, it were quite a to-do at the time, I can tell you. Do you like cats?” Grinning and twitching, her head angled up one way, her eyes turned to look in another direction completely, it’s impossible to tell if she’s asking anyone in particular, but in any case, she doesn’t pause for a reply. “Some people go all soppy for them, don’t they? Never understood it myself. I quite like a dog, you know, if it’s the right kind of dog. Nothing too small and yappy. But cats I don’t really have time for, myself, and—”
“If you would be so kind, Josephine, please …” says the pale man. There is only a tiny grain of exasperation in his tone, but it works well enough. Josephine’s jolt
ing head comes to a standstill and her eyes rest briefly on Mr. Osterley’s still, expressionless face.
“Of course,” she says, and balls her bony hands up into tight fists. “Get on with it, Josephine. Well, then. Here we go.”
Well, it was a funny old business from the start. From before the start, even. But I’ll start at the beginning anyway. I can always go back, now, can’t I? Oh, but then, when was the beginning? Well, there’s a question and no mistake. But I tell you what I’ll do: I’ll start with Helena. I’ll start with Helena dying.
So, Helena died. Well, you knew that already, I just said.
Oh, anyway, Helena died, but nobody was surprised, because she was very old and she’d been ill almost forever, and nobody cared very much because, well, let’s be honest: she was a horrible, horrible woman. Nobody liked her. Even the other people in the village that nobody liked: they didn’t like her, either.
And Helena, so far as anyone could tell, didn’t like anybody. She’d been a difficult and lonely child, and over the years she’d grown into a difficult and lonely old woman. A difficult, lonely, bitter, spiteful, poisonous old woman. She lived in a big old house away from the main village and she’d go days without seeing anyone at all, which suited her. And, to be fair, it suited everyone else, too. Well, you can imagine.
So she was lonely, by choice, but she did have her cats. She’d had a fair few of them over the years, but by the time I’m talking about, at the end, she had three: Tabitha, Tiptree, and Oswald. And when she was very ill, with only months to live, so the doctor told her, and she couldn’t really cope anymore, her nephew came to stay to help her out. He shopped and he cooked and he cleaned and he looked after the cats.
He was a sweet boy, Roland, just lovely. And so loyal to his aunt. She treated him just as badly as she treated every other human being she ever met—shouting at him and calling him stupid and never a word of thanks for all he did—but he wouldn’t say a word against her.
He wouldn’t even speak ill of those cats, and they were right little demons, let me tell you. Tabitha and Tiptree were bad enough, but Oswald, oh dear, Oswald was an unholy terror. Times I saw poor Roland with scratches on his arms and face, and he’d tell me some tale about tackling the brambles in Aunt Helena’s garden, but I could see: those scratches weren’t from any brambles.
Now, like I say, old Dr. Whitfield had said Helena had only a short while left to live. Two or three months, if she was lucky, he said. Well, Helena was as bloody-minded and stubborn about that as she was about everything else, and she didn’t die after three months and she didn’t die after four, or six, or even a year … In fact, Dr. Whitfield himself died before Helena did. Went to bed one night telling Mrs. Whitfield he had terrible indigestion and it turned out he was having a heart attack. It might not have been fatal if Mrs. W had been upstairs with him to get help, but she was downstairs in a huff because he’d blamed her dumplings. Silly man. Still, if he had lived, then it wouldn’t have done much for his reputation, would it? People knowing that he couldn’t even diagnose his own heart attack!
Anyway, Helena lived on for three years and a little bit more before she finally passed on, and she didn’t get any kinder in her last days. That poor boy Roland took all manner of abuse from her, and it wore him down, you could see. Oh, he’d been a lovely lad when he arrived. He was a fine boy: bright and cheerful and kind. Couldn’t do enough for you. And he was still trying his best at the end, but you could see that some of the old woman’s poison had seeped in. He’d be just a little bit short with you, and he always looked so tired, the poor boy. He looked, well … he looked broken.
But even then, when Helena did finally die, he was proper upset about it. I wouldn’t have blamed him if he’d had a party. I would have. There would have been plenty who’d’ve been happy to celebrate the occasion. But there was a decent turnout at the funeral, for all that. More for Roland’s sake than out of respect for the departed, mind, and old Mrs. Collins just along for a good feed at the wake as usual. Couldn’t resist a ham roll, that one. It was a sunny day for the burial, and you couldn’t help feeling like it was a rather jolly occasion. Not really funereal at all. I swear the vicar was absolutely beaming at times, you know, when he thought nobody was looking.
A few days later and they had the reading of the will. And the thing was, with no friends and no other relatives (her rich husband had died years before, and who could blame him), Helena had left Roland everything. Now, there was a bit of money—not a fortune, but a tidy enough amount—but the main thing was that he got the house.
Only there was a catch. There was a condition in the will that Roland couldn’t sell the house, or at least not yet. He had to live in it and carry on looking after the cats, and only after they’d all died could he sell it.
Well, you can imagine, he wasn’t especially keen to stay. He’d not exactly had a whale of a time in that house and he certainly wasn’t fond of those blessed animals. But the house was in a right old state from generations of cats roaming around the place scratching and chewing and doing their business wherever they pleased, so what Roland decided was that he’d stay living there while he got the place tidied up a bit, then, by the time the cats had all passed on and he was able to sell, it’d be looking at its best.
So now we see a bit more of Roland around the village for a while, and he seems a bit happier now, with his aunt gone, but it doesn’t last long. You see, as dreadful as Helena was to everybody, she always spoiled those cats, and Oswald in particular. But now Roland’s in charge and he isn’t treating them like royalty, like they’re used to, so they act up proper terrible-like. Roland’s trying to make repairs around the house and they’re tearing around the place, or they’re fighting amongst themselves. And they’re bringing in dead mice and whatever and getting blood and fur all over the carpets in rooms that Roland’s just got clean. So you’d forgive him—anyone would—if he was completely sick of those bloody animals (pardon my French) by now. You wouldn’t blame him a bit if he wished they all just died as soon as you like and he could have a bit of peace and quiet and sell the house and go. Off to somewhere nice with no cats. But he still doesn’t complain. Well, hardly at all. And he’s still blaming the bramble patch for all the new scratches he’s got, and not a soul believes him.
And then Tabitha dies, and despite it all you can see he’s proper upset about it. Apparently she got into a fight with Oswald, who chased her out onto the driveway just as Roland was backing the car out of the garage. There’s no consoling him afterward. If only I’d been paying more attention, I might have seen her. Maybe I could have stopped in time. Well, there’s no use thinking like that, is there? The cat’s no less dead for worrying about it, is she? I try to cheer him up. I say, “Look on the bright side, Roland: one down, two to go,” but he takes it the wrong way.
He’s still brooding on it a week later when Tiptree dies, too. Just drops down dead. Old age, most likely, and you’d think there’s no way Roland can blame himself this time, but bless me, he finds a way. He reckons that Tiptree died from a broken heart, grieving for Tabitha. Now, as I say, I think he’s a sweet boy but, ooh, this kind of nonsense gets my goat.
So now Roland is living in that big old house with no one for company except Oswald. And Oswald is just a devil. Always has been. Nice as pie for Helena—except for that one time she tried to put a collar on him and he scratched her to blazes—but a right monster to everyone else. And he’s gotten worse as he’s gotten older, and worse again for losing Helena, and again and again for Tabitha and Tiptree dying. Roland can’t get near him now, not that he would want to if he had any sense. Which, if you’re asking me, he doesn’t.
Anyway, we don’t see much of Roland around the village for a while. He’s right busy getting on with all the work around the house and it makes him a bit of a recluse. Then Mr. Cutler bumps into him at the ironmonger’s over in Freckingham one day and says afterward that he doesn’t look so good. And Mrs. Curtain spots him in his car,
freshly scarred she says, over near Westerby. I wonder if he’s eating properly and drop by once in a while with soup or a stew, and he takes it from me and says thank you, but he doesn’t smile and he never once invites me in.
He’s a hard worker, though, I’ll say that for him. Works all hours on the house, he does. He does the small jobs himself and pays to get men in to do anything he can’t manage: you know, plastering and plumbing and such. Of course Oswald hates all the disruption and kicks up a hell of a fuss (’scuse my language) and that slows things down a bit. Some small furry dead thing gets brought into the house in the night and ends up in the plasterwork. And the plumber, eating supper in The Crown one evening, shows us all a nasty gash on his leg and boasts about the bonus Roland paid him in compensation.
A couple of days later Roland gets hurt, too. A bloomin’ great bookcase topples over when Oswald jumps from the top of it, and Roland’s right underneath it when it falls. Might have killed him, easy as pie. Must have been a heck of a weight. Dangerous things, books—I won’t have ’em in the house. Well, anyway, it doesn’t kill Roland, but it does put him in the hospital for a few days. I think at this point that it feels pretty much like a holiday for him, lying in bed all day, everything laid on, and not a cat in sight. He’s as chirpy as I’ve seen him in a long while when I go and visit. Then, when he gets home, he finds that Oswald has finally gone to meet his maker while he was away.
It’s not been a dramatic death; it’s just that the years have finally caught up with him. It was probably only spite that was keeping him going anyway, I reckon, so with nobody else about to make suffer he probably couldn’t see the point anymore. Roland finds him curled up in his favorite spot: in front of the fireplace in the sitting room. He looks so peaceful, but it’s hard for Roland to appreciate because of the stench. It turns out that in his last moments Oswald had lost all control of his bowels. All over one of Helena’s best rugs, too. Worth a fortune, it is. Well, was worth a fortune.