by Will Carver
Her ears were ringing from the explosion next to her head.
And it was all she heard until the detective with the shadow pulled her away from her dead son.
She would never tell anyone what really happened that day in the park.
YOU DIDN’T CALL
Jacob Brady was not the first victim that week in Hinton Hollow. The most shocking. The most public. But it didn’t start there.
Oz Tambor arrived at his mother’s house. It was a four-minute walk from his own front door but he felt it made more of a statement to Liv about his intentions that he had taken the car. He was being proactive. He was getting things done. This would all be resolved very soon. She could relax for the rest of the week, which would mean that Oz could relax. She could steal toast and combine unrelated words. And he could nod and love and not talk about weddings.
Oz was never able to park in his mother’s driveway. There were only two spaces and they were occupied by her Micra, which she never used – people walk in Hinton Hollow – and his father’s old Jaguar, which his mother refused to get rid of. It had sat there for four years, since his dad had passed. Of course, she’d thought about selling it or giving it away, she even came close once, but Oz offered to give it a clean – on the outside, at least – and she had regressed into nostalgia. He parked up the street and took the long walk up the front garden to the house.
OSCAR TAMBOR’S FATHER
If he ever scored a bargain, the item he purchased cost him ‘a threepenny bit’.
One summer, he rang the bells at the Church of the Good Shepherd every Sunday at noon.
His favourite song was ‘Night and Day’ by Cole Porter.
When Dr Green told him he was ill, he refused any treatment and he never mentioned it to his wife or son until he was weeks from the end.
Then Oz knocked on the door, not realising that I was watching his every move.
‘Hello, dear. I wasn’t expecting you. You didn’t call.’ May Tambor was surprised to see her son standing on her doorstep in the middle of the morning. It wasn’t the correct decorum for a visit. Luckily, she was already immaculately dressed and made up. She’d been up for hours and had made cookies, there was some bread baking in the oven; Oz could smell it from the doorway. It smelled like home.
‘Sorry, Mum. Something’s come up. Nothing major.’ He kicked his feet against the doormat and his mother moved aside to let him in.
‘I’ll put the kettle on.’
He waited in the lounge for his mother. The curtains were almost drawn. It was cave-like, but a strip of sun shone through the gap, picking up particles of dust on its way to the carpet, though May Tambor had polished all the furniture that morning. It shouldn’t have been so bright at that time of year but summer was still holding on to Hinton Hollow with the tips of its fingers.
‘Here you go. A cup of tea. If you’d have warned me that you were coming I could have made the biscuits earlier, they’re still cooling.’ May just couldn’t let it go that he hadn’t called ahead.
Oz ignored her prod. That was the best way to handle her. She’d forget it eventually.
SOME THINGS TO KNOW ABOUT MAY TAMBOR
She never blamed her husband for the way he had handled his illness.
She wished she’d had a little more time; she missed him.
She was waiting to see him again.
They spoke about nothing for a while. Oz asked what she’d been up to, though he knew it was trivial. Cleaning the house that didn’t need cleaning. Baking food that wasn’t going to be eaten. Reading books that should never have been written. Worrying.
Then she brought up the wedding.
‘Plans all sorted by now, I imagine,’ she asked, though it was more of a statement. ‘Exciting.’
‘Well, that’s why I’m here, actually, Mum.’
May Tambor placed her cup on the saucer that was resting on her occasional table with the upturned romance novel. She was expecting bad news. The wedding was off. He’d left Liv.
If only it had been that simple.
‘The preparations are fine. Everything is sorted, but you know Liv.’
She did know Liv. She had known her since she was a teenager. She loved Liv. Her husband had been particularly fond of her. She was a local girl. She’d always been pretty. And smart, though she preferred to play that down, for some reason.
‘So what is it?’
‘The honeymoon.’
‘What’s wrong? You need some money?’ May had money and no mortgage. And she wasn’t spending much because she hardly left the house.
‘No. No. It’s all covered and paid for. Thanks. It’s just … I haven’t sorted out my passport yet. Have you got my birth certificate? I think Liv is about ready to kill me.’ He smiled but it was nervous.
May Tambor didn’t say anything. She stood up from her chair, walked over to the cupboard beneath the stairs, got down to her knees and clicked open the metal box where she kept her important files.
When she returned to the room with a piece of aged paper, folded into perfect thirds, she did not sit down in her seat but next to her son on the two-seater. She looked him in the eyes and poked the birth certificate in his direction. Oz grabbed it between his thumb and forefinger. He pulled but she did not let it go.
‘Mum?’
She looked straight into his eyes. She didn’t blink.
Oz pulled again and she released the document. She had spent the last four years trying to let go of her husband and now she was relinquishing her son. That’s how it felt to her, anyway. Liv would look after him now. Who did May have? What would she be left with?
That’s the problem with small-town life. Sometimes you never leave. And that shit can get you killed.
They talked seriously for the first time in years. They needed this talk. They should have had it a long time ago. It was a relief for May but the absolute wrong time for Oz.
He left the house in a hurry, shutting the door himself while his mother remained in her dimly lit lounge. He thought about Liv. The birth certificate was in his right hand. He was getting things done. He should call her. Tell her that.
There hadn’t been enough time to dial her number.
The door slammed behind him.
He took one step forward.
And was taken.
WHOLE GALE/STORM
When it’s not the people, this is how it works.
Think of it in terms of the Beaufort Scale, where zero is complete calm, five is a fresh breeze, eight is a gale and eleven is a violent storm.
0. Calm. I am watching you. Stalking you. Understanding how you operate. Discovering what evil may lie within you. You appear to other people in the way that you always have. Your inner turmoils remain your own. I have not even had a look inside for myself.
3. Gentle breeze. It’s a test. A taster. I want to see how you react to a gentle prod from Evil. This may result in a broken window or tightness in the chest or throwing a handful of salt into a pig’s bloodied face. This is not how people always see you but it may be a part of who you really are.
6. Strong breeze. Your moral compass is twisting, trying to locate which direction is north. What is right? What is wrong? Just one more drink/pill/biscuit/fondle. You post a lie on social media. You are not yourself. You start to lose who you are. See also: becoming who you really are. Many people do not return from this.
9. Strong gale. You are angry. You wonder what it might feel like to thrust a knife into someone’s stomach or whether you could push them over the edge of a building. What would it feel like to fire a gun? You may think that other people deserve harm because you feel personally hurt about something. You want to inflict suffering. Making somebody else feel worse will make you feel better.
12. Hurricane. Mania. Chaos. A mother makes the worst decision of her life. Selfishness. Sexual promiscuity. Depravity. Taking someone’s life. A child, perhaps. A family. More. Breaking all the windows. Animal cruelty. Torture. Six bullets to the face. Pl
unging an entire community into a haunting, distorted darkness that is either the deepest depression or the absolute truth.
This is the part where you give in.
Because you have no choice.
When Oz Tambor was taken, in order for the plan to work, to take away the sunshine and light that had lingered in Hinton Hollow for too long, I had to create a storm.
A GOOD BOY
If you’re worried about Little Henry Wallace, please don’t. Not yet.
They took care of him.
Two uniformed police officers – one male, one female – entered the train carriage and they teamed up to find out what the hell was happening. The sight of them altered the passengers’ moaning-at-being-held-up into whispering g o s s i p. See also: the damage of conjecture.
The female constable was responsible for trying to get Henry to talk, to gather some information about where he was from and what brought him so far from home. But the boy did not give over any particulars. He was a good boy. He did as his mother told him.
Her male counterpart took on the elderly lady. She explained how the boy had been in that very seat when she got onto the train. He was next to a woman in her late thirties for about forty minutes. She spent most of the time on her phone while the boy was quiet.
‘The only thing that struck me as odd was just how well behaved her son was while she buried her face in one of those ghastly devices.’
‘You didn’t think of saying something when she got off? She didn’t say anything to the boy as she left?’ He had so many questions: Could she have been the boy’s mother? Do you remember which station she got off at? What did she look like?
The elderly lady was the one who had acted. Eventually. She read the label around his neck. She alerted the police. She waited with him until they arrived.
She cared.
But what she did should not be seen as good – the bar is set too low – it was normal. Typical. Ordinary, even. To me, it is nowhere near enough. It is unexceptional.
She felt beaten down by the officer’s questions and let down by her lack of action.
G u i l t.
Nothing came from the questioning. The boy gave zero and the elderly lady had played her part in the pantomime.
‘What will happen with the boy? Is there anything I can help with?’ She was desperate to atone for her mistake, though it would not have made a difference if she’d called the police straight away, the boy was out of Hinton Hollow and that was all that mattered.
‘You’ve done enough,’ the policeman offered. Then added a ‘thank you’ to try to take out some of the obvious bite in his tone when the old woman’s shoulders slumped even further. ‘We can take it from here. We will make sure he is fed and watered and has a roof over his head while we get to the bottom of this.’ He forced a smile. She didn’t buy it.
So, you see, you don’t have to worry about little Henry Wallace. Not yet.
He was with the police.
And, as long as he kept his mouth shut for seven sleeps, he wouldn’t be able to go home. Home was about to become a horror story.
SOME WAYS IN WHICH EVIL PRESENTED ITSELF *
An old woman lying on her side in a shop.
A boy lying on his back in the park.
Another boy rocking back and forth with his arms folded around his knees.
A mother. Screaming.
A man in the boot of a car.
Another mother lying in the hallway with her brains spread across the wall.
A detective smoking.
THAT DAY IN THE PARK: ORDINARY MAN
Oz Tambor was supposed to be his last.
That was the only part he had to plan.
Before, there had to be the mothers. The research. Though he hadn’t really planned anything. This was not thought through at all, in fact. It was the start of a rampage. Passionate, yes. But without pattern. The kind of case that has detectives frustrated by its apparent randomness. A killer who is not looking for notoriety, is not trying to be caught. They are not looking to outsmart the investigating officer.
They are doing it for themselves.
Or worse, they don’t know why they are doing it.
Worse still, they don’t realise.
Sometimes, an ordinary man can simply snap.
He lit a cigarette and waited in the woods near Hinton Hollow Primary School for the children to be dismissed and collected by their parents. He didn’t think that the puffs of smoke acted as a beacon to his whereabouts. The dangers of a naked flame in a wooded area had not crossed his mind. He had felt empty since stepping past that very first tree. There was a great nothingness there, and that complete detachment was exactly what he needed to commit the heinous crime he had in his mind.
He wanted to kill another mother.
He wanted to be right.
The first twenty minutes, he viewed children up to nine years old running from their parents towards the grassy area, or racing to the swings for a two-minute play. He saw a father ask his daughter what she did in school that day and her enthusiastic response with regards to mathematics.
There were scores of mothers who used this time to engage with each other rather than their children, and there were slightly older kids who walked home alone or in small groups.
None of them were right.
The monster in the woods knew that he could not walk out into the middle of a crowd and start shooting.
Don’t blame Michael.
He needed strays. Stragglers. The lame and wounded antelope that can’t keep up with the herd. The weakest link. He heard the woods whisper to him.
You are a predator.
It wasn’t the woods that whispered. It was me.
Then nobody came for three minutes. He was left with the trees to think. But he couldn’t think in there. It would get in the way of what he had to do.
Michael Brady rounded the corner, followed closely by Jacob, smiling in that way that he did.
He had a couple more minutes left to play with his brother, to talk with him, laugh and get teased by him. He didn’t know that he was about to die. But neither did the man in the woods.
Faith Brady was not far behind. Her legs were long and lean, hugged by dark but faded denim. He stared at her thighs, then her calf muscles. There was an excitement there that he hadn’t felt before. But he wasn’t himself – I’d made sure of that.
This is how the shadow saw her.
Instinctively he moved to the right as the boys powered ahead of their attractive but dawdling mother. He didn’t notice her doting eyes because he didn’t care. He just wanted to get behind her. He wanted to blow her brains out.
The man with the gun was not thinking about the children she would leave behind.
He just wanted to be right.
Faith dropped the bags by her sides, fished around the tight jean pocket for her phone and that man, the one who wanted to shoot her in the back of the head, emerged from the trees unnoticed. He was safely behind her now, out of her line of vision, he could’ve grabbed her but he waited until she picked up the bags again. She’d have her hands full. He didn’t even look at the boys. He thought they were safe.
This is it.
‘Don’t scream. Don’t you dare.’ He whispered in her ear the way I had whispered to him. And he pushed the gun hard into the back of her head. The bullet aiming somewhere between her cerebellum and the occipital lobe.
She was rigid but he sensed that her arms were shaking, still clinging to the boys’ bags.
She’ll take the bullet. She will.
The unknown shadow moved his mouth closer to her ear.
‘Shh. You don’t have to die today, miss,’ he told her, but she didn’t believe him. He was looking at her sons.
Faith Brady’s eyes began to water. She didn’t want to die but she didn’t want this man to know that she was scared.
He knew she was scared.
I knew. I know fear. See also: the dark, propaganda, lack of education, so
cial-media likes.
‘Which one is your favourite, miss? Which boy would you keep with you?’
Trying not to make any sudden movements that might make him pull the trigger, Faith Brady shook the back of her head across the width of the muzzle of the gun.
‘You are running out of time. Call the boy’s name you want to save.’
She won’t choose. She is a mother, the man told himself. And he believed it.
She will take the bullet.
I’ve been around for too long to have had his level of belief in humankind.
THIS IS WHAT I THINK
You are doomed.
There is no way back for you.
The fight is there but you fight for the wrong things.
He held her for a few seconds more, allowing her to mull over his ultimatum. She wasn’t trying to fight him off. He loosened his grip of her mouth. He thought she would say nothing. That she was taking one last look at the boys she had given birth to. The good boys. The ones who would be no trouble as teenagers.
Well, Jacob had the chance to be a little rebellious.
And she had known Michael longer; he was more of a person, somehow.
Why was she reasoning with herself?
Then Faith Brady shocked the man with the gun. She called out. But it wasn’t in warning. She was not telling her sons to run. She was not saying one last goodbye or stating that she loved them both.
She was choosing.
‘Michael.’ She spoke loud enough that Michael could hear her. She only said his name but what she was really saying was, I choose Michael.
I choose myself.
And she knew it was wrong immediately.
But it was too late.
Michael turned around first to answer his mother’s call and the Ordinary Man with the gun knew the child that she had chosen. He moved the gun from her brain and pointed it over her shoulder at the boy deemed not enough and he shot that poor child in the chest.