by Will Carver
I knew she’d pick him, the gunman boasted to himself.
But she relented, pulling her hand back to her side. She closed her eyes. He could not see her face but that is what she did. And then she spoke.
‘Take me.’
He pulled the trigger. He was shocked. He had hoped that a mother would eventually sacrifice herself but he hadn’t truly believed that it was possible. Like so many in Hinton Hollow, he had lost his faith.
But there was no time for reflection. The rain cover was now peppered with a salsa of brain, skull and blood. The baby was crying. Further along Stanhope Road, the other mother, the lucky one, pulled her child to the ground to protect him.
The boy he thought was going to be chosen did not turn around straight away. He was still looking dead ahead. He was doing as his mother had asked. He was behaving.
By the time Ben Raymond looked over his shoulder, the man who had shot and killed his mother was merely a shadow in a long coat disappearing onto Oakmead.
Moments later, the town’s police inspector came speeding along the road towards the carnage on his pushbike.
A baby wailed.
A boy, in shock, rummaged through a bag for a crumpled cinema ticket.
And a mother held hands with her town as they both died.
Drifting once more into faultless nothingness.
MOMENTS
This is how Inspector Anderson fucked up and got Catherine Raymond killed.
Anita Hayes approached the chief at his desk. He was fake tidying, trying hard to think with his head and not with his tightening balls. He had to get down to Stanhope Road and announce himself as present.
But the councilwoman seemed to glide across the room to him. Her blouse was unbuttoned and he could see enough skin to excite him. She approached him at the desk and pulled his head into her breasts – he was the perfect height while seated. She ruffled his hair. He tried to pull back but not too hard.
Hayes could feel Anderson’s soft facial hair tickling her skin as he started to kiss her, his large hands reaching around and pressing into her back before unfastening her bra.
The scene ended painfully on the floor surrounded by broken wood. Her joke comments on his prowess had proven to be accurate. The desk had finally given way. The papers and stationery Anderson had been pretending to tidy had been swiped across the room just before he picked up the councillor and lay her on her back on his old desk.
It held her weight, her feet pointing to the ceiling, heels resting against Anderson’s chest as he thrust inside the married woman. The pressure became too much near the end as his movements sped towards climax and he leant his body against his lover’s to have more skin contact.
The flimsy wooden desk collapsed before Anderson had finished. The councilwoman and the inspector fell to the floor with a crack. Anita Hayes let out a yelp that was distinguishable from the noises of pleasure she had mustered for her man up to that point.
But that did not hold Anderson back. He continued to pump back and forth with his partner bruised and in obvious discomfort. When he finally rolled off the councilwoman, they both laughed. Pleasure and pain. Not something they planned to make regular, but it had worked that time.
He still had time to get to Stanhope C of E.
‘You see? Plenty of time left, you animal. Jump in the car, I’ll close the door when I leave. Think I’m just going to lay here for a few more minutes.’ She smiled and patted his thigh.
But it wasn’t the impromptu, gloom-fuelled intercourse that had helped kill off the last light of Hinton Hollow. It was that message about the missing Wallace boy.
It hadn’t been used in a long time. There had been no call for it. High-speed car chases through The Hollow were very rare; most crimes were not urgent enough. Besides, everybody in town walked. That is how it had always been in their little slice of heaven.
The useless lump of metal would not start. Something was turning over in the engine but nothing was catching, nothing ignited. That was nothing to do with me.
Just dumb luck.
Anderson looked at his watch. He was now late. The man with the gun was already there and he sensed no police presence. All he saw was opportunity.
The chief had to go back into his office, the councilwoman was true to her word and was indeed still lying on the splintered wood of what used to be a police desk. He didn’t speak to her. He found the drawer intact and fished out the key to his bike lock.
Minutes later he was whizzing past an empty school towards another victim. It had been a few minutes. Moments, really.
The thunder crackled overhead, splitting the leaden sky in two, promising to swallow the town whole.
COMING HOME
Liv Dunham picked up the phone after three rings.
She said nothing. She didn’t want to give anything else away.
This time, it was not silent. She could hear her caller breathing. And he was breathing heavily.
She caved. ‘Hello?’
He continued to pant before forcing himself to inhale deeply.
‘Hello?’ she tried again. ‘Who is this?’
‘Liv?’ he spoke.
Tears fell instantly from her eyes.
‘Oz? Is that you? Is that really you?’
‘I’m coming home.’
‘What? Where are you? Are you all right? Did they hurt you? You have to call the police. Oz? Oz?’ She was excited and furious and scared and elated all at once.
‘Forget that for now, Liv. I’m coming home. Wait for me.’
He hung up.
THE WORLD WAS GETTING DARKER
The man with the gun was running through the woods. His ordinarily ruffled hair was now slick with rain and falling over his forehead.
He could hear the trunks of large trees sighing in the wind. The leaves began to form more of a shelter as he edged deeper inside. He could see the silver of the car a few hundred yards ahead. He sprinted that last few hundred yards, hitting the back window of the vehicle with his hands to slow himself down.
The gun was still in his right hand. He tucked it into his belt, the handle uncomfortable on his back. Then he pulled the keys out of his pocket and pressed the button that would unlock the car.
He lifted the door to the boot above his head, letting the light in.
There was nobody inside.
He punched the parcel shelf several times.
It was coming to an end. He knew that. But he wasn’t scared. He felt weak, that was all.
The man with the gun leant his hands on the rubber seal around the boot opening and bent down to look in the car. One of the back seats was pushed forward. Not easy to do from the inside but not impossible.
He looked around over his shoulder. The world was getting darker and he was feeling tired. This was not over, not yet. But he needed rest. Murder had taken its toll on him emotionally and he was drained.
The man, that ordinary man, the man with the gun tucked into his belt, walked around to the rear door of the car – on the side where the seat was unclipped and folded forward – and pushed the seat back into position. But not fully. The clasp did not click shut. He then walked to the back of the car, hoisted a leg and set his foot down in the boot.
Then the second foot.
Moments later, he was crouching down, his right hand held the inside of the boot door, pulling it shut and leaving him lying in the blackness.
He sighed with relief. If the police did venture into the woods, if they followed the whispers that tickled the leaves, if it led them to that car, they would find a man locked inside the boot. He would tell them that he had no idea what had happened, that he had been in there for days with very little food or water. And only a coat to keep him warm at night.
They’d believe him at first. They’d have to. He’d been reported as missing.
Oz Tambor felt around above his head until his hand stroked against the rustling carrier bag. He took both biscuits out and ate them, devouring the first and savouri
ng the second.
He needed to regenerate; then, just as he had told Liv Dunham, he was going to go home.
RELIEF IN DISGUISE
Faith Brady had died but nobody had been murdered on the second day.
Outside, the wind was picking up and blowing out anything that resembled a lingering autumn from Hinton Hollow.
It was dark in that car. And cold, getting colder. But Oz Tambor was alive. The coat he was wearing provided adequate protection but if the temperature dropped any more, he’d be in trouble. At least he still had Liv. The thought of her, anyway. The prospect that this nightmare could come to an end and he would be able to make the wedding that they and the town had put so much effort into.
On the Tuesday evening of that dark week in Hinton Hollow’s past, it was Liv Dunham who had helped Oz through to the next morning. He imagined the ceremony, the flowers, the speeches and the cake. He thought about Liv taking that triangle of toast again one morning. He pushed forward in time to a point where they would be sitting on the sofa, her hand on his hand, his hand on the bump, waiting for movement.
Then his mind skipped back to the past and his own mother. It was a Monday and he had forgotten to do the one thing he had been in charge of. He was supposed to sort himself a passport for his first trip abroad.
He recalled the quarrel with Liv and he wished he hadn’t left things on that note. If he could just talk to her now, he could change things. He remembered that long walk up his mother’s front garden because there was nowhere to park. She’d been annoyed that he hadn’t announced beforehand his intention to visit. Hungry in the dark, cold car, he thought about the smell of the bread that was baking.
May Tambor had handed her son his birth certificate without question. She had been keeping it within her files. Oz’s father had always been so organised in that way throughout his life.
But he wasn’t Oz’s father. And May was not his mother. Not biologically. He’d been on the Earth a matter of days before they’d taken him in as their own. Any other moment in his life but that one, any other day he might have been able to digest the things that May Tambor was explaining to him. But the pressure of the wedding, that he was putting on himself, that the good people of Hinton Hollow were choking him with every time he took that seven-minute stroll to the crossroads in the middle of town, it had mounted up. It was suffocating him. And this news had been the second to last thing he needed.
NEWSFLASH
The last thing he needed was me, bringing a storm.
‘Did you think you would never have to tell me, Mother?’ He’d raised his voice at May. Something he’d never done before. He was standing up, too. He looked threatening.
She’d managed to talk him back down to the couch with her. She’d explained things. He’d felt more settled. He knew he’d have to explain this to Liv as soon as possible.
Then he asked, ‘Is that it? Is that everything? Everything I need to know?’
May Tambor didn’t move.
‘Mum. What else is there? You’ve started this now. The truth. Come on.’
It was too much for him. That last piece of information could have waited. He’d have found out eventually. Oz just could not handle it then. That day. At that moment. Too much information to digest. He was only human. A man. An ordinary man.
He left the house and he was taken. By Evil.
That was not where it started.
Oz Tambor walked back to his car with the darkness that had taken him and he drove out of town. He didn’t really know what he was doing but he knew where he was going. And that was the problem.
The shop sold guns and leather. Oz only wanted one of those offerings.
And that is where it started.
With the intention.
Next, he was driving his ordinary car back to his ordinary town and tapping on the door to what had been, he thought, an ordinary home to an ordinary family.
When May Tambor opened the door, Oz did not afford her the courtesy of choice that he would give to Faith Brady.
Die for me, he had said to the woman who had raised him, looking her directly in the eyes before blowing a hole in her face. In what was continuous movement, he continued walking forward, stepping over May’s body, walking towards the kitchen, swiping the warm biscuits on the counter into a carrier bag and taking his father’s long coat from the rack. It had irritated him for four years that she had left it hanging there.
But that coat was keeping Oz Tambor warm enough in his car on that first night as he listened to the trees talking.
Thinking about the woman he had called Mother his entire life.
And when he would call Liv again.
And he hoped that the next mother he questioned would be different. That she would prove him wrong.
NIGHT, NIGHT
The pig was tied to Darren’s radiator by its leg. It fell over. It screamed. It shit on his dining-room floor. But it couldn’t be heard. Darren had left the radio on a classical-music station, hoping it would calm the animal while also drowning out any noise that it made.
He had left a pile of food on the floor. Apples, lettuce, mushrooms and other vegetables from his fridge he was not going to eat.
The animal was unhappy and alone and in distress, but in no way was the situation worsening the quality of life it had already experienced.
The damn thing should be thankful, Darren thought. I gave it an extra day.
It was lying down on the carpet when the slaughterer returned home from work. Darren could no longer sense the smell at work but it was different in his own house.
‘Oh, you dirty…’ He stopped himself.
Part of him wanted to cut its head off slowly but the mess was already too much in there.
He left the dining room dark and the music on. Then he made himself some pasta and mixed it with a ready-made sauce. He drank three beers while he watched television and ignored any stirrings in the room behind him.
Before retiring for the evening he went to check in on his new companion.
Darren spoke to the pig.
‘That’s right. You get your rest. We are up bright and early in the morning and I will set you free. But you’d better get running because I’m not giving you too much of a head start.’ He smiled. Then he added, ‘Night, night, little one.’
HAPPY ENDING
He’d had to speak with more than one mother. Faith Brady had failed. So, too, had Rachel Hadley, though her intentions could be construed as honourable.
Catherine Raymond had loved her children enough to choose herself to die. That, or she hated herself enough to choose her children to live. Whatever the mother’s motive, it was the result that Oz Tambor, the ordinary man, had been looking for. It had reaffirmed his faith.
He was startled when he awoke in the darkness of the boot. He shot up and rasped his head against the parcel shelf he had punched a few hours before.
Deep in the woods, he was unaware of the panic and malaise that had set in for the Hinton Hollow community. That was not his concern. That something had swept through the town, changing almost everybody into someone they were not, did not mean a thing to the ordinary man. He had changed. He was altered. Oz was still in there somewhere, hanging on to the possibility of his happy ending.
There was no such thing.
Happiness was simply relief in disguise.
Oz’s stomach growled and he rolled his eyes in the darkness, lying back down. He turned onto his stomach and pressed both hands against the back of the seat until it flopped forward, allowing him to crawl out through the gap. No light was let in this time.
He continued through the space between the driver’s and the passenger’s seats, eventually dropping in behind the steering wheel. The keys were in the ignition. He turned them forward one click. The dashboard lit up as he flicked the headlights on. The windscreen wipers squeaked as they pressed against the rain.
He turned around and looked through the back windscreen. All was darkness.
&n
bsp; NO VOICEMAIL
That was it. No more. Maeve was sick of all the waiting around for love. She was tired of putting in all the effort for no reciprocation, no reward. She’d had enough of it from her first husband and she wasn’t going to take that shit from Detective Sergeant Pace.
I WAS CONCENTRATING ON HINTON HOLLOW
So, all of this came – without my intervention – directly from Maeve.
It was all her.
And a little Pinot Grigio.
She didn’t want to text him. She didn’t want to leave a goodbye voicemail. And she knew he probably wouldn’t pick up if she called. It was late, anyway. So she did it the old-fashioned way. She wrote him a letter. Nothing poignant or cutting, no farewell speech.
Just a short note that would let him know it was all over.
She didn’t even write it with her own hand. She typed it and printed it and folded it into three before placing it into a self-adhesive envelope that would be delivered the next day so that he would understand his predicament the moment he returned home.
DAY FIVE
Where you will understand:
The Isaacs family
The significance of pigs
The importance of truth
and why some windows had to be broken.
THIS IS THE END
My small story.
It was strange.
You got angry.
Then it got worse.
Just as I told you in the beginning.
But, if you are still here, it is because you want to know how it ends.
Endings are tricky, aren’t they? You want everything to be resolved, tied up in a little white bow.