by Bill Hussey
‘Realise this, then,’ Garret said. ‘Telling the police would be easy. A quick fix. Not real punishment. You must live with it, alone, uncomforted, friendless. Live as you have lived. Put your little soul back into that empty house.’
‘Yes …’ she spoke slowly. ‘Seventeen years for nothing. But it will be for Simon now. It will be real. Yes, thank you.’
Garret heard her footsteps, hesitant in the hall, and wasn’t surprised when she spoke again.
‘What did you do with the body?’
‘Don’t think about it,’ he replied.
The front door whined and clicked shut. Garret wondered if he had done the right thing. Might she not phone Trent as soon as she got home and tell him everything? Even if she did, a sober-looking fellow like that would never believe her, would he? Still, it struck Garret as too dangerous a risk. She ought to be dealt with. But the Doctor had made it plain that she was not to be touched. Not yet.
The mantle clock chimed three. There was still time to visit the army surplus store before his appointment at the glass factory.
Just young Mr Lloyd, he told himself, and then the Doctor must keep his promise.
Fifteen
Jamie slammed the door. From inside the house, he heard the gruff, exasperated calls that told him to stop being a ‘fool hothead’. The last bellowed admonishment – Jees-us, Jamie, grow up – sent him vaulting over the garden gate and sprinting across the farmland that backed onto his grandad’s house. In the spring, golden light from this cornfield was thrown onto the ceiling of his grandad’s sitting room. Jamie would lie dozing on the sofa and watch the rectangle of honeyed light sway above his head. Now the harvest was over and the field was desolate.
The wide-ploughed furrows made it hard going. Like running in a dream, he thought, when you’re being chased by a zombie, and you should outrun ’em easy, but your legs won’t work and the air’s thick as treacle. He ran the width of three fields before collapsing beside a dyke. He laid on his back and felt the gutsy tattoo hammer inside his chest. A few gulps of air later, the beat steadied.
‘Sonovabitch. Sonovafuckinbitch,’ he garbled.
He wasn’t sure who the insult was aimed at – Jack or his grandad – but he felt bad for saying it. But why should he feel bad? ‘Jack doesn’t want to see you anymore’. She’d corrected herself, to make it seem like he didn’t want to see either of them, but the slip had been made. Jack hated him. That deserved a ‘sonovabitch’ didn’t it? And his grandad? Well, that old git had called his own daughter – Jamie’s mother – a whore. A WHORE. Jamie punched the ground until his fists ached. Sonovabitch … sonovafuckin …
His temper ebbed and flowed. One minute he was furious, the next the anger cooled and all that he felt was heartache at Jack’s rejection. He watched bloated rain clouds inch across the sky. In the next field, a scarecrow nodded in the wind while a mangy crow stalked across its shoulders and pecked at its hat. Resentment continued to churn in the back of his mind. His grandad must have known that something was bothering him as soon as he brushed past the old man with a muttered ‘Hi’, and collapsed in front of the TV. Tom Howard had set out the Risk board on the dining table and asked Jamie if he wanted a game. A half hour in, and Jamie had just invaded Japan, when his grandad asked what was riling him.
‘Come on, son, leave the yellas alone for the minute. Tell me the trouble.’
‘That’s racist,’ Jamie muttered.
‘Well, I’m always being told I’m something-ist. Racist, sexist. The only thing they’ll let you be when you’re old is defeatist. They positively encourage that. Come on boy, what is it?’
Jamie had burst into tears and blurted out everything. Then, after a few minutes’ thought, his grandad called his mum a whore. Well, he hadn’t actually said ‘whore’. He said she’d had a lot of men – failed relationships (correcting himself quickly) – and that maybe Jack wasn’t the only one to blame for the break up. Yesterday, Jamie would have had sympathy with this view. Hadn’t he accused his mother of distancing Jack? Suddenly, he realised what was fuelling his rage. Shame: Jack loves Mum, he thought, I know it. But he hates me. Hates me so much he broke up with her … But why does he hate me?
Perhaps you’re too pushy.
The thought jarred in Jamie’s head, as if it hadn’t been his thought at all. He tried to dismiss it, but it developed:
You’re too involved, too desperate to see them together. Jack must have picked up on it and been frightened away. Maybe Jack wants kids of his own. Maybe you bug him with constant pestering about comic books and kiddy crap. Maybe …
Jamie sat up and listened. He had heard something outside that inner dialogue. Footsteps on wood. They seemed to come from the little bridge twenty yards or so downriver. But only that ragamuffin old crow strutted along the handrail, rearranging its plumage like a drunk adjusting his clothes after a brawl. He must have imagined it. Still, there had been an abruptness to the sound that didn’t seem like the work of imagination.
‘Trip-trap, trip-trap, trip-trap. Up jumped the troll. I’m going to eat you up,’ Jamie whispered.
The Billy Goats Gruff had once been his favourite bedtime story. Whenever his mum adopted the grumbling voice of the troll, he had laughed and trembled, imagining that at any moment her lips would draw back to reveal wicked, needle-sharp teeth.
Rubbish, Jamie thought. Baby stuff.
Yet, glancing beneath the bridge, he half-expected to see yellow eyes staring back at him. A squat, grey-skinned body would be hunkered down low in the murky water.
Don’t believe the storybook, Jamie, it would say, I ate them all. I ate Little Billy Goat Gruff, I ate Medium-Sized Billy Goat Gruff, I ate Big Billy Goat Gruff. And I’ll eat you, too.
He scrambled to his feet, feeling stupid, but also a little frightened. He glanced down at his trainers. They were caked with mud. His mum was gonna have a fit. Shame-faced at his own baby-thoughts, he began to trudge back across the field.
Then he stopped dead. He had heard it again. Footfalls on wood. Cawing and a furious flap of wings sounded behind him. And footsteps, slow and creaking. This was ridiculous. He swung round. The chuckling stream and the laughing crow fell silent. The sun flashed across the fields. Across the scarecrow that stood upon the bridge. Watching him.
Although he couldn’t make out the face beneath the shadow of its wide-brimmed hat, Jamie knew that it was staring directly at him. It remained so still that, for a moment, he wondered if somebody had propped it up against the handrail as an early Halloween prank. If he was stupid enough to approach, some fuckwit kid was bound to jump out of the hedgerow, screaming. It was just a mangy old scarecrow after all. It wasn’t as if it could …
It moved. The head tipped to one side, posing like Mr Fuckface Fosker when announcing particularly difficult homework projects. Then it raised its hand, its shirtsleeve hitching up over a fleshless wrist and forearm. It beckoned.
Jamie knew he shouldn’t go near the bridge. That was the moral of the tale: trolls live under bridges. They grab and tear and rip. They eat you up. They grind your bones to make their bread. They take you to the dark places, far away from the watchful world. They take you to the woods. So he would stay put. He wouldn’t go anywhere near the beckoning figure. Not a chance. However resolute this decision, it seemed not to communicate with his legs. He glanced down. In sudden, sharp jerks, like a poorly operated marionette, he was stumbling towards the bridge. The muscles in his legs flexed and braced as he tried to resist the force that dragged him on. It was no good. He could not stop himself. And then, all at once, the boy realised that the pressure wasn’t external at all. There was an insane sliver of curiosity inside his own mind that impelled him to meet the figure.
I want to see its face, he thought. Shit, NO! I don’t want to see its face … I want to see its face …
The wind blew the hood of his Parka across his head, but it did not obscure his view of the beckoner. The rags it wore remained unruffled by the breeze, but
the brim of the floppy hat shivered. Below it, Jamie could see bloodless veins standing out in cords, as the head worked left to right, left to right, left to …
How had the scarecrow walked across the fields? How had it …
Jamie’s stomach shrank. His bladder gave way. Gooseflesh puckered his skin and sent his testicles riding up into the cavity of his body. The scarecrow was still in the far field. It had not moved. The thing that waited upon the bridge was something other. An animated mannequin was frightening enough, but instinct told Jamie that whatever the scarecrow’s doppelganger turned out to be, it was something much, much worse.
The tips of his trainers touched the bridge. He stopped. It wasn’t a conscious effort. It was as if the decision had been made for him. He was close enough now to see the lower half of the thing’s face. Thin, waxy lips drew back across a set of worn teeth. It smiled. The sandy skin of its jaw was broken in places, so that bone showed through like brilliant white pebbles on a dirty beach. Its mouth hitched open. Wider, wider, wider, until it resembled the wailing figure from that painting called The Scream. So wide now that Jamie thought, if it pitched forward, it could swallow his head whole. He saw himself consumed, torn apart inside that gangling frame.
But the figure did not move. The only part of it that stirred was the mouth, which grew ever larger. Saliva dripped between palate and tongue. Then, through that gaping hole, came the whisper of words. The lips did not form them; they echoed from the back of the creature’s throat, like a voice projected from the depths of a cavern. Those words spoke of ancient, brutal things. And, as they rustled in his ear, like the leaves of old books, Jamie understood the terrors of a grown-up world.
Bob Peterson watched the boy being dropped off at the old guy’s house. He noted the time – 09:51 – took out his thermos of coffee, and waited.
He wished he could do surveillance in his new De Tomaso Pantera instead of the shitty, but inconspicuous, Citroen Sedan. With its brutal Ford 351 4V Cleveland engine, the bright yellow Pantera was just like the one his idol, Elvis Presley, had bought in ’71. While he rummaged through his tapes for ‘Roger Miller’s Greatest Hits’, he contemplated firing a bullet into the dashboard. Then he’d be just like the King, who had shot at his own sleek motherfucker when it had refused to start one morning. He was in two minds, however. A shit-load of hours rooting through dustbins had gone into paying for the Pantera.
It was pure good fortune that Bob had chosen a spot giving a view of the back and front of the house. Bob Peterson relied on a lot of that kind of good fortune because he hardly planned anything. He was always in the right place at the right time. To take the spicy photo of the philandering hubby, to retrieve the incriminating credit card statement before the bin men collected. Well, if you will put KY Jelly and strap-ons on your MasterCard, you deserve to be caught out.
He was listening to Miller crooning ‘The Last Word in Lonesome is Me’, when the skinny little runt banged out of the back door. Bob jumped out of the car and strolled along the public footpath, acting like he was out for a walk. The kid reached the dyke and lay down for a while. Then he got up and walked to the bridge, swaying like he was three sheets to the wind. Now the boy was talking to himself and stepping closer and closer to the dyke bank. Below, the water ran deep and fast. Bob made his dash.
‘Hey? You hear me?’ Bob said. He grabbed the boy’s arm. ‘You all right?!’
Christ, he hated breaking cover, but what else could he do?
‘Huh?’ There was something about the kid’s eyes: was he stoned?
‘Looked like you were gonna go ass over tit there,’ Bob said. ‘Who were you talking to?’
‘Huh? What …? I don’t know what you …’
‘Looked like you were talking to somebody.’
‘I don’t remember. Someone was here … I don’t remember …’
With a troubled look from Bob to the bridge, the boy took off back across the field. Bob watched until he clambered over the gate and re-entered the house. Then the private detective stepped onto the bridge and rested his back against the handrail. Feeling the nicotine demon on his shoulder, he took out a strip of gum and chewed hard. That was when he saw the footprints on the slats. Wet footprints with maggots rolling at their edges. They weren’t the kid’s. The kid hadn’t come onto the bridge. Bob Peterson shuddered.
Once, an irate husband had cornered him in his office and shoved a shotgun between his teeth. Bob had noted with interest that here was a Benelli M1 pump action piece. The kind used by American cops up until a few years back, when the model had been succeeded by the Benelli M3. Not a bad toy, all things considered; Christ knows how that asshole had got hold of it. Then he’d grabbed the barrel, removed it from his mouth and told the stupid motherfucker to get out of his office. Bob Peterson was not easily scared. But, for some reason, those still-drying footprints would haunt his dreams for many nights to come.
Sixteen
Sister Agnes Hynter stared at the two detectives. Jack tried one last time:
‘Agnes, if you can hear me, can you write down anything that might help us?’
The pencil faltered on the page. Then it was dropped again from the nun’s balled fist.
‘You can’t expect miracles,’ Dr Jamison whispered. ‘The poor dear’s lucky to have any motor functions at all.’
Soon after their arrival at the nursing home, Jack and Dawn had been introduced to this sad scene. A tiny room containing a tiny woman, aged suddenly beyond her sixty years; hunched over, child-like, trapped inside an ungovernable body. Sister Agnes had suffered her stroke on the night of Father Brody’s disappearance, brought on, no doubt, by the blow that had knocked her unconscious.
‘Did you know Father Brody, Doctor?’ Dawn asked.
‘I rarely saw him,’ Jamison said, shining a pinpoint light into Agnes’ eyes. ‘He, like poor Agnes, had always been in robust health. A very powerful man, in fact, in mind and body. That’s what’s so strange.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Why, Agnes’ phone call that afternoon. She called my office, telling me Brody was behaving out of character. She was flustered, but it didn’t sound serious. A lot of these old chaps go down hill without much warning. I said I’d pop in when I could. I was about to leave the surgery in the early evening, when I got a call from the Home saying Brody had recovered. I said I’d visit the following day.’
‘Did you recognise the voice of the person who called?’ Jack asked.
‘No. But there are so many comings and goings here staff-wise.’
‘Did Sister Agnes mention anything specific that Brody had said?’
‘No. No, I … Wait a minute. There was a name. The name of a doctor, and of Brody’s old parish. Some bird name …’
‘Crow Haven?’
‘Crow,’ Sister Agnes murmured. ‘Crow … man.’
She snatched up the pencil. Jamison made a move to placate her, but she swatted him away. Her eyes fixed on Jack. The pencil worked, scrawling two dark circles over and over until the paper had torn through.
‘Crow. Doctor. Eyes,’ the nun intoned, spitting over the page. ‘Crow, Doctor, Eyes; Crow, Doctor, Eyes … Eyes – See – You – Eyes – See – Boy.’
Before Jack went up to Brody’s room, he inquired if there had been any visitors on the night of the disappearance. The security camera footage had shown no-one arriving at the Home after six p.m. As it seemed that Brody had not been abducted, the working theory was that it had been he who dealt Sister Agnes the crippling blow. Dr Jamison had protested that, in her phone call to his office earlier in the day, Agnes stated she had locked the priest in his room, for his own safety. When the Brookemoor police arrived, however, Brody’s door had been found open.
Jack did a circuit of the old priest’s room. He checked under the bed and mattress and behind the headboard. He even pulled back the edges of the carpet where the tacks had come away. Finally, he came to the wardrobe. He rummaged beneath piles of clothes until he came
across a collection of musty diaries. He carried each to the bed and laid them out in order. They spanned the years 1946–1994. As he arranged them, he saw that the journals had been written in a variety of locations: Sydney, Lima, La Paz, Cusco and, finally, Crow Haven. All had been penned in a firm, bold hand. All except the Crow Haven diaries, these written in letters so shaky they were barely legible.
As Jack took a cursory glance through the journals written prior to the Crow Haven period, he noticed how detailed and full of colour they were. A trek that Brody had completed across the Andes to the forgotten Inca city of Machu Picchu was a prime example:
5/6/65- We reached the Sun Gate before dawn. The mountain terraces below were hidden in the boiling mist. I was left wondering how Hiram Bingham had felt – the first white man to see this sight in centuries – as he looked down into the valley and waited for the ‘Old Peak’ to unveil herself. As we watched, a condor broke through the blanket and heralded the dawn. In the same moment, the sun hit the top of the gate and the mist rolled back, revealing the ancient city. I was dumbstruck. Never before have I felt the utter inadequacy of language to express the stirring of the soul.
In fact, all the old diaries were full of these kinds of observations, stories and transcribed conversations. The priest had certainly seen the world, and had delighted in trying to recapture his experiences. It was only in the later Crow Haven diaries that an odd, staccato voice entered Brody’s writing:
1st Jan 1977 – Bad dreams. Dead? We – the whole village – pretend to forget.
3rd May – Keep thinking of books. Should we have burned them?
23rd Aug – Mind easier now. Is he fading?
30th Oct – The children draw their pictures, sing their song. Call him The Crowman.
There were many years of these curt, sad little entries.
Dawn tapped the door. Her inquiries of the Home’s staff and residents had yielded little more than the Brookemoor police had already ascertained. Nobody at the home believed the hypothesis that Father Brody had hurt Sister Agnes. Some lunatic had broken in and taken the old priest: Why had the security cameras not picked up the intruder? No idea, but Asher Brody is a good man.