by Adam Nevill
‘And you put him down there. A terminally ill man. You wanted him dead. And you thought you had killed him by putting him inside.’
‘Fought? He was dead. Fergal checked. He didn’t last the night. And no one screams like that and comes out standing. No way. ’Cept for you.’
Stephanie smiled as cryptically as she could.
‘It’s wiv you now, ain’t it? That’s what he’s afraid of, eh? Fergal is shitting himself cus it’s speaking to you. I’m right. I know I am. It went from Bennet’s dad to Bennet, then from Bennet to Fergal. Then from Fergal to you. I fucking know it. You can’t trust no one. Can’t trust nuffin’. What’s it want now? You tell me? Yeah? Yeah? What’s it want?’
‘Let me go. Let me out. I’ll say you helped me. That you were a prisoner too. Two against one. You were afraid for your life, and rightly so. Because when Fergal’s done me, Knacker—’
‘Fuck off! You don’t know nuffin’.
‘And when he’s done Svetlana—’
‘Fuck off! We go way back. Me and him been in all sorts of scrapes.’
‘It’ll be your turn.’
‘Fuck off, I said.’
‘And you know it.’
‘Fuck, fuck, fucking hell.’ Knacker dragged his fingers down his face and shook his head. He was out of his league. He turned and ran to the bed, snatched up the bottle of acid. ‘You tell me, yeah? You tell me what it’s asking for? More girls? That’s what it wants, eh? More girls? That what I gotta do to keep it away from me, yeah?’
‘It wants company, Knacker. What it always wants,’ Fergal said from the doorway, before he walked into the room and slowly shut the door behind himself.
FIFTY-NINE
Hours had passed; it was dark outside. Stephanie could feel her humanity trying to return.
During the previous night, trauma had flattened any sense of who she used to be, and it had only reinforced its grip of numbness after the fresh violence of the morning. But now the part of herself that registered fear and grief and hope was incrementally expanding and trying to remind her of who she was, and how she should respond to the things she experienced. A part of her psyche had run into the road and was screaming before Stephanie’s windshield, flagging her down with crazed hands, trying to slap and claw its way back into her life. But she didn’t want to feel normal again, not yet, because when the end came she would only feel worse.
What she had witnessed after Fergal had crept up the stairs and entered the room had left her feeling sick and physically weak for hours; the violence he had inflicted upon Knacker was a statement and a reminder that she was not like them. Not of them, nor this house.
Fergal had not left to get polyfene. He had pretended to leave to test Knacker because he suspected betrayal. This was a place in which the worst things happened and the worst people flourished. Maybe something had told Fergal as much: a serpent that might be whispering to him again.
It takes one to know one.
And now Stephanie began to shake again, to tremble and to desperately want the relief that could not come, because she was cornered and trapped and chained to a bed and forced to remember. In here, fixed to a metal bedframe and looking at the empty wardrobe, with the mirrored doors smashed out, she was left with nothing meaningful to occupy her mind. And again, in her memory, she could hear Knacker shouting, ‘Leave it out! Leave it! Fergal! Leave it!’
After the first punch had landed on his forehead, Knacker had started that chant as his wits scrambled to get airborne so he could begin blagging his psychopathic mate into another course of action. But Fergal wasn’t having any of it. Fergal enjoyed it. Loved it. Any reason, any excuse; violence made him come alive in a way that nothing else could, not even alcohol or drugs. Stephanie understood this now.
And her memory was misfiring as it had done after Ryan had been kicked to death. Most of what had happened in the room that morning she managed to suppress, save for key images, scenes in Technicolor that stabbed quickly into her thoughts and then repeated their highlights in a slow motion cycle, before vanishing again and returning her to the present, sickened afresh and weak in body.
And then she would hear Knacker’s voice again. How high-pitched it had become, squealing as the younger man, his friend, beat him. And the cycle of reluctant remembrance would begin anew.
Fergal’s neck and face had bloomed bright red, and then shadowed to a purple-black that was too awful to look upon, but too compelling to not see. His expression was all yellow teeth and flared nostrils, slit eyes inside screwed up skin; he’d actually snarled like an animal. Saliva had spat from his mouth like he was a barking dog with a disease. He had been transformed, totally, by rage.
‘It was her! It was her! Tried to get me to grass to the filth!’ But Knacker’s attempt to save himself and transfer the violence onto Stephanie had only incensed Fergal even further. And the blow he’d then wielded into Knacker’s bleached face had made the sound of a coconut thumped by a cricket bat. Skull echoes and jaw judders.
Stephanie was sure Knacker’s neck had snapped or his skull had shattered like a ceramic vase. ‘Fuzzzzz sake, like,’ Knacker had mumbled, and his arms had gone limp as he tried to hold Fergal back, or shove him away; by that point the intentions behind the gesture were as unclear as Knacker’s drunken eyes.
Knacker had then tried to turn around and stagger away from the attack, which only produced the same reaction as petrol thrown onto a garden fire. ‘Don’t you turn your back on me!’ Fergal had roared this over and over again, like he was creating a rhythm for the flurry of bone-deep punches while spraying the air with spit.
Not being able to gain easy access to his friend’s face had simply enraged Fergal to such an extent that he had clutched a handful of Knacker’s hair on the very top of his skull, and pulled his head down so that he could hammer a fist into the smaller man’s face. And even though Stephanie had turned her head away, a sound followed her, a noise similar to a large metal spoon repeatedly striking an open crate of eggs until they were all smashed to liquid.
A part of her she had only known inside the kitchen of the ground floor rooms, feelings she still tried to condemn in retrospect, emotions she believed had no place inside of her, had suddenly surged at that point with a blind and maddening excitement. And only afterwards did she detest herself for the overwhelming presence of this new desire. But at the time of Knacker’s destruction she had wanted to chant ‘Kill him! Kill him! Kill him!’ as Fergal punched and punched and punched something that had gone silent on the floor. Then she had thought of Margaret, young, beautiful Margaret, and she had groaned and felt her stomach desperately trying to retch its emptiness into a room that felt small and insubstantial around the frenzy of violence she was convinced had created another dead body at 82 Edgehill Road.
But even the punching and the kicking that smashed Knacker’s body half under the bed, where he choked for air through the blood that was inside his broken mouth, was not sufficient punishment or satiation for Fergal’s rage. Because he then pulled Knacker out from under the bed by his curly hair, dragged him like a child across the floor, raised him from the ground and pitched his floppy body into the mirrored doors of the wardrobe.
Only the silvery crash following the explosion of a human body through two broad glass doors snapped Fergal out of his violent trance. And for a while he seemed disorientated, and just stood still, sniffing and looking at the cut knuckles on one hand. Eventually he gazed at Knacker and nonchalantly said, ‘Cunt.’
Holding one arm stiffly, supporting the wrist with his other hand, Fergal wandered out of the room, sniffing as he went.
And his exit broke Stephanie from her torpor and she scrabbled as far as the remit of her chain would allow, to locate, seize and retrieve a long sliver of mirrored glass from the carpet, before returning to her former position at the foot of the bed.
She slipped the piece of broken glass behind her bottom and beneath the bed. And then sat back against the mattress, panting an
d almost weeping with relief that the violence had stopped.
Incredibly, and impossibly, Knacker wasn’t dead. Though he didn’t move from where he was positioned half inside the wardrobe cavity, he had coughed and muttered something to himself before falling silent again.
Fergal had come back into the room grinning, one hand wrapped in sodden toilet paper. He’d smiled sheepishly at Stephanie as if nothing significant had occurred in the room, said, ‘Oh dear.’ This was followed by the deep, forced ‘Ho Ho Ho’ imitation of a laugh. ‘Fink he’s gonna have headache. What you fink? He he he.’ He prodded Knacker’s still and silent form with the toe of a dirty training shoe. ‘You’s been asking for a shoeing, Knacker, longer than I can honestly remember.’
The next laugh that came more readily sounded devious. He followed the laughter by spitting a long slug of phlegm and saliva onto Knacker’s back, before he dragged his mate by one leg across the broken glass and into the corridor outside.
Fergal only returned to the room to side-foot the larger pieces of broken glass to the foot of the wardrobe and away from Stephanie. And as he kicked the glass she’d shrunk at the thought of him searching under the bed and finding the shard she had retrieved.
He’ll kick you to death where you sit.
But Fergal never came near the bed. And before he left the room he grinned at her. ‘Oh, do you know if that shop by the pub sells polyfene? Afraid you is going up the garden behind that tree wiv your boyfriend. You can keep him company.’
DAY NINE
SIXTY
Feeling damp and uncomfortable, Stephanie awoke sometime in early morning, lying in a foetal position, huddled into her herself on the floor at the foot of the bed. She shivered, uncomfortable inside her own skin, and realized she had come on as she slept.
There had been a dream but she couldn’t remember much of it besides the fading and ill-recollected notion of someone standing alone within a wide, flat field of small green crops. And she had come awake saying, ‘No, no, no, no I did not…’ But another vague and surreal dream was the last of her worries now.
She quickly became aware of how weak she felt from hunger, her stomach burning and cramping; all she had eaten in three days was half of a sloppy burger Knacker had brought her. At least Fergal had given her water after he’d returned to the house following a sortie to find polyfene. Whether he was successful or not she had no idea. But he didn’t kill her when he returned, so maybe his pursuit of a roll of plastic in which to encase her body had failed. Instead of delivering a violent death he had brought her water. Tap water collected in a dusty plastic measuring jug he must have rooted out of the kitchen cupboards.
Stephanie drank all of the water within minutes of Fergal’s departure from the room, about a pint’s worth, and she had urinated into the saucepan sometime later, not long before she fell asleep while curled around the shard of broken, mirrored glass. A waft of her own waste hung around the foot of the bed as she fell away from the world and into an exhausted, wretched sleep.
After waking, during the hours she’d had to sit alone and reflect, she had fashioned a knife handle out of a single stocking that had once belonged to Margaret, and which she had been able to reach in the centre of the bed. She made the handle by repeatedly wrapping the flimsy hosiery, from toe to rubbery hold-up top, around the shard so that she wouldn’t cut her hand on the edges of the long fragment of glass when she found an opportunity to stab Fergal.
She had thought of using the glass spike on Fergal when he brought the water, but he had stayed clear of her and not lingered. Just put the jug on the floor and said, ‘Yum, yum.’ Then checked the cuff around the strut of the bedframe and left the room without another word. She had needed him closer.
Next time he came inside she would have to cut him, and before she fell asleep she had made considerable efforts to recall what she had been taught during her GCSEs, about where the major arteries were inside a human body. She needed to find one under his pasty flesh where it was exposed at throat or wrist. She doubted she could wield a fatal blow with a piece of mirror, and it would probably snap within the resistance of his dirty brown parka if she missed his flesh, but she wanted him hurt before he killed her. That idea was not only a source of comfort but now her sole purpose. The idea, uncomfortably, functioned as a source of excitement, as if the new aspect to her character that she’d discovered downstairs, and while Knacker was kicked around the floor, was trying to take hold of her again.
After his beating there had been no further sighting of Knacker, or even any sound of him on the first floor. A small mercy. She imagined him writhing around broken bones in a bed at the top of the house. Or perhaps Fergal had finished him off and buried him in the garden. No matter the length of their shared criminal history, she could not imagine them repairing their bond after such an attack. The duration and ferocity of the violence would have been a deal breaker between even the most devoted brothers. And the most awful aspect of all, lingering from the confrontation, was Fergal spitting onto his insensible mate as Knacker lay semi-conscious, half inside the ruined wardrobe. They were worse than rabid animals.
Perhaps Knacker had even been left bleeding on the kitchen floor of the ground floor flat, something she would only wish upon her worst enemy. So in her cold and discomfort she hoped that Knacker was in there, down there, and being investigated right now by the occupants before he joined them in a darkness that would never end for him. But then, if she were forced to endure an eternity inside this house after her murder, as a semi-aware presence, she realized her suffering would be greater if Knacker was inside the blackness with her; he might be able to torment her as Bennet still made his victims suffer.
She clenched her eyes and her fists and her mind to shut out any recall of the previous night, and what death inside this building seemed to suggest as a continuance of self, or a part of self.
Stop it, stop it, stop it …
She held the shard of glass tighter and did not return to sleep. Instead she sat alone in the darkness and listened to the other women of the house. Her neighbour sobbed against the wall for hours. A door on the first floor opened and closed several times; what she assumed was the bathroom door. Feet moved up and down the corridor outside. Steps of the distant stairwell creaked.
Around the curtains she watched dawn arrive incrementally in a variety of colours: indigo, blue, silver, white, before settling for grey. Rain pattered against the window to wake the world. With a trickling sound the radiator came on and warmed the room. This usually happened around six.
So was this to be her last day? She seemed to have been living on borrowed time for days, before her end came in this wet city, inside a half derelict house upon a mostly forgotten street.
It’s how so many must die.
When thirst and hunger made her moan, she decided she’d had enough. It was time. That time. Time to speed things up, to force a resolution, a conclusion. To get this over with.
I will not spend another night inside this house.
I will not spend another night inside this house.
I will not spend another night inside this house.
She moved the shard of broken mirror and held it close to the small of her back. Moved the glass about in her fingers to gain the best purchase for a thrust.
Aim for an eye.
That was asking a lot for someone who had never stabbed anything before. Maybe the bigger target of a cheek would be better. The glass would snap on impact but the point was sharp and should leave a mark that would be permanent. A scar on the awful face of a demented killer would be her final act and her legacy. But it was better than just dying in this evil place.
Maybe that’s what death mostly was: misery, exhaustion, despair, and just getting used to the idea through a series of steps towards the inevitable end. Who had the luxury of going at home in bed, surrounded by loved ones, satisfied their life had been fulfilling and had fulfilled some purpose? Since when did death have any regard for pers
onal development or time? Maybe there was no such thing as time anyway.
Her thoughts seem to grow too vast for her skull and they made her feel tired, sluggish.
You can sleep when you’re dead.
Or can you?
A brief notion of taking her own life from the wrist made her shudder and she shut the thought out. No, she didn’t think suicide would be possible. Not yet. But after another couple of days of this she might be more comfortable with the idea.
I’m not going out like that.
Dispassionately and uncharacteristically, as if some dark and insidious reptile was coiled inside her mind and hissing advice, she decided it was better to be killed after inflicting a terrible wound on her murderer. And if she died angry and vengeful, perhaps she would remain as such, and not as a victim who lingered between these horrid walls forever.
Not long now.
The first visitor to enter her room was a surprise.
SIXTY-ONE
Stephanie heard two sets of footsteps slowly make their way to the door. One of them had to drag itself down the corridor. The second set of footsteps followed patiently and in silence.
When the door was unlocked, she heard someone breathing heavily from the exertion of turning the key and the door handle.
The door opened slightly, but no one came through. Not for a while anyway. Voices entered instead.
‘I want it done by the time I come down, yeah?’ It was Fergal, but whoever he spoke to did not answer, which angered him. ‘Yeah? You fucking deaf as well as stupid?’
‘Awright, awright,’ Knacker said in reply, and in a voice that suggested a speech impediment.
‘She’s the reason you got fucked up, so deal wiv it or I will deal wiv you.’
‘I said awright, yeah?’
‘She ain’t done by the time I’m done with the other slit, then you can start cutting your own polyfene to size. You got it? Five minutes, tops.’