And the night took hold.
And still no vehicle passed by.
Until finally, the car’s battery died.
And Fintan Wickerly began to worry.
It was time to make a decision. He was either going to spend the night freezing in the car with no blankets or food – and his stomach had already begun to rumble – or else he was going to have to get out and seek some other form of shelter. He couldn’t remember passing a house in the last few kilometres of his journey, but there had to be one somewhere up ahead, hadn’t there? They don’t just build roads to nowhere, he told himself, as he climbed out of the car for the second and last time.
Fintan had been striding down the middle of the road, as purposefully as his bunion would allow, for what felt like hours and he still hadn’t come across any sign of civilisation. Without a torch or the moon to guide him, he’d occasionally wandered off the track, but then his eyes had adjusted to the night and he’d become more confident. For a while. The purposeful striding was downgraded to a hearty walk and then a sullen trudge as tiredness began to take hold. The rain eased off, not that he cared very much. He was already soaked through. He knew he needed to find shelter quickly. He was wondering how long it would take to die of hypothermia when he heard a howl coming from the woods.
‘Probably longer than it would take to be eaten by a wild animal,’ he muttered.
He wasn’t sure what sort of creature could produce such a howl. A coyote? A cougar? A bear? Did bears even howl? It hardly mattered. What was important was whether or not he could outrun any of them if they caught his scent. He was a forty-seven-year-old burger-loving postman and whatever lurked in the night was a wild animal that survived because of its speed, strength and stealth. The odds weren’t exactly stacked in his favour.
Then he saw a light up ahead. A tiny pinprick in the distance, but a light all the same. He felt adrenaline surge through his body. His legs and arms might not be ripped off after all. He might live. He picked up the pace. Another hundred metres farther on and he could see a blurry, dark shape beneath the light. A contrast to the trees. Was it a house? He was almost sprinting now, his bunion pain a distant memory. No sign of any creature from the woods either. Half a kilometre later and Fintan Wickerly smiled for the first time in six months. It was a house. Of sorts. More like a cabin.
Sweet relief.
Surely whoever was in there couldn’t refuse him shelter. Even if they did, Fintan decided that it wouldn’t stop him. He was going in there no matter what they said. They could give him a meal. And a bed for the night. A hot shower would be nice too. Yes, he’d be their guest. They’d have to treat him right. He left the road, cut through the trees and up a slight incline until he reached the log cabin. It was pretty basic and probably charming in some sort of rustic way, but he didn’t care. All he wanted was some place safe. A refuge from nature. He pounded on the door with his fists.
No answer.
The rain started up again, splattering onto the dirt path that had been made by successive footprints. He tried the handle. To his surprise the thumb latch clicked. He pushed the door open.
‘Hello,’ he called out.
There was no reply. The cabin was small and not very well decorated, but all he focused on were the orange flames flickering in the stone fireplace, bathing the room in a warm, welcoming glow.
‘Hello,’ he shouted again. ‘My car broke down and I need to use your phone. I’m coming in.’
Still no reply. He stepped inside. Ah, he thought, the heat’s the job. He crossed the room, rubbed his hands together and warmed them by the fire before easing himself into the armchair with a satisfied grunt. He slipped out of his shoes, peeled off his stinking socks and laid them on the hearth to dry.
He took another look around the room. Now that he noticed it, there weren’t any homely touches: no flowers or plants, no paintings or photos, nothing to indicate the owner had any family or friends. Just like me, Wickerly thought. He didn’t have friends because he thought most people were boring eejits and why would you want to waste your life hanging out with boring eejits?
As for his family, well, most of them hadn’t spoken to him since he’d tripped over a poorly positioned nephew in his sister’s house and broken his leg. They’d got annoyed with him just because he’d sued them. Why shouldn’t I have sued them, he thought. Stupid child lying in the middle of the floor drooling like a puppy. He’d won the case and the compensation money they’d been forced to give him had paid for his holiday to America. Of course, it also meant his sister and her husband had to sell their house to pay the legal bills, and now there were seven of them living in a rented two-bedroom flat, but that’d teach them to control their children rather than let them run wild around the place like a congress of baboons.
When his feet were toasty and the rest of him had dried out, he decided it was time to locate a telephone and a directory. He had to find a mechanic if he was going to get his car sorted and get back to his holiday. There was another reason too. Even though he wouldn’t admit it to anyone, and didn’t want to admit it to himself, there was a gnawing feeling of doubt at the back of his mind. The bravado he’d felt when he first arrived was fading. Maybe being here wasn’t the greatest idea he’d ever had. The owner would be back soon if that fire was anything to go by, and even though any reasonable person wouldn’t mind someone in trouble warming themselves by the fire, perhaps the owner wasn’t a reasonable person. And this was America, not Ireland. They had guns here. Guns were scary. Especially in the hands of an unreasonable person. Yes, better hurry and find that phone.
He began to search the small cabin. Nothing in the kitchen. No phone in the bedroom. Or the bathroom, which was a good thing. It’d be terribly unhygienic. He turned the place upside down, but he still failed to unearth a phone. And the gnawing feeling grew stronger.
Think, Fintan, he told himself. There might not be a phone, but there had to be a computer. Everyone has a computer these days. He could get in touch with someone on the Internet and they could help him. The only thing was that there was no sign of a computer either. Aha, Fintan thought, clearly on a roll, if the man has a laptop he may have hidden it to prevent it from being stolen. Now where would you hide a laptop?
After a further ten minutes of searching, he thought he’d found it at the back of the kitchen dresser, hidden behind the cereal boxes. But he was wrong. It wasn’t a laptop. It was a long, thin wooden box with gold trim on the edges. It was held closed by a small brass clasp. No padlock though. Wickerly unhooked the clasp with his thumbnail and opened the box. His mouth dropped open when he saw what it contained. I’ve got to get out of here now, his mind screamed, as his legs buckled under him. He grabbed the dresser and steadied himself. This was bad. This was really bad. He was in so much trouble his mind was unable to take it all in.
‘I see Goldilocks hasn’t aged well.’
Fintan’s eyes widened in surprise when he heard the velvet voice of the man who was standing behind him. If he hadn’t opened them to their maximum potential at that particular moment, he’d have opened them even wider when he turned and saw the two dogs flanking the man. Rhodesian Ridgebacks. Like every good postman, Fintan Wickerly knew his dogs. This breed was big and strong, with a distinctive stripe on its back. Ridgebacks had often been used in South Africa to hunt lions. Fintan Wickerly may have been many things, but a lion wasn’t one of them. And he knew just by looking at them that, unlike the dogs back home, these two weren’t afraid of him.
He gulped. ‘I … I …’
The dogs bared their teeth and growled. Low and menacing. Fintan’s shoulders tightened and he felt knots of tension popping up at the base of his skull. He dearly wished he’d stayed in the car.
‘Easy, Keyser. Stand down, Moriarty,’ the man whispered.
The dogs stopped growling immediately and sat back on their haunches. Wickerly said a silent prayer of thanks.
The man standing before him was tall and pale, his smo
oth skin almost white enough to be transparent. He was also good-looking, but in that too perfect way that gives you the creeps rather than drawing looks of admiration. There was something too symmetrical about his face. No flaw to draw the eye and make him seem human.
‘You broke into my home,’ the man said.
His voice was still calm, Wickerly noted. Too calm. Most people coming home and finding a man going through their stuff would either be terrified or furious. This man wasn’t either. A shiver decided to take a jog along Fintan’s spine.
‘Ahm, it’s like this – my car broke down and I lost my phone and it was raining and I was looking for somewhere to shelter. I didn’t know the place was occupied.’
‘I would have thought the fire in the hearth was a clear sign that someone was staying here,’ the man said, his tone only slightly south of freezing.
‘Yes, I, ah, what I meant to say was that I would …’ Fintan realised the sentence had nowhere to go. ‘I don’t want any trouble,’ he added.
‘I don’t care what you want,’ the man said, brushing a stray lock of hair from his forehead. He moved towards the wooden box. ‘What did you see?’
His body language was unreadable. Fintan wondered how he should play this. Apologise? Act tough? It would all depend on whether the man was angry, amused, bemused or concerned.
‘Me? I saw nothing.’
The man’s eyes suddenly burned with fury. Right, Fintan thought, it’s anger then.
‘Tell me.’
‘Or what?’ Fintan asked aggressively. When all else fails, try bluster.
‘They won’t find your body, you know. A single, middle-aged man. From the south of Ireland judging by your accent. A farmer? No, the hands are too soft. But you do work outdoors, you have a ruddy complexion. A postman, perhaps? Three thousand miles from home. On holiday by himself. That means no family or friends. Nobody who’d care that much anyway. You’re someone who can be disposed of very easily.’
Fintan knew he’d stepped into the wrong house at the wrong time. That was very clear now. It was just a pity it hadn’t become clear before the arrival of the terrifying man and the dogs with the crazy eyes. He decided that it would be best for him to do exactly what the man said. That way there might be a chance of surviving the night. A slim chance, but that was better than no chance at all. A million times better.
One of the dogs leaned forward and nuzzled his leg with its wet snout. He could feel its hot breath on the back of his knee. So this is what genuine terror feels like, he thought.
‘I saw a name. And … the thing. The … erm … objects.’
‘What name did you see?’ the man asked.
‘An Irish name. I … it seemed unusual. Here of all places.’
‘Don’t make me ask this question a third time. What was the name?’
‘Colm,’ said Fintan Wickerly.
‘Who sent you here?’ the man asked.
‘No one. I wasn’t lying. My car broke down.’
‘Then you’re just very, very unlucky,’ said the man they called The Ghost.
Two
The library was quieter than usual for a Saturday morning, but Colm didn’t mind. It suited him. He nodded hello to Mrs Dillon, the friendly librarian, then followed up with a ‘hi’ to Edan, the local genealogy expert, who was sitting in his usual spot surrounded by a pile of books and sheaves of papers. He passed by the old people who were poring over the daily newspapers, occasionally raising their heads to comment on the state of the world, and took his place at one of the computers, quickly getting to work.
Two hours later he leaned back and yawned, rubbing his tired eyes. The monitor was a blur. He hadn’t uncovered any new information on The Ghost or the Lazarus Keys, so he’d moved on to researching the working methods of the great detectives: Holmes, Marple, Rockford. He hoped that they might give him some idea of how to proceed with his investigation. He was aware that his interest in the master criminal and the supernatural keys was turning into an obsession, if it wasn’t one already, but he didn’t know how to stop it. All his other interests had fallen away and he’d grown distant with the few friends he had. He wanted to explain his situation to them, but he couldn’t. Having people think he was weird was one thing, allowing them to believe he was mad was another. Thinking about the situation put him in a foul humour, just as it always did.
He was only supposed to have been on the Net for thirty minutes, but when there wasn’t anyone waiting a turn Mrs Dillon allowed him to stay on the computer well past the allotted time.
‘How are you, Colm?’ she asked, leaning over his shoulder. Her hair smelled of peaches and cream.
‘Good thanks, Mrs D,’ he replied, too polite to mention his bad mood. ‘Can I get a print-out of these pages?’ he asked waving his hand in the general direction of the computer.
‘Of course. How’s the book going?’
Ah, the big lie. Colm had been coming to the library every Saturday morning for the last eighteen months and over that time Mrs Dillon had become increasingly chatty. One day, she’d asked him what he was working on. He didn’t want to tell her the truth. It would have sounded ridiculous. So he’d told her that he was doing research for a book he was planning to write. Of course, if you want to keep a librarian off your back, telling them you’re writing a book isn’t the way to go. Books are like catnip to them. It led to a serious amount of questions, which in turn led to Colm having to make up the plot of a story which he had to relay to Mrs Dillon on a monthly basis. After that, every time he went in she would go out of her way to help him. It made him feel very, very guilty.
She printed out the pages he’d asked for, Colm handed over the money, and a couple of minutes later he was out on the street and back in the real world. Unfortunately. The city was sprinkled with the light of the fading sun. Colm swung his bag over his shoulder and headed for the bus stop. The streets were crowded, filled with the hum of conversation and the stop-start of passing traffic.
Colm heard Ziggy before he saw him. His voice rose above the crowd: loud and braying and American, even though Ziggy wasn’t from America; he was born and bred in Dublin. He’d never even visited the US, but he spoke with the accent because he thought it fitted in with his image. To be fair, it did, since his image was that of a Californian surfer. Still, Ziggy didn’t surf and the opportunities for wearing the baggy shorts he favoured were quite limited in the less than tropical temperatures in Ireland, unless you were a fan of goose bumps.
He was a neighbour and classmate of Colm’s, and lived on the far side of the estate. Only two hundred and four steps away, as Ziggy had once informed the class.
‘What’s the difference between the coolest guy in the universe and a chubby-faced mammy’s boy?’ he’d asked. ‘Two hundred and four steps,’ he’d said, pointing at Colm.
Their fathers had worked in the same factory before it had closed down and Colm’s mother was always encouraging Colm to hang out with Ziggy, as she’d recently decided that what he needed was a new friend. She didn’t know what a pain their neighbour was since he was one of those kids who makes sure they are always friendly and polite when adults are around, their nastiness only emerging when the adults leave the room.
For once, Colm was glad of Ziggy’s inability to speak in a tone lower than booming. Being alerted to his presence meant he could avoid him. He wasn’t in the mood for whatever sarcastic zinger Ziggy would send his way. He could see him clearly now, hanging out in front of the chip shop with Iano, the best friend Colm always suspected that Ziggy secretly hated because he was funnier and more popular. Amy was there too. And Stephanie. The ‘A1 Crew’, as they called themselves.
Time to disappear, Colm thought. He crossed the street, waving apologetically to the man on the bicycle who was forced to weave around him. When he was on the far side he glanced back to see if the crew had seen him. That was a mistake.
‘You stepped on me toes, ya chipmunk-cheeked moron.’
Oops.
&nbs
p; In his desire to see if he was in the clear, he hadn’t noticed the three teenagers leaning against the shop front. All of them were dressed in football shirts and tracksuit bottoms as if it was some kind of uniform. Buzzer, Killer and Neil. Three guys with nothing to do and all day to do it.
‘Sorry,’ Colm said.
The teenagers weren’t having that. Colm felt a thump on his shoulder. In the past he would have put his head down and walked away because he knew that they wanted him to react, just to have a reason to start a fight. The smart thing to do was to ignore the punch. And Colm was smart.
Usually, that is. Not today though. Today he’d had enough of all the lies and having to keep his fears bottled up. He felt like a pressure cooker that was about to explode.
He shifted his gaze so that his eyes met those of the guy who was acting like the leader. Buzzer stared back, not even blinking once. His sidekicks stopped slouching. This wasn’t going the way it normally did. It had just got interesting.
He’s going to ask you a question, the sensible part of Colm thought. He wants an excuse to beat you up and no matter what you say he’s going to pretend it’s an insult. Don’t give him the ammunition.
‘What’re you looking at?’ Buzzer asked.
‘An eejit with an enormous nose and a tiny brain,’ Colm found himself replying.
I’m dead, he thought as soon as the words left his mouth.
It took Buzzer a full five seconds before what Colm had said registered. He couldn’t believe this fat little kid had said that and his brain was frantically checking to see if there was another, more respectful, way of interpreting the words.
During the time it took Buzzer to process the insult, Colm’s sudden rush of anger died and he remembered that there were three of them and one of him. But even if there were ten of him and only one of them he’d probably still get his butt kicked. So he used the rest of the time that Buzzer’s brain was grinding into action to take off. He sprinted down the footpath, followed by the words he really didn’t want to hear.
Colm & the Ghost's Revenge Page 2