Hometown

by Luke Walker

  Clothes? What the hell is this?

  It was a bedroom. He was in someone’s bedroom and the room below was on fire.

  Will wiped sweat from his forehead, tried to think clearly and heard a great bark of laughter from straight ahead, high and excited.

  Still with his fingers splayed, Will stepped forward and hit a long line of some thick material. He pulled at it; dust and dirt coated his hands, and he pulled again. The dust played over his mouth and nose. He recoiled, coughing, and yanked hard. A brief burst of cold air hit him from somewhere in front and the rumble of the fire pulsed in reply.

  ‘Karen,’ Will said without hearing the word. He pulled again; more ugly laughter rang out, then the unmistakeable sound of breaking glass below. Cheers.

  Cold air. Rough material.

  Curtains. And a hole in the window on the other side.

  Yelling, Will yanked again. The material tore, dust flew and the curtains collapsed. He threw them off, coughed the filth from his mouth and gazed at the moonlight breaking in through the hole in the glass.

  It shone on him and the curtains. It shone on the mess of broken furniture and old clothes on the floor. And it shone on the ghastly stains on the bed.

  His bed.

  He was in his bedroom, the bedroom he’d slept in for the first twenty-one years of his life, the bedroom his dad now used as a study.

  It was exactly as it had been the day he’d left home, down to the posters on the walls. Only back then, they hadn’t been torn and defaced. Back then, there hadn’t been illegible graffiti sprayed on each wall, drawings and words that didn’t make sense.

  ‘Fuck this,’ Will whispered and stared through the hole in the window. The stink of the smoke had grown stronger. His panic, muted for a moment by shock, returned and he shouted through the hole.

  ‘Hey. I need help. There’s a fire.’

  Movement below. Will saw a few figures, then others, come from the front of the house. Ten of them. Maybe twelve. They gazed up at him. None reacted to his cry.

  ‘Hey,’ Will roared.

  One of the figures took a few steps forward, pulling an object from their coat pocket.

  It was a bottle.

  A second figure joined the first’s side. A spark in their hand and the rag in the neck of the bottle was alight.

  The bottle flew through the air, a little fire rising, then falling towards Will’s bedroom window.

  He screamed once and dropped. The bottle passed his window, then fell. Glass broke; a soft woof of fire and more laughter, high and childish, followed it.

  Will managed to stand. A small patch of the grass at the side of the house was aflame. The figures ran back to the front of the house and Will finally saw how small they were. The kids ran to his front door, coming through the fire they’d started, all coming to him.

  Will moved without any conscious thought. He grabbed a chunk of wood from the floor, didn’t think of it as a piece of the desk he had used for homework and threw it at the window.

  Glass exploded and dropped to shower the grass. Will took another jagged piece of wood, smashed more glass and boosted himself up to the ledge. Fiercely cold air coated his skin.

  ‘Karen,’ Will whispered.

  There were no figures on the grass. The fire from the Molotov cocktail they’d thrown at him had almost extinguished itself. The conflagration below had become a full roar and there could only be seconds before the kids made it up the stairs and smashed through the bedroom door.

  Will jumped.

  He hit the bushes, fell and lay winded on the grass. Above, a full moon shone from a deep black sky. There were no stars.

  ‘Karen,’ Will croaked.

  He rolled and realised he was still holding the piece of wood he’d used to smash the window.

  Voices above. Shouts. Jeers.

  Will stood and ran drunkenly. The shouts changed from excitement to anger. Will dashed alongside his burning home, reached the front garden and raced for the path ahead. Following it brought him to a cycleway. He left that, took a cut lined by black hedges and smelled water. Despite the cold, the water was gorgeous compared to the reek of smoke and dirt which still clung to him.

  Will ran in a straight line, crossed another cycleway and hit grass. The aroma of water abruptly grew sharper. Will crossed the grass, wood against his leg and realised where he’d unconsciously been heading for safety. Monk’s Cave was straight ahead. Picturing the creek which ran from the boulders and shallow pond of the cave to the river was as easy as it had been when the burning shell behind really had been his home.

  Will reached the trees which grew around Monk’s Cave and bare twiggy branches stabbed him. Brushing them aside, he crept into the shadows of the Cave and squeezed between two rocks. Behind, a metal gate blocked access to the interior as it always had and thinking of the complete dark inside sent waves of coldness through Will.

  Relax. Just stay quiet.

  As if on cue, the laughter of the kids who’d burned his house answered him.

  Will pushed himself further down between the boulders. His jacket shifted upwards, taking his shirt with it. His skin pressed against the rock; he jerked in shock at the cold and grazed his back.

  A hiss escaped his mouth. He clamped his lips together, reached to his back and pulled his jacket down. The cold clamped on his arms, chest and face, eating into him, and his breath was fog in the air. Will ducked his head and did his best to still his breathing. The voices drew closer and there was something wrong with the words, something that made them sound like gruff barks more than actual words. One of the kids, a young boy by the sounds, said water. Another replied with a shouted no, and their steps drew closer to Monk’s Cave. Below the steps, a soft crackling rose. Will squinted through a tiny gap in the rocks. The kids carried flaming torches. Four of them. The sticks were simple makeshift lights, casting shadows in a wavering circle around the group.

  Someone barked water again and the group headed to the river. Will readied his legs to launch him. If he made it to the grass and back to the path, he could outrun the little bastards and get somewhere safe, find some help.

  A scream rang out, sexless, full of fear.

  Will jerked upright, exposing his location. The torches lay on the grass close to the edge of the river. He saw running shapes, heard a tremendous splash of water. Someone shrieked, and then silence. The torches burned on the grass. Nothing moved.

  With shaking legs, Will crept out from the boulders and edged along the creek a few yards. With the thin light cast by the moon and the glow of the torches, a small fraction of the river was visible. The surface didn’t move. Holding himself, shivering with cold and delayed reaction, Will crossed to the nearest torch. Not comfortable with taking his eyes off the water even for a second, he fumbled picking up the torch and came close to burning his hand. Swallowing repeatedly, he moved a little closer to the water.

  A massive, howling laugh crashed over him, booming out of the river and from the opposite bank.

  Will dropped the torch and ran for his life.

  Seventeen

  Mud pressed against Stu’s face. He shoved his hands down against the cold ground and pushed himself up. Mud stuck to his lips. In disgust, he brushed it off and blew the remnants from his nostrils. The smell clung to his nose and he wiped at his face, shivering.

  He rose, staring at the house in front. It was instantly familiar.

  ‘Mum? Dad?’

  His voice sounded as if it belonged to someone much younger. Stu took a few tiny steps to study the little of the garden he could see. He finished by facing his parents’ home. It appeared to be normal other than the lack of lights in any window.

  ‘Normal?’ he whispered. ‘How the hell is this normal?’

  A memory hit him and he swayed as if blown by a strong wind.

  This was what he had seen a few days before at work. His parents’ house like something that belonged in a warzone, the whole street nothing but empty houses with smash
ed in windows.

  He stared at the fence on one side and the high row of bushes on the other, expecting the others to be with him, expecting the pub to be there and their conversation about Geri to continue as if it had never stopped. The cold bit at him; he was vaguely glad he’d been wearing a decent sized fleece despite the night not really calling for it. This was winter, not autumn.

  ‘Will?’ he whispered and didn’t even get the breeze as a reply. ‘Karen?’

  A ghastly mixture of panic and fear made his stomach cramp. There were too many corners and dark patches in the garden. Anything could be inside them.

  Fighting his fear, Stu crossed the garden towards the house, planning on knocking on the back door, getting inside and calling the others. He stopped after a few steps and gazed at the remains of the kitchen window.

  A jagged hole spread from the middle of the pane, leaving sharp teeth of glass poking in and out. His gaze moved to the living room window, then up to his parents’ bedroom. All the windows were broken. And there was something on the back door.

  Stu moved closer. Spray paint. Covering the width of the door, a smiling face gazed at him with mocking humour. Seeing the childishly drawn graffiti on the door to his parents’ home brought a new emotion to Stu. Anger. It mixed with his fear and fermented in his mid-section.

  Keep calm, he told himself.

  He moved alongside the house to the side passage. The moonlight didn’t reach that far and the few steps to the gate were horribly black. Stu paused, one hand touching the brickwork of the house.

  Mobile.

  Cursing himself for not having thought of his phone, Stu took it from his pocket and cursed aloud. No signal. He pocketed it, then pulled it free again.

  ‘No time. No date. Handy,’ he whispered.

  Moving forward, he slid his phone into his pocket and kept his other hand on the side of the house. His foot hit the gate; it rattled with a sound that was too loose. Stu fumbled until he found the handle and opened the gate. It let loose a tired creak which didn’t stop until Stu held the gate still and gazed at the front garden.

  It was a scorched mess. Even with a lack of light, Stu could see the burned grass, the flowerbeds ravaged by flame, and the remnants of the tree trunks. The garden hadn’t simply been burned. It’d been torched.

  Stu closed the gate behind himself, walked to the centre of the garden and studied the front of the house. Like the back, the windows were broken. The same smiling face had been painted over the door.

  ‘Bastards,’ he whispered and had no idea at whom the word was aimed. Wind gusted; he shivered and considered entering the house. At once, horror rose and he rejected the idea. Wherever the hell he was, it wasn’t outside his parents’ house. This was a nightmare place and he wasn’t going inside the building in front of him. No chance.

  ‘Where to, then?’ he asked himself and knew the answer.

  Back to the pub. Back to the place he’d been with his friends. Stu pictured the route. At a fast walk, he’d need fifteen minutes to return to the pub.

  A rhythmical sound, something tapping, reached Stu. He walked to the pavement and named the sound. Running feet. Lots of them, coming closer. Exactly as they had during his vision of this place.

  Another whisper spoke, this one from a long-silent corner of his mind concerned only with survival. The whisper muttered with a nameless fear that told him to run before whoever was sprinting closer reached him.

  The sound grew louder. Whoever they were, they’d arrive in seconds.

  Stu jogged to the pavement, faced both ends of Huntsman’s Walk and jogged to his right. Within a few seconds, his jog became a run. He crossed over the road, hit a wide stretch of grass and stopped beside an oak tree.

  The runners were still coming closer.

  Stu ran over the grass and reached the end of Huntsman’s Walk. A short line of paving slabs marked the way between gardens and opened up to Winslow Road shops. A glance told Stu there’d be no shelter in the shops. The few which didn’t have graffiti all over the shutters covering their entrances were full of smashed windows and doors. They were all abandoned.

  Running feet behind and drawing closer.

  Stu dashed past the shops, reached Cromwell Road and ran right, heading towards his old school, a squat building set a fair way back from the road. Stu ran towards the main entrance, panting hard, and looked back. The runners had to be in sight.

  Nobody was visible. The heavy slap of dozens of feet on the ground echoed up and down Cromwell Road all the same, and Stu understood that the invisible runners were almost at him.

  He sprinted into the main grounds and saw a flickering light in a window. It vanished a moment later as if aware he’d seen it. Out of breath, Stu tore towards where the light had been, barely aware of the word please falling from his mouth over and over as he ran.

  Eighteen

  There was someone beside her.

  Karen stayed utterly still. She hadn’t moved in what felt like hours but could only be minutes. Dark pressed on her eyes. The hard seat on which she’d found herself pressed against her back, and there was someone beside her. They hadn’t spoken. Neither had she. There was no need. Even though she couldn’t hear their breathing, she knew they were beside her.

  There was no way of knowing how long it had been since she’d …what? Appeared here? Woken? Whatever had happened in the pub had brought her here and all she could do now was hope the others were somewhere close. The problem was, even if they were close, she couldn’t rely on them to get her out of this.

  Karen lifted her left hand, held her arm steady and eased it down. There was a table in front, not wide by the feel of it. Dust coated it and her forearm. She grimaced at the touch, lifted her arm again and gingerly felt the air beside her level with her head. Nothing there. She pulled her arm back, tensed her legs and prayed there was nothing behind.

  With a massive shove, Karen used her legs to push her chair back and leaped to the side. Her chair hit something hard, clattering as it fell. She ducked, struck a wall and lunged forward.

  The clattering fell silent. Nobody spoke. Karen’s coat brushed against old wallpaper as she stood upright. She rubbed her chest as if to decrease her heartbeat and felt her way along the wall for several seconds until she reached what could only be a door. Something sticky covered the handle. She jerked her hand back, pushed the door with her foot and it eased open to a silent corridor. Karen peered as far as she could to either end and faced the black room again.

  ‘I know you’re in here,’ she said, shocking herself with the sound of her raw, naked fear. ‘You make a move and I’ll run. Think you can find me in the dark?’

  The words wanted to sound tough, in control. They wavered, though.

  ‘You tell me what’s going on here,’ she shouted.

  Silence came back.

  Holding her breath, Karen lowered her head to the door, pressed an ear against the wood and strained to hear anything.

  The corridor was as silent as the classroom.

  Will, where are you?

  An idea gleamed.

  The door. This was a room. The door. A light switch.

  Karen’s hand crept back to the wall, found the doorframe and rose. She felt nothing but the old wallpaper lined with splits and cracks.

  ‘Want to talk?’ she said, still searching for the switch. ‘Want to tell me what’s going on?’

  Nothing. No switch. Only a shitty wall.

  ‘Nothing to say?’ she said and hated the tremor in her voice just as she hated the feel of the wall on her hand.

  Her fingers hit a small square with a switch in its centre. She rested her index finger over it.

  ‘Nothing to say?’ she cried and hit the switch.

  Light exploded above. It lasted no more than two seconds before it fell into a tired spluttering that cast crazy shadows and angles to each table and chair.

  Karen slapped a hand over her mouth to keep the scream back.

  She was in a cl
assroom. Three rows of tables were before her, five tables in each row.

  At each table, two mouldering corpses sat waiting for the day’s lessons to begin.

  Nineteen

  Andy slid a foot forward and froze when he heard the scrape, much too loud in the dark.

  He counted to thirty, moved a step forward, counted to thirty again and took another step.

  Where are you guys? What’s going on?

  He played back the last few moments in the pub: the conversation about going to Geri’s grave, moving through the crowds in the pub and stopping close to the doors; Stu asking if they believed it, all of them saying they did and the world changing, the floor turning into a black hole.

  Now this.

  Where the hell are you?

  Panicked tears formed. Furiously, Andy blinked them away and hugged himself. Wherever he was, it was much colder than the pub. This was like being inside a fridge.

  Above, someone screamed and Andy felt no surprise at all.

  St Mary’s Court.

  At least he knew where he was just as he knew what to do.

  Oh, Geri. This better be for the last time. And you better tell us what this is all about.

  It didn’t matter that the thought was nonsense. All that mattered was going upstairs, stopping the woman from being raped and then getting back to the others. Anything else could sod off for now.

  But he didn’t have to go upstairs. He could just run.

  Disgusted horror rose inside and Andy cursed himself. Even if this mad business didn’t have something to do with his dead friend, he wasn’t so much of a fucking coward that he’d let a woman be raped.

  Holding on to a bravado he didn’t feel, Andy faced where he guessed the stairs to be and walked with his arms outstretched. He hit the wall before he expected to and swore under his breath. Using it as a guide, he moved step by step and eventually found cold metal. A moment’s blind exploration told him he’d come to the lifts. Andy passed them and stopped when the wall ran out.