by Luke Walker
Stu kept his hand on the knife buried in the mess that had been the man’s stomach.
‘Can I be the first to say it?’
‘Say what?’ Mick said.
Stu wrapped both hands around the knife handle but didn’t pull it.
‘We’re in another world.’
Mick remained silent. Stu faced him.
‘We are, man. Look at all this. It’s Dalry but it isn’t. It’s another world.’
Mick lifted his hand from the graze in his arm and Will winced. Blood had splattered on Mick’s fingers and wrist.
‘Say that’s right, what’s next?’ Karen said and a memory bloomed in Will’s mind. He pictured the house as it had been over fifteen years before: the wide driveway and pretty garden at the front of the house, kitchen window; her bedroom window above it, and the few stone slabs leading to the door at the side of the house.
‘Number twelve Oakfield Walk,’ he said and Karen lifted her head to stare at him.
‘Geri’s house?’
‘Yeah.’
Stu pulled the knife free and he wiped his hands on his jeans.
‘Sounds good. Only problem is that’s got to be three miles away. Seems like it might be a long walk given how friendly the locals are.’
He stood straight and Will saw his own need to do something, to get moving, reflected on Stu’s face. He pointed at the knife.
‘We’ve got that, the bat and a gun,’ he said.
‘How many bullets?’ Mick said and Will shrugged.
‘Don’t know. Can you check?’
Mick fiddled with the gun, his blood coating the barrel. After a moment, the cylinder opened. Mick let out a bitter laugh.
‘None left. Son of a bitch.’
He closed the cylinder and looked at the others.
‘Anyone we meet won’t know how many bullets we have,’ Will said.
Stu pursed his lips and a slow grin spread over his face.
‘So we just wave the gun around and threaten them with it? A plan.’
‘Either that or stay here until their friends turn up,’ Will said and gestured to the bodies. Stu’s grin died.
‘Fuck that. Let’s go.’
They moved back to the stairs, Will holding Karen’s hand. The group shuffled past the girl’s body. Nobody spoke. She lay facing the wall, a great deal of blood coating her chest. It had splashed up to her neck and more smeared over her cheeks.
It seemed grossly unfair to leave her body where she had fallen but there didn’t seem to be any choice. Will squatted beside the girl, head bowed.
‘Come on,’ Karen murmured.
Will stood and they descended. He looked back once but the bodies of the killers had disappeared in the gloom. The body of the girl Andy had saved lay in a small lump.
Will held his wife and let her lead him downstairs.
Forty Three
Kirsty parked four spaces behind Phil, took out the keys and rested a hand on the door lock. Conflicting urges struck her: to open the door and run to the house Phil had parked outside, or to stay in the car with the door locked. On one hand, he’d brought her to a pleasant, residential side street from a long road lined with trees and full of expensive cars. It didn’t seem too likely that if he was a nut, he’d try anything here. On the other hand, she didn’t know him and Stu was still missing.
Her window was unwound an inch; she lowered it a little more and leaned her face to it, tasting the air. Phil slammed his door shut and jogged towards her. She withdrew, keeping a hand on the lock.
‘You stay here and I’ll go to the house,’ he said.
‘What the hell is going on? What did you mean, Geri’s brought them here?’
He wiped at his mouth and she felt a moment’s sympathy. His confusion and pain were clear, and while she couldn’t trust him completely without knowing him, she could empathise with how he felt.
‘Sorry. I should have explained it better at the cemetery.’
‘It would have helped,’ Kirsty said and smiled. He did the same.
‘At her grave. I was there, talking to her. You know. And she was there, just a few steps away, watching me. It was like she was a picture but as real as we are. And I heard her speaking. She told me to come here, our old house. She’s sent them here and she wants us to do something.’
‘What?’
Goosebumps had risen on her arms as she’d pictured Phil in the cemetery talking to the ghost of his sister. Even the fresh, autumnal air couldn’t warm her arms just as it couldn’t take away the memory of the figure at the gates, turning towards her.
‘She didn’t say. Just that it’d be clear when we got here.’
He looked towards the rear of the house and sighed.
‘Not been here in years. Didn’t think I’d be back today. Christ.’
He gathered himself.
‘Stay here, would you? It’d be better if I talk to the people who live here first. Tell them I used to live here. Probably better that than both of us knocking on the door and telling them about ghosts and all that.’
‘Stu’s not here now?’ Kirsty said.
‘She said they’d arrive soon after us.’
Doubts pressed against her but she kept them silent. ‘Okay. Let me know when I can come in.’
He jogged to the rear of the house. Kirsty stared at him until he vanished from sight behind a high fence which presumably moved towards the building’s front.
The silence brought back the memory of Phil’s dead sister, Stu’s dead friend, appearing out of nowhere.
‘Go away,’ she said and the harsh whisper of her own voice frightened her.
‘Not as much as the ghost,’ she whispered.
The drive to this house and focusing upon that had helped to keep her mind from what she had seen outside the cemetery, and what that might mean for Stu, as well as herself. Sitting silently now, though, a garbled run of thoughts filled her mind.
Geri. Ghosts. Stu. This man Phil. The police. She couldn’t focus on any single one of them. She couldn’t think past the faint figure at the cemetery gates turning towards her and being unable to hear anything other than the great thud of her heartbeat in her ears.
‘Shit,’ Kirsty muttered.
She took a few deep breaths and began to count. She kept her gaze on the pathway Phil had taken and counted.
Three hundred seconds. Five minutes. Sitting in her car while the world carried on as normal and her husband was missing had been close to impossible, but she’d made it through five minutes, counting silently and keeping her hands on the wheel while she waited for Phil to reappear and tell her what was going on with his dead sister and this house he hadn’t seen the inside of for years, this house Stu hadn’t been to for at least the last decade.
Kirsty pulled her mobile from her pocket and checked the time. Just gone quarter past ten. Her fingers tapped on the mobile, typing a text to Jo. She made it halfway through, realised she couldn’t explain it all in text and deleted the message. But then how to say it over the phone? Either way was ridiculous.
She tapped her fingernails on the wheel and considered her options, bitterly amused to realise they came down to staying in her car or going up to the front door as Phil had done and knocking on it.
An elderly man appeared on the path beside the fence. He walked a further few steps, stopped and studied the cars. Kirsty lifted a hand in an unsure wave and he hurried to her, beckoning to her at the same time.
She unlocked the door, opened it and leaned out.
‘Are you Kirsty?’ the man called. He had a high, nervous voice that seemed odd when put against his bulky chest.
‘Yes, that’s me,’ she said.
He stopped a few steps from her and swallowed a few times, his throat working mechanically. ‘My name’s Sam. I live at number twelve.’
He jerked a thumb at the house and swallowed again.
‘Is Phil in there? Phil Paulson?’ Kirsty asked.
Another swallow. ‘Yes. He wants
you to come in. He needs to talk to you about his sister.’
Moving slowly, Kirsty stepped out of her car and studied Sam. There wasn’t anything remarkable about him: just an old guy in his trousers and cardigan, an old guy who’d probably go to the pub at lunchtime for a couple of pints with the other old guys, a man who’d welcome his grandchildren when they came to visit and be silently grateful when they left and took their noise with them. Nothing remarkable about him at all so why the hell was she uncomfortable?
‘Everything all right?’ she said.
‘We have to go in,’ he replied and looked at his watch.
‘Why?’
‘He said it’s about his sister and your husband. He said it’s about Stu.’
He searched her face and despite her tiredness and worry, she saw his fear. Not of her, though. Something else.
‘Are you sure we have to go in?’ she said quietly and he checked his watch again.
‘Yes, now. Come with me, please.’
Kirsty locked the car door and slid a hand into her jacket pocket. Her hand found her mobile.
‘After you,’ she said.
Kirsty shifted her hand around her mobile and rested her thumb on the nine as Sam walked in front. Her other hand stole into her jeans pocket and gripped her keys as tightly as she could. The sharp tip of one jutted from between her knuckles.
Forty Four
They moved through the cathedral grounds in a line, Stu leading. Their shoes crunched on pebbles and debris, making more noise than Stu liked. He comforted himself with knowing their route either had to be this way or right through the centre of the city which would take them in full view of hundreds of windows all acting as eyes. At least through the grounds of the burned cathedral, they had passageways and shadows.
He stopped at a corner, leaned around it, saw nothing moving and crept further. He glanced back when Mick hissed; he had caught his wounded arm on the wall. Fresh blood pattered on to Mick’s legs and he clamped his hand over the wound.
‘You okay?’ Stu said.
‘Hurts like a shitter,’ Mick said and squeezed his arm as if that would pull the pain out.
‘You ponce,’ Stu whispered and Mick wheezed a laugh.
‘We need to keep moving. What’s the quickest way?’ Will said.
Stu thought through his exhaustion. If they followed their current path, they’d hit a passageway which would take them out of the cathedral grounds to a narrow road. It ran behind most of the shops on Bridge Street. At the end, they’d need to follow the road into the car park at Tesco. Then from there to alongside the river for a couple of miles.
Simple.
He wondered if he’d ever been so tired.
‘We need to get to the river. Follow that,’ he said and studied Mick. ‘You sure your arm is all right?’
‘I’ll survive.’
Mick flicked blood at the pavement and attempted a grin. It made his face look sickly.
‘Seems pretty exposed going that way,’ Karen said.
‘Either that or straight over Thorpe Road bridge,’ Will said.
‘I think it’ll be all right once we get closer to the river. If it comes to it, there are plenty of trees and bushes to hide in,’ Stu said.
‘I’m too old for climbing trees,’ Mick muttered.
‘And too fat,’ Stu said and Mick punched his arm.
‘Let’s go,’ Will said.
‘Wait a second.’ Mick coughed, clearly struggling for his words. They waited and he whispered towards the ground.
‘I’m sorry about before. In the shop. Those men. I shouldn’t have called for you, said you could come out, I …’
‘It’s all right.’ Karen sounded near tears.
‘No, it’s not.’
‘Yes, it is. You did the right thing. If you hadn’t, I’d bet we’d all be dead.’ Karen touched his shoulder gently. ‘It’s okay,’ she whispered and Mick managed to nod once.
They moved in the same line as before; Stu took them through the passageway and wished they hadn’t stopped for as long as they had. The cold had turned his sweat into an unpleasant sheen on his body and he prayed for the early autumn mildness of the day and night before to return.
Hold that thought, he told himself and halted when the passageway opened to the road. He counted four wrecked cars, all burned out. The road itself was black in places: scorch and skid marks staining it. Once again, Stu wondered just where the hell they were.
Geri, you better start explaining things soon.
They moved on in a tight line and ran alongside the rear of the buildings. Broken glass littered the pavement in places and more stains coated the slabs. They reached the halfway point and a scream rang out all around them.
‘Christ,’ Stu hissed and froze. Mick fell on him and he only vaguely caught Mick’s grunt of pain. The noise ran on, the sex of the screamer impossible to guess, the terrible sound a mix of pain and fear that fell silent either because the person had run out of breath or been silenced.
‘What the hell was that?’ Stu whispered.
‘Was it a woman?’ Karen said and Will leaned in closer to her.
‘No,’ he said. ‘That was a bloke.’
Stu saw the command to agree on Will’s face. He nodded. So did Mick. Karen didn’t relax.
‘We keep going,’ Stu whispered and moved on again in a bent run, eyes straining in all directions.
They ran past old railings which met a narrow passage, and stopped again. The end of the road wasn’t far ahead. Stu estimated they could be beyond it, over the road and into the car park at the Tesco car park within five minutes. First, though, they had to get beyond this passage which would expose them to Bridge Street.
‘Stay low,’ he whispered to Mick who said the same to Karen and Will. Stu pressed himself against the railings, leaned forward and peered around the edge into the passage.
His breath stuck in his throat and his heart gave a horrible skip. A cough rose from his chest and he desperately swallowed it back.
A body lay on the road in the middle of Bridge Street. Short, narrow poles jutted from it and streams of blood ran in all directions.
Not poles. Arrows.
With faraway horror, Stu realised what the strange, whispery sounds had been.
The body moved.
An arm rose and fell against the road, the fingers dug into cracks and it began to pull itself along. Sickened but unable to not look, Stu watched the body move a couple of feet, arrows jutting from it in at least five places. Its long hair coated the face and with the hunched body, there was no way of knowing if it was male or female.
Its hand lay splayed on the road, still for a moment, and Stu only registered the hissed whisper in the air a second after the arrow hit the hand.
The body howled, the head jerked up and the hair fell away from the face. One eye, full of hellish awareness, stared straight at Stu.
It was a woman.
He jerked back and swallowed cold air several times, afraid he would vomit.
‘What is it?’ Karen whispered and leaned towards him, head moving to the corner.
Stu shoved her back. ‘Don’t. Just don’t.’
‘What the hell is it?’ she said too loudly and he raised a hand towards her mouth. Will pulled her close.
‘It’s a woman. She’s been shot. With arrows,’ Stu said. The beat of his heart hurt in his chest and the sour taste in his mouth suggested vomiting might still be close.
‘We have to help her,’ Karen said and Stu shook his head.
‘She’s still being shot. Someone’s in one of the buildings, shooting at her.’
‘Fucking hell,’ Mick said. ‘They’re playing with her?’ His voice rose, heavy with horror and incredulity.
‘Looks that way,’ Stu said.
Karen wept and her voice trembled, anger radiating out of her in waves. ‘We can’t leave her there. Jesus Christ, what the hell is going on here?’
Another sharp whisper hissed. A pained cry
followed it straightaway and Karen slapped a hand over her mouth.
‘Where are they shooting from?’ Will said.
‘Quiet,’ Stu whispered. He listened and heard nothing.
Moving inch by slow inch, he eased his head around the edge of the building and peered to Bridge Street. The woman remained on the ground, arrows still jutting from her. Swallowing repeatedly and aware it wasn’t helping to lose the sour taste of his spit, Stu scanned the little he could see of the windows opposite. Movement on the second floor caught his eye. He held his breath and prayed none of the others would speak or move.
The movement was definitely a figure, someone leaning through the broken window.
‘Nobody move,’ Stu breathed and sensed the others freeze beside him.
Something else moved behind the indistinct shape in the window. Stu could only take a guess as to how many people were in the room two floors up. At least three.
Three people shooting arrows into a dying woman.
Geri, what is this? What the hell are we supposed to do here?
Cloud covering the moon shifted and Stu had a glimpse, no longer than a second, of the figures in the window before the moonlight left the building in darkness again.
Instinctively, he threw himself towards Mick who caught him with his uninjured arm and pulled him against the rear of the building. Karen’s arms embraced him and he shook.
‘What is it?’ Will whispered.
In the window. In the window. Jesus Christ.
‘Stu,’ Will hissed and Stu stared at his friends.
‘People. The people shooting. They don’t have any faces.’
He trembled in Karen’s arms and wished he hadn’t looked, wished he had suggested a different route, wished Geri hadn’t brought them here.
And for a ghastly moment, he wished he had never known Geri Paulson.
‘We have to go,’ he said and the words tasted horrible. Strangely, they brought a thin slice of focus back to him. ‘We can’t help her without getting killed. We just have to hope that she …’ He choked and forced out the rest of his sentence. ‘That she’s killed quick.’
‘Jesus,’ Karen said dully.
Mick stood; Stu did the same and Will pulled Karen upright. Mick gestured to the road in front. The gap of the passageway at their side was just a couple of feet.