Hometown

by Luke Walker

  ‘Christ, look how much hair I’ve got,’ Stu said.

  She hadn’t heard them come to her and that was all right. She reached for Will without turning and he was there.

  ‘Let me see that,’ Stu said.

  Karen handed him the album. He traced two fingers over the photos and eased the group shot from the page.

  ‘I remember this. We were seventeen. About a week before the Christmas holiday.’ He laughed. ‘Look how fat Mick is.’

  Karen smiled although it hurt to think of Mick just as it hurt to think of Andy.

  ‘Wasn’t that the time he said he’d lose two stone for a new year resolution?’ she said.

  ‘Yeah. And he did it, too. The fat bastard,’ Will replied.

  Stu gently placed the album on a shelf in the wardrobe and looked at both of them.

  ‘When?’ Will said.

  Stu held the diary in one hand and the photo in another. Karen watched his throat work as he swallowed twice.

  ‘Now.’

  Fifty Six

  They stood beside the bannister, Stu a little way from Karen and Will. He kept his eyes on the front door and his hands on the diary and the photo.

  ‘I figure it’s ten minutes to the school, I spend no more than twenty minutes there, and ten minutes back,’ he said.

  ‘What if you don’t find anything?’ Will said and Stu shrugged.

  ‘Then we’re back to square one.’

  Silently, Karen offered the baseball bat and knife to Stu. He glanced at both and took the knife.

  ‘Sure?’ Karen said.

  He nodded once, eyes back on the front door. He’d seen that door countless times but never like this, never when things were so wrong. Mick and Andy both gone, and how the fuck could that be? The rest of them haunted by their dead friend who’d never done anyone any harm if she could help it, and how the fuck could that be, and here he was about to go outside by himself, go back to their school and how the fuck could that be?

  He crossed to the door.

  ‘You shut this the second I’m out,’ he said.

  ‘Stu,’ Will said weakly. ‘The diary, man. The picture. What if they don’t work?’

  ‘Then I’m fucked.’

  Will rubbed at his mouth and spoke, eyes on the floor. ‘I’ve been thinking about that girl in Andy’s flat and how she …I don’t think she looked like Geri, exactly. I think she was a version of her.’

  ‘What makes you say that?’ Karen said.

  ‘No one thing. There was just something in her face that looked a bit familiar. And that makes me wonder if …shit, this will sound mad. It makes me wonder if there’s anyone else here like us, like that girl or if everyone else is just another version of Geri.’

  Stu managed a smile that actually appeared real. ‘You’re right. That does sound mad.’

  ‘Think about it. We haven’t seen anyone else human like us. Everywhere but Geri’s house is a threat. This is her world. This is like being in her head. I think that girl …’ He hissed and said the rest in a pained rush. ‘I think that girl was meant to die so we’d come here. I think Geri wanted to send us here.’

  Stu considered. ‘Yeah. You’re nuts. But you’re probably right.’

  Karen pushed past Will and embraced Stu. Her breath was hot and quick on his ear.

  ‘Come back,’ she whispered.

  ‘Of course.’

  He let her go, eyed Will and gripped the diary, photo and knife in one hand. With his other hand, he gave Will a weak shove on the shoulder.

  ‘See you, Elton,’ he said.

  Will wiped his mouth with a shaking hand and didn’t speak.

  Stu faced the door again. He kissed the front of the diary, did the same to the picture and jammed both into his jeans pocket. They made a comforting bulge. He gripped the knife handle, counted to three and opened the door.

  He was outside and the door shut behind him before the urge to look back overran him.

  The arrow they’d fired at Will grew from the door. Stu didn’t touch it. He faced the silent road and the silent houses and pressed a hand against Geri’s diary and the photo. A queer sensation rolled in Stu’s stomach. He knew the door, house and his friends were behind him but even so, his surroundings seemed vague. He concentrated on the pathway, the hedges and other houses. All felt to be mere impressions of solid objects. It was like looking at a drawing and the thought of Will and Karen in Geri’s house was a loose, baggy image. A step from the front door and he was in another country.

  Forget it. Just move.

  Stu slid one foot over the paving, then his other. Standing still, he heard nothing at all.

  He wasn’t alone, though.

  Stu scanned the still trees and hedges. No twigs or leaves moved. The only sound was his breath. He could have been the only person in the world.

  I’m not. They’re watching me.

  No interior argument replied. The people who’d chased them here, who’d killed Mick and Andy and the girl, were watching him, unable to get to him. They were in the leaves and grass, in the cracks in the pavement and in the broken windows of the houses all around him. While they couldn’t touch him, they wanted him to hear their breath, to smell the rotten stink of their dirt. They wanted their hands around his neck and they’d be with him every step of the way.

  Geri, this had better work.

  He ran and the night swallowed him.

  Fifty Seven

  Will stared at the little pane of glass in the centre of the door as if expecting to be able to see Stu. All he could see was a square of darkness. Staring at it made his stomach tight and hot; he sat on the bottom stair, rested the bat against the wall and leaned into Karen when she joined him.

  ‘He’ll be all right, won’t he?’ she said.

  ‘Sure.’

  The reply was nothing more than automatic. He wished for more words to add to it, for a way of giving it strength the way Stu would have done.

  ‘He’ll be back in less than an hour.’

  The words felt weak, stupid. Karen reached for him and Will spoke before he realised he was going to.

  ‘What happened upstairs. Me and Geri. You need to know all that is old shit now. I wish she’d been okay and I wish things hadn’t happened like this, but it’s still old stuff. I don’t want you thinking it’s anything other than that.’

  ‘You don’t need to explain it.’

  He pushed her away so he could see her face. ‘Of course I do. You’re my wife.’

  ‘And she was your girlfriend.’

  ‘She was my friend.’

  Neither broke eye contact.

  ‘Listen to me,’ Will said and realised with bitter humour he had no idea what came next.

  ‘It doesn’t matter,’ Karen muttered.

  ‘It does.’

  She shook her head. ‘No, it doesn’t. You’re right. I’m your wife and I’m scared. Mick, Andy. Stu’s gone. I’m so scared, Will.’

  She’d dropped her head as she spoke; her hands twisted restlessly in her lap, and Will thought of a day a couple of years previously. They’d been driving home on a Saturday night after visiting friends and a car had come from nowhere, shooting out of a side street as they drew level with it. It had missed them by a few feet.

  That’s the last time she was this scared.

  She lifted her head to his and her tears wet his cheeks. She kissed him hard and he shifted to face her fully, mouths open, her tears meeting his.

  They became limbs and undone clothes and kisses and tears and then they were on the floor of the hallway, somewhere between the foot of the stairs and the front door of Geri’s house, of their friend’s home. They were a little light in the dark. And the moment before he entered his wife, Will closed his eyes and pictured all of them together, all laughing, all together as they had been in the photo from Geri’s album. He held the thought of them as tightly as he could, tracing the December light around them and listening to Mick’s big laugh as Karen’s legs were around his
hips and he buried himself inside her. She cried out into his mouth and the picture of his friends all together soared above his own cries.

  Fifty Eight

  Kirsty hunted through the cupboards and fridge until she found bread, various cheeses and sliced chicken. Although she ensured she faced her hands and the food, her eyes kept moving to the drawer beside the sink. She’d taken a dinner knife from that drawer and pretended not to notice the three large knives before closing it. On all rational levels, she knew Phil couldn’t see what she was doing or know she had seen the knives, but she couldn’t stop herself pretending to be focusing on nothing but the sandwiches. Her stomach growled as she moved and she had to eat a slice of the chicken in an effort to quieten it. The taste of the meat filled her mouth and she quickly ate another slice.

  Get the knife.

  She placed a pile of sandwiches on a plate and began making more. Phil would surely not give her more than another couple of minutes before expecting her back. Time enough to make a second pile of sandwiches, time enough to take a knife from the drawer. But where the hell to hide it? Up her sleeve? Wedged between her arm and side? Both too risky and dangerous to her. It’d be a big joke if she managed to stab herself with her own defensive weapon.

  Feeling the time slipping away from her, Kirsty scanned the kitchen. Three tea towels hung on a rail near the fridge. She paused.

  A knife hidden in tea towels? Her mind raced through a possible reason to take the towels—a lack of napkins, the need to wipe their hands and look here Phil, a great big fucking knife at your throat.

  Before she could talk herself out of it, Kirsty grabbed all three tea towels, dumped them beside the plates and finished making the sandwiches.

  ‘Let’s do it,’ she whispered.

  Lucy’s face filled her head. She had never in the child’s short, sweet life wanted to see her daughter as much as she did at that moment.

  Kirsty slid the drawer open, took one of the knives and wrapped it in the tea towels. They didn’t provide a great deal of camouflage for it but with the plates against the towels, she was pretty sure she could keep up the pretence for the few seconds she’d need. A jab to his leg, a non-lethal wounding and hopefully Sam and Charlotte would already be running for the door and with her right behind them.

  ‘Let’s do it,’ she whispered again and picked up the plates and towels.

  A few steps took her back to the hallway and to Phil crouched beside the bannister, staring at her.

  Fifty Nine

  Stu rested against a low wall which ran alongside houses. He’d run for the last five minutes, seeing and hearing nothing but feeling eyes all over him. As he leaned on the wall, he studied the pools of shadows in gardens and at the sides of houses. It wasn’t simply that they were empty, he knew. They were void. He wasn’t exactly in the nightmare version of Dalry they’d come to. This was somewhere else, and while it might be safer without people trying to kill him, it was also worse.

  This version of Dalry was like a drawing the second before it was tossed into a bin. If Geri’s diary was acting as a sort of protection, it had done so by keeping him outside the place in which he’d left Will and Karen.

  ‘And that means you’re even further away from home,’ he whispered. Even further away from home, from Kirsty and Lucy. Stuck outside everywhere, stuck in the deadest of dead places.

  ‘Bollocks,’ Stu said and felt a little better.

  He inhaled deep lungfuls of cold air and faced the path ahead. The moon illuminated ahead for a little way and that was all.

  ‘What are you worried about?’

  Speaking aloud didn’t help. His voice sounded too flat. Stu tried to shake off his nerves and jogged down the pathway beside the houses. The memory of running earlier returned, running and chased by things he couldn’t see. And what would have happened if he hadn’t made it to the shelter of the school and Karen? What about that?

  ‘Bollocks,’ Stu said again. He jogged for another few moments, doing his best to think of nothing. His trainers pounding on the road created hollow slaps; he tried to count his paces and gave up when the seemingly empty houses looked as if they were mocking him.

  He emerged on Cromwell Road, not far from where he had been earlier. The road looked the same; the damaged houses looked the same. Nothing was the same.

  Stu halted and did his best to control his fast breathing. Behind, the road stretched off into darkness. No sounds came from that way but Stu didn’t relax. The fact that he couldn’t hear anyone made no difference.

  He was being watched.

  Stu stared at the few whole windows and saw nothing. It was the same in the thin hedges. There was nobody anywhere near him but he was still being watched.

  He pressed his fingers against the shape of the notepad in his pocket and tried not to think what would happen if he lost the diary or the photo.

  ‘At least it’s working for now,’ he told himself and wished he hadn’t spoken. Too much like tempting fate.

  Stu jogged in the middle of the road, passed houses and a few smashed cars and stopped at the road which led into the school car park. Sweat coated his forehead, neck and back. It cooled as he remained still, leaving his skin clammy.

  ‘Geri. Where are you?’

  He walked into the school grounds, crossed the car park to the main building and tested the first set of doors he came to. They were locked. Stu moved alongside the building and reached the side of the English block. He paused, thinking. Unless the school was different here, following the path would take him into an open space surrounded on all sides by the separate blocks. It would also give him a perfect view of the library and the floor above it.

  ‘The steps. Don’t forget the steps,’ he whispered.

  He hadn’t thought of them in years, a set of faded yellow steps built in metal railings which led up to the fire exit of the sixth form room. He and the others had used those steps almost every day for two years, the thud of their shoes on the metal sending out a high ringing as they descended.

  ‘Block.’

  Naming the sixth form room delighted him. He hadn’t really thought of it in years, let alone said its name. Giving it some slight degree of flesh here brought a sense of control if only briefly.

  Climbing those steps now, though, that couldn’t be done. No way.

  ‘Screw that,’ Stu whispered. It was one thing to be here on the ground where he could run in any direction he liked. It’d be another to climb those steps and see the door swing open as he reached the top, see the emptiness inside the room.

  He kicked at the earth below the hedges with the toe of his trainer. Mud crumbled. Sticking close to the hedges, Stu followed the path in a straight line, counting his steps as he moved. Twenty steps took him to the open space he’d pictured, the languages block to his right, science beyond languages, maths off to the side and the school library a little way ahead. And there were the steps just as he’d last seen them. He scanned them, tilting his head as they rose. There was the fire exit, a faint grey rectangle in the middle of the brickwork. There was the long window that overlooked the cafeteria. Stu stared at the building, aware he was trying to work out how long it had been since he’d stood here; aware but not truly focusing on it. He couldn’t focus on it, not with the school formed from solid brick and glass and right in front of him as if nothing had changed since he’d been eighteen.

  ‘Goddamn.’

  He glanced at the imposing bulk of the other blocks, then back the way he’d walked. In the movement of turning to face the library and Block again, a shifting rolled in his centre. His free hand rose, pushing into the air, coming to touch his stomach. The shifting moved, rising into his chest, neck, face and eyes.

  It’s a building, something tall, and the temperature has dropped. This is deep winter, the air a bitter tang in his nostrils, the threat of ugly snow heavy over him and Stu knows what this is. More than that, he knows where it is.

  He draws breath to scream Geri’s name and see
s her as he does so. She stands twenty or thirty feet from him, facing away. She stares towards the dark sky and the ground gleaming with Christmas lights, and that ground is much too far below.

  The scream of her name breaks out of his mouth and she doesn’t turn. He’s not here for her and it doesn’t matter to the world that the reverse isn’t true. She’s as here for him as the mid-December cold and the knowledge of a street filled with Christmas shoppers moves below, none of those shoppers knowing what’s about to happen up here on this car park. And why should they? This isn’t their world. It’s his. It’s Geri’s.

  Move, he bawls at his legs and feet and wonder of wonders, they do. He runs across the car park, trainers kicking up loose snow and splashing through puddles of icy water. This isn’t a nightmare with salvation out of reach: Geri’s coming closer, a little of her hair visible despite her long coat and thick scarf. His feet break through dirty ice; he skids but manages to stay upright and shrieks her name a third and final time.

  Nothing changes. He’s close enough to reach for her, fingers straining for her coat, her body and what happened happens again.

  Geri throws herself from the car park ledge, the air brings her down to the Christmas shoppers and Stu lets loose a terrible scream.

  Abruptly, the shifting sensation dropped out of his eyes, his face and neck. It trickled out of him like water down a plughole and he collapsed to hold his stomach and wonder if he was going to vomit.

  The nausea faded moment by moment. He stood as straight as he could and took several breaths.

  ‘Geri,’ he whispered. ‘I didn’t need to see that. I’m sorry. I’m so fucking sorry, but I didn’t need to see that.’

  Stu opened his eyes and the figure in the window aimed their gun down at him.

  He tried to scream but nothing emerged other than a weak exhalation of air. His legs wouldn’t move; his chest wouldn’t rise and fall.

  The gun looked at him, the barrel a long line with one dead eye. He stared back, thought of Kirsty holding Lucy, both smiling at him, and his cry shot around the school grounds, his horror and fear hitting the benches, the walls and windows.

  From roughly the other end of the world, he saw the shape lean forward, the face and body rippling as if under water