by Luke Walker
The figure moved a fraction and Stu had time for one word.
Something smacked into him. He flew to the concrete beside the hedge and the gunshot chased the echo of his cry.
The crash of his fall and the gunshot vanished. Stu scrambled to his feet and stared upwards.
The window was sealed.
He rubbed his arm and shoulder, still feeling the impact on his body, and tried to look in all directions at once.
He was utterly alone.
A laugh rang around the school grounds, childish and excited. Stu’s breath jammed inside his lungs; his throat was a pin hole. The laugh tapered off into a soft giggle. Then silence.
Stu’s breath rushed out of him. He whirled, attempting to look everywhere at once, and couldn’t focus on anything.
Something rustled.
The squat bushes outside the maths department moved, tattered leaves shifting, twigs breaking. Fifteen feet from where Stu stood, something was coming through the greenery.
He backed up two steps, then a third, eyes unblinking and stuck to the bushes. Leaves parted. A pale hand, small and horribly white, jerked outwards. A second one followed it. Both twisted, revealing bloody scratches ingrained with mud on the palms.
The thing in the bushes laughed again, a child’s mocking giggle.
Stu backed up again and tried to fight the ghastly cold that had encased his flesh. The hands in the bushes pulled the green apart and two wide eyes glared at Stu.
A final mocking laugh stung his ears.
Stu ran.
Sixty
A second of silence passed between them, surely no longer. Even so, Kirsty felt as if she had been standing in the kitchen doorway, balancing her plates and knives wrapped in the tea towels, for days, weeks, years. The handles of the knives pressed into her fingers, the smell of the sandwiches rose to her nostrils and she thought as clearly as she had thought anything in her life:
If you don’t speak right now, he’ll know.
‘What are you doing?’ she said and it had to be a miracle that her voice didn’t crack.
Phil gazed at her for another few moments, then stood. ‘Thought you might need a hand.’ He extended one of his as if to take a plate from her.
‘No, it’s all right. I can manage.’
‘Sure?’
‘Yes.’
He lowered his hands, stood awkwardly and then slid them into his jeans pockets.
Where the hell is his knife?
‘Kirsty, listen. I don’t want this. I don’t want any of it.’
‘I know.’
He stared at her. ‘Do you?’ he said and answered his own question. ‘Yeah. You do. And you believe me, don’t you? I know you do. It’s just …well, it’s not like this sort of thing happens all the time.’ He laughed. ‘If I had any other way of sorting this and getting to Geri without involving you or your husband or your mates, I’d do it in a second.’
‘You don’t have to do it like this,’ Kirsty whispered and he grimaced.
‘I wish that was true. Either way, it’ll be over soon. I can leave as soon as it gets dark.’
A childish sense of dread trickled through her. To be here in daylight with this man was one thing. After dark was another.
Anything can happen when it gets dark.
‘Upstairs, then?’ he said and stood as if to let her pass.
Kirsty kept her eyes focused on his and didn’t think of her next words or what they meant—
—the biggest lie you’ve ever told—
She said: ‘I believe you. You want to help your sister. I can understand that. I want to help my husband so we want the same thing. More or less. If I can help you, I will. If you can help me, will you?’
He nodded immediately and a smile bloomed on his face, turning him into something that went beyond handsome.
‘Definitely.’
‘Good. Then lead the way.’
Still smiling, Phil began moving up. Kirsty took four fast steps to the bottom of the stairs, dropped the plates and flung the tea towels off the knives. Phil turned as she did so, alerted by the smack of crockery into the carpet. He stood halfway up, colour bleeding out of his face.
‘Kirsty?’
‘I’m going. You won’t stop me, understand? I’m getting out of here and you won’t stop me.’
He began to cry. Kirsty welcomed her anger like an old friend.
‘We’re going to the bedroom. We’re both going up there. You’re going to sit on the bed and me, Sam and Charlotte are leaving, all right?’
He wept.
‘Turn around and don’t do anything I …’ She coughed, voice catching in her throat.
Don’t do anything I wouldn’t like? Christ. Is this really happening?
‘Just go up slowly,’ she said and moved towards him. He took each step with deliberate care and halted at the top.
‘To the bedroom,’ Kirsty said.
She saw him in profile, wiping his eyes and sniffing. Pity, laced with a heavy weight of disgust struck her. This was like threatening a child.
‘Bedroom,’ she said.
He shuffled over the carpet towards the door. Kirsty followed and swallowed the thick taste of adrenalin. He’d closed the bedroom door before coming down and as he reached for the handle, something kicked into life inside Kirsty: an instinctive warning, an alert from somewhere deep and secret.
Phil pushed the handle down, the door swung open and he raced into the bedroom, a man-shape blurring with movement. She dashed forward, but too slowly. Phil yanked his knife off the dresser and shoved it towards Charlotte’s throat, missing her flesh by less than an inch.
Kirsty stared at the scene, seeing it with another’s eyes.
Sam and Charlotte were tied together with a bedsheet; balls of underwear jutted from their mouths. They wept. Urine had spread from Charlotte’s crotch to stain the mattress. Sam struggled beside his wife, unintelligible noises of rage coming from behind the makeshift gag.
He knew the whole time.
‘Drop that fucking knife or I kill this old cunt right now.’
Phil’s tears had ceased. He smiled at her. Spit coated his teeth.
Kirsty’s fingers relaxed and the knife hit the carpet with a gentle thump.
‘Inside. Shut the door.’
It was all over. She’d tried. She’d believed him. She’d been wrong to do both.
Lucy. My baby.
Kirsty entered the bedroom and closed the door. Phil placed his weapon on a bookshelf and smiled at her again. It didn’t hold the slightest warmth.
Then while Charlotte sobbed behind her gag and Kirsty jammed a hand over her mouth to keep her own screams inside, Phil beat Sam into unconsciousness.
Sixty One
Karen heard the movement outside before Will, simply because she stood closer to the door.
‘Will’.
She didn’t care if whoever was outside heard her raised voice. This was Geri’s house and they were safe. Even so, goosebumps rose on her arms as the movement came again. Will ran from the kitchen, bat in hand, and Karen pointed to the door.
‘Someone outside,’ she whispered.
‘Stu?’
‘I don’t know.’
They stood motionless, both staring at the door and listening for footsteps. Will lifted his bat and his arm jerked when the knock struck from the other side of the door. A tired voice followed it.
‘It’s me.’
‘Stu?’ Will said and ran to the door.
‘Wait,’ Karen shouted and Will froze with his hand on the lock.
‘What?’
‘How do we know it’s him?’
‘It’s me, for Christ’s sake,’ Stu said, still with the same tired voice. ‘Stu Brennan. Thirty-six. Married to Kirsty and my daughter is Lucy. Now open the door.’
Will hesitated, then said: ‘Suck my fat one.’
‘Whoever told you you had a fat one, LaChance?’
Laughing and crying, Karen ran to Will’s si
de and shoved the lock down before he could. The door opened and Stu was there, pale and looking weak, but there and back with them and her heart was happy if only for a moment.
He entered in a stumbling walk and Karen let him fall against her. For a glorious moment, all her fear vanished. Then Stu muttered against her neck.
‘This is bad.’
Sixty Two
They sat at the kitchen table with all the lights on. Stu shifted aside the small pile of gloves and woolly hats Will had placed on the table a few minutes before. Karen kept her hand on Will’s while Stu told them what he’d realised about being outside the world with Geri’s diary and the photo shielding him, about being watched by the things who couldn’t get to him and the darkness in the school grounds.
‘It was Geri with a gun. Above the library. A big gun. A rifle, I think. One of those guns with a sight on it like a sniper would use.’ He held the cup of coffee Will had made, both hands tight on the mug. ‘She shot and I don’t know if it was real or what. I didn’t hear the bullet hit anything and it definitely didn’t hit me.’ He laughed. There was a wild note to it that Karen didn’t like. ‘Someone else was there. They bashed into me, knocked me over. That’s how I got these.’ He pointed at the grazes on his forehead and his arm. ‘Obviously I got up pretty fucking quick. There was nobody around me, no way they could have got away without me seeing, and there was nobody at the window. In any case, it was closed. If someone had been up there, I would have heard the window close; I’d have seen something.’
His hands shook and spilled coffee. He didn’t seem to register the hot liquid on his skin.
‘That’s not the only thing. In the bushes. Christ.’ He sipped his coffee and gazed at the cup. ‘I heard a laugh. A kid’s laugh. Then in the bushes. They didn’t come out. I didn’t give them time.’
‘What the hell are you talking about?’ Will said.
‘In the bushes. A kid, I think. They laughed at me. I saw their hands, all scratched and dirty. Then they were looking at me through the bushes and I legged it.’
‘Jesus.’ Karen looked at both men. ‘So the photo and diary didn’t protect you?’
‘They did. Whatever it was, whoever it was, it was just there to scare me. They couldn’t get to me which is why they didn’t follow me back here. I think it was like a picture, maybe. A film. Something frightening but not real.’
‘You sure about that?’ Will said.
‘Not in the fucking slightest.’
‘It was definitely Geri with the gun?’ Karen said. To think of Geri in such a way hurt in some deep way of which she couldn’t get hold.
‘I saw her. Only for a second, but it was her.’
Karen opened to ask how Geri would get a gun. She closed her mouth, the question unsaid. How wasn’t the issue. What came next was.
‘So who knocked you over?’ Will said.
‘No idea. The thing is, they came at me from my right, knocked me over so unless they fell with me when I fell or they jumped back the other way, they would have been exactly where I was when Geri fired.’
‘It doesn’t make sense. Why would Geri want to shoot anyone let alone you?’ Karen said.
Stu tapped the diary.
‘You read it. I want to hurt people. I want them to feel how I felt. I know that’s wrong but it’s still true.’
‘Geri wasn’t like that.’
‘Maybe she is now,’ Stu muttered.
‘I can’t believe that.’
‘It doesn’t matter what we believe,’ Will said. ‘It’s what we do next. Any ideas?’
Karen and Stu looked at him and nobody spoke.
Two heavy blows hit the front door.
Sixty Three
Show them.
Take them.
Lead them.
The thoughts. In a circle. Around my head. Nothing else there.
My feet on. The ground. Solid. Walking. Taking me. Path. Grass. The houses. I know. I know. This is. The street.
Geri’s house.
Geri. Geri.
House. Her house. Right there. Lights on. In the windows. I’m walking. To. The door. The door. Hand up. Knocking. Once. Twice. Knock knock. Who’s there? Me.
I’m. Walking back to. Back to the path. And. And looking at the. House.
The window. In the window by. The door.
Face.
Two.
Three.
Them. Staring at me. Big faces. Mouths open. I know. Them.
Their names. Elton. Elton. Will. Karen. Stu. Watching me. Running. We ran. We were. Running. Water. Water around me.
I’m here. I’m walking.
With my friends.
Friends.
Take them.
Lead.
Take them.
Sixty Four
Will yanked the door open, saw the figure on the path at end of the garden and all the air fell out of him. He fell back against Karen, deflated. She pushed him up and spoke in a little, hurt voice.
‘Mick?’
Will gazed at the shape on the grass. It had Mick’s face, his body and it wasn’t him. It was like an idea of him, a life-like drawing created by someone who’d had Mick described to them.
‘Mick,’ Stu shouted and the figure lifted a slow hand. Splayed fingers. Waved.
‘Jesus fucking Christ.’ Stu stepped outside. Will grabbed his arm.
‘It’s not him,’ Will said.
Stu shook Will off and took a few small steps on to the grass. Mick, or whatever he was, didn’t move.
‘He’s dead. We saw him die,’ Will said.
‘It’s Mick,’ Karen whispered and Will stared at her.
‘How do you know?’
She smiled despite her tears. ‘I just do.’
Before Will could react, she ran from the front door, brushed past Stu who immediately followed, and ran to Mick.
‘Karen.’ Will ran after them, leaving the light and safety of Geri’s house.
Sixty Five
Take them.
Water.
To the hole. The space.
Gap. Between.
The gap between.
Dalry.
Home.
Sixty Six
Charlotte eased the blood-stained pillow case from Sam’s head, dropped it to the floor and replaced it with a fresh one. Sam’s head rested against her legs; he made soft noises that may have been words. Kirsty didn’t know and couldn’t look at the old man. She couldn’t look at Charlotte either. The fear and anger on her face were too much to take in.
That left Phil to study and that was somehow worse than watching Charlotte. His tears, if they’d ever been real, were long gone. Smiles hadn’t replaced them. Instead, he studied the unconscious Sam with a frowning curiosity, a look that suggested he couldn’t quite work out what was wrong with the old man.
‘He needs a hospital,’ Charlotte said and dabbed at a fresh line of blood oozing from Sam’s nose.
‘He can wait.’
‘He needs help. He’s bleeding. Can’t you see that?’
‘Shut up.’
Phil ran a finger over the blade of his knife and Kirsty prayed Charlotte would stay quiet. There wasn’t any reasoning here, and no hope of connection. She’d been an idiot to think there might have been. All they could do was keep quiet and hope for an opportunity.
Charlotte closed her mouth and Sam made no sound beside her.
‘Girls,’ Phil muttered and shifted position. Kirsty had spent half an hour seeing him in profile. With his movement, his face brightened by the orange illumination from a streetlight. Dusk had fallen minutes before and the orange light turned Phil’s face into a sickly mask, the face of an ill man. His eyes were worse than the rest of his face. They were dead.
Girls? What the hell does that mean?
His eyes landed on hers and a panicked shriek inside her head told her he’d heard her thought.
‘Your daughter. How old is she?’
Kirsty’s fear reached a level
she’d never known. ‘None of your fucking business.’
He blinked as if she’d moved to slap him and life returned to his eyes and face.
‘Probably not, but in my defence it’s been a difficult few days. Not often you see your dead sister, is it?’
She didn’t answer. She couldn’t.
Phil stood, stretched his legs and back, and grunted with pleasure.
‘Getting a bit stiff.’
His eyes landed on hers for a second too long and her stomach clenched. He pulled the curtain back a fraction and peered outside. Kirsty’s eyes flicked from the knife in his hand to the back of his head. She didn’t move. Not enough time.
‘Always depressing when it starts getting dark so early. I hate it when the clocks change,’ he said and let the curtain fall back into place. Sam snorted and groaned. Fresh blood pooled out of his nose. Phil paid him no attention and Kirsty wondered if Sam and Charlotte still existed for Phil. Or if everything for him came down to her because of who she was.
The wife of his sister’s friend.
A new target for her hate came. Geri. So what if they’d never met? This was her fault, the whole fucked up business. If she had stayed dead, if she had left them alone, then Stu wouldn’t be missing, their lives wouldn’t have been torn in half by whatever the hell all this was about.
Geri. All her fault. All of this down to her.
‘It’s time,’ Phil said.
He looked at Kirsty and only Kirsty.
‘Get up,’ he said and her fear, buried in resignation for hours, returned.
Moving with exaggerated care, she stood, back against the door.
‘What about them?’ she said and gestured to Sam and Charlotte.
‘They’re staying here.’
‘You can’t leave them like this, for Christ’s sake.’
‘Why not?’
It was like arguing with a child.
‘He needs help,’ Kirsty shouted and Phil shrugged.
‘I don’t care.’
He moved with the same horrible speed he’d shown as they’d come into the bedroom, striding to Sam and Charlotte, shoving Sam from Charlotte’s lap despite her pleas, and tying both of them together with bedsheets. Kirsty watched, impotent with fear, cursing herself, Phil and Geri.
Phil stood and faced the couple. ‘We’re going. The police will rescue you soon, I imagine. Just sit tight.’