Hometown

by Luke Walker

  Fucking stop, she says aloud and the word she’s spoken only a few times before is darkly exciting. She says it again and again and her tears cease. Control has come. She’s in charge and that’s the best thing in the world. It’s a present. She gave it to herself. The tears aren’t with her anymore. She’s smiling in the toilet. In charge.

  And she’s smiling because she’s with Will. She’s twenty and Will is here with his uneven smile and his hands all over her, and oh God she loves it when he’s like this. She loves being twenty and his house is theirs and theirs alone. Late January outside, stupid, dead January with its bare trees and wind and all the joy of Christmas already long gone. It’s all outside and so what? Who cares? It’s out in the night and she’s here in the light and heat of Will’s bedroom, pillow below her head and the stereo on, volume not too high, just high enough to cover them.

  This is it, this is what it’s all about, she tells herself. Happiness here in this room, dead winter locked away. They’re safe from it because they’re inside and it’s out. She’s safe with him; she’s in charge of him.

  Now he’s on top of her, blowing into her ear and it makes her laugh and down there, she’s hot. Jesus, she’s hot. Her new denim skirt is high, much higher than her thighs, and it’s frustrating in a strangely pleasant way that her tights around her knees prevent her from opening her legs any further. Frustrating. Annoying. But pleasant. He likes her like this, she knows. Sort of slutty. Open but not completely. Showing a bit. Open.

  She relishes the heat that comes with this thought. She’s in charge. She gave this to him. She does this to him. Her. Her. All of her. What power. What heat.

  Will’s middle finger trails over her thighs, then higher, and she shifts to let him in. She feels herself let go when he enters her as deeply as he can; it drips when he pulls his finger out, pushes it back in and oh my God, oh my God, it’s blood, it’s blood everywhere, it’s red, it’s red between my legs.

  She’s crying out of nowhere. Dead January is here. It’s broken in. Now Will has jerked away from her, his mouth stained with her lipstick and he backs away over his bed, staring at her, wanting to speak. She can see that, even if she can’t see anything else. Eyes full of tears and she staggers out of Will’s bedroom and across the hall to the bathroom. She sees herself through his eyes as she lurches away from him: skirt up around her waist, tights nothing more than a torn second skin stuck to her legs and she’s still wet, still dripping.

  The bathroom door is closed, locked. She’s leaning against it and her hand moves down there to her heat, the terrible pain. She’s crying as she does it, as her orgasm eats into her, thinking of nothing but her bedroom flooded with red. And worst of the worst, worse than four nights later and finishing with Will, worse the other guys in the pub, all three of them one after the other, worse than the pain, exhaustion and shame she feels in the morning, worse than anything there could ever be is her right now, right here at Leigh’s funeral.

  Leigh, dead. Leigh, gone from the world and only seventeen. Not fair. Not fucking fair. Leigh, pregnant, and the car hitting the wall hard enough for flying chunks of glass to take off her face.

  Not fucking fair.

  Not fair.

  Not her. Shouldn’t have been Leigh. She didn’t deserve this, not her little sister, not the one she should have protected for all this time.

  This is the worst of the worst. Leigh, dead. Leigh, pregnant. Leigh in the car and it wasn’t out of control, she wasn’t drunk; there was nobody else, just Leigh in her car, belly still flat despite what slept inside, and her car hitting the wall fast enough to end everything.

  The worst of it all.

  Is right now.

  Because she knows everything.

  What he did to her. Just once.

  What he did in her bed just once.

  What he did to Leigh for ten years.

  Geri stands on the edge of the car park and Christmas shoppers are miles below; the Christmas lights watch her stand on the edge, watch the wind whip through her hair. Dirty Christmas. Dirty lights. Dirty air, full of winter and cold and there’s nothing left but below, but Dalry, but her home and she knows it as well as she knows her own name, knows it’s a dark place, full of ugliness and hurt and rage: streets and roads filled with secret things as ugly as what he did to her one time, what he spent ten years doing to Leigh and Leigh never said a word.

  Not fair. Not fucking fair. So fuck you. Fuck you.

  Fuck you, fuck me, fuck me, that’s what she said, Geri, when she told me to, she told me fuck her because she loved it, she loved me and we did it all the time, for all that time, I fucked her, I fucked her like I never fucked anyone else, like I made her believe it, believe me and for that all time, all those years, all those ten years until she was seventeen and she was pregnant so do it, you bitch, fucking do it, see if anyone gives a shit because they’ll know you wanted it like she did, you asked for it so you fucking well do it.

  And the world, made of Geri’s tears, of rage, of red exploding out from between her legs.

  This world is red.

  Geri brings Leigh’s face to her mind and she is sorry, she is so sorry she never told anyone what he did to her.

  Geri jumps from the carpark, sails down towards the Christmas shoppers and Christmas lights of Dalry.

  Ninety Two

  Phil let go of the woman. His hand free from her arm felt strangely sad.

  ‘Go,’ he told her.

  Kirsty ran to Stu and Karen; Karen let go of Stu. Kirsty caught him. Karen lifted Will and supported his head. His hands fell on his stomach. His blood coated her when she lifted his fingers from the wound.

  ‘Karen?’ he whispered.

  She lifted her head, marked Phil and the depth of her rage surprised him.

  ‘You fucking bastard.’

  Her shriek managed to bury the noise outside for a second. He waved the knife at her.

  ‘Stay there,’ he said.

  She held Will, talking to him and burying his head against her breasts.

  ‘Will?’ Stu croaked.

  ‘He’s fine,’ Karen sobbed. ‘He’s fine.’

  Phil watched this, idly interested. Stabbing Will hadn’t been part of the plan. It had just happened when the idiot came running in here, running right at them. It had just happened like so much other stuff.

  Will raised a bloody hand a few inches; Stu dropped, wounded leg jutting from his body at an odd angle. Will’s hand slapped against Stu’s arm. Kirsty embraced Stu as she wept and Stu took Will’s hand.

  ‘You’re not going anywhere, Elton,’ Stu said.

  Phil watched them, wondering who’d be first.

  Will. It’ll be Will.

  He was right. Will lifted his head with obvious effort and stared at him. Blood covered his stomach and chest.

  ‘Geri.’

  It wasn’t much more than a whisper. Phil heard him, though.

  ‘You raped her.’

  Phil lifted his hand and extended the blood stained knife towards Will.

  ‘Say that one more time.’

  Will’s mouth trembled and it wasn’t with fear, Phil realised. It was anger. His words flew from him in a terrible bellow and blood poured from his stomach at the same time.

  ‘You raped her, you bastard. Leigh, too. You raped them, you piece of shit.’

  The windows in Block collapsed. Phil ducked as glass rained. Momentarily forgetting the group on the floor, he shielded his face. Freezing air coated his skin. The night outside finally registered even though a distant part of his mind had noticed it moments before. The crash of the collapsing roads and buildings also reached him. Faraway panic came closer and told him to get out of here, to leave the people on the floor and get somewhere safe.

  No. This is my place.

  Phil stared at the little he could see of the school grounds, frowning. This, his place? His school, yes, but he hadn’t been here in years. He hadn’t been back to Dalry in God knows how long and until he’
d seen her, he hadn’t given much thought to Geri for a long time. Not until the girl, of course. Whatever her name was, she was the spitting image of Geri. Same hair, same eyes, same potential.

  Telling the woman, Kirsty, about her, hadn’t been a good idea. He knew that now. But nothing to be done about it. Nothing but deal with this and get out. Nothing but this place and her coming back to him.

  Letting a slow smile spread over his face, Phil faced Geri’s friends and welcomed what he saw. Their faces were all aimed towards him, their mouths open.

  The moonlight between him and them was moving. It danced just like she did.

  She was here.

  ‘You came.’

  Told you I would.

  ‘I did wonder.’

  I didn’t lie.

  The light around her grew and the noise of the town falling apart belonged to another world.

  Here, it was their world and their world alone.

  Phil moved towards his sister.

  Ninety Three

  The storm in his stomach had faded to background noise. Karen’s hand was in his and they were all together in this nightmare. And the light was here. Inside the light, Leigh.

  Will’s mind raced backwards in time, taking him with it through his and Karen’s relationship and back before that to home, to family and Dalry and school. And now Geri.

  He stood in his past, buried with it, and saw Leigh as she’d been as a kid, a figure in the background of his teen years, only gaining flesh and colour when he and Geri had become closer friends, then more than friends. Leigh, always behind, always young and always there but never quite as solid as anything else in his life.

  Here she was as solid as she’d been back then, as alive as she hadn’t been since she was seventeen.

  Realisation fell into him. The girl. Andy’s flat. Looked like Geri. Could have been her cousin.

  Or her sister.

  Or Geri and Leigh inside one body, the face belonging to neither and shaped from both of them.

  I knew you. Will couldn’t speak. All he had was the thought. I knew you. I knew you.

  He heard her talking even if her mouth didn’t move. She spoke to Phil and her words broke through the noise outside now racing through the school and heading up to Block, and even if her face and body said she was seventeen, Will saw her as a child in her bed, blood between her legs as she wept for what her brother had done to her, would keep doing to her until she died: her scream, one constant noise all around her, a hand resting on her stomach and the thing growing inside her, the thing he put there; and her car crashing into a wall at seventy miles an hour.

  Then those bleak times for him and Geri when some unnamed horror had been eating her, some horror that gained a name after Leigh’s death. It all came back and welcomed him like an old friend. Will was conscious of the others around him, Karen’s hand in his and the distant pain in his stomach. They were all with him but none as solid as the lost years of before, lost with Geri and her grief for her dead sister and her lost past.

  Her childhood. He took it, he fucking stole it, he …

  The thought descended into noise. Will returned to his body and his pain. Block was here; school was here and they were all here with their blood and their grief of lost time.

  Back here in Dalry.

  Back home.

  They’re coming, Will. Those outside. The forgotten. They’re coming here.

  Will’s free hand dropped to the shaking floor, palm flat and ready to support him.

  Glancing down, he saw Karen’s hand sliding towards Stu’s jeans pocket, and Stu and Kirsty were looking down, a frown crossing Kirsty’s face and an exhausted smile filling Stu’s.

  In front, Phil and Leigh; Phil smiling at the sight of his sister back again; Phil’s smile a monstrous beast as Leigh crossed to him; Leigh, seventeen, and forever there with her arms opening and the light that enveloped her a dark, pulsating heartbeat.

  Two heartbeats.

  ***

  The diary flies from Karen’s hand.

  It lands without a sound on the carpet.

  The diary opens.

  The light around Leigh falls into it, slips inside the pages as if made of ink. The crash of the school falling apart reaches the door to Block; wood splinters and collapses, the cracks race across the floor in lines and the moonlight bellows in through the holes in the windows and walls.

  And the diary.

  Geri’s diary.

  A shape coming out of the pages, rising, full of light, the pages giving birth to light and it’s there for all of them: Will, Karen, Stu and Kirsty see her emerge from her pages, standing over them and smiling as she did in life.

  Geri.

  Leigh.

  Phil.

  Sisters face brother and Leigh is away from Phil without moving a step. He’s left alone on the floor, eyes moving between them, tasting them. The wind blows into a gust, then a gale. Debris spins around Phil, blocking his body but not his face from view. The ground falls away from him. Chunks of building drop into nothing and it isn’t nothing below. It’s the same void that brought them to this version of their school and the laughing thing from the river, the thing that keeps the doors closed between what is past and what is now, that thing is there, peering upwards. Its great mouth opens and it swallows the falling chunks of building and the beams of moonlight.

  Phil tries to speak, to say his sister’s names and nothing is there. What is there is movement behind him: figures coming in waves. They walk on nothing. They fill the holes in the building, clamber through the wrecked windows and cross towards him.

  The dark things with their clubs and bats, their hands stained with blood. All the dark things come from the underside of Dalry to this little world.

  Leigh screams.

  The sound splits everything in two. The sound echoes from death to life. The rage of her monstrous life torn in two by her brother flies into what remains of Dalry, falls below the hungry holes into the mouth of the laughing thing below to land in the lost Dalry.

  All the light starts to fade. The moon is gone. The clouds are here. The people advance on Phil; hands reach for him and he speaks, calling Leigh, then Geri and the hands are on him, fingers digging into his skin, tearing open his flesh and he’s still calling to his sisters, still saying he loves them, always loved them and fingers move to his face, higher to his eyes. Fingers pierce them, eager to blind him, eager to unleash his blood and screams and he falls down into the Dalry he created, the Dalry he owns, the dark things falling with him.

  Leigh falls with him, a Leigh forever seventeen and Phil shrieks that he loves her, that he always loved her and always wanted to prove it.

  There’s a pause, pregnant with wonder and terror. Phil’s horrified scream breaks out of one world to crash into Block. A scream of realisation.

  One final sound comes from the lost side of Dalry.

  The sound of a crying child, calling for its father.

  Ninety Four

  It’s been so long since I’ve seen them. They’re older now. They’re not the people I remember and they’re just the same. Stu, this new woman, this good woman Kirsty. Karen, our Will. He’s bleeding. His blood is on us. He’s still breathing, still here.

  Sunlight is coming back and that’s all right. It’s welcome here. The mess is gone. The things are gone. Leigh’s gone, too, and I miss my sister. Always loved her. Always wanted to protect her and I didn’t. Not my fault, though. Phil hurt us; he hurt me and that wasn’t my fault. It was all down to him and I won’t hurt, anymore.

  So I sit with my friends while the sunshine comes back to us and I tell them I love them, that I always loved them, and I hold their hands. They hold mine. We hold one another for as long as we can while the light comes back in and their world comes with it.

  Our sunshine. Our days. I miss them. I miss them all. And Mick is with me. Andy, too. We’re here in Block and this is us right here, right now.

  Too much blood. It’s on our han
ds and Will is breathing; he’s breathing to Karen, still breathing and still loving her and now he’s coming with me.

  Coming with us.

  Coming with all of us.

  Coming home.

  ***

  ‘Will?’ Karen whispered.

  Stu and Kirsty were beside her. She knew it and didn’t care. The school as it was had gone and they were somewhere else. Where didn’t matter. What happened didn’t matter. The only thing in the world was Will. His bloody hand was still in hers and that was only because she was holding him so tightly. Her jacket was wet with his blood and no more pooled from the wound in his stomach.

  ‘Will?’

  A touch on her shoulder. Kirsty. She was crying.

  ‘Karen, he’s …’

  ‘No, he isn’t.’ Karen ran her fingers through a few loose strands of Will’s hair. It was getting thin on top. Needed a trim around the sides. ‘He’s not. He’s not. He’s not.’

  She held his body and she wept for her husband.

  ***

  Later.

  Kirsty rocked with Stu in her arms. He hadn’t spoken in what might have been hours. She hadn’t wanted to but had forced herself to speak to Karen. Nobody had said a word since. Sunlight was here, the windows, doors and floor were whole. No ghosts. No things. Just them.

  There was just her, rocking with Stu.

  Back and forth.

  Together.

  ***

  Later, again.

  Stu stared at nothing and tried to think of nothing. His eyes saw Block and while a fraction of his mind noted that it was all as normal as it should be, he didn’t think of it in any deeper way. It didn’t mean much if anything.