It didn’t feel like a letter at the bottom of the sack, though. It was something loose and hard. Blake grabbed a fistful of whatever it was and removed his hand from the sackcloth.
When he opened his fist, he grimaced.
“What is it?” Ricky was staring at him expectantly.
Blake dropped the bone fragments back inside the sack and shoved it into his jean pocket. “It’s just some worms and stuff,” he lied. “Must have crawled inside and died.”
“And you just shoved your hand in them. Ha!”
“Cheers, son. Now come on, let’s go show Mum what you found.”
“Yay!”
The two of them set off down the field, heading back towards Poe’s Place and the inviting warmth of its natural fires. It had suddenly got very cold out in the field.
2
Blake unlocked the front door and Ricky charged inside. Liz was home, but Blake still preferred to lock up whenever he left. After what had happened at their home in the city, he wasn’t willing to take any risks. If he had his way, he would build a large brick wall around the property and a gate, but Liz didn’t want to feel trapped. They’d compromised and installed an alarm system. They’d also built a kitchen annex onto the property, which was where Liz was now.
“Mum, look what I found!” Ricky zoomed through the galley kitchen and joined his mother by the range cooker at the back. The heat it gave off made it all the way to the reception hallway where Blake stood. He was stuffing the sackcloth full of bones into one of the pockets of a coat hanging in the entranceway.
Liz turned from her cooking and smiled at Ricky. Her blonde hair was tied back, making her look all business. “Oh, wow! What is it? Did you find that with the metal detector?”
“Yeah, it was buried way down in the dirt. It’s an old picture frame. We had to dig it up.”
“I can see that from the state of your clothes.” There was a subtle hint of irritation in her voice, and Blake knew it was directed at him.
Blake grabbed himself a coke from the fridge and asked Liz if she wanted anything.
“No,” she raised a large glass of red. “I’m good for now.”
Blake checked his Citizen to find it was a little past four. He might join her with a glass later. He was an enthusiastic drinker — just like his brother and father — which was why he made such an effort to limit himself. “Ricky did really well,” he told her, “a natural treasure hunter if ever I saw one.”
“And here I was thinking you wouldn’t find a thing. Well done, honey,” she said to Ricky. “Now, why don’t you take off those dirty jeans and I’ll throw them in the wash before dinner.”
“What are we having?” asked Blake, pulling the tab on his coke. “Smells good.”
“Special spaghetti.”
Ricky pumped his fist in the air. “Woohoo! I love special spaghetti.”
Blake did too. He didn’t know what Liz made it with, but the bits of bacon mixed with the tomatoey pasta was divine. His saliva ducts loosened at the thought of it. “Saves me having to go fetch a pizza,” he said.
“You told Ricky you’d get a pizza without checking if I was making anything first?”
“What? No, he just asked and…sorry.”
Liz sipped her wine and patted Ricky on his head. He was now standing in his underpants. “Go get washed and put some fresh clothes on. You look like Mowgli.”
Ricky frowned. “Who’s Mowgli?”
“Never mind, just go.”
When Ricky left, taking his prized picture frame with him, it gave Blake the opportunity to approach his wife in private. “You okay?” he asked her. “You seem upset.”
She sighed and dropped her head. “I shouldn’t take it out on you. I’ve just been on the phone with my mother. She’s on one, as usual.”
Blake sighed. The old dragon had a knack for upsetting his wife with a thirty-second phone call. “What has she said this time?”
“Oh, nothing, if you ask her. She’s without fault.” Liz breathed deeply and sighed. “Oh, you know, just her usual: telling me how lonely she is, how she’s cooking a roast for just herself, and that she’s forgotten what Ricky looks like.”
“She saw him last week.”
“Exactly. She’s trying to say she wants to do something with us, but she’ll never come out and say it. She prefers to play the victim and guilt-trip me. I’ve just had too many years of it now. It gives me headache.” She took another gulp of wine.
Blake gave her tense shoulders a squeeze. “We’ll do something with her in the week. I don’t know why you let her get to you.”
“She’s my mother. God knows you have enough issues with your own family. Your father was a drunk, your brother too, and as for your mother…”
Blake felt himself getting wound up, but took a breath. He reminded himself that Liz was stressed—and stress was something Blake understood well. He’d be a hypocrite if he didn’t give his wife a free pass from time to time. “You’re right,” he said. “Families are a nightmare, but you’ve got me and Ricky. We have your back, honey.”
Liz took another hearty swig of wine and placed the empty glass on the counter. She fumed for a moment more, but then her expression softened. “She just has a way of making me really mad, you know? She’s always been like it. Always passing judgement with her snide comments. I know she raised me on her own, and that she loves me, but…” She made a growling sound. “She just makes me so mad sometimes.”
“Fuck her,” said Blake before he could stop himself.
Liz gawped at him. He expected her to fly off the handle, but she ended up laughing. “Yeah, you’re right,” she said. “Fuck her.”
Liz picked up her wine glass and filled it from a new bottle. It was then that Blake spotted the empty one in the sink. He wondered if she’d polished off the whole thing today, or if it’d been half-empty when she’d started.
Blake shuffled his feet on the tiles. He never used to feel awkward around his own wife. “So…what you fancy doing tonight?”
“Watch a film, maybe? What’s that new one, with all the apes taking over the world?”
“Gorilla Warfare? I don’t think it’ll be on WebWatch yet. I’ll find us something, though.”
Liz took another gulp of wine, then gave him a wet kiss on the lips. “Thanks, honey. I do love you, you know?”
“I know. I love you too. You’re a good daughter, so don’t let the old bag grind you down.”
She nodded. “Just let me get dinner sorted and I’ll be fine.”
“Okay. Give us a shout when you’re ready.”
Blake went into the main house. As soon as he opened the door to the hallway, Bailey bounded down the stairs towards him. The blue roan cocker spaniel was a menace to the groin, and she managed to land both front paws directly into Blake’s tender area. He bent forwards and grunted. “Hey, Bailey. Did you miss me? I would’ve taken you treasure hunting with us, but you’re a bloody lunatic.” Bailey had a habit of sprinting off into the distance every chance she got, an insatiable urge to just run.
Bailey whined excitedly and wagged her tail. They’d gotten her as a pup six years ago to get Ricky used to dogs, but she hadn’t lost any of her energy with age. Moving to a place in the country had only served to increase the cocker spaniel’s excitable nature.
“Come on, girl. You’re in the way.”
Bailey plonked her bum down and tilted her head. She offered her paw.
“I don’t have any treats on me. Go fuss Mummy and she might give you a chew.”
Bailey barked. Blake managed to shift her aside with his foot and make his way to the family room. The family room was an open-plan dining room/lounge at the front of the cottage that was also part of the modern extension. There was another, more traditional lounge on the other side of the property, where the original cottage stood, but the family room was where they spent most of their time.
The older Ricky got, however, the more difficult it became to keep family time going. T
he boy’s bedroom was slowly turning into a man cave, with its flat screen television and confusingly named videogame consoles stacked beneath it. Blake grew up with Nintendo vs Sega, but the waters seemed to have got murkier since then—and children were more partisan about their gaming choices than most political parties were about their manifestos.
Blake sat in one of the room’s two reclining armchairs and raised the foot rest; his arches ached from the uneven ground of the field. Blake flicked on the wall-mounted LCD situated above the fitted bar in the corner of the room.
The news came on mid-broadcast.
Commissioner Palu, head of the UK’s Major Crime Unit, was waffling on about whatever today’s threat was. Something about a terrorist cell planning an attack on the country by infecting hospital patients with infectious diseases. The commissioner was followed by Prime Minister Breslow, who gave a speech about whatever Middle Eastern conflict Britain would be interfering with next.
Blake switched the television back off again. It might’ve been selfish, but the fear of terrorism and global conflict was something he’d chosen to leave behind in the city. He made a point not to lend his attention to the horrors of the world. Those were for someone else to deal with.
Ricky came sprinting into the room. He’d changed into his pyjama bottoms and a Brody isn’t Dead t-shirt. The picture frame was clutched against his chest. “I gave it a clean,” he said proudly.
Blake stood and took the picture frame from his son, giving it a once-over. “Hey, you got it looking good as new.” It was strange, but the picture frame was spotless. Even after a thorough clean, Blake wouldn’t have expected it to come up so well. The ingrained carvings were now clear of debris and appeared even more intricate. With his thumb, Blake traced images of flowers and flames, interwoven like a garden on fire. It was a strange design, like nothing he’d ever seen before. It wasn’t pretty, exactly, but there was something captivating about it.
“I’ve got a picture to put in it,” said Ricky, pulling something from his pyjama pocket. “It’s a picture of Bailey. Can we put it on the side table with all the others?”
Blake looked over at the crammed side table in the dining area and wondered if there was even enough room for another frame. Liz was an avid picture-taker and had filled the table with scenes from Orlando, Barcelona, Armação de Pêra, Port El Kantaoui, and other places he couldn’t even remember visiting. They were memories of their previous lives; the one he’d removed them from for their own good.
Blake shuffled the frames around until there was just enough room to fit one more. “There you go,” he said.
Ricky was grinning. He placed the picture frame on the table and edged it backwards, shoving aside a picture of Liz and her mother in Gran Canaria. Once the new frame was set in position, Ricky stood back and admired it. It was strange how unblemished the glass was, having been buried for at least several years.
“You going to put the photograph inside, then?” asked Blake.
“Yep.” Ricky lined up the photo of Bailey with the gap at the top of the frame, then slid it behind the glass carefully. “There,” he said, “perfect.”
It was a nice picture: a rare snapshot of Bailey sunbathing in the garden. It was taken last summer, if Blake recalled correctly. “It looks good,” he said. “You should be proud. That frame might have been buried for decades, but now it’s all cleaned up and sitting in our lounge. You did that.”
Ricky smiled widely. “It’s really cool, isn’t it? Can we go treasure hunting again tomorrow?”
Blake tussled his son’s hair. “Maybe.”
There was a sudden bang that forced them both to jump, followed by what sounded like screeching tyres.
“What the hell was that?”
Ricky’s eyes were wide and his lower lip trembled.
Liz started screaming from the kitchen.
Blake raced through the house.
When he reached the kitchen he was unable to disguise the panic in his voice. “What is it? What the hell happened?”
Liz was sobbing and couldn’t speak. She pointed out the kitchen window.
“What is it? What…” Blake stared out of the window, out at the B-road running past the end of the driveway, and covered his mouth in horror. “Jesus, no.” He raced out of the kitchen and flew through the open front door.
Had he left it open?
The white van was already fading long into the distance as it sped along the B-road, impossible to identify, but it had left Bailey behind, lying where she’d been hit. The cocker spaniel was broken, her tongue lolling with every agonising pant. Blake ran over to her as quickly as if it’d been Ricky lying there. Ricky was hurrying up the driveway behind him, but Blake spun around and shouted at him to stay back.
Liz grabbed the boy and ushered him inside.
Blake got to his knees beside Bailey and went to touch her, but recoiled. He didn’t want to cause her any more pain by carelessly prodding at her. The only parts of her still moving were her ribcage which heaved, and her eyes which were fixated on Blake. They seemed to be pleading with him to make the pain stop. Maybe she was wondering why this had happened to her.
Blake decided to place a hand against her muzzle and stroked gently over her head. A soft whimper escaped her, but then she was gone; a bloody mess right outside her home. Her killer had fled scot-free, no witness within a two-mile area to grab the license plate number or flag the van driver down.
Suddenly, Blake loved the country a little bit less.
3
There was nothing the vet could do. Blake had offered to bury Bailey in the garden, but Ricky surprised him by saying no. He didn’t want her at home, upsetting him. He knew she was in a better place and that her body didn’t matter anymore. Besides, he didn’t want the fox in the field digging her up.
Liz and Blake gave their son a huge hug, and paid the vet to do what needed to be done. Before she did, though, she gave Ricky a pen and paper to write a goodbye note. It could be placed next to Bailey when they cremated her. Ricky wrote something quickly, making sure nobody else read it, then handed it over with tears in his eyes.
Then they drove home in silence. Blake knew his son was hurting, but was surprised by how much he was as well. All of the times Bailey had misbehaved, making him shout or scold the dog, came back to haunt him now and made him well up with tears. He knew, deep down, that Bailey had had a good life, however short. It didn’t change the fact that he would happily endure a thousand more doggy punches to the groin if it would bring her back.
Liz sat in the passenger seat, rubbing her forehead and turning an unhealthy grey. Blake suspected she had a hangover from the several large glasses of wine she’d downed whilst making dinner. A drink sounded good right about now, so a hangover was most likely in his near future, too.
It was dark when Blake dropped Liz and Ricky off at the house and headed off to get pizza. The special spaghetti would have to wait for another day. Liz was in no mood to cook.
The pizza place was in the high street of the nearby town of Redlake. The town wasn’t much more than a village, in truth, but it had a lot of history and character, which Blake had found attractive when considering his purchase of Poe’s Place. The town’s eponymous body of water was bordered by a 12th century Cistercian Abbey-turned-museum. Blake took Ricky there once to learn about the town’s history and how it had got its name, but it hadn’t gone down particularly well.
The monks at the abbey had once produced dyes and pigments; the runoff from which had turned the lake red, thus giving the town its name. Back then, nothing lived in the lake, but now it had been repopulated by the council and made into a nature reserve. Sport fishing, sailing, and bird spotting all went on at a place that once resembled a lake of blood. It was just another example of how nature prevailed, even after mankind had wrought its destruction.
Blake turned his Citroen Picasso off the roundabout and pulled into a small car park outside a row of shops. He parked in front of the pizz
a place, DiMarcos, which was sandwiched between an Indian takeaway and a chippie. At the end of the row was a hairdresser and grimy laundrette.
A couple of people formed a queue inside the chippie, but the rest of the shops were empty or closed. Blake entered the pizza place and stood in front of the counter. It took a few minutes for anybody to appear from the kitchen, and that was accelerated by Blake coughing and clearing his throat loudly.
“Hey,” said a teenaged boy in a red baseball cap and baggy blue shirt.
“Hello, could I get a large Chicken Deluxe and a medium Margareta, please?”
“Gunna be about ten minutes, mate.”
“No problem.” Blake took a seat on a bench by the window. He checked his watch: 8:30. He couldn’t believe how quickly the last few hours had rushed by. He still hadn’t properly processed what had happened. Had he left the front door open when he’d come back from the field with Ricky? The more Blake thought about it, the more he was sure he had.
He’d killed his son’s dog.
No, some jackass in a white van had killed Bailey, and then sped off like a coward. Blake wished he could get his hands on the driver. Animal cruelty left a particularly sour taste in Blake’s mouth.
What made the situation even more tragic was how Ricky had delighted in placing a photo of Bailey inside his newly acquired picture frame. As soon as he had done so, Bailey had been struck down and killed. It was the very essence of cruel irony, a spiteful jab of coincidence.
The ten-minute wait turned into twenty and Blake was in a sleepy daze by the time the teenaged boy shouted at him. “Ready, mate. Fourteen-ninety-eight.”
Blake reached into his pocket and pulled out a tenner and some coins. He took the pizzas and left without waiting for his two-penny change.
He returned to the car and slid the pizza boxes onto the passenger seat, but before he started the engine, he rubbed at his eyes with balled fists. He felt weary and mildly unwell, like he had a cold coming. Hardly surprising considering the shock he’d suffered. Grief had a way of crippling the immune system.
The BIG Horror Pack 2 Page 86