The World's Last Breaths: Final Winter, Animal Kingdom, and The Peeling

by Iain Rob Wright

  Inside it felt like a sauna, humid and hot. After hours of freezing, the aura of warmth was heavenly, but it was unnatural as well. There was no rational explanation for the backroom of The Trumpet to feel like the Brazilian rainforest, especially when it was snowing outside.

  Rather than retreat, Harry stepped out onto the stiff wood of the dance floor. It creaked beneath his weight. From the end of the room, the bright light continued pulsing. It was coming from behind the elevated DJ booth erected against the far wall, but as Harry got closer the light began to weaken. He hopped up the three steps at the edge of the dance floor and hurried towards the booth. The light continued to fade. Harry had the feeling that if he didn’t get a look inside the DJ booth quickly, he would miss something important. Harry unlatched the door and rushed inside.

  His heart skipped a beat.

  It was the most wonderful and the most painful thing Harry could ever have hoped to see. He choked back a sob. “Toby?”

  Cowering before him, engulfed by a rapidly fading glow, was Harry’s son. Toby hadn’t aged at all since the crash. He peered up at Harry with the same deep, soulful eyes he had always had.

  “Daddy.” Toby’s voice was an echo, seeming to come from the walls themselves. “Daddy, I’m scared.”

  It was impossible, an evil trick. Yet, somehow, Harry found himself speaking only affectionately. “It’s okay, Toby. Daddy’s here.”

  The light around Toby died, returning the room to near darkness. He looked just like a normal six year old boy now. “You promise you’ll keep me safe, daddy?”

  “Yes, son. I’ll keep you safe.” Harry reached down to Toby, but the boy shuffled backwards out of his grasp.

  “No, you won’t,” Toby said spitefully. “You can’t keep anyone safe. My daddy was strong. He taught me to ride a bike and would buy me chicken nuggets whenever I wanted. You’re not him! You’re weak. Weak and pathetic!” The words hissed and crackled from Toby’s mouth, not at all like the voice of a child.

  Tears fell from Harry’s eyes. I am weak, he thought to himself. I failed you, Toby. I let you get hurt, and all I’ve done since is feel sorry for myself. But you’re not my son.

  The apparition of Toby was so accurate that it sent a chill through Harry’s bones. But it wasn’t perfect. Harry could see the lack of humanity in its malignant eyes.

  “I have to go now, Toby,” Harry said, backing away slowly. “I think you should go back to wherever you came from.”

  The malice in the creature’s eyes gave away its age. There was something ancient and inhuman bubbling away beneath the surface as it cackled at Harry. The piercing sound filled the room.

  “Running away is all you’re good for, maggot. You watched your family die and have been running away ever since. You are pathetic, wasting the life that He gave you. Death will embrace you soon. Leave this place Harry Jobson and be done with it. Your time is over. Reckoning is here.”

  Harry didn’t understand, but he knew he had to get away. By taking Toby’s form, the creature had specifically targeted Harry, plucking at his grief like strings on a guitar.

  Harry didn’t take his eyes away from the DJ’s booth as he sidled backwards along the dance floor, but it didn’t stop him noticing the light source growing behind him.

  Harry spun around.

  His heart stopped all over again.

  Thomas Morris stood by the exit to the pub’s backroom. The man who had taken everything from Harry was here, and smiling at him like an old friend.

  “Long time no see, Harry,” the apparition hissed. “You’re looking…older.”

  Harry said nothing.

  “You really gunna ignore me? With the history you and me have? Thought you’d have more to say.”

  Harry’s fists clenched. “I have nothing to say to you!”

  The apparition of Thomas Morris laughed again. “You never were much of a talker. You prefer to let actions speak for you, right?”

  Whatever this thing was, it was not Thomas, and it could do Harry no harm. If it could, then why hadn’t it done so already? Harry stepped around the image of his old enemy and headed for the door.

  Harry was thrown backwards and hit the floor hard.

  Thomas immediately loomed over Harry. His inhuman eyes were filled with the same malignance that Toby’s had been. “You will pay for your actionsss,” it hissed at Harry. “Everyone will pay. It is time for…retribution.”

  Harry cowered on the dance floor. The apparition had hit him; but how? Harry decided not to hang around to find out. He leapt to his feet and rushed for the door.

  The apparition shouted after him, words both wicked and baleful. “You will die tonight, Harry Jobson. Death’s cold embrace awaits you. Go outside and face your end. Do not delay what is already certain.”

  “Fuck you!” Harry shouted back. He reached the door to the pub’s corridor and glanced back one last brief second. It slowed him down, but he couldn’t help it.

  Thomas Morris was nowhere to be seen.

  Harry realised he was shaking. He took a series of deep breaths but still couldn’t relax. He needed to get out of that room right now, return to the others and tell them what he’d seen. Not that they would believe him.

  He would just have to try to make them believe him. After what he had seen in the last hour, Harry knew that they were in great danger – from a source he could not make sense of.

  Harry was about to leave, when the back room presented him with another gift. This time his heart kept its rhythm. Perhaps he was becoming used to seeing the impossible. Lying on the floor was his wife, Julie. Her body and face were battered and bruised, bones splintered and askew. Just like what she had looked like after the car crash that had killed her.

  Harry gazed down at the twisted forgery of his wife and allowed his heart to scream for a moment. The final image of his wife’s dying form had always stayed with him, but never had he confronted it face-to-face. Not since the night it happened.

  Julie tilted her head towards him, broken bones scraping and grating against each other as she moved. “Harry…” She spoke in a condemning whisper. “Why did this happen to me? Why are you not with me?”

  Harry ground his teeth. This wasn’t his wife. This wasn’t Julie. Whatever it was, it was defiling the memories of dead people. He owed it no explanations.

  “You’re dead, Julie,” Harry said, stepping over the twisted body and heading into the corridor. “And I’m not afraid of joining you.”

  21

  Damien wasn’t sure why he had lied. Harry had made himself look a right muppet in front of Steph, but the fact was he was telling the truth. There had been flames outside, but they’d suddenly disappeared. Damien could have backed Harry up, but had instead decided to leave him hanging.

  Did the thought of Steph and Harry possible copping off together irritate Damien so much? He didn’t think he was so petty. Steph wasn’t like the usual girls Damien fucked. She was strong, with a mind of her own, and took control in the same way he did. He respected that.

  But it was more than simple jealousy. Damien had gained a degree of pleasure from Harry’s frustration. Over the last few hours, Harry had shown himself to be an alright bloke. He may have been a deadbeat, but the geezer’s heart was in the right place. Maybe what pissed Damien off was the way Harry constantly played the part of the wounded soldier, always making people want to come up to him and ask if everything was okay. Oh, poor Harry, so full of pain and anguish, yet he still keeps going. What a guy!

  Damien scowled. Harry had no right to make out like his problems were worse than anyone else’s.

  He did lose his son though...

  Damien shook his head and stood up from the cushion-less bench. He was beginning to lose sight of things. Tomorrow would be a new day and he would go back to not knowing any of these people.

  Jess and Jerry were sitting nearby, with the dying polish kid who’d come through the window. Damien had chosen to stay near to the three of them just in ca
se they needed help. He’d been impressed by the way Jess had glassed the old bird. Took balls.

  As he stretched his legs, Damien continued to brood about Harry. Damien had things tough, too, but no one cared about his problems. No one ever gave a damn that his old man used to beat him black and blue growing up for no other reason that he felt like it. Trying to toughen you up, boy! Teach you to be a man. No one cared when the locally-feared, notorious gangster, ‘Big Jan’, had made Damien deal drugs at ten years old. No one will suspect a kid, his old man used to say, so get yourself on that corner and don’t come home till you’ve sold it all. And no one cared when Damien’s old man, ‘Big Jan’, had tried to pin an assault charge on him just to boost his street cred. People need to fear you like they fear me, Damien. Time to get a name for yourself.

  The rage that ever flowed through Damien’s veins began to heat up. When his old man had gone down last year, he’d felt free for the first time ever. But it hadn’t lasted. Damien had been ordered to take over operations and report to his father in the nick via regular phone calls. Keep the money safe for me, Dame, for when I get out. Make me proud, son.

  Yeah, I’ll make you real proud, dad! I’ll live up to the name of ‘Big Jan’.

  Except Damien had never felt so small than when he was trying to be big like his father. For him, violence was an act, a well-rehearsed skill. There was no joy in punching a rival’s face, only emptiness. To his father it came easily. Like when he kicked the shit out of a local street dealer until he was a whimpering, bleeding mess on the ground. A kid no older than Damien.

  Gazz Brown had been tough. He’d managed to knock Damien spark-out at a party and taken his stash of e. Damien’s father had not been happy – the supply had been his. Not happy at all. In a drunken rage, Big Jan – along with a group of ‘the boys’ – had taken Damien to go find Gazz. They’d found him round the back of the local supermarket, selling the e to the warehouse workers. Big Jan saw red – had gone red in fact. Like a wild bull, he had torn into the youth, cracking bones and shattering teeth, stamping and kicking long after the boy’s beaten body lay unconscious on the ground. It took almost ten minutes before the boys dragged him away, but by that time someone had called the Police. Somebody had to go down for it.

  But not Big Jan.

  Gazz ended up in a coma and Damien fessed to the crime. He’d gone to juvi for a stint, while ironically the fuzz got his old man twelve months later for Class A dealing. Big Jan went to Hewell Prison for 15 years just as Damien was getting out of kid’s knick. Upon his return, Damien had become feared on the local estate, viewed as a vicious, animalistic thug who had gone down for beating someone into a coma. His old man would have been proud.

  But tonight was supposed to be the night when Damien did something to make himself proud. He was going to disobey Big Jan for the first time and do the right thing. Instead, he’d found himself trapped inside a rotten pub with a bunch of losers.

  Losers like Harry, who only care about their next drink.

  Finally it clicked. The reason Damien hated Harry so much was because the man cared more about getting wasted than anything else. Damien’s father had been no different, except it had been drugs instead of booze. Every time Damien looked at Harry, downing pint after pint, night in night out, he thought about how much he hated his father.

  But Damien realised he had got Harry all wrong. Harry had been a good man and a good father, a bloke who cared so much about his family that, when they’d died, he’d just given up on life. Harry’s family had been his entire world – the exact opposite to Big Jan – and when they had died, part of him went with them. Damien finally understood Harry’s endless drinking.

  And he could forgive it.

  “I should apologise,” Damien told himself, “but first I gotta go take a piss.”

  This is it! Nigel’s body teemed with excitement. Harry and Lucas were nowhere to be seen, probably in the cellar with the cripple. The grumpy shrew, Kath, had disappeared somewhere to clean the gore off her ugly face and Damien was at the other end of the pub with Jerry and the young girl, Jess. If he played his cards right, Jess would be dessert.

  But first he had Steph to gorge himself on.

  I’m finally going to fuck her.

  Nigel had watched with delight as everyone departed, except Steph who had gone toward the toilets alone. This was his chance. He would follow her in, knock her out cold, have his way with her, and then slit her throat with his trusty pen knife – sharpened to perfection. By the time he dumped her body outside in the snow, no one would be any the wiser. Nigel would plead ignorance of Steph’s whereabouts and, while everyone would fret and worry, that would be the sum of it. What else could they do but impotently panic? Only Nigel would know the truth.

  First thing in the morning, he’d hop in his lorry and get the hell out of there as fast as the snow would flatten before his tyres. He would spend a few months in France maybe, enjoy some of the pussy on the South Coast. It was the easiest thing in the world. Raping and killing unsuspecting women had become as second nature to Nigel as taking a leak. Just another need to be taken care of. An itch to scratch.

  Nigel eased open the door to the men’s toilets, where he’d seen Steph enter. The door creaked ever so slightly, but the sounds coming from inside, of Steph gathering up supplies, drowned out any noise he made.

  The toilets smelt of stale piss and the room was lit by a single candle Steph had placed on the middle of three sinks. She was at the far end of the small space with her back to the door, gathering up bundles of handtowels from a storage cupboard.

  Perfect! She won’t even see it coming.

  With well-practiced grace, that belied his lumbering appearance, Nigel struck his blow. He clocked Steph from behind, hooking his fist into the side of her jaw and knocking her cold. The clunky Dolphin ring on his pinkie finger gave the blow a little extra impact. Steph’s body flopped sideways, collapsing into one of the toilet cubicles. Her head hit the ceramic bowl inside with a resounding thump!

  “Good, girl,” Nigel grinned, “helping Daddy like that. You’ve found us a room and got yourself ready.”

  He knelt over Steph and fumbled at her clothing, squeezing her breasts through the material. He could barely see in the dark, but that only made it more exciting. He’d fantasied about this moment for so long that every touch of her flesh was enough to send small beads of ejaculate spurting from his swollen cock.

  He rolled Steph onto her back and slid his eager, trembling fingers beneath the waistband of her jeans. Despite the perishing cold, the flesh of Steph’s belly and groin was surprisingly hot.

  Steph murmured incoherently.

  “That’s it, you little slut, cry out for your Daddy. He won’t help you.”

  Nigel fumbled excitedly at the buttons on Steph’s jeans. He ground his teeth in frustration when they refused to pop easily. Taking a deep breath, he steadied his excited hands and concentrated. The buttons came loose one at a time.

  Pop.

  Pop.

  Pop.

  “That’s it, darling, let’s get you out of these clothes.”

  Just as Nigel was about to start tugging down Steph’s jeans, he was alerted by a presence close behind him. He spun around.

  Then bit his tongue as something struck his jaw.

  “What the fuck is going on here?” a voice demanded.

  What the fuck indeed, thought Nigel as he unwillingly went to sleep on the piss-soaked floor.

  22

  Harry had been on his way to the toilet when he heard the ruckus.

  After seeing the apparitions in the dance hall, Harry had hurried downstairs to the cellar to regroup. The vision of Thomas Morris had reached out and struck Harry, but he was almost certain that was the extent of the physical threat. If it could have done any real harm then surely it would have done so. Harry had no clue what was going on, but there was no need to panic the others with what had happened just yet, at least until he could figure out what to
tell them.

  It turned out that Old Graham wanted to speak to him about a rather embarrassing matter. The old man had needed to piss badly, but couldn’t get up with his leg the way it was. Harry understood the predicament, and accepting responsibility, but at first didn’t know what to suggest. Then he spotted the half empty bottle of Famous Grouse that Lucas had brought down. He gave the bottle to Old Graham who immediately necked the rest of the contents. “For the pain,” he said. Then Harry had given him the old man a few moments alone to refill the bottle.

  Now Harry was on his way to the urinals upstairs, with a candle in one hand and a whisky bottle full of geriatric piss in the other. He hadn’t expected to run into trouble again so soon after his last encounter, but something was definitely happening inside the toilets as he approached.

  The men’s toilet was dimly lit by candlelight, and it was too dark to see clearly what was happening inside. There was some sort of scuffle going on. A soft wet thudding that was immediately recognisable.

  Someone’s getting a beating.

  Candle in hand, along with the whiskey bottle full of urine, Harry ran forwards, lighting the room in a narrow sphere as he moved. At the back, he found…Damien. And then he found Nigel. Damien was beating the bigger man to a pulp, like he was tenderising a piece of beef. His knuckles made soft whapping sounds as they bounced off Nigel’s swollen face. What upset Harry most, was the sight of Steph lying unconscious in one of the cubicles. As Harry swooped the candle towards her, he saw that her jeans were unbuttoned.

  Damien looked up and noticed Harry, but it was too late to give an explanation. Harry smashed the whiskey bottle full of piss over Damien’s head so hard that it might have killed him.

  Part of Harry hoped it did.

  Beside the fireplace, Jess watched over Peter, with Jerry beside her. She watched her sleeping friend turn paler and paler, and could not tell whether it was down to the cold or blood loss. Most of Peter’s wounds were bandaged, but they wept constantly.