The String Diaries

by Stephen Lloyd Jones

  The pressure building in Hannah’s head was unbearable, a ribbon of pain that ran from ear to ear.

  He’s HERE.

  Jakab is HERE.

  And while she was trapped in the kitchen, Leah was alone in one of the upstairs rooms. ‘Have some humanity,’ she moaned at Vass’s back, tears coursing down her cheeks. ‘Don’t let him take my daughter. Please. Don’t let her think I abandoned her. Not again. Please not again.’

  Vass took a step towards the hall, inspecting the human wreckage on the floor. Then he turned and met Hannah’s eyes. He smirked.

  ‘Jakab!’ he shouted. ‘Jakab, listen to me! It seems you got here safely. That’s good. I’m glad about that.’ He laughed in delight. ‘And I like a man who shares my affection for a dramatic entrance. I have what you want. What I promised you. She’s a live one, I’ll admit, but that makes it all the more interesting, doesn’t it? I can’t fault your taste. You know what, Jakab?’ he asked, glancing first at Gabriel and then at the syringe that lay on the counter. ‘I don’t even want anything in return. I’ll set her free, turn her outside, and you can just take her and go.’

  He paused, listening for a reply.

  Around them, the house waited.

  One of the Vizslas dropped its head, snuffled the floorboards, raised it again. The second dog turned, its nose lifted high.

  Beside Hannah, Gabriel whispered through gritted teeth. ‘Look.’

  She turned to him, shocked when she saw the paleness of his face. She recalled the moment at Llyn Gwyr when she had switched on the Discovery’s interior light and discovered how much blood Nate had lost. The memory raked fresh claws at her. Gabriel indicated the windows and Hannah untangled herself from the memory, following his gaze.

  Illes strode through the plum orchard towards the house, his auburn tresses flowing unbound behind him. His eyes had darkened to black, and Hannah thought she knew the significance of that. His face was a mask, an approaching death, devoid of colour or emotion. In each hand he carried a gleaming steel pistol. Beside Illes walked a second Főnök guard. He carried a pistol of his own, and his eyes were as black as coal.

  ‘Sebastien, stand back,’ Gabriel hissed.

  Illes was already halfway across the orchard. He passed in and out of sight through the trees. Hearing Gabriel’s instruction, Sebastien turned and saw the Főnök’s man. He threw himself against the wall as Illes raised his gun and fired off four quick shots. The glass in the french windows exploded across the kitchen floor, a tidal wash of diamonds. Two rounds slammed into the cupboard beside Vass’s head. Splinters of wood spun across the room. Another round punched through the door of the oven. The fourth destroyed a rack of metal cooking implements.

  Vass dropped to the floor. He twisted around, trying to locate his attacker. When he saw the advancing hosszú életek, he bellowed, ‘Dogs!’

  Frantic, his Eleni lieutenant unclipped the chains from the Vizslas’ collars. The animals surged across the kitchen and leaped through the broken windows, a fluid streak.

  Illes appeared at the edge of the orchard. He raised his other pistol and fired off five more shots. Kitchen utensils and wooden cupboards exploded into shrapnel. Vass pressed himself to the floor.

  The younger Vizsla reached Illes first. Jaws snapping, it hurled itself at his face. The Főnök’s man swatted the animal’s skull with the butt of his gun. The dog tumbled to the grass, convulsing. The second Vizsla changed direction, vaulted the orchard fence and scrambled through the trees.

  ‘Benjámin!’ The signeur, hunched in his wheelchair, sat stranded in the middle of the kitchen. His eyes were wild, chest jerking as it rose and fell. ‘Get me away from the window!’

  Vass ignored him, slithering on his stomach across the floor. Blood flowed from his hands where broken glass had sliced them. He overturned the heavy oak table beside Hannah. Ducking behind it, he lifted his revolver over the top and fired three times into the garden.

  Thunder cracked in her ears. She strained against the ropes that bound her.

  You’ve no more time! You have to free yourself! Come on, Hannah!

  ACT!

  ‘Shoot them!’ Vass roared.

  ‘Benjámin!’ The signeur was shrieking in fear. ‘Benjámin, as your signeur I command you!’

  On his knees, across the room, Vass’s lieutenant finally found his nerve. He rose into a shooter’s stance and squeezed off a volley of shots. A bullet took Illes’s companion in the heart, punching him backwards in a red spray. Another drilled through Illes’s right arm, tearing out a lump of flesh. The impact spun him around, but he recovered his balance with barely a missed step. Illes raised the pistol in his left hand and returned fire.

  Crockery and cupboard doors and glass and ceramic tiles exploded, filling the air with dancing shards and splinters and dust. A bullet opened the Eleni lieutenant’s throat in a dark rain. Two more shredded his torso, pitching him on to the floor. His back arched as blood fountained from him, and his heels scrabbled against the floorboards as if they gloried in the scarlet murals they painted on the wood.

  In the garden, Illes ejected the spent clip from his pistol. He tried to reach inside his coat, but his wounded arm prevented him. Instead, he closed his eyes. The muscles of his face slackened.

  Vass peered around the side of the table. He saw Illes standing motionless in the garden and flashed his teeth. Lifting his revolver, he aimed it with both hands. The gun bucked, and the sound of his shot tore through the kitchen. Illes staggered backwards. A dark stain appeared in the centre of his cream polo neck, just below his breastbone. He glanced down at it, eyebrows lifting in surprise as it blossomed. He dropped to one knee. His remaining pistol fell from his hand.

  Hannah’s eyes found Sebastien’s. The old man stood with his back against the wall, shielded from the french windows by the stove-pipe.

  ‘Seb. Please, Seb, I can’t get loose. Find Leah. Don’t let Jakab take her. Please don’t let him take her from me.’ She sobbed. Hated herself for it. But she was losing this. How much time had elapsed? How long had Jakab roamed the upper floor of the house?

  ‘Nobody leaves this room,’ Vass snapped. He broke open the cylinder of his revolver, shook his head at the empty casings. ‘Oh, this just gets better and better.’

  Across the kitchen, Sebastien nodded at Hannah, and her heart ached at the compassion she saw in his face. Leaving the safety of his alcove, he strode across the room and into the hall. From his pocket he pulled his short-bladed knife. She cringed when she considered what little protection it offered him. He disappeared up the stairs.

  On hands and knees, slipping and sliding in blood, Vass crawled to where his lieutenant had fallen. He snatched up the dead man’s pistol. Wiped it clean. Crabbed back towards the overturned table.

  Outside, Illes was still down on one knee. He opened his eyes, picked his pistol from the grass. Lifting his wounded arm, he pulled a spare clip of ammunition from his jacket. He rose to his full height.

  Halfway across the kitchen floor, Vass paused beneath the counter that held the stainless steel syringe. Its glass reservoir was undamaged. He reached out a hand and snagged it. The liquid rolled ruby reflections across his face.

  Vass grinned, and then he was snatching at the button on his shirt cuff. He rolled up his sleeve. Revealed a fleshy forearm.

  ‘Benjámin, what are you doing?’ the signeur rasped.

  Vass found a blue vein in the crook of his arm. ‘I know, I know. You’re dying, and I promised you. I hate breaking promises. But this might be the only chance I get.’

  He depressed the plunger on the syringe. Gabriel’s blood swelled up through the needle and flooded into his arm. Grimacing, he pulled it free and tossed the empty vessel across the room.

  The signeur twisted in his chair, mouth working soundlessly.

  Hannah heard
a loose floorboard creak above them. She watched Vass crawl back into cover behind the table, holding his plundered pistol close to his chest. He raised his eyes to her, and she saw that his pupils had dilated.

  ‘Shit, this stuff’s good,’ he said. He opened his mouth wide and bit at the air. His arm twitched and he dropped the pistol.

  In the garden, Illes pushed the spare clip into his gun. He took a step towards the house. Then another, raising his weapon.

  Vass lifted his hand, examined his fingers. ‘I can feel it flowing through me,’ he murmured. ‘No pain. Just a . . .’ He clenched his fist, opened his fingers and picked up the pistol.

  ‘Benjámin!’ the signeur hissed.

  Vass raised the gun in a fluid movement and shot the old man twice. The signeur’s head burst like a rotten squash and his wheelchair rocked backwards. Sharp pieces of Károly’s skull slid down the wall behind him.

  ‘Don’t interrupt me like that when I’m thinking,’ Vass said. He frowned, looking first at the weapon in his hand and then at the signeur’s corpse. Then, noticing Gabriel, he aimed the gun at the Irishman’s face.

  Hannah closed her eyes. She couldn’t help Gabriel. The rope that bound her was too tight. She wondered if she could stop herself from screaming if she was hit by the spray from the shot that killed him.

  Nothing she could do to intervene. She wouldn’t watch him die in front of her.

  So you’ll keep your eyes closed and abandon him too.

  She raged at that internal voice even as it shamed her into opening her eyes.

  Vass’s pupils vibrated as if powered by tiny springs ‘What’s happening?’ he asked.

  ‘You’re dying,’ Gabriel replied. ‘You’re a psychotic bastard, you’re dying and it’s going to hurt. You’re going to feel more pain than you ever imagined you could feel. And when it’s over you’re going to wake in hell where it’ll start all over again.’

  Vass shivered. His cheek began to twitch. ‘Then I’ll take you with me,’ he said, and pulled the trigger.

  Gabriel jerked back in his chair as the blast echoed around the room and Hannah opened her mouth wide and screamed and screamed.

  CHAPTER 25

  Aquitaine region, France

  Now

  It had only been her bedroom for a few days, and it contained barely any of her belongings, but it was clean and brightly painted and it had felt snug.

  She tried to tug her wrist away from the headboard. The plastic cuff that bound her to its slats cut into her skin and she screwed up her eyes with the pain. She had thought about chewing through it, but she couldn’t get her teeth into the loop.

  If only she could reach something metal – a screwdriver would be perfect – then perhaps she could twist the plastic with it, tightening it until it snapped. The pain would be awful, but at least she would be free. At least she would be able to creep downstairs and help Mummy fight the Bad Man.

  She didn’t want to think about Him, didn’t want to even consider that she might have to meet Him. But she didn’t want Mummy to die. And she didn’t want to die either, mainly because it scared her but also because she didn’t want Mummy to be alone.

  It was no good though. There was no screwdriver in sight. She could see a pair of pyjamas and a paperback book and a Bratz doll and that was it. None of those things offered her any means of freeing herself, unless there was a chapter on how to escape from handcuffs in the book, and she knew there wasn’t because she had read it before and it was mainly about horses in love.

  The man who had tied her to the bed had done so in silence, refusing to look at her. First he had bound Éva in the larger bedroom next door. After that, he had taken a syringe and injected the woman with something. Éva’s eyelids had drooped and she’d fallen asleep. Then he had led Leah into her bedroom, where he used two of the plastic strips to truss her up.

  She heard sounds from the next room: a creak as the door swung open, voices, a whispered conversation. Moments later the door of her bedroom opened and Sebastien peered inside. His face was paler than she had ever seen it and he carried a stubby blade. When he saw her, he sagged with relief and moved to the bed.

  ‘Are you hurt?’

  She shook her head. ‘Where’s Mummy?’

  ‘Downstairs.’

  ‘Is she—’

  ‘At the moment, she’s fine. She’ll be even better once we get you out of these cuffs and away from the house.’

  ‘I tried to bite them off. But I couldn’t reach.’

  Sebastien nodded, motioning her to lower her voice. He slipped his blade inside the loops of plastic and sliced them off. Leah sat up on the bed, rubbing away the soreness from her wrist. She heard a soft thump, somewhere upstairs.

  ‘Let’s go,’ he whispered.

  Leah nodded and when he offered her his hand, she was grateful. It felt good to be that close to someone. Sebastien moved to the bedroom door and opened it a crack. He squinted through the gap. Satisfied, he opened it fully and moved into the hall. Leah followed, but when Sebastien headed towards the main stairs she tugged his hand and shook her head. He frowned at her. In response, she pointed along the corridor past her own room. Balcony, she mouthed. Steps.

  The master bedroom lay at the end of the hall. It contained a set of doors that opened on to the roof of a single-storey annexe. A balustrade ran around it, except for a gap where a set of metal steps descended down one side of the house. It was the better option. They had no chance of making a silent escape via the main stairs. Almost every tread screamed or groaned under pressure.

  Leah led Sebastien into the master bedroom and drew back the curtains. Opening one of the balcony doors, she walked out on to the roof. The sun was a white coin in the sky above them. She filled her lungs with air, relieved to be outside where no one could creep up on her, plunge a knife into her, or press a hand to her mouth and suffocate her. She thought about her mother downstairs. About how scared she must be.

  ‘Let’s go,’ Sebastien said.

  ‘Where are all those men from earlier?’

  ‘They’re probably dead,’ he replied. ‘We have to hurry.’

  Heart accelerating at his words, she tightened her grip on his hand and accompanied him down the steps.

  At the bottom, feet crunching on the gravel, Sebastien crouched down beside her. ‘Listen to me, Leah. You see that car?’ He pointed at one of the big white off-roaders the men had parked in front of the house. It sat empty, a few feet away from the dining-room window.

  She nodded.

  ‘When I say the word, we’re going to run over to it and jump inside. You take the passenger seat. You know which one that is?’

  A silly question, but she nodded anyway.

  ‘Good. Get in and do up your seat belt. We’re going to leave here fast. The car will make a lot of noise. Some of those men from earlier might turn up.’

  ‘I thought you said they were dead.’

  ‘Probably dead, I said. And I only said they might turn up. I want you to lie low in your seat. Make yourself small. Understand?’

  Leah nodded. She discovered she was crying. ‘What about Mummy?’

  ‘We get you to safety first. Then I come back for her. OK?’

  ‘OK.’

  ‘You’re sure?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Go.’

  Leah sprinted across the gravel. She tugged open the Audi’s door and scrambled up into the seat. She slammed the door behind her and struggled into the seat belt. When she glanced at the driver’s seat on her left she saw that a dark liquid had drenched it. It was still wet, and she was pretty sure it was blood.

  Hannah didn’t want to look, didn’t want to see the evidence of Gabriel’s ruined face, wanted to remember him as the proud hosszú élet that had accompanied her up the slopes of Cadair
Idris. But in the end she couldn’t stop herself, as if her eyes demanded that she witness the continuing tragedy of Jakab’s legacy.

  When she turned in her chair she found Gabriel staring back at her. ‘Missed,’ he said, eyes wide. ‘Can you credit it?’

  Vass’s hands spasmed and he dropped the gun. He grinned, the skin of his mouth stretching far wider than it should have done, exposing teeth as far back as his molars. When the flesh on one side of his mouth split open all the way to his ear, he screamed. The loose flap of cheek flopped down under its own weight, revealing the pink gum along his jaw. Blood, in a torrent, flowed down his neck.

  ‘Son’thing whurong,’ he slurred, hands scrabbling on the floor for the pistol. His fingers slipped on the boards, leaving bloody trails. Hannah realised that the dark and gummy discs that glued themselves to the wood were his fingernails.

  He raised his eyes to her and she saw that one of them bulged as if forced from its socket by pressure within. ‘Helk-he,’ he said, gargling through the blood welling in his throat.

  Help me.

  Fluid gushed from his ear. It spattered on to his shoulder

  ‘You want me to help you?’ Gabriel asked. ‘You untie me and give me your pistol. That’s the only way I can help you now.’

  ‘Helk-heeee.’

  ‘You untie me now while you still can!’

  Vass bucked and twitched. He tore at his clothes, ripping open his shirt and exposing the soft white folds of his flesh. He began to paw savagely at himself. Gobs of fat, like molten wax, came away in his hands. He screamed again. Teeth rained from his mouth, clattering on to the floorboards like ivory dice. He raked his fingers across his abdomen, tearing open a deep furrow. Hannah saw his organs lurking beneath, a dark and shining mass. Just as he was about to plunge a hand into that snake of intestines, a gun barked and the top of Vass’s skull detonated like a bloody firework.

  Leah watched Sebastien yank open the driver’s door and swing himself up into the cabin. She thought she might be sick if she watched him settle into the seat already glossy and sticky with someone else’s blood. When the fabric squelched beneath his weight, she felt her stomach clench, and tasted the acid burn of bile in her throat.