Lonely House

by Collins, James

  ‘Who?’

  And, then, Pete realises what she means.

  Pam has this sadness about her as she turns and looks at her daughter. Pete gets this sudden flash of an idea that she meant what she said. Whatever plans Pam had they were for Lily’s benefit. Pete believes her.

  But, then, that look is gone. In one sudden blur of movement Pam is gone. She’s wrenched from the room, pulled backwards through the doorway and there’s this almighty roar followed by a gurgling scream and the sound of bones breaking. The front door slams but still the screaming goes on outside. There’s a low growling sound followed by the high hiss and wail from the wind in the forest, rising in pitch and volume like the hysteria of an excited crowd until Pete has to put his hands over his ears. But, through them he can still hear the bestial sounds of a wild animal ripping flesh from flesh and shredding apart a body with its teeth.

  And, then, there’s a hand on his arm and he leaps away in shock. Lily is standing there, smiling at him, all metal and madness. She takes the car keys from him. In her other hand she holds the two sports bags.

  ‘Quick,’ she says, pulling one hand from his ear. ‘We can go through the back door while he’s out the front. I can drive.’ She pulls Pete towards the door.

  He pulls back.

  ‘No.’

  ‘Come on. He’ll be coming for us next.’

  ‘No.’ Pete picks up the knife.

  ‘That won’t work.’

  Pete’s mind is racing through what needs to be done. It’s suddenly like every thought he has ever had has fallen into place. It’s like all the cluttered stories and tales that fill his mind have fallen away, fallen back like they were fainting as this one, focused thought comes striding through his head to the front. He knows what he has to do and he knows how he is going to do it.

  Lily is trying to drag him towards the door.

  ‘Please, Pete,’ she pleads. ‘I want you to come with me.’

  He pulls away. She turns to face him. He hears the wild noises outside. He knows a woman is being devoured right outside this window and he doesn’t care. This story is real, now, and he is right in the heart of it.

  ‘Peter,’ Lily says, and her voice is soft. It glides keenly but gently into his head, arresting all other thoughts he may have. She settles the fireworks, repairs them, puts out their sparks. ‘Please, help me. I need to get away from here. Take the bags, come with me. We can be anywhere you want. Together.’

  He looks into her eyes and his thoughts start to cloud again. She has the deepest, softest eyes he can remember seeing. She smells sweet, her hand is on his arm, and it feels tender. She looks vulnerable. She needs him. His chest feels warm inside and his shoulders relax. He can actually feel a weight coming off them. But, what weight?

  Drover. That’s what.

  Without Drover he can go with Lily right now, into the car, through the woods, out of the woods, anywhere. He can have his fairground. There’s enough money here to buy two. Her and him, in his fairground. It feels right. It feels perfect. He can hear the music from the merry-go-round, the clang of the strong-man bell, the thump of the bash-the-rat, the smell of candyfloss, the churning of the pipe organ, the screams of delight from the waltzer; the screams of pain from a woman being murdered outside the room, and the smell of vomit and blood, and this girl standing there before his eyes tempting him and offering him all he ever wanted. And all he has to do is leave behind the man who killed his father.

  ‘Stop it!’ he screams at the top of his lungs. He can’t take any more.

  Pete reaches down, picks up the shotgun, tucks the knife into his belt, and pushes past Lily into the hall.

  He knows what he has to do.

  Twenty-five

  IT’S LIKE RUNNING through a dark forest in very dim light with no idea where you are going, and while you are running you are trying not to trip on the roots and dead branches. You can’t afford to miss a step or you will be dead. You are aware that everything around you is waiting for one slip-up and that will be it. And while you are running you are carrying things with you, but they are not tangible things. They are memories and thoughts, they are pain and they are heavy things. You feel the weight of decisions on you, you feel the weight of choice pulling you down as you leap over that root, as you duck under that branch, as you feel that bramble reach out and take a swipe at your side. And the trees only crowd thicker around you, the light only dies dimmer, and the things holding on to you only act more and more like anchors as you struggle through. It’s like having too much of a good thing, like drowning in treacle. And at the same time it’s like being frozen in a state of waking-sleep where you hear voices around you and see someone pass by your bed and yet you can’t open your mouth to speak and you wonder if your lungs will take another breath and there’s nothing you can do except close your eyes and will yourself to live.

  Run, run some more and keep away from those trees, those clinging low branches that grab your shins. Keep them away, stop them from pulling you down, jump and dance and dodge. It’s like running blind into barbed wire; anything could jab your eyes out at any moment. It’s like having the pack on your tail. There is a smell of the hunt and it’s you, you are the hunted. And it is all dragging you down, the pain, the thoughts, the knowledge. And it seems that there is no end.

  But there is an end. There is a tiny light somewhere in the distance. It comes and goes as the trees get in the way. They are moving, like players in a game, blocking you. They swerve in front of you and then, at the last moment, you skirt around them, sidestep, leap, avoid, feel good.

  You can use that weight, that burden, that thing that’s dragging behind you and dragging you down. Use it. Lift it. Let it swing in your arms, let it fly out and take a smash at that tree. Feel the thud of that memory knocking into that trunk and bashing it out of your way. Use that dark thought, that heavy, drag-down memory of something old and nearly lost, swing it out, swing it wide and down, and let it cut through that thicket and clear your way ahead.

  Find another thought inside of you and take it. Take that lighter but sharper, keener, thought, and use that to cut through the branches as you run. And, as the memories clear the path so you can run faster, your route becomes clearer because the darkness is replaced. Not by light; there is no great light here, just that tiny spark at the vanishing point, but the way ahead, the path, is easier.

  You are dragging less because you’ve kept hold of the lighter things, the happier things, the safe and strong memories, and you have let the evil, dark and weighty ones fall away. You can reach that vanishing point if you keep hold of what will clear the way.

  All you need do is what you always do: stay loyal and do what is right.

  Pete bursts into the kitchen with Lily dragging along behind him. She lets go of his hand. He stops and stands at the table, looking around.

  ‘Back door,’ she says, ‘and around to the car. Quick.’

  Pete’s mind rifles through the kitchen like a crazed burglar. What does he know? What has he seen? What does he not need to repeat? He’s looked under the sink; only money there. Fridge? No good. Tall cupboard? Nothing there. Other cupboards? Coffee and shit, nothing there. Work surface? One glass. Useless. Knives? No good.

  ‘Hurry!’ Lily says, and starts towards the back door.

  Pete ignores her. That’s not where he is going. He heads to the garage.

  He hears Lily yell out and takes a quick glance over his shoulder.

  She has the back door open and is looking outside into the night. All Pete can see beyond are shadows moving, some yellow lights, those strange eyes, slit and evil and waiting. But he can also hear. He hears the low groaning sound that he once knew as the sound of a strong gale through trees, but now it’s the forest itself. There is no gale out there. On top of it is that high hissing noise that
once would have been innocent wind high up through branches. Now it’s the hissing and whistling, taunting, egging-on of strange dark beings with jaundice stares. It’s the Missing, those still guarding the house. Those who met their end are here now, protecting the gift.

  A movement. A flash of yellow, a crash of something against the window and the scrape of something hard and sharp across the glass, coming around the house towards Lily.

  She screams.

  Pete wraps one arm around her from behind and pulls her back into the kitchen. He kicks the door shut, what little good that might do, and drags her. She’s still got the bags in her hand, he’s still got the gun in his. Door is shut. Lily feels light in his arm, light and bony, but she is safe. For now. He pulls her towards the garage door and she senses where he is going. She breaks away and turns to run there.

  Light on, door open, into the garage, door shut.

  ‘Find something to put in front of it,’ Lily says, but Pete is at the car trying the boot. Still locked. Then in a flash he is at the freezer.

  He gets his fingers between the chain and the lid. There is a tiny bit of give. He pulls at the lid. There is a minute movement but not enough to get the rubber seal above the level of the freezer’s side. No way to get air in.

  Shelves. Look around.

  The sounds from outside are fainter in here. The concrete walls feel like some kind of protection but Pete knows there is still the door, the kitchen on the other side, the unlocked back door a way for William to get in, the windows, the up and over garage door, hit and dent, hit and dent and break down. He needs to be quick. He needs to find the ammunition and Drover last had the car keys.

  Weaken him. Weaken the monster and cut out the heart. One thing at a time. Find the keys, the cartridges, load, shoot the thing. Do it fast.

  Lily is pushing clutter in front of the door, old chairs, brooms, anything she can find. She pushes a work bench across but Pete knows it’s not going to do any good, not against that strength. But, as she shoves the workbench, a saw falls from a nail. A small, metalwork saw. Something he remembers from school. Hacksaw.

  He puts the shotgun on the freezer, grabs the hacksaw and starts on the loop of the padlock. It’s the thinnest piece of metal. The chain is big, the padlock is heavy but the lock-loop is its thinnest part. The weakest link. It’s rusty, the hacksaw blade, but once some of it scrapes away against the padlock’s loop it looks like its teeth are sharp.

  Sharp teeth, biting into your flesh. What does that feel like? What’s it going to feel like when William’s jaws clamp down around your shoulder and when you feel his hot mouth suck your flesh away from your bones? How long does the pain last for? Pete screws up his eyes and saws the thoughts from his head. There is something new driving him on and it’s not the thought of being ripped apart.

  ‘Drover?’ He shouts against the freezer lid as he saws. ‘Can you hear me?’

  There is no sound. Pete kicks the freezer.

  ‘Drover! She told me, Drover,’ Pete says, and saws harder. ‘She told me what they think, what you did. How you was there when Dad got killed. She says it was you, Drover. I want to know the truth. Was it you? Will you tell me?’

  The girl is at his shoulder. ‘Get away,’ she says and pulls him back.

  But Pete shrugs her off and is straight back at his task. ‘Tell me, Drover?’ he shouts at the freezer, but all he gets back from inside is silence.

  ‘We don’t need him,’ Lily says. She has the car keys, Pam’s car, and she is showing them to Pete. ‘It’s just outside the door, there. I know where the switch is. Quick, now, while he’s busy. We can drive away. We’re free, Pete.’

  ‘I have to know, Drover,’ Pete shouts back as he saws again. There’s a small indent in the lock now, but he’s getting somewhere. ‘I just want the truth. You know me. You going to go down on the ghost train and not come up, Drover? Or will you go and find your way out? Accident, or did you mean it? You gotta tell me, Drover, I have to know.’

  ‘Leave it,’ Lily is pulling at him again.

  ‘Get off me.’

  ‘Look, I know our way out.’

  She leaves him alone.

  He saws, cutting deeper, and hears her scrambling about in the wreckage that is the disorder of the garage. Water falls from his face. Sweat or tears? Some kind of moisture makes circles in the dust on the lid. He sees finger marks in the muck that covers the metal. He wonders how many of the Missing have been stored in here waiting for William to work his way through them all. What must it be like to eat another person? Does William actually know he is doing it?

  His mind flashes to what they stole from the fridge earlier. Were those really sausages?

  He saws harder and is nearly through when Lily shouts at him.

  ‘Look!’

  He glances across to his right, very quickly. He catches sight of her holding some kind of control on a wire.

  ‘It’s for the door,’ she says.

  ‘No!’

  She holds it up, about to press the button.

  ‘No!’ he shouts again, and saws, frantically. ‘You will let it in.’ The saw slips. He feels something hot slide across his fingers but ignores that as he puts the blade back in the groove. If she opens that before he gets the gun loaded then William will be in and they will have no protection at all. ‘Not yet!’ He yells. ‘I need the bullets.’

  She seems to understand and drops the control. It hangs on its wire and she turns to face the doors. From the other side Pete can hear the sound of the Missing, the whispering, the hissing, the howling and the groaning, the excitement of the chase. Where’s William? There are no more sounds of anyone being torn apart. Pam is gone, her diversion is over.

  Then he thinks: he’ll bring what’s left of her in here. There’s no way out.

  Pete has a millimetre left to go. His arm is aching badly and he now sees that he’s sliced through his finger with the blade. Blood is dripping, but he can’t feel the cut.

  He is through.

  ‘Hang on, Drover!’

  He wrestles with the padlock but it won’t turn. The loop is cut, but the loop won’t turn. It always works like that in films. Desperately, he pulls against the metal loop, two fingers inside it, the rest of the padlock held in his bloody hand. He yells out and pulls as hard as he can.

  Wait!

  Did it just slip or did he bend the metal? He looks. That gap is more than the blade made. He pulls again but it only digs into his fingers and his hands scream out in pain. Another idea swings up from the back of his mind, swings up and out from desperation and despair and becomes light, slicing through the thicket ahead, clearing the path. He kicks the freezer, hard.

  ‘Drover. You got to push up. Push up, Drover.’

  If they can push the lid up then that force should pull the loop apart. It only needs to stretch enough for him to slip the chain though the gap and the lock will be off.

  Pete gets down and puts the palms of his hands under the lid of the freezer. In that tiny gap between the lip and the indented rubber seal he can just about squeeze some of his flesh in there, the heel of his hand pushing into the rubber. He puts the other hand in front. He knows Drover is only an inch away and yet they are separated by this cold, metal wall. They both need to push, push up and see if they can stretch the loop of the padlock. Maybe if both of them can do it, together.

  ‘Push up, Drover, push hard. Now!’

  ‘Pete!’ Lily screams.

  A deafening crash of metal stops Pete in his tracks. His hands slip, his feet slip, he falls backwards, cracking his head against the car bumper as he goes down.

  The last thing he knows is the smell of engine oil.

  Twenty-six

  TIME HAD STOPPED meaning anything to Drover. His thoughts sway back and forth i
n time, remembering things from then, wondering about what’s happening now. The more he shivers, the more his bones hurt and his eyelids droop, the more time melts around him.

  Once he had realised there was no way of finding, let alone breaking open, any hinges, the cold turned to numbness and once he accepted that he would soon run out of air, he became calm.

  He didn’t care about the blood leaking from the body that covered him. The body was still slightly warm, giving him a few extra minutes before he really started to feel the cold. He had heard Pete on the other side. He could hear his muffled voice, he could just about make out the words, and he could feel the freezer shake and vibrate when his friend banged on the sides. And then Pete had gone.

  But Drover knew he would be back. Pete was always there.

  Drover shifted his legs. The freezer was just about long enough for him to lie flat out. He dragged one arm under his head, resting like he was in bed, and he closed his eyes. If he could make his breathing shallow, he thought, he might last long enough for Pete to come back with help. But, then what? What was on the other side of this coffin? What would he find if he could get out?

  That woman bleating on about killing her father-in-law, the man Drover accidentally killed earlier; the man that they said had become… He laughed, and wondered if he could see his breath. He could if the freezer light was on, but it wasn’t, of course, not until the lid opened. ‘This is your standard, death-freezer model,’ the shop assistant would say. ‘If you want the luxury frozen tomb model it will cost you extra. That one comes fully equipped with indoor light and soft under-padding so you can be comfortable while you freeze, and so you can see your breath, your carbon dioxide, leaving you and filling your own personal chamber with deadly gasses. The deluxe model also features an on-board dead body for extra warmth, and sits very nicely in any man-eating house…’